Went to see Suede in Southampton on Saturday night. Jack's idea, and why not? The boys had been asking for a sleepover at Grandpa's house, so we decided to do a flying visit for this without them. We took the train for a change as I didn't fancy rubbish drive there, quick turnaround and rubbish drive back.
Saturday morning I did the park run, and while it was super windy, it felt quite a good one. Someone even congratulated me after the run for overtaking them and then they could not catch me back up again. Was still not my best time, but not far off, and better than last week at 22:54. Hmm now I write those numbers I think I wrote this out before at the beginning of the weekend. Nevermind. Cycled back from there to tag Clare, she raced off to the station. She went on a train an hour earlier than me to try and do a little shopping. I got changed, Jim came to pick up the boys and dropped me in Cheriton so I could walk for a bit but still make the next train. Met Clare at St Pancras and we trained to Portchester.
Called for Jack on the way, a brief stop at Mum and Dad's for a chat and a cup of tea, then a lift to Fareham to get the train to Southampton. It was literally all go this weekend.
Southampton was confusing, I did not recognise any of it. We headed out of Southampton Central "the other way", feels like it used to be he back exit and there was not much out that way the last time I visited (twenty years ago? more?) but it seemed to be the direction of the action. We headed to the BrewDog and it was great. Got a flight of beers each so we could sample some different things. The decor in there is nice industrial chic, and there was a record fair on in the pub too so Jack was delighted. Didn't buy anything but we sat there for quite a while. Lovely to spend some time with my nephew, especially somewhere interesting.
Next we tried to eat. Time must have flown because we didn't have time for a second pub. Looked in a few places that partly appealed but not to everyone, then got turned away from some places that did appeal to us all. Starting to panic we ended up at a Bill's. And it was very nice. And Mum had generously given me the money for dinner! It was good stuff, I had roast cauliflower for a starter, in a bit of a batter but not much. Then a vegan wellington for main, with a little mash. Didn't feel like a very big portion, though the other two were happy with their chicken based dishes. We had wine but no puddings. Then on to the gig!
Not been to Southampton Guildhall for a long time, and not many times at all. We got there just for the closing bars of the support, and easily found ourselves a place to stand right near the front. Good gig, plenty of old stuff, I'm not familiar with the new songs. Brett, Simon, and Matt look the same as they ever did. Richard seemed to have changed, but he was younger than the others. Neil Codling has crazy heavy metal hair now, he looks like Scott Gorham from Thin Lizzy. Brett messed around with some of the older songs, he is probably bored of playing them, but he also did a couple of Justin Hawkins style impromptu walkabouts in the the crowd. An acoustic "The Living Dead" was good, but being entirely unplugged and facing slightly away from our side of the stage was a strain to hear. The band did captivate the room. Must have been just about a capacity crowd, the front row were mostly new teenage fans but the rest of the audience was more my age. Setlist stolen from the internets:
And for the encore:
Introducing Obsessions Brett said "this is from an album that doesn't exist", he is not very happy with this one then1.
We had to change trains on the way home, a bit dull and cold, but it had been a good night.
Next morning more or less straight off again! Slow trains home because I think we'd have struggled to cross London because of the Marathon, but it was nice and relaxing, reading books and drinking tea.
💬 Suede at Southampton Guildhall
Paul Clarke's weblog - I live in A small town, Kent. Married + dad to two, I'm a full-stack web engineer, + I do javascript / nodejs, some ruby, other languages ect ect. I like pubbing, parkrun, eating, home-automation and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, family tree stuff, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, and TIME TRAVEL.