Wednesday morning up early. Did not have to take T2 to school so I could go slightly earlier to work. Repacked my work bag to remove any unneccesaries with a view to taking it into the gig later. This would not happen, but I tried. Meant not even taking my coffee cup. I parked the Beetle on the road for free parking. Had already decided pretty much this would be a day of not drinking, but by leaving the car on the road I am free to change my mind. Not having my coffee cup, and being in good time, I could / would have to get a coffee from the stand at the train station. And it was good coffee! My coffee tastes better at home, but doesn't always from my rubbish commuting flask. I need to sort this out.
Busy day at work, well they're all busy. Regular lunch of a falafel wrap, and then away promptly. Got the tube from Farringdon back to Stratford to meet my friend for a few beers in Tap East before the gig. A couple of non alcoholic beers for me and some good sounding East End Mild for him. Then to the O2.
We knew by this point there was no taking a laptop bag like mine into the gig, even if I'd taken almost everything out. So checked it in and paid a tenner. Then to pick up our free tickets, some expensive drinks, and in to the show.
Support from Skindred, and I thought I recognise that name, and that singer, but I don't think I've seen this band. They were great though, lovely rockers, clearly been doing it for a while but not as long as KISS. I loved the "Newport Helicopter", though I was a bit wary when he was encouraging everyone to take their tops off for this. Another Tommy Lee I thought, haven't we moved on? It wasn't that, it was everyone in the moshpit swinging their shirts round their heads, it was great. We were not in the moshpit. I looked them up later, the singer is from Dub War. I know I saw them at the Joiners in Southampton about 1995, I remember him winding up a big old air raid siren on the stage but I cannot find it in my gigography, hmm...
Anyway KISS played this, with all the fireworks, blood spitting, and flame breathing from before. Plus Paul Stanley flying from one end of the O2 to another on a trapeze type device:
Great to end on Black Diamond, and that's where we had to leave it. I did not want to risk the trains. So turns out we missed this (fairly predictable) encore:
We got the bag back, went to the tube, with quite a lot of others who left at that point. We actually ran through Stratford shopping centre and just made the last direct train home.
Now finally to sleep! Then back to work, a Thursday from home. And we're pretty much up to date.
Estimated 1130 cups of coffee from my espresso machine1 probably comes to £1.28 a cup (including actual coffee and now servicing1 but not the electricity).
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in Hythe in Kent. Wed and father to two, I'm a full-stack web engineer, + I do mostly javascript / nodejs, some ruby, python, php ect ect. I like pubbing, parkrun, eating, home automation and other diy stuff, history, genealogy, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, and TIME TRAVEL.