fingertrouble | Last Big Weekend

That's not a bird, that's not a plane, it's a thrown bottle! They were throwing the plastic bottles like crazy!

The weekend started with the Blur concert as I mentioned before, so won't go into too much here apart from it was wonderful - I went with Kirk and we were worried about rain and came prepared but as you can see from the pics it was glorious sunshine...the moon even came out for 'This is a Low' and Damon asked everyone to say hello to the moon...all the way through he was throwing out bizarre factoids like this was where Crystal Palace was in 1851 and how beautiful it must of looked - cue loads of blank faces and Wayne-style 'I did not know that Damon!' type reponse ;-) Nice to hear Parklife in the very park that actually inspired it (fact fans!).

Me and Kirk

After a very emotional Universal and Popscene and the whole crowd moshing to Song2, we headed off to the Quebec -where I bought some drinks and literally 5 seconds later in the crowded bar (half Blur fans singing along to Parklife, the other half elderly gay men and a few young entrepeneurs looking on bemusedly) lost my wallet. Cue phoning to cancel my cards in a panic and really didn't end the night well...lost about £35 + 20 euros and loads of stuff in my wallet, mostly unimportant...

Kirk at the end of the night

Went back to Johns and slept late, went into London about 5ish, wandered past Trafalgar Square where the PA sounded broken and some C-list no-name pop wannabe band were gyrating on stage. Wandered past pretty quickly and got in contact with my friend Lee 10000 Spoons and Ian Fondue who were having drinks at the Phoenix Arts Club. Had a great - and strangely quiet - time in there while the madness continued outside. I have to say the whole wallet thing had left a pall on Pride - I wasn't looking forward to it anyway, I always meet people I'd rather not see again...but fucked me off that I go to a gay bar night before pride after being on my guard with all the people at the Blur gig and I get ripped off by a fellow homosexual (pretty sure it was as the Blur fans weren't in the lower bar). So I felt like I wasn't missing much,

Then me and Lee went onto Jez Celebrity Murder Party's place in the wonderful but surprisingly-not-as-shitty-as-I-thought environs of Peckham Rye, met up with some of his friends and had some food and wine that I'd brought as a present for Lee, then went onto Crimes Against Pop where Ian was playing...sadly he was delayed so only played a few tunes, but least I was there early for once...also there was Gregg and Kelly (you might remember them from the CMP XI photos?), Robb and someone I'd not seen for 6 years and was happy to see - Alex aka Jet Set Alex so we caught up a bit.

Robb and Lee the birhday boy

Robb doesn't do funny faces...

???

I then had to rush off to get the last train to Gay Shame where Kirk and Gary were...got there OK but just to find out I'd missed a surprise set by St Etienne! Damn...had a great time, the theme was Gay Shame Goes Girly...well I didn't but had a great time dancing. Gay Shame is the Pride event put on by Duckie, and was the last one sadly :-( Another Last this weekend.

Danced for 2-3 hours non-stop and especially loved them playing Mighty Real, Common People, Girls and Boys (more pogoing to Blur!) and ended on KLF's What Time Is Love which I couldn't believe they played and loved it, and of course reprised with He's On The Phone by St Etienne. The nice thing is it went a long way to restore my faith in homsexuality that had been destroyed by the wallet incident, it was the tonic I needed.

Boys that are girls and girls that are boys...

Got back to Kirk and Gary's early Sunday morning and it was light and stayed up talking til 7am and then dropped down to sleep...had a very chilled day today, mostly chatting and eating then came back here...lovely sunshine and again very warm.