We left off on our story of this intrepid adventurer and narrator last week with me holding a pair of Sex Pistols tickets and nobody to go with.
My friend Dominic that I know from volunteering was actually very excited and eager to go -- but unfortunately he couldn't get the night off work. At the last minute, my friend Christina (whom I don't think I've ever mentioned here before) contacted me via Facebook to say she really wanted to go, but didn't know anyone to go with. I felt a little bad for not asking her originally, but didn't think we really knew each other well enough to be going to a gig together, just the two of us.
But considering she spent most of the day with only Rhys when we all went to see Aerosmith in Hyde Park, she's not someone who gives that kind of thing any thought. In the end, it was a similar story for her though -- she couldn't get the night off. And I stuck the ticket on Ebay.
I actually put it on Ebay before I heard from Christina for definite, but gave it a reasonably high "buy it now" price. I figured if Christina was unable to go I could then drop the price right down to get a sale. What I hadn't bargained on was being unable to change that later because there were bids on the ticket. Or in this case, one single, solitary bid of a pound.
Naturally, I just logged in with my alternative ebay account and bid on my own auction to raise the stakes a bit.
The bid-snipers came out in the closing minutes, and in the end one user in particular won the auction for a massive £21. Almost half price, it was a whole £19 less than I am paying for the ticket -- but beggars can't be choosers.
Once the auction ended I started emailing the buyer to arrange details for how to pay me and how I would give them their ticket. The buyer turned out to be a young lady named Jools who was very grateful for the ticket and on exchanging numbers to arrange to meet with the ticket on Thursday night, we spent much of Wednesday night having conversations via text.
I wondered if perhaps I wouldn't be seeing the band on my own after all, and although we knew nothing about each other, thought perhaps there could just be the beginnings of something more.
Fast forward to Thursday night: I finish work and walk into the storms ravaging England. Luckily for me the rains had lessened considerably from earlier in the day -- but Jools was apparently not so lucky. I called her when I arrived in Brixton and she told me she'd had to go home to change, as she'd been soaked. But she gave me directions to the bar where we were to meet.
Finding the bar was no problem, but I hesitated before walking in. I was dressed in my old torn jeans, Zero t-shirt and black leather jacket -- through the window of the bar I could see the clientèle in suits. But with the alternative being wait outside in the cold and the rain, I held my head up high, walked in and ordered myself a beer.
Within seconds I was having second thoughts about Jools, when I noticed the bar's rainbow flags. Still, although I don't much go in for the gay scene I know that I can walk into almost any gay bar in London and be certain that unlike a lot of places the staff will be friendly and I won't get any trouble.
I stood at the bar and read my book for an hour before Jools arrived. I was just finishing my second drink when my phone started to ring -- I picked it up and answered, and noticed Jools walking in.
The signs should have been obvious to me sooner -- the fact that she was new to Ebay when she bought the ticket, and confessed to being thrown by setting up a Paypal account, there should have been alarm bells ringing. I wondered if not unlike the bus-stop girl she might be a teenager. What I didn't expect was a 50 year old.
On Wednesday night when we'd been texting she'd made some comment like "I wonder what the crowd will be like?", and I'd replied saying I expected they would be older than the band. She probably smiled to herself about that, at the time (although she's not older than the band).
It turns out Jools had never been to this bar before and didn't know it was a gay bar, but if I had put any thoughts of something more between us out of my head earlier, they now positively dropped and rolled in their hurry to get out.
As it happens, Jools was very good company. She was both very grateful for the ticket and extremely generous (though she could have been more generous and given me the face value), buying me drinks and not even questioning why I was on my own. I'd probably said in the auction's item description I was on my own.
I was introduced to her friends as they arrived -- just as Jay, the nice guy that had sold her the ticket -- who were all of a similar age, but also it seems in their own ways quite successful. Although what she does now, I don't really remember apparently Jools used to be someone very important in the media with a close and long-running professional relationship with a certain radio DJ and television presenter. Maybe this person is in my life not for personal reasons but professional ones?
Looking back, I wish perhaps Jools and her entourage had been a little less generous with the drinks. We didn't bother watching the Cribs who were supporting, and although I lost track how much I drank that night, some rough calculations since then have suggested it was something like 6 or 7 pints, more or less on an empty stomach.
As for the gig itself, we were stood at the absolute very farthest back wall of Brixton Academy. We could see the stage, but I don't think I got a glance of Johnny Rotten all night. The band were good -- very bloody good, consider it's been thirty years since Never mind the Bollocks was released -- and Johnny Rotten remains as funny as ever, in his very strange posh/cockney way. Despite being so good "considering" they weren't amazing. They played their songs well and with passion, but I don't know... It just wasn't spectacular. That said, I never expected the band to be amazing -- they never were, what they were was incredibly influential and a sort of catalyst for the times -- for the whole movement. And I wanted the chance to see the original band playing their own songs -- it's one thing to hear records, to hear live records, to hear bands playing Pistols covers, but it's something else to hear Johnny Rotten singing, right there.
Getting home was naturally a struggle because the Victoria line -- the only Tube line to Brixton -- was closed, and buses were running instead. Jools sent me off after a bus, and the rest of the journey home was a bit of a blur. I got off the bus somewhere around Leicester Square, since I knew the area from when I worked there and sort of stumbled along to Liverpool Street and to the train home. Jon had kindly agreed to pick me up -- even though it was gone 1am by the time I got the station -- and I was barely through the door at home before I was bent over the toilet...
I woke up on Friday with the bedroom light still on. Even when I shifted the worst of the hangover with pain killers, caffeine and sugar the day was not fun.
Still, it's very punk.
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