Our cat, Felix, is a butter-wouldn’t-melt, birthday-card-cute kind of guy. He’s never happier than when he’s sitting on Rachel’s lap, gazing adoringly at her while we watch TV. Okay, he wakes us early every morning, wailing his own kind of song, but we love him. So last Monday, when he suddenly sank what’s left of his teeth into Rachel’s wrist, biting deep enough to draw blood and necessitate a trip to a local Walk in centre for some antibiotics, we forgave him. It seems he was himself attacked by a flea which must’ve chosen a very sensitive area as a target, so he instinctively lashed out. To be honest, I’d have done the same if I’d been bitten in my nethers.
What has this got to do with our trip to see AC/DC at Wembley? Well, it was the start of a long chain of irritating or frankly weird occurrences that became so common on our journey that, by midnight on the following day, we ended up in a state of mild hysteria.
Tuesday dawned and we packed our sandwiches for the journey, clothes, antibiotics and numerous chargers for all the gadgets that we now possess into a small suitcase, and the three of us – Rachel, David and Yours Truly – headed down the M1 to Milton Keynes. Surprisingly, that was the easy part. Maybe because I wasn’t driving. We had booked an Air BnB on a new housing estate that appeared to still be settling into place. After we were told that the place was still being “cleaned,” (the inverted commas are deliberate – stick with me) a young woman appeared from the house opposite and we asked her whether there was anything like a cafe or a garden centre nearby where we could go and wait. She couldn’t quite grasp the idea of a garden centre being in Milton Keynes, but very helpfully pointed us in the direction of a pub, which we were more than happy to try out.
It turned out to be one of those new housing estate pubs that serves burgers, has “The Sport” on TV all day and probably does a roaring trade on a Sunday when all the local families come in for a roast. One of a chain of pubs which Alan Partridge would’ve described as “fine dining.” But it was pleasant enough and we looked forward to returning to our accommodation, suitably refreshed.
But however refreshed we were, the accommodation in question wasn’t. It was pointedly obvious that it hadn’t been cleaned at all, and even the sheets on the bed hadn’t been changed. Rachel went into Super Woman mode and arranged a refund from the owner, after we decided that it was unfit for us to stay in, and we headed off to seek a local hotel.
There was a particularly delicious looking Costco lasagne languishing seductively in the boot of our car, which had been booked as the star attraction on our dinner table tonight. But as we were now heading for a hotel instead, we no longer had any use for it so we sought out that friendly neighbour to donate it to her. She was very grateful, and waved us off with a cheery smile as we drove away. We smiled back, Rachel doing so through gritted teeth as she had twisted her ankle on the path outside the house and it was still giving her gip as we left. I wore a fixed smile too, but that was more to do with the fact that I’d been really looking forward to that lasagne.
And so to the Milton Keynes Travelodge. What a strange place MK is. It’s very functional, set out on a grid system, but gaining access to it involves going across a few roundabouts, a couple more roundabouts, and then some more roundabouts. Our SatNav kept advising us to “continue straight ahead onto H6 Childs Way” for what seemed like an hour and a half but was probably nowhere near that. It was long enough to become a catchphrase in our evening’s conversations though.
Rather incongruously, there is a huge Sainsbury’s right next to an abandoned car park in the city centre. Outside the hotel itself there is a square, not at all unlike the Soviet-style efforts you might find in Vladivostok or Gdansk. Purely functional, it was framed on all sides by chain restaurants such as Nandos, Turtle Bay and the one we plumped for, Zizzis, which offered an acceptable pizza and an over enthusiastic waitress who single handedly dispelled the myth that Southerners are unfriendly. She couldn’t have been more helpful or more smiley.
David is a big fan of Formula One. Good job too, as he drove us into London the following day, down the M1 and onto the North Circular Road via the Hanger Lane Gyratory System, as I seem to remember it was once called. And the route was as crowded as the starting grid at Silverstone (where, coincidentally, David was going after he left London). The effort of driving took all his attention and effort and I’m grateful to him for getting us to the Premier Inn there in one piece.
Once again, at the hotel we were met with happy staff. There must be something in the water in Ealing because if I ever ended up living, let alone working, in the area, I’d constantly have a face like a smacked backside as the city suffers from constant traffic noise, and I suspect more people came through the lobby of that hotel in one hour than turn up at St James Park whenever Newcastle are at home.
Wembley beckoned us through the hotel window. We could see the famous arch rising into the skyline and to look at it from our vantage point you would’ve thought it would be easy to get to as it looked so close.
Oh, Mobbsy, you fool. How wrong could you be.
It was actually four miles away, but travelling four miles in London takes as long as travelling thirty miles in Northumberland. Catching a tube was out of the question as that would have involved travelling all the way into central London, just to go all the way back out again. So we decided to find a hot, crowded, slow method of getting to the stadium instead, and what better way to achieve that than choosing a bus?
It bumped along the potholed roads for about fifty minutes, so when we got to Wembley we rewarded ourselves with a pint of something fizzy in a nearby pub. We had planned to get into the venue as soon as we could because we had standing tickets. Now I’ve always wanted to step onto the pitch at Wembley. What football-loving English person wouldn’t? I had pictured us in the mosh pit, bouncing up and down to ‘Highway to Hell” or “Whole Lotta Rosie”, and to some extent that is exactly what we did.
What I hadn’t planned for was the fact that I am now of an age where being on my feet for nearly six hours would start an argument between my brain my lower back. My back would insist on sitting down, while my brain shouted back that there was nowhere to sit anyway so complain all you want, it ain’t going to change anything. Never mind “Back in Black.” This was more about “Back in Agony.”
And so it was that I limped out of Wembley, having stood more or less on the spot where Sir Geoff had scored the third of his three goals 58 years previously, with the echo of “For Those About to Rock” ringing in my ears and no idea of how to get back to the hotel (which rather unhelpfully couldn’t be seen from the stadium).
Taxis were out of the question as 80,000 people all wanted one at the same time. So we managed to join a queue somewhere near a bus stop, and we were assured by one of our fellow passengers that the bus back to Ealing runs every twelve minutes. After an busless hour, I was becoming somewhat sceptical about this promise, and although we got to know everyone in the queue quite well by then, I was delighted when David found that there was a taxi on its way. My back started to come out of its sulk as soon as I sank down into the back seat. At that point I was unsure whether I’d ever be able to get out of it again, but I was willing to take the chance.
I eventually fell into my Premier Inn bed with a degree of gratitude that I hadn’t experienced since the last time a dentist told me I didn’t need any fillings.
The following day, David went off to Silverstone to see the Grand Prix, and we caught a tube into London to try out a restaurant that’d we’d heard a lot about.
While in London, we stumbled across Heddon Street near Piccadilly Circus . What’s on Heddon Street you ask? Well, there’s the Starman pub, and there’s Ziggy’s restaurant. And if you think that all sounds a bit David Bowie-ish, you’d be right, because Heddon Street is the location of the photograph that appears on the front cover of one of the best albums of all time: the Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
How lucky was it that the pub and the restaurant have the same name as his songs?! Amazing. I just had to do the tourist thing and had my photo taken right where the great man himself once landed.
Imad’s Syrian Kitchen is just off Carnaby Street, and it served the kind of dishes that I remember scoffing when I lived in Damascus. I couldn’t be tempted by Barada Beer, the local brew in my days as a resident of that city, as it wasn’t on offer. So I plumped for a “Beirut Beer,” Beirut being so close to Syria that the waters they use in its manufacture may well come from the same river as the Syrian version.
Lamb, rice, pickled radish and peppers, flatbreads, hummus and baba ganouche all contributed to a really delicious meal and we caught the train back to Newcastle well satisfied. So well satisfied in fact that I wasn’t even tempted by the offer of a Twix from the trolley.
And to top the whole trip off, our lovely friend Pam gave us a lift back home from the station, saving us from a trudge through the rain.
Would I see AC/DC again? Hell yes. Old Rockers never die! But Brian Johnson is 76 now, and Angus Young 69, so it may never happen.
Though if it does, I will be there. Sitting down of course.
Steve's Journal 