Cut and thrust

My 37th birthday! Yeah. And one of my very best friends, vodkaslut, bought us both tickets to a charity gig at 93 Feet East, in the heart of trendy Spitalfields. Bad news is I'm not going to past muster sartorially among the fashionistas, good news is that I don't care! I have a birthday to celebrate and nothing is going to get in my way. Hung over from a spectacularly drunken Halloween party at one of my more respectable friends' hacienda, I arrive at Liverpool Street Station bright eyed and bushy tailed. After meeting up with vodkaslut, we amble over to the ten bells pub and meet up with cidertramp and my old university pals, real ale boy and Bulmersbabe. Presents are given and platonic kisses exchanged, then vodkaslut asks me what I want to drink. The answer is of course the ubiquitous 'gin!'. Impressed by my ability to transgress the laws of science and aging, I bask in the kudos that this entails. At the venue, we observe fashionista territory in all its plumage- girls in fifties style dresses with asymmetric haircuts are the prevailing trend on show (what is that by the way, did somebody decide that all of a sudden we're not going to bother making things even?). Real ale boy is particularly impressed with a Britt Ekland lookalike whose hair is so backcombed that it'll take months to unravel. Still the music is good to variable. Rosemary made a particular impression on me, and The Holloways, just because they made the effort to dress up in bras ('how do you girls wear these things?' they comment, 'they're so uncomfortable' Well, d'you know what, we just put up with it). Further inane questions come from the tequila fuelled crowd of unruly Dogs supporters, who entertain me greatly until one of them turns and stares into my eyes with the concentration and glassy maniacal glaze of the truly obsessed. 'Where are the Dogs' they chant, 'backstage' I almost pluck up the courage to shout back, but then think better of it. Forget the village of the damned, forget Dante's vision of hell and the nine circles of Hades, these girls are on a mission to seek and possibly destroy their prey, which they almost do when Dogs finally come on stage and play a fantastic set unhampered by the lost souls who invade the stage at every opportunity. That Johnny Cooke (or is it the incarnation of Peter Cook gone slightly barmy?) is a brave lad to be sure.

All in all a quite adventurous birthday this year. 6 or 7 hours of drinking and gigging in one day. My feet hurt but my heart was uplifted. Let's hope I have many more like it.