Title: A mad, magical weekend
Fandom: Live Music
Rating: General
Content notes: None
Author/photographer notes: Account of a magical fannish weekend, with photos and video by me. Also for 'hit the wall' on my Birthday Bingo card.



I am giddy. I am ridiculously happy still, writing this, after spending a weekend doing things I couldn't have contemplated this time last year for very boring long-term illness reasons.

What did I do? I travelled to a couple of gigs to see a band play live. That's all. I do it quite a lot these days, now I can, but normally I catch a train or bus to a nearby city, meet up with one or two other fans, enjoy the gig, take photographs, occasionally chat to the band, and my partner picks me up at the end with our dogs in the car and drives me home to my nice warm bed.

This time I planned to travel down to Nottingham from West Yorkshire for one gig, then on to London the following morning for another one. I couldn't afford hotels, so it was going to be more than two days without sleep, close to as many hours awake as my age. By most standards it was a pretty bloody stupid idea.

But you know. It was Peter. (And Jack, Katia, Miggles, Rafa and the sadly absent Miki, who isn't well.) Together they are the Puta Madres, a band Peter has played and toured with when he's not doing Libertines stuff, and has now released an album with. And they were incredible, as always.






In response to 'Marry me!' from someone in the crowd - 'Well, I can't right now, love, I've got a few more songs to play, you know?'













Peter Doherty & the Puta Madres, Nottingham Rock City, 11th May 2019.

But much as I love them, this isn't really about them.

As I said, the band were amazing, and I couldn't wait to do it all again the following night, but I almost, almost gave in and rang for my partner to collect me from Nottingham in the early hours of Sunday morning. The crowd had been extra rough, and a girl who had to be dragged over the barrier by security managed to gouge my leg open with her heels or whatever she was wearing. My legs are easily injured so I'm always careful to be at the barrier to protect them, but my luck ran out this time. It'll take months to heal properly, and I was in an insane amount of pain.

In the end, I caught the coach down to London as planned, because if I did decide to pack it in it was easier and cheaper to get transport home from there than Nottingham. I thought I might manage some sleep too, but it was full and I was sharing a seat with Mr Fidgetty Sharp Elbows. Grrr.

So tired, cold and... I'd say limping, but that doesn't really come close - I could barely stand up at this point - I sat in the cafe at Victoria station and contemplated my options. If I was going home I didn't want to waste the ticket, so I thought I'd see if anyone on the fan group I chat with online could use it. If someone could, it might make the decision to give in easier.

Instead of taking a free ticket off me, they all persuaded me I could still go. They made helpful suggestions too, because I didn't know much about Kentish Town Forum but it turned out it had a balcony with seats. I managed to swap my ticket for a balcony one at the door, and although it was weird being so far away it was fun watching the crowd below.

"You're My Waterloo - short clip London Kentish Town Forum 12/5/2019" (Watch on YouTube)

The clip is from a song that's very important to The Libertines (his other band) and that's built up a lot of meaning over the past 20 years. It's basically a love song to his writing partner (who sang it himself - something he rarely does - at a gig in China a couple of days earlier) and when they played it the night before Peter said it's as true as the day he wrote it. Everyone gets emotional about this song, and we always, always sing it with him.

Bonus special appearance by Zeus the escapologist Siberian Husky, who loves attention and singing along and regularly finds his way on stage or into the audience.

Coming out of Kentish Town Forum on the usual post-gig high, the streets were packed with us. I walked slowly down to the tube station, and faces I recognised, people I knew had been at the gig were everywhere. They were in and out of little food places, they were messing around in the bus shelters, they were gathered in groups talking about the night they'd had, they were chanting and singing in the next street over, and the next. Still singing together like we all had been for the last hour or so.

I chatted with someone I've met at gigs before and online while on the platform waiting for my train - actually, she was the one who suggested swapping for a balcony ticket, so it was down to her I was even there. While we talked someone pointed at my 'Libertine' tattoo as they passed us and said something incomprehensible, but the gist was clear – he was another fan. There were more than a few of us on the train when it headed off for Kings Cross, and an hour later while getting supplies in the deserted shop there, I saw another familiar face from the gig.

Even at 3am, in a freezing cold coffee shop, having tea and biscuits with a very nice homeless lady called Frances, dancing around in my chair to keep warm, I saw a couple of fans I recognised walk past and it was better than caffeine at giving me a buzz to stay awake.

We were everywhere. It's years since I've felt something like that, part of a community. I've been cut off from a lot of the things that made me feel that in the past for a long time, and I never somehow expected to find it again. Certainly not in music, because that's never happened to me before.

It wasn't a perfect weekend, and some of the fans might have been obnoxious or at best over-enthusiastic on occasion, but from the moment we all started singing along with Peter at Kentish Town Forum on Sunday night - no, actually, from the minute a whole load of people, most of whom I've never met in person, wouldn't let me give up on my mad weekend adventure - I was happily, tearfully in love with my fellow fans, the music and my life.