Anticipating a Riot
I’m still recovering from the weekend: Joe celebrating his 10th birthday, and all the activities that surrounded that (see the partner blog life’s a riot for details). Life goes on. The tight schedule of Mondays with the children returning to school, work, haring back home to pick the boys up from karate and feed / homework / bed them whilst J works her evening shift, the end of her working ‘week’.
No rest this week – work is particularly busy and I’m a day down, having booked Thursday off for a family trip to the dentists (amongst other things). The highlight of the week will surely be seeing the Kaiser Chiefs at the Birmingham NIA tomorrow evening. Perhaps it’s as well that I’m not working the day after.
The last time I went to the NIA was to see the BBC Balamory Live show with Daisy. We had the best seats, right in the middle on the front row, about 4 metres from the stage. There was a line of stewards preventing the little ones from rushing onto the stage – which was at about chest height. Probably the easiest job in the world. That time we travelled on the train so I’ll have to suss out the parking from scratch this time.
The last time I was in the area was our anniversary break, when we stayed for three nights in the mediocre (but flashy) City Inn hotel. We were given a room without a working toilet. We moved to a room with a toilet but no bath. They don’t advertise on their website that none of their rooms have baths. We struggled to communicate with the staff – no-one seemed to have English as a first language. We were locked out of our room and forced to provide evidence of our pre-paid three day reservation, after they lost our paperwork. On top of this we both had some kind of flu bug which made it a surreal experience. We went to see KT Tunstall at the Carling Academy and I practically passed out half way through the best bits – I had to leave. It was still a great gig though. I remember back in the hotel we had the Kaiser Chiefs Employment. I had suggested it and J had bought it for me. It wasn’t long after we returned home that J bought the tickets for tomorrow.
So, struggling to see past the mundane preparations, I’m quite looking forward to seeing the Kaiser Chiefs. I hope to get somewhere near the front and will take pictures if I can. I’ve not really been happy with the gig pictures I have taken so far, I’ll be trying some new techniques to see if I can improve. If there’s the proverbial riot then I’ll be lucky to make it out with the camera in one piece… we’ll see.