Posted:
Today my plan was to go to Northampton to hangout with my friend Pawel and other members of the NN1 dev club. While on my way to Mackbear for coffee and breakfast I got a message from Susan saying her sister couldn’t go to the gig and did I want to go with her.
The NN1 dev club is a meet up in Northampton run by Pawel. It’s a fantastic community event and every last Friday of the month they have a working day at the co-working space they hold their meet ups. This week I went. At lunch we all went to a Greek restaurant for lunch, because they know I don’t like pizza.
Getting to Northampton was super easy and it only took me 90 minutes. So a t 14:30 I thought that 2 hours 30 minutes would be plenty of time.
When I got to the car Waze said I would get back at 17:15. As I got closer to the M1 the time it was going to take was not getting shorter and by the time I was at Dunstable it was saying that I would not get home until 18:00, the time I’d be meeting Susan at Carluccio’s. After a few minutes of talking to Waze I worked out that I’d be able to get to the Royal Albert Hall for 17:30.
Once I passed the M25 I pulled into London Gateway services to use the bathroom and find somewhere park near Royal Albert Hall. [JustPark] offered me Millennium Hotel which was 9 minutes to the restaurant and 15 minutes to the venue.
I arrived at Carluccio’s early and god a table. We both had the spicy sausage gnocchi then did desert I had Affogato and Susan had Tiramisu.
When we left the restaurant it had started raining, fortunately there is a tunnel that goes from South Kensington to most of the way. By the time we exited the tunnel it had stopped raining.
The Support act for the evening was Chvrches. While they only played a 30 minute set they were quite entertaining.
The headliner was My Bloody Valentine. There was a 30 minute break while they set up.
During this break there were a few videos from young people who had been supported by Teenage Cancer Trust. Before the band came on one of the workers from the charity came on and told us more about the work the trust do and then brought on stage a group of young adults that they had been supporting and let them take selfies.
Prior to the gig both Colin and Clive had said to us "I hope you have earplugs". While yea it was loud, most of tracks were about 102dB and the loudest peaked at 110dB. I have definitely been to much louder Leftfield gigs.
It was a really cool gig and the louder they got the better it was, or more likely that it got better as they played their more popular songs towards the end of the gig.
Because I'd parked my car near the venue it meant that I got to drive through what is the congestion zone during the day time and not have to worry about paying. This is a great drive that takes you past many famous London landmarks which at night time are all lit up.