Down Under in Sarf London

Following a reminder from KY that I was not averse to his music I trotted along to a Pete Murray gig the other night. Pete Murray being some sort of all-Australian homespun hero musician guy, the crowd consisted of some 3000 Australians who all knew the words to the songs, (a few of whom did bad shuffling dancing in my personal space) me and Rachel.

The Carling Brixton Academy is an odd sort of place, with Greco-Roman stylings in a part of London that surely not so long ago would have Elvis crooning songs about the plight of the underprivileged. But a great concert venue nonetheless, despite their odd security policies. Upon arriving, we were asked to show the security guards our handbags, which implied a nice sense of sartorial interest so I obliged. When the security folk asked if I had a gun, I did think it was a bit more direct than any other questions I'd been asked recently, but I admired their directness so I answered their question frankly and forthrightly in the negative. (Did seem a rather odd question either way you look at it really - either they was being careful of everyone, as Australian rock singers were likely to attract the pistol-packing troublemaker element (a fact I don't believe to be backed up by any significant or credible statistics) or she felt I looked likely to be a member of said p-p'ing t.m element and likely to incite violence at the slightest provocation. Which is surely on par with the airport worker who checked my flip flops for shoe bombs, when it comes to racial stereotyping?)

Anyway, turns out they were asking if I had any GUM - which struck me as an even stranger security precaution than not letting us taking bottlecaps into the Chris Rock performance at the O2 a week earlier. However, as I was in Brixton and already living life as far on the edge as I have done since my early 20s, I was in a devilish mood - I told them I didn't, even though I did. Bwa-ha-ha!

Fortunately Pete Murray was very, very good, so I forgave him the following:
-A hairstyle that made him look like a character out of some of the classic British 70s sitcoms
-A t-shirt and waistcoat combo straight out of Jason Priestley's Beverly Hills 90210 collection circa 1992
-Back up musicians who have clearly been to Rockstar Behaviour 101 and were keen to enact every cliche they'd ever studied

The rest of the weekend passed in a blur of nothingness and bad TV - which, the older I get, gets closer and closer to my idea of perfection.