I had waited a long year for it, but it came around quickly enough......
What is this that I am referring to, you ask?
Roger Waters "The Wall" LIVE, thats what!
It was epicly epic in all epic ways possible.
Epic. The show was a sellout and 'remastered' as a copy of the original live show Pink Floyd performed some thirty years ago. They built a giant wall on stage, each brick with its own high definition projector beaming propaganda onto it. The things they can do with technology nowadays is mindblowing! Seriously. There were moments when it looked like the wall was collapsing in on itself in some kind of vortex type blackhole, only for us to realize that the wall was still there and it was the use of the projectors and some seriously powerful computers combining to do the job visually. An amazing concert, and well worth the wait. Roger can still rock out like the best of them. Voice was pitch perfect.
Checked out Brick Lane for a curry a few Fridays ago. Brick lane is the hagglers choice for Indian cuisine. We sorted out a curry, starters, naan bread, poppadoms, and 2 beers each for a tenner, all of which went down a treat. Mental note however: I am not ordering Vindaloo again. My toilet will thank me.
Renee and I celebrated our two year anniversary at a nice little Greek restaurant, famous for offering more food than any one man can eat. I was close to 'death by stomach failure', when my hosts informed me I had yet another main course to follow. I tried to groan a refusal, but I think they mistook my worried eyes and trembling lips as some sort of kiwi laughter and made the chef work quicker to get the food out.
We rolled home after. Lucky our house was downhill from the restaurant.
.................
When we realized we had yet another long weekend fast approaching, Renee and I took proactive steps to try and plan a quick getaway. You have to take advantage of these situations when they present themselves. The unfortunate thing was that everyone else had the same idea and trips abroad were becoming a scarce, or very expensive, experience. We were two seconds away from booking a pricey trip to Krakow, when fortune called, in the form of Corey. You see, Corey had just brought this new red campervan (akin to Postman Pats wheels) and he wanted to test the waters. A cheeky trip to Belgium would clear the pipes, and it was snap decision to change plans instantly.
With minimal planning, we drove an hour to Dover, jumped on a ferry for an hour, drove another hour into Belgium and decided to sleep in the van for the night. The team consisted of Corey, Bec, Ironmonger (also known as James), Renee and yours truly; a formidable unit.
The first nights sleep in the van was relatively tolerable, apart from the fact I had James' feet in my nostrils all night. We awoke early, fearful that some coppers will come tapping on our window and, after taking a quick leak, we rejoined the motorway and headed some 30 mins to our first stop, Ghent.
It was good.
Ordered pancakes there and I was foolish enough to ask for Bacon and Banana on mine..... I dont think they have bacon in Belgium. We strolled the streets, took some snaps and finished things up with a canal boat tour. Lovely.
We were locked in to stay a night in Bruges, so we headed that way and checked the place out. It was crammed with tourists which kind of made it lose that quaint vibe that was evident between all the flying bullets in the movie "In Bruges". We just holed up at a bar and slammed down pint after pint of Hoegarden and Leffe. Good stuff.
The next morning we traveled to Antwerp trying to buy diamonds. Its famous for them, you know. It was a really nice town also. Belgium has a lot of nice towns, we concluded. Spent a morning there accompanied by some Belgian waffles before heading to Luxembourg via a stop in Brussels. We spent all of half an hour in Brussels - traffic jam packed.
Luxembourg is a seperate country, and although it is right next to Belgium, the change of scenery was entirely evident. We stayed at a small place called Lultzhausen; small in the sense that it was literally only a hostel, a few houses and a church out there. It was amazing, situated right on a mirror lake, with large pine forests adorning the surrounding countryside. We had opportunity to go kayakking, mountain biking and basketball. I went up against James on the bball and got dealt. Like trying to face LeBron.
Our return back to the ferry in France was always going to be tight, but it wasnt until we had 40km to go and 45 mins to get on the boat that we realized we were going to struggle. Thinking ahead, we called and changed our reservation to the hour later. Thinking we had significant time on our hands, we stopped off in the shithole that is Calais and had a feed. Little did we realize that we were required to go through a hefty customs line to get permission back into the UK.
Our boat was leaving at 7:50pm
We were still standing in line at 7:46pm, having not even got our boarding tickets.
Shit.
The customs officer was trying to be difficult with us but realized the magnitude of the situation and stamped through our passports. We hauled ass into the big red van and accelerated like a formula one car to the ticket booth.
"Hurry, hurry, we only have a couple of minutes to get on the boat!!!!" we pleaded.
"Hmmm hmmmm hmmm, there are 5 of you?" the ticket dude said in an almost bored voice.
7:49pm - Got tickets.
7:49:20pm - Passed some old ditty trying to find car gate. We were traveling close to the speed of light at this stage
7:49:45pm - Find our gate.
7:50pm - Fly onto the boat Dukes of Hazzard style.
It was tight. Incredibly tight.
We all needed a beer to calm our nerves.
So thats that. A busy summer coming up. We have the Royal Ascot races in a few weeks, the Glee live stage show, Wimbledon (camping out for tickets), and then 5 days at an international festival in Spain, all within the next month.
Going to be poor and busy............