trip to uk to see leftfield & man utd

through a long convoluted story i planned a trip back to the uk at the beginning of december and stay at my mate dave’s place in reading and to see leftfield play at brixton academy and also to go up to manchester the following tuesday to see utd’s last champions league group stage game against valencia.

plan was ibiza to palma at 1.20pm on the thursday then palma to gatwick early evening and stay at my mates in reading. that week it started snowing…. gatwick was closed weds but they said it would open thursday morning. i got up early thursday morning to be greeted with the fact that gatwick was again closed… oh shit. finally got through to monarch airlines to be told at 10.30am that my flight from palma later that day was cancelled – shit.

they said the first flight out of palma was on sunday – no good to me as the leftfield gig was on saturday night. mad panic to try and get another flight from palma to somewhere in the uk before i had to go to the airport to get the palma flight or risk losing the whole trip alltogether. a quick search of direct flights from ibiza to anywhere remotely near or via anywhere was out unless i wanted to stump up a grand or so. . i decided to risk it and flew to palma anyway while the kind boss guy at the office tried to book a flight from palma. i arrived in palma to find that the next flight i could get was the next day and was going to hannover with a 2 hour stopever and then finally onto to stansted. that’ll do at least i’ll be on uk soil the day of the gig.

thankfully my brother lives in hemel so he met me in stansted on the friday night – unfortunately my phone had died by the time i got to stansted so iwaited outside at the pick up point for 45 mins in the hope that he’d take a punt and turn up. to say it was freezing with snow everywhere would be and understatement – i hadnt seen snow for years, anyway no luck – he’d gone to the macdonalds to wait for my phone call. in the end i went back into the terminal and talked the very nice lady on the foreign echange desk to see if i could borrow a paper clip to take the sim out of my iphone and then er.. can i put this sim in your mobile please?

while we were trying to grab my brothers number from the sms on the sim – her moby rang – it was my brother wondering where i was. i’ll never forget the expression on her face when i thanked her, she turned to her friend and said “aww, isnt that nice”

anyway, stayed at brothers instead of my mate dave’s and then saturday afternoon we went into the west end to meet dave and then onto brixton for the gig.

neil (barnes) from leftfield had very kindly put me and my brother and dave on the guestlist. an unbelievable gig – extremely loud but one of the cleanest sounding sound system i’ve ever heard. went to the aftershow and had a chat with neil. after that we ended up at a bar round the corner with a brother and sister couple we met outside the academy after the aftershow. we ended up in the bar till 6 ish and then went to macdonalds to wait for the tubes to start. (btw i’d had to take my rucksack to the gig as i was supposed to be staying at dave’s in reading). in the end he copped off with the sister so i ended up back at my brothers again – we walked through his door at 8.30am that morning – a very long day.

monday, me and dave drove up to manc land and stayed at his friends whose boiler had broken down the day before – when we arrived in manc land that evening it was -7 degrees – fuckin cold

next evening we walked the 20 min walk to old trafford in minus god knows what weather – a dissapointing 1 all draw but great to go back to old trafford again

came back weds but again stayed at my brothers with dave who then drove me to reading station to get the train to gatwick as i had already prebooked the train – so instead of spending the week at dave’s i didnt set foot in reading until i got to reading station on the last day…

journey home went without a hitch

btw both palma and hannover airports had a smoking area – very civilised.

some photos and video:

thanks neil ! :

me being very cold in front of old trafford

Best, Law & Charlton statue:

Man utd warming up

Utd just scored:

back in palma wtg for flight home to ibiza