my rock star weekend

Weekend before last i decided to go to london, partly coz i had to sort out some banking which apparently could only be done there, but also coz i wanted to check out the modernism exhibition on at the V&A museum, which was closing in a few weeks. i'd heard that there was a gig by a certain electro musician/dj who visited adelaide recently, who you have all heard me talk about, and who i shall refer to only as 't'.

so, i decided to call up t's agent so see if i could get a free ticket. met up with him and t on the friday night, for dinner at Ravi Shankar's restaurant - very unimaginatively called 'Ravi Shankar'. food was amazing though, vego indian, wayyy yummy. then i learnt that the gig was in exeter, a town about 3 hours drive west of london! but i must have caught him at a generous moment coz he invited me to go along with them to the gig! maybe he felt guilty coz he knew how much i had to put up with them in adelaide. i decided to abandon my very well-planned weekend in london and joined the t entourage.

the tour bus (van actually, disappointing) left on saturday morning, t decided he wanted brekkie so we stopped at a traditional english caff. almost full english with a mug of brickies tea.



FInally arrived in Exeter in the late afternoon, couldn't find the venue, nobody seemed to know where they were going. t woudn't have known of we had driven for 3 hours in the opposite direction (then again, neither would i). eventually found the hotel, which they were putting me up in as well, it was a poshy english boutique hotel.



I got verrrry excited when i heard that it was Michael Caine's hotel. I'm thinking, cool, possible celebrity sightings may ensue. However apparently there's another Michael Caine who is a minor celebrity chef in the UK. Not exciting.

Still the hotel was very nice, all big piles of cushions and rows of free little bottles of grapefruit-smelling toiletries (i took them all when i left). So we checked in, they all went up to the venue to check it out, I went shopping. They all did soundcheck and teched the venue. I had dinner, paid for with t's dinner allowance money. So far, a pretty damn good deal!

I rocked up to the gig and it turned out to be a community world music festival (term used very loosely) run (also used loosely) by a bunch of hippies. Bless them, they were trying hard, and they did manage to pull together a pretty reasonable lineup. But I really had to turn off my event manager brain, it was all a bit of a free-for-all. But I had a great time all the same, danced all night, t's playing wasn't that great, but he did had heaps of problems with the sound.

Next day had brekkie at the hotel (included with the room of course) - this time a real full english, I stuffed myself. We set off to go back to London. Next minute, the agent was like, oh, that's Stonehenge over there. Right-o.

I'd booked a flight back to Edinburgh from London leaving that night at about 6pm, there was only about 30 mins leeway in our schedule, and I HAD to get back coz i was starting my job the next day. Then t decides he wants to stop for lunch. All hopes of making my flight disappeared. He wanted to take us to the area that he grew up in, way out in west london, it was cool, seriously just like being in Delhi. Had the most amazing vego indian lunch, i think maybe the best i've ever had, complete with Bollywood films playing on a telly in the corner.

I've seriously never heard someone talk about themselves so much, and be completely unaware of it.

And I did miss my flight and had to catch a train instead, took ages and cost a packet and had to put on a happy smiley face to cover my exhaustion for my first day at work. And I had to book another trip to London the next weekend to do the things I had planned to do...

But it was so worth it.