Blog: I Was There!

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You discover me back at work after my extensive BREAK, during which i did many DELIGHTFUL things, including having local CURRY (best London Balti EVER!), watching FILMS (Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind- GRATE!; Mr & Mrs Smith - not so much), seeing SIGHTS, and being in the CRUCIBLE OF HISTORY.

This latter was of course LIVE 8 where The Tomato In My Ketchup and i went on Friday to the Extra TV Screens BIT. It was a bit weird really - it was like being towards the back of a MASSIVE gig, but with no FRONT, as we were all stood watching the gigantic telly screens. In some ways it was quite GOOD, as you could SEE, and there wasn't any big PUSH down the front, but it also felt a bit ALIENATING, as the whole event reinforced the idea that there WAS a GRATE GIG occuring, but it was happening just next door to where we were! This was ESPECIALLY noticeable during REM, who were BLOODY ACE i must say, but whose third song was CUT with Fearne Cotton (is that her name?) interviewing Bloke From Razorlight. Yeah, THANKS the telly, i'm sure we'd all MUCH rather watch this twit wave his silly hat about than actually see ONE OF THE GRATE BANDS OF OUR TIME, ROCKING! Cuh!

Also - Peter Doherty? Was it me, or was there a loud THUNK after he'd staggered off, the sound of the door being FIRMLY CLOSED BEHIND HIM? Even Elton John looked a bit embarrassed, and surely that takes a LOT!

I did enjoy Macca tho, obviously, and one cannot argue with the MIGHTINESS of Madonna's back catalogue, but like everyone else the bit that'll stick with me will be the woman who'd been fifteen minutes from death as a child, back as an adult. Seeing the actual real live human beings who are affected - and especially seeing them AS real live human beings, as in this case, rather than victims - RAMS home the point that it IS real live human beings we're talking about, and not just vague financial projections for economic growth. When people say "Ooh, but it's more complicated than that" then it might well be, as far as economists and politicians are concerned, but very much NOT as far as the real live human beings whose children are about to die. I read an article by David Bloody Mellor yesterday where he sneered at the "naivety" of it all and it reminded me that "naivety" is only ever used as an insult by cowards who've never DARED stand up for a single thing in their lives. Hey! Cutting debt may well NOT solve all the problems of Africa, but it can solve SOME of them, and surely that's worth having a try for, isn't it?

Mr Bob Geldof has certainly done a good thing ALREADY, in that he's made millions of us think about all this, and i bet also made millions of us start to REJECT the easy put-downs from those invested in the status quo. Who knows, maybe this'll be the start of ALL of us deciding that even if we can't do EVERYTHING, doing SOMETHING is still worth having a go at?

ANYWAY, after Madonna we toddled off home for BEER. That was my other favourite bit.

Meanwhile, on Monday we headed into THAT LONDON, where we watched The Changing Of The Guards (featuring, bizarrely, an ELTON JOHN MEDLEY from the BAND) and then got on the Open Top Bus for a MASSIVE tour around the city. It was DEAD GOOD, we saw LOADS of really POSH bits of London that i, at least, never see, and learnt many FACTS. Most of these have MUSHED into a collective FACT, that all of London was riven with plague, burnt down, designed by John Nash, built in the 1800s, bombed in the war, and has something to do with Princess Diana, but it is a FACT i feel will serve me well in future. I also had MORE BEER, which is how it should be on any holiday!

posted 5/7/2005 by MJ Hibbett

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