4 Monday May 2 2022 | the timestimes2
people we always had been —
part-time caners now, but enthusiastic
practitioners when we had the
chance. We went into the pandemic
with a social life that was hale if not
hearty. By December 2021, it was in
palliative care.
To go out-out when you have two
small children, you need either very
engaged grandparents or live-in
servants. You can pass one child back
and forth between you while you each
sleep off a hangover, but with two,
some prolonged palming-off needs
to happen to give you the requisite
recovery time to face them both again.
My husband and I have managed one
proper night out together (dancing,
not dinner) since our son was born in
October 2020. I am still grateful for it.
But to make sure I go out-out again
before I am 90, my next attempt will
be with friends instead. It has been
selected and planned for as though a
military target: a daytime festival that
ends at 10.30pm and is a half-hour
walk from home. I’ll be sober by the
time my key hits the lock and fine
again the next day. I used to go to
clubs that didn’t open until 3am and
shower around the entry stamp so I
could go back the next night.
The festival I’m going to will be
mostly beautiful young people, some
just-about-still-cool slightly older
people who will barely register on the
beautiful young people’s radars (I’m
including myself in this bracket) and
then the sort of noticeably addled
even older people who always turn up
at these things. Who are they? I used
to wonder, and now I know: they are
me in ten years’ time.Do you feel as if you have aged a decade
in the past two years and can never go
back? Times writers on how they’re
returning to their old selves — at last
T
his year I have mostly been
going to concerts, gigs,
cabaret performances and
live shows. I’ve always done
this — usually close to the
front, forever braving the periphery of
the mosh pit, even as my fading, fifth
decade sensibility might seem more
comfortable in the safe, seated circle.
Gigs have been more sporadically
attended in later life, but during the
past few, post-lockdown months, I’m
back to my teenage schedule of seeing
a band every fortnight.
In 2022 I’ve already enjoyed the
Horrors (Camden Electric Ballroom),
the Psychedelic Furs (Albert Hall),
Lewis OfMan (genius French
keyboardist at a hipster art gallery
space off the Old Street roundabout),
Saucerful of Secrets (trippy Pink Floyd
spin-off, the Albert Hall), Miss Hope
Springs (at the Crazy Coqs, Piccadilly),
the still soaring Suede (Alexandra
Palace), Wasted Youth (their first gig in
40 years! At the Lexington, Islington)
and Petrie (my daughter’s boyfriend’s
electropop band in a pub in Hoxton).
This spring I will see the Chemical
Brothers and the peerless Kraftwerk.
In a couple of weeks’ time, I have
tickets for a Steely Dan tribute band.
Has anything changed during the
extended PA silence of Covid? Well, it’s
the same... but different. There’s been
a subtle vibe shift (magic mushrooms
having taken over from cocaine and
Ecstasy), a price hike and a knob
twiddle. Here’s what I’ve noticed.
While there are fewer phones in the
air than before — presumably because
people got so tired of living their lives
through screens — it is clear that the
music has been hushed also. Yes, this
may be partly due to the lockdown
build-up of ear wax in my aural
passages but the volume at live music
shows seems to have been turned
down quite a few notches. Sometimes
the sound has been mixed to village
library levels, inviting clearly audible-
over-the-music cries of “Turn it up!”
Wander over to the bars and merch
stands and you’ll be shocked at how
stuff got really, really expensive. I
know venues have massive losses to
recoup, but £7.50 for a pint of beer in a
squishy plastic cup? In the foyer of the
Albert Hall, I watched as a man in his
fifties dropped almost £350 on
hoodies, badges, a band logo’d “throw”,
an autographed snare drum skin and
a Polar Camel Pilsner travel mug. I
think he may have been unmarried.
Is it me, or did live music suddenly
get more punctual? Post lockdown, thelive music industry in the UK seems
to have been taken over by the Swiss
railways division. If the venue tells you
that the headlining act will be on at
7.45pm, be in your seat/have found
your place by the monitors at 7.40.
With strict scheduling comes a new
type of manners; people say “sorry”,
make way and stand back. Crowds are
largely jostle-less. Staff are firm but
kind. An almost unnerving sense of
decorum and gentility pervades.
While aftershow parties are now
brief (and often have a pay bar),
enthusiasm for getting out means that
one never knows who you will meet.
Slowthai and Joséphine de La Baume
grooving to Lewis OfMan, Alexa
Chung at the Horrors etc, seemed like
a return to norm. But what a thrill to
find myself having a pee next to
Jimmy Page and discovering that the
actress Paula Wilcox, of Man About
the House fame, is a Pink Floyd “head”
(who knew?). The indefatigable Bobby
Gillespie remains a reliable presence
at pretty much every gig.
It has been genuinely moving to see
how lockdown has inspired some
bands to reform. Until February 12 this
year, Wasted Youth, Plaistow’s very
own Velvet Underground, hadn’t
played a gig in four decades. As apermanently starstruck post-punk boy,
I had been a borderline groupie. And
so I travelled to Islington to their great
comeback, leather jacket on, only to
learn that three of the original band
had died. The singer Ken Scott, still
magnificent as their Lou Reed-ish
frontman, had survived a stroke
while Rocco Barker, now an
optician, still rocks a fur coat
with a swagger. I saw them
outside the venue, having a
cigarette before the show.
“Hello chaps,” I said, hopefully. “I
haven’t seen you since Leeds
Futurama, in the bus station, in
September 1980. Do you remember
me?” “Of course!” they lied, rather
kindly. “How have you been, man?”
It was good to be back.COVER: JOHN HUBA/MADAME FIGARO/CAMERA PRESS. BELOW: TOM JACKSON FOR THE TIMES; GETTY IMAGES; SQUIZ HAMILTON FOR THE TIMESI’m back in the
mosh pit at gigs
Simon Mills
I
t’s one thing finding your way back
to life after a pandemic has
convinced you it’s over for ever. It’s
quite another realising that it
wasn’t the pandemic that nailed
the lid shut on fun, but in fact the
second baby you had during it.
There was a point, during November
2020, when it felt as though the whole
world was on maternity leave with
me. It was lovely: not a jot of fomo
— more “it’s quite good, this lockdown
malarkey”. My beautiful squishy baby
got bigger, learnt to smile and
everybody else was watching
Bridgerton in their trackies too.
But eventually they started going
to the pub and on holiday. To
restaurants, freedom dinner parties,
even out clubbing again, despite hating
it, because they were only 35,
goddammit, not 75. And there I was
still watching Normal People. I had to
switch it off in the end because I was
too envious of the many backdrops
they had at their disposal to look
stricken in front of. It was still either
home or the park for me.
Before Covid and with only one
child, going out-out (not just dinner,
but dancing too — and drinking)
merely required a babysitter and a
strong constitution. Socialising was
different as a parent, but my husband
and I were recognisably the sameAll-day partying
(until 10) for me
Harriet Walker
Fancy drinking
in a foetid
room for eight
hours like we
used to?
Gigs! Festivals! Travel! We’re
Simon Mills