The ramblings of Keane Ingram

The weekend in Clacton went pretty well, the caravan is still in reasonable shape and there's nothing we need to worry about before the Isle of Wight. It stayed dry all weekend so putting the awning up and packing it away was straightforward - nice to not have to worry about it being dry! I still don't especially like towing it but there were no major dramas. The most disappointing thing was the breakfast in the Toby Carvery on the Sunday morning - I'd been looking forward to it but there wasn't a great deal of fresh food available and we had to wait 15 minutes for clean cups for hot drinks.

Last Tuesday we went to see the Manics at the Royal Albert Hall. They played the full Everything Must Go album as well as a second set of assorted songs.

The support band were Editors.


I struggle to think of a support band I've ever enjoyed - I can remember the really bad ones (Goldie and My Vitriol were particularly bad) but there's never been one that I really enjoyed. Editors did nothing to change that. I'm sure I've seen them before supporting someone else but it was presumably equally forgettable!

The first half of the Manics set was Everything Must Go, the first Manics album I owned and one I've listened to many, many times. It was strange to hear A Design for Life as the second song! The band were great but the crowd was really disappointing, a most un-Manic crowd - even though we were three from the barrier a lot of people didn't seem to recognise half the songs and there wasn't as much jumping as you might expect.


The crowd seemed to improve in the second half. Massive kudos to the girl with the sign in the photo above - one sign said "Did you learn Patrick Bateman?" to which James said "Never", the other said "When is the IKTZ (I Killed the Zeitgeist) 10th anniversary tour?" to which Nicky answered "The songs were so shit that I've forgotten them all!" The highlight for me was definitely "Nat West - Barclays - Midlands - Lloyds", one more I can tick off from Generation Terrorists. I hope they'll play some more rare ones when we go to see them in Swansea this weekend.

Two weeks today and I'll have had my hernia operation! It can't come soon enough.