10th December 2002

hi there

wow, 4 or 5 days since i last posted here. sorry about that, really busy sorting out stuff and having a life of boxes and, indeed, properties. but more on that sooner or later.

in the mean time, yes it is another find. i found an old calendar today - perhaps i, or indeed we, am or are a hoarder or hoarders. it's gone now, but not before this picture.

10th December 2002. for the benefit of those searching for such things on google, this was when we saw the Manic Street Preachers on their Forever Delayed tour, or as they called it their "greatest hits shenanigans". that they were supported by Ian Brown meant that we flew over mostly just for this, to be honest - seeing two of our favourites was too good a thing to miss.

for the most part i am just uploading all the pics i found here - yes, these are the negatives i spoke of before, which a specialist Mr Negative Mender kindly put on to CD for me. i may well take more, but for now here's some pics with comments.

a big thanks again, since here seems appropriate, to my dear friend, Mr Norman Bastard, and his amazing better half, Andrea, for not only letting us stay with them but also for fetching us after the gig.

first then, my (considerably) better half at Stockton train station, waiting the for the train (as one does at train stations) to take us to the promised land of Newcastle.

i cannot think of any reason why one would really want to see a look of me, but if for some reason you do, here i am at the very same train station, waiting for the very same train.

a lovely train ride up, it was. we met some other Manics fans on the train and had a good chat. Manics fans are a breed apart, really - we tend to argue or "discuss in a heated way" everything related to the band and beyond, but my word do we tend to come together as and when we can, be it in need or for fun.

on to a whole load of gig pics, then, which feature mostly the back of people's heads and some looks at the artists doing their thing.

please bear in mind that this was all long before anyone glued or welded a camera to a mobile phone. it was also at a time when Apple just did some sort of specialist computer for designers. a thing called an iPod existed, but few had seen one in 2002 - i think the only one i had seen was a sort of prototype one that Bowie raved about. they didn't even have a colour display then, let alone a camera.

digital cameras were also very much in their infancy at this time - they were expensive and took really bad pictures.

these pics, then, were taken with one of those disposable film camera things, one that i smuggled in with no problems and didn't get it taken off of me. Mr James Dean Bradfield did look in my direction with a p!ssed off look, something i will remember forever.

with only a few exceptions, here then are the pics with as little added by me as possible.

erm, sorry if for the most part all you can make out is the back of people's heads and the faces of the show security. here's a lovely bunch of faces, though.

that's my (considerably) better half with some of the amazing Manics fans i mentioned. how amazing? when they found out how far we had come for the gig, they all helped us get closer to the front, without us asking or suggesting it! all the fans were brilliant, they made the gig all the better.

and a quick comment here as the lad in the middle there looks like a prototype Franny. it cannot be the Franny, as Franny was probably an embryo or similar at that stage.

on with the pics!

yes, these last few have indeed been of Ian Brown. i was too busy watching him for the first time ever to worry about how the pics came out, sorry, but i hope one or two seem decent.

well, there you have it. i suspect general readers will have scrolled through this with a lack of interest, but for those who searched for this i hope you either saw yourself, or saw something that you remembered!

if you for some reason want to comment, click on the title of this post (i think) and it takes you to some sort of comments section. probably.



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!