Tour Diary

Hi Everyone :-)  I'm bored so I thought I'd take this weekend to perhaps start my tour diary off!!  I lost it on the computer when I did the reinstall so I'm retyping it for the journal.  By the time I did the reinstall it was already up to 13 odd pages Yes you did read that right and I still had 2 gigs to write about!!  Mind you Brixton was included in this diary and you guys already know about that :-)  - I've taken the decision to do this in instalments so I shall start.  Hope you enjoy it people :-)

NEWCASTLE - 03/05/2005 - Metro Arena

Trina and I went up to Newcastle on the Monday as it took 6 or 7 hours by train.  As it was a long journey we went up by Club Class on Virgin trains.  Never travelled by club class before and enjoyed our free drink and snack pack.  These are great they have mini crackers and cheese in them, together with mini bag of pretzels, fruit bits, mini kit kat, and lots more!!  The journey was fine and we didn't get delayed at all.  Just after Birmingham the refreshment bit put out an announcment that it was closing for a stock take, but we never heard an announcement that it was re-opening.  I was thirsty so we asked the ticket blokie and he said he would check it out and get back to us.  He eventually came back with more free drinks and another snack pack.  We both took the drinks and when asked if we wanted the snack pack I said no, but Trina, who wanted one, also said no!!  She really is a strange girl!!  Eventually we arrived in Newcastle.  This was the first time I had ever been there and we had to find the hotel.  According to multimap it wasn't that far away from the train station.  Hint - never believe in multimap!!  Or maybe it was because we didn't know our way around and couldn't agree with each other ha ha........Eventually (well according to our watches) it had taken 1 hour and 10 minutes to find the hotel, but we got there!!  The Waterside Hotel was going through refurbishment and was a complete tip.  The room wasn't bad and the staff seemed friendly (even if we couldn't understand them lol........ only joking peeps!!) Anyway after a quick settle in, it was off to check out the venue and get something to eat.

The Metro Arena wasn't easy to find either!!  Why is it that when you have a sign with an arrow pointing the arrow is never pointing in the right direction??  We walked around the venue and were both amazed at the size and the amount of doors to get in.  As we got round the back the crew were already there with the buses and lorrys.  We decided to text Sarah (who we knew from the Roger tour in '99 and met again in January for WWRY), and let her know it didn't look promising.  That started her panicking so she texted back to say she was gonna set off at 4.30am.  She was staying with Gavin and Cat at Gavin's in Scotland.  It started raining on Trina and myself and we didn't have an umbrella or anything.  As everyone had started panicking about the queue I decided to book my place, so I stepped in a puddle and jumped to a dry bit by the doors leaving wet footprints.  That was my space saved lol.......

We made our way to Weatherspoons for some grub.  It wasn't too bad in there, Trina ordered lasgne and had to send it back coz it was frozen in the middle.  In compensation they gave us some more wine :-), but when she got it back it was still cold.  We gave up in the end and set out to find a local food shop to buy some snacky stuff.  Jeez, what a task!!  Could we find a shop that was open??  No!!  I was beginning to dislike Newcastle!!  We then decided as we had some time to kill to walk across the Tyne bridge.  We got to the middle, stopped, looked at the view, had a laugh and a joke.  We'd been trying to figure out which hotel the band were staying in as that was probably the only way we were gonna meet them.  Just across the water from the bridge was the Hilton hotel.  I joked to Trina, "I bet their staying there."  She responded, "I doubt EMI would foot the bill to put them up there."  We wandered back to our hotel and watched some TV.  (Whose Line is it anyway - neither of us had seen that for ages so that was good :-)  We agreed what time to set the alarm and tried to get some sleep aiming to get to the venue by 9am.

Got up earlyish!!  Went without breakfast, we'd found out we'd have to pay something like £9.50 for a full english.  There was NO way I was paying that doesn't matter how much I want one.  Got to the venue about 9ish after a stop at the train station to get some food :-)  About 4 people already there.  Julie, Vern, an american girl called Jamie and a girl I recognised from QOL called Alessia (on QOL she's whitequeen)!!  Walked up to them and said "hello".  There was no way I was gonna sit there all day and not talk to new people.  More people turned up for the next 1/2 an hour but no real queue formed until later.  Sarah, Cat and Gavin got stuck behind some sheep so that made Sarah panic about the queue bless her!!  Eventually though they turned up and we all settled in for the day.  It rained and thundered can you believe it?  Everybody in the queue was lovely and we all looked out for one another, getting food, newspapers, saving spaces for toilet breaks etc, it was a good laugh, especially when Gavin read the problem pages from one womans magazine :-)  I had a nice chat to Julie whose been a fan for years and she's seen them at nearly every gig and apparently can be seen on the Live Aid DVD.  Asked her if she had ever met Freddie, but things like that and autograph hunting didn't enter her mind back then!!  She and Vern had done quite a few of the gigs in Europe.

That's a page of what I've written so far..................keep reading for the next instalment :-)  Take care peeps have a good weekend!!

  JEN xx