2.30 AM

It’s Saturday night, 2am, I’m sitting up listening to music and having a late night pint, there’s a mad wind blowing outside, slashing rain, rattling the windows, there’s a ghost film on TV, but I’m not watching it really, I’m just playing some music on my headphones and typing this.

This year, I shall be 60 – I feel like I’m lying saying that, but it’s true! Once upon a time, I was much younger, I just found a video of the Damned live in 1982 on YouTube, its crazy, it reminds me how we was, fucking mental, that’s the best way to describe it – well they’re back this year, doing a tour with that original line up, same as it was all those years ago – incredible, brilliant energy, they really were very very good – the aim back then was to drink and smoke as much as humanly possible, and just have the biggest night out imaginable, we had the energy for that, we had ambition, the idea was to just smash your balls to the walls, LOL I just made that up, but that’s how I remember it – first time I saw them, we queued up outside, and some bloke built like a brick shit-house told us “Sup it up outside lad” (cos you couldn’t bring your bottle of vodka or whatever in with you) Well we got in there, and it was mayhem, Anti-Nowhere league were support band, singing “Fuck you Fuck you, Don’t you tell me what to do” Then the Damned came on and drinks and beer flew through the air as everyone just exploded throwing each other all over the place to the crazy music, on the way home we got our heads kicked in by some local nutters, missed the last train home too.

Well I’m not looking to repeat that experience, but the music still sounds pretty wild, sure I’ll be going along to get my lug holes reamed, you can’t beat it!

Nowadays, I don’t think the sort of things we were doing are normal anymore, they weren’t then either to be honest, but it was fun to go crackers, back then I remember chatting to some guy, he said oh you don’t like that do you? Those punk people are scum! Well that was a part of it, there was a lot of anger around, mum and dad thought you shouldn’t be doing any of that disgraceful behaviour, but that’s what made it so fabulous, it was therapeutic, to be seen and heard, rather than seen and not heard, which was meant to be idyllic you know back then, when England was so conservative, stuffy and boring, we weren’t really trying to overthrow the order, just get absolutely hammered drunk, get onto the stage and jump off heroically into the heaving crowd, that would be a good start! LMAO