Actually going

I spent the Sunday just gone in London.  David and I went to see Hamish Hawk at KOKO in Camden; a gig I booked tickets for while we were on our honeymoon last September.

As is usual for me, I booked the tickets without thinking about what it’d be like to actually go.  I don’t like actually going to many places: the unpredictability of journeys, the amount of time they take, and the sheer number of other people taking the same journey all put me off.

(If I could choose a superpower, it would be to travel anywhere I wanted just by wishing myself there.  Think how amazing that would be in attack or kidnapping situations, too – I’d just close my eyes and be off.  A bit like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, except I wouldn’t have to say anything and it wouldn’t just be home I could wish myself to).

It’s sort-of worrying how much time I spend at home, though.

I work from there, I do most of my eating and drinking there and I spend most of my evenings and weekends there.  Whenever a friend cancels social plans at the last minute I’m secretly happy because it means I get to spend more time at home with my husband and my cats, which is the best thing in the world.  It’s all a bit pathetic, really.

In my defence, going out isn’t the same once you’re older.  Life feels heavier and more complicated, because it is, and that makes it harder to relax.  There’s always something to worry about, or at least that’s the way it feels to me.  Will the cats’ automatic feeders open?  Did I lock the back door?  Will our house burn down?  What if nuclear war breaks out before we can get home?

You know the sort of thing.  Or maybe you don’t.

Actually going was OK, in the end.

We had dinner at an all-vegan pizzeria; something you can only do in London or Brighton, or trendy places that aren’t Southend-on-Sea (so why don’t we move, then?  It’s a long story and it involves logistics, again).

The gig was great, though we were up in the balcony with an almost birds-eye view, which caused Hamish to direct the line, “I’d paid over the odds for my seat in the Gods,” from Elvis Look-alike Shadows right at us.  From this vantage point I saw an inordinate amount of bald heads bobbing in time with the music, reflecting the coloured star-shaped lights that rotated around the room with a deep, beautiful sheen.

One bald man was really giving it some, punching his arms into the air during Juliet as Epithet and shouting the lyrics like his life depended on it.  I loved that just a few rows back, another bald man was doing exactly the same.  I sort-of wished I could introduce them.

(Though having said that, I think I’d be offended if someone wanted to introduce me to another fortysomething bottle-blonde who sings loudly at gigs, just on the basis of those two things).

“Hamish attracts a lot of older people, doesn’t he?” I whispered to David, just before it occurred to me that we are “older people”, too.  But that’s what actually going does, I suppose.  You see things and you do things and it makes other things dawn on you.

We spent the night at a hotel, in which David complained about the price of the cocktails, and then we went home.

The cats’ automatic feeders had opened (though they hadn’t touched the food inside).  I’d locked the back door.  Our house wasn’t engulfed in flames.  We got home before nuclear war had had the chance to break out.

Countdown to the next time of actually going anywhere: 36 days.