The great birthday dash

The long publicised arrival of my birthday celebrations came with the realisation of a potential spanner in the works. Crucial to my timings was good transport connections, however the Victoria line was closed for the weekend to carry-out engineering works. This was not what I wanted to hear.

For those not familiar with the underground system, the quickest tried and tested route is take the District Line from Putney Bridge to Victoria changing there, onto the Victoria Line in order to reach Kings Cross. Euston, today's destination, is the stop before. Sometimes you need to change at Earls Court en-route.

To circumvent the dilemma would require staying on the District Line to Embankment and the getting the Northern Line to Euston. This has far more stops, thus adding time to the journey.

Setting off in mid-morning I headed into town with another friend and called into the Chancery Pub in Lillie Road, Fulham for our lunch. Always a good place to go for a pre-match pint and some basic in-expensive pub grub, all the better that on match days you get 25% off a meal with your match tickets - not bad as most of the food is less than a tenner in the first place. However, Plaice is not on the menu and the hiring policy is not as it used to be :o).

Leaving there we headed for the game and settled in our seats ready for the match. It looked like I was going to be in for a real birthday treat two minutes into the game. That man Clint, with what must have been his first touch of the ball gave us the lead, closely followed eleven minutes later with a second from Damien Duff. What a start to the day.

Unfortunately, my elation was short lived as the team then took on the role Muppet impressionists, reverting to an afternoon of sloppy play, particularly in midfield.

Granted we hit the bar and post a couple of times, but throughout the eighty minutes of the game I saw it was excruciatingly painful to watch and deservedly, Norwich did pull one goal back after 77 minutes.

As my colleague pointed out, if you took away the two goals and woodwork incidents in a series of highlights from the game, you'd have wondered why Norwich didn't score more.

With the transport spanner to worry about and a team playing like Muppets, I decided I daren't risk leaving any later than with ten minutes of play left. It took 50 minutes to reach Euston which gave me plenty of time to catch my breath and train. I'm sure if I'd left it until the end of the game I would have been cutting it more than fine. So OK I cheated a bit in my attempt to do the dash, but surely Joe was going to put on a better show for me than Fulham - I hoped so.

The train made good time to Birmingham New Street, arriving on time at 19:30, just when Joe was due to come on. Unlike some bands I've gone to see, who tend to come on stage anything up to 30 minutes after they're due, that's not the case with Joe. I think 15 minutes might be his maximum and he's very professional. I quickly found a taxi which took me the five minutes to the NIA gig venue. Then dashing into the arena, to find my two friends who'd arrived earlier, I saw Joe up there halfway through the first number of his set, ironically called 'Slow Train'. The video below was recorded by someone on the night.

What a gig, he was on for two hours plus a half hour encore set. He also had a guest up on stage in the rotund shape of Bernie Marsden former guitarist of Whitesnake. They duetted on tow numbers:   Further-on Up The Road and Blues Deluxe. The video below of them playing Blues Deluxe, was recorded the day before at Bournemouth International Centre and features someone called Rus Scagell along with Bernie.

He also played the title track, Driving Toward the Daylight, from his forthcoming album, as video'd on the night.

What an awesome gig and great way to celebrate my birthday. It was good fun to achieve the little challenge I had set myself. Great company all day with friends at the football and gig.

Great driving by Charlie to get us back from the gig and the night was still to finish with a slight annoying twist. Having dropped Ruth home in MK we then headed back to the motorway, deeming the alternative routes we passed to not be as fast as our chosen option. The only drawback with our plan was, unbeknown to us, our exit junction was closed and we had to go on a 20 mile detour to get home via the next junction.