thegillspatch

Wait...uh, what? Sorry, just that song makes me laugh (it just came on...shuffle mode...never mind). If you don't know the song in question, well, you should. Anyway, that has nothing to do with the content of this blog post, but it is Wednesday.

This, however, does:

Yes, that is a genuine ticket to see Queens of the Stone Age (arguably the best band around today :P) live at the Guildhall in Southampton. How did a humble, bald cancer patient come to be in possession of such a coveted and valuable item, I hear you cry. Well, it's a long (er, kind of) story, that all revolves around those two words: "cancer patient" (not humble and bald >_>).

Indeed, believe it or not, if you're a "young person" and get cancer, you get to "make a wish" (sorry Mum and Dad, you'll have to do with your cheap Saga car insurance). So besides the pain, the chemotherapy, the nausea, the diarrhoea, the hospital visits, the surgery and the physio, there is actually a perk to getting cancer. You can probably see where I'm going with this, but I'll continue, otherwise I'll be berated for not writing a long enough blog post.

Anyway, along with the nurses and doctors etc. in Piam Brown, there's a "social worker" called Trish (I hope that's right). The reason "social worker" is in inverted commas is that she's actually a ringleader in the Russian Mafiya, and just uses this social worker guise to avoid suspicion. The reason I make such bold claims? Well, you can guess what my wish was (to see QOTSA in concert), and a few weeks after those words had left my lips a concert of theirs suddenly appeared in Southampton. If that wasn't suspicious enough, the concert was sold out, as you might expect - and yet, after an enigmatic "I'll see what I can do," and the unexplained disappearance of a known ticket tout, I was told a few days before the concert that she'd managed to get hold of a ticket. Coincidence?

If anything other than the words "I think not!" are running through your head, then you need to reconsider. Because unfounded conspiracy theories such as mine (actually, scratch that, especially mine) are always right. Full stop (or "Period." as some of you Americans say (you know who you are). We Brits tend to avoid this, because ending an emphatic statement with the word "menstruation" tends to detract from the effect.).

Other people that should be mentioned are the people that work at CLIC Haven, which is a charity house run by the childrens' cancer charity CLIC (oh yeah, donate, damnit!) right next to the hospital. It's been a real godsend over the past 9 months, and they agreed to let my dad (I know, bringing my dad to a rock concert...oh well, it could have been worse. It could have been Mum. Or even my sister, heaven forbid...) and I stay the night there. Without them we'd have had to find some accommodation somewhere else, and it would have been a real hassle, not to mention expensive.

Anyway, when we arrived, we got a cab straight to the Guildhall, negotiated the supposedly wheelchair friendly steps and amused onlookers with mohawks, picked up our tickets and headed for the nearest KFC. I think I heard a faint sonic boom as the food disappeared down my dad's gullet. Back to the Guildhall, where the supporting act, called "In Case of Fire" (imagine the confusion as my mum tried to find out who it was over the phone) pummelled our eardrums, and then the main act arrived on stage and blew us all away with (and I'm not exaggerating; I've seen a lot of their gigs recorded) I think the best live performance I've heard them do, or at least the best one for a while. The only downside, other than the fact I wasn't playing drums for them, was that we were sat at the back, albeit on a raised platform. We got a good view over everyone's heads, but we were around 15 or 16 metres from the stage at least, so we didn't get an up-close view of the band, nor could we take any decent photos (partly due to the measly 18-55mm lens we have *hint*). We did, however, get an up-close view of the band the day after in the airport. We were waiting for our flight, and who should queue up for boarding right next to us but Josh Homme and co.

I think I may base my choice of university on how many QOTSA gigs are performed near there per year.