A night out .....

..... in Bradford.

It's now 1:30 am and I'm too drunk to write a proper blip, but this photo sums up the night pretty well. Details to follow tomorrow.

It's tomorrow now :

This evening I had a trip over to Bradford with Mr M to go and see DownReno playing a gig at the 1 in 12 club. We arrived at about 8:30pm which was the time the first band of the night was advertised to start, but there were no other people there apart from the bands who were still sound checking so after having a chat with Jake who works at the club decided to go for a drink in a pub around the corner whilst waiting.

The Castle hotel is a typical locals pub in Bradford but they have live music on a Friday night ( we didn't know this when we went in ). As we were at the bar ordering our pints a man with a red beard and hair and wearing a poncho and cowboy hat walked in, sat down with his guitar and started singing. We sat on the table next to him and after he finished his song I got chatting to him and found out he was called Tom.

Tom carried on playing tunes and singing ( he's a talented performer ) and another man with a beard and guitar walked in to the bar. Karl ( named after Karl Marx by his parents ) is a fascinating gent, I spent a while chatting to him before he started playing, you can read a bit more about Karl here. The serious drinkers in the bar did their best to ignore the music, but a few of the locals ( along with me and Mr M ) really appreciated it. A few more musicians arrived during the night including a violin player called Arthur who told me his violin was valued at £1'200 but he paid £250 and an old clock for it, as well as playing the violin he also sang some wonderful songs unaccompanied by any instruments.

It was a surreal night, a cross between phoenix nights and a Choen brothers film. Two local characters walked in with a giant teddy bear with no explanation, a lady who sang a song about ponies for her friend who's birthday it was, there was a pair of ( very large ) identical twins in their late fifties who picked a fight with a man on crutches ( the pony singing lady stepped in and calmed it down ). There were loads of interesting characters.

In the end myself and Mr M never made it to the gig as we were having so much fun listening to all the wonderful music, chatting to the interesting characters and watching all the strange goings on that we stayed in the castle all night ( drinking very strong beer ). At the end of the night the owner of the bar asked me if I could come back next week to take some photos of his 108 year old dad ( I was drunk, but he definitely said it ). I'll be going back next week but I won't be drinking as much or having the post drink kebab.

I've added a few more blurry photos from the night here.

So today's blip is .....


..... A night out in Bradford.