Depeche Mode

We converged on Denton - one of us making the epic journey from Southampton, the other (me) from delightful Warrington.

At the point of arrival, there was a bit of angst, tea and wine resolves angst, so we were able to move on.

Slight loss of direction on the way into town and a bit of elevated blood pressure driving through some of the more worrying back streets. But we arrived safe and sound, just reflecting our respective ages and therefore in need of a toilet break!

It turns out the support act were pretty damn good (The Jezebels) so I am off to look for some of their music.

But Depeche Mode, as ever (in my opinion) were just sublime. Yes, it is something to do with the way Dave Gahan moves, and OH, that voice live on stage is just something else. Tears at one point as they played a song that was pretty much the soundtrack that was in my car when I drove home from seeing Nana the last time. But mostly that blood rushing, fist pumping, screaming at the top of your lungs JOY that comes from seeing one of your favourite bands for the umpteenth time and being with your bestie to see them.

Afterwards, an entertaining 10 minutes at a nightpay garage ("Oh, whilst your there, please could we have some Dairy Milk"....and a ham and cheese sandwich that turned out to be something akin to Chicken tikka...) then back to Denton to drink tea and put the world to rights.

before I knew it, it was 2am. The motorways are glorious at that time of the morning :-)

I miss my best bud so much and it seems that life gets in the way of seeing each other (that and the distance) but it never matters because it's like we haven't been apart as soon as we do see each other.

That music is the sound track to our lives - to our university days, our developing relationships, the birth of our respective children, the demise of my marriage, the loss of people near to us, of love, of friendship, of our lives intrinsically linked to each other. So it doesn't matter whether others don't like it - 10000 of us clearly did last night, but no-one will take away what the music means to at least 3 of us in that room.