The Ageing Rocker

Nope...still no craving.
Two days on, haven't even felt the twinge of need, or want, or culinary lust, to go back and have more grease.

Went to see Bon Jovi live in Cardiff last night though.

With my mother.

In the pissing down rain.

"A little Norman rockin' Bates?" suggested Sian. Maybe. Meh - sue me, I'm one of those weird blokes that, despite many a rebellious phase as a teenager, gets on with his mother. Got on with my dad too, as I got older. Creepy? Maybe, seen from one angle. From my point of view, just means I get to store up good memories of people to whom I'm grateful, in the same way as I store memories of my friends.

The gig (my pal Lee, who also, separately, went to see it, says his sister tells him he's not allowed to call it a gig now he's 40, but that's just ludicrosity) was in an open air arena...and as I say, it pissed down. Bon Jovi was, I think, showing his age and begging for applause from the word go, but on the other hand, gave faithful, foot-stomping renditions of some of the classics, and the crowd went home happy.

At one point, Ma was up and dancing (well, actually, at many points, she was up and dancing) with a complete stranger.

It reminded me of that fantastic Mark Twain quote:
Dance like nobody's watching; Love like you've never been hurt. Sing like nobody's listening. Live like it's heaven on earth.

I...as it happens...can't do that first one. Even IF nobody's watching, my natural expression of rhythm is very much "sober bloke on a drunk night out" shuffling. The occasional, badly misjudged flung-out foot is about the limit of my dance capability - well, either that, or a kind of whirling dervish dancing like a man with one too many ferrets down his trousers. Dancing...not my thing.

Ma though has always been a jiver. And she's always been a rock chick. After a teenage misjudgment (she was in love with Ringo), she's always given me a sense of good rock - when we left my bio-dad, she took four records with her - Black Rose, by Thin Lizzy, the single of We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions by Queen, All Right Now, by Free, and a Black Sabbath album I'm fairly sure hadn't always been hers.

And there she was - 63, soaking wet, and her first time in a rock concert for at least a half-handful of decades...dancing. Dancing like noboby was watching. That's my Ma.

I on the other hand, as I've mentioned on many an occasion, do the other thing - I sing like there's no bugger listening...which might explain some of the funny looks I get in Choir, come to think of it...
Just yesterday morning, on the way back up the trail, singing Bon Jovi songs that were frankly too high for me, I got interrupted by a workman as I came around the corner.
"Bloody hell," he said. "I thought there was a seagull in pain for a minute there!"

I laughed with him, explained it was too early in the morning to properly hit the notes I was trying to hit (I had done a reasonable multi-octave Bat Out Of Hell earlier on the Trail, mind you!), and we parted on a chuckle.

And that, I guess, is me. Singing like nobody's listening, and unable to move my hips for love nor money. Same spirit though. Ma's spirit, I guess.

Kinda proud of that, in retrospect...