Spectacularly crap Morrissey tour pics

Once again the sun shining over Manchester like a big friendly prozac capsule in the sky, poking long marmalade fingers through the windows of my house, and 'sending the shadows scurrying like convent girls menaced by a tramp', as the wonderful Vivian Stanshall once put it. Summer is here. Fantastic! We went out to a deer park in what's left of the Cheshire countryside today, to bask in it. And only two days to go now before the beginning of the the biggest sporting event in the world! Yay! Cold beers, sunshine and wall to wall international football. Things don't get much better. I don't know about where anyone else lives, but around here there's already so many England flags sticking from cars, hanging from people's windows, and tied to pet dogs etc, you'd think it had already started and we were even doing well. As some friends of mine recently moved to Germany, I was thinking maybe I'd try and get over there for some of the games, but as tickets are selling for over £1500, that now seems about as likely as finding a condom machine in Vatican City. Just as well, as I'm too busy. Uncannily, my girlfriend's country, Sweden, are in the same group as England once again, so I'm hoping that's a draw and we both get through just so I don't have to sleep on the couch or something for the next few days.

I'd give you my predictions of who I think would qualify from each group except that I haven't got time.

Managed to get to four of the Morrissey gigs on the ROTT tour (my girlfriend managed five as she also flew out to the Gothenburg one), Manchester Lowry, Grimsby, Manchester Apollo, and Blackburn, the best of which was Grimsby on account of that we had standing tickets for that and got right at the very front where I was able to study Morrisey's nostril hair. Got a bit crushed but I like that, although not in any kind of sexually perverted way, or not much of one, but just because I love the intense, fervent atmosphere of it all when you're being born along in a crowd of seething bodies.Towards the end, a fight broke out a bit behind me when a group of what looked like local lads starting laying into some older guy who crashed into me and eventually had to be lifted out over the barrier by the generally incompetent security staff. Wonder if we'll ever know, is there life on Mars etc. Morrissey came back for an encore and looked over wearing an expression that was a mixture of curiosity, disapproval, and someone wondering 'are these really my fans?' The next day we looked around Grimsby's neighbouring seaside town of Cleethorpes, and although the the people around there were really friendly so I don't want to criticise the place too much, really think it may well have been the inspiration for 'Everyday is Like Sunday'. It looks like it peaked in the 70's and has been frozen in a time capsule, slowly decaying, ever since. I was half expecting them to still be using old money. Yet there's something appealingly romantic about all that shabby, desolate, end of the pier, fish-and-chip-shop-sign garish, moribundity that touches me somehow and maybe stirs vague half-forgotten memories of my childhood holidays at such places before the world went mostly shit.

At the Manchester Apollo gig we decided to go to the pub behind the venue afterwards, which, in the best British tradition, was bloody closed, but next to it, amidst the roadies loading up all the amps and stuff, we noticed Gary Day sat down talking to a couple of girlies, so we went over and said hello and got our ticket stubs signed by him, embarassing though that is to admit.

So that's it for Morrissey for this year! For anyone who is interested, some extremely crap photographs of the gigs that I took can be seen and laughed at below:

The Lowry, Manchester 18/4/06 Crap seats near the back.

Grimsby 4-5-06, good place at the front but crap photos.

Manchester Apollo 7-5-06, even crapper seats near the back.

Blackburn 11-5-06, the crappest seats at the back of all.

The seaside town that they forgot to close down.