Another year older!

This year my birthday fell on a bank holiday, which meant it also coincided therefore with the Mathew Street Festival. After a birthday brunch in my favourite greasy spoon, the cafe at the Penny Lane Neighbourhood Centre (off Church Road but capitalising on the Penny Lane name as so many businesses do in my area), Colin and I went into town to catch some of the festival.

We saw David Bowie (Bowie Experience) and Supertramp (Logical Tramp) tribute bands in Williamson Square, and then Suzanne, Mike and Mandy joined us from Manchester in time to see the real live actual China Crisis who did a great set. You may recall that I met them in the Richmond beer garden just after the smoking ban was introduced. They are from the Wirral, Wallasey I think. They were very popular, the biggest crowd of the day on the Phil Easton stage.

We then moved over to the big stage at the entrance to the Birkenhead tunnel in time to see the tribute band Kins of Leon (you can work out for yourself to whom they are a tribute). I estimated there was something in the order of 30,000 at the big stage, it will probably be the biggest gig that band will ever play. Everyone really enjoys themselves, it is quite easy to imagine that you are seeing the real thing with many of these bands and the songs are familiar, which is always important.

I was a bit worried about St Johns Gardens, which was completely covered with people, they were even standing in the flower beds, I do hope none of the memorials were damaged. The rain held off until the end of the last song of the day, and then the crowds melted away (mainly into pubs I think, judging by the queue for the ladies in Dr Duncans).

I really enjoyed myself, the only dampener on the day was that two of our friends who were meant to join us, gave up waiting for a bus on Allerton Road after an hour and turned back home. This was in the early afternoon. We really do need twice as many buses, not half as few.