All that you can do is watch them play

Happy birthday to my oldest, best mate, The Man of Cheese. If my records are correct (and they are - of course they are), the first gig we went to together was, unbelievably, Blur, in October 1991. I seem to recall us drinking rather a lot of snakebite and black, made with unhealthily strong K cider. That might explain falling into a ditch on the way back to my student digs after the gig, and it may also explain later trying to eat frozen bread when it transpired that was the only food I had in the house...

Of course we weren't the only ones who had a bit to drink that night. Blur were in their post-Leisure, pre-Popscene phase, and things were not going brilliantly for them. This might explain why they were quite so well lubricated on stage, with Damon introducing their biggest hit to date with the memorable phrase, "You're going to think this is shit." He had, at least, moved on from the haircut he sported in the video for it, but the band as a whole had yet to reinvent themselves.

Blur got better, of course, a lot better; we saw them again just two and a half years later, by which time they were headlining the Shepherd's Bush Empire, with a nascent Sleeper supporting. Damon et al. had recently gone top five with Girls and Boys, and topped the album chart with Parklife; they were almost like a different band. Another top, top night, that was, though with no K cider or frozen bread...

It seems impossible to me, mate, that first tipsy gig being 31 years ago. Equally impossible, that we were dropped into the same class at school on the sole but fortuitous basis of surname alphabetical order, some forty years ago. Essentially, impossible that our youth is such a distant thing. Still, no-one can say we didn't give it a good go, can they? And still are! Happy birthday, my cheese-eating friend.