Age is just a number until you become music memorabilia

Sometimes before I go to the Finsbury Park Picturehouse cinema I hang out in a bar called Someday, which despite looking slightly imposingly hip from the outside is very relaxed, does ma-hooooooo-sive pizzas, and often has quite nostalgic indie playlists on.

Still, I did suddenly feel very old and unhip the other day when I spotted, behind the bar, up among the music memorabilia they have, a reprint of a poster for a New Order gig I went to in Finsbury Park approaching four decades ago. Railway Children above Happy Mondays on the bill? What were Factory thinking?

My hazy recollections of the day are that I was with a small bunch of friends, I was right down the front for Happy Mondays and A Certain Ratio, but we also rather naively bought loads of booze at an off licence round the corner, at an age where it was touch and go if you got served, thinking we could bring that in. Obviously we couldn’t, so ended up as 15-year-olds trying to neck loads of beer in the park before queuing up to get in so as not to waste our precious pocket money. It is no wonder the memories are hazy.

It was all a very long time ago too. I said to the guy behind the bar, “Oh do you mind if I take a picture of that? I was there” and as the gig was in 1987 that would have been the equivalent of going up to a bartender in 1987, pointing at something on the wall that happened in 1949, and saying “I was at that”. Ouch.