My lecturer said we could leave half an hour before the computing session was due to finish; I only had to wait about three minutes for a bus; I didn’t have to wait at all to buy a train ticket; I waited seven minutes for a train; and I didn’t have to wait at all to get a taxi to the venue. (I couldn’t find any useful timetable information about Leeds buses on the Internet - shame on them! - and I wasn't going to make my way through a city I couldn't recall ever visiting on foot.) All this resulted in me arriving at the venue on time, and due to the, "Motorhead? Aye, why not, after we’ve had a few pints" policy of the bulk of their audience, I got into the second row, two people away from the centre of stage, without even trying!

The first band, Young Heart Attack, were uber-retro high-pitched hard rock, complete with tambourine player. I liked it! I wasn’t particularly impressed by The Wildhearts at first (I confess I’m not familiar with their work) - their songs seemed a bit samey (yes, I know Motorhead’s are too, but I approve strongly of their formula) - but I warmed to them a lot as their set went on. As for Motorhead themselves, I was expecting their sound to be more brutal (the (singular - shame on me) album I have is brilliantly distorted) and their presence to ooze with evil, but they all looked younger than I’d expected them to (and indeed younger than they actually are) and they incited encouragement rather than heckling. Still, I grinned like a lunapath, and they played "Stay Clean" for the first time since 1998, as well as "God Save The Queen" and other goodness.

Sadly, I wasn't in a particularly good state. Now, I'm not a lightweight when it comes to moshing: I’ve quite happily been in the pit at Rammstein, after all: apart from all the fire doubling the room temperature, my feet never touched the floor and I wasn’t even doing anything. But after my experiences at the Gary Numan gig a few weeks ago, I decided to take it easy! Easy! The only time I'm easy's when I'm killed by death! (Or something.) I pogoed for about a minute in total, nodded my head for another minute, and clapped half-heartedly (not because I wasn’t impressed, but because I’d accidentally burnt my left index finger that morning). Making devil horns and trying to prevent my spine from being twisted out of recognition in the crush was the extent of my extertion.

I wasn’t dehydrating badly, but when security handed the first few rows beeploads of water, I took a swig (and unavoidably poured half of it down my front). A few minutes later, even though I haven’t been sick for fourteen years, I felt in danger of decorating the shirt of the guy in front of me, and everything went pixelated - on a really low screen resolution, at that. So I got out of there and spent the rest of the gig chilling out (well, headbanging - I’m not a total wimp) at the side, where I could only see Lemmy.

I would have to lose my gig-going constitution *before* I see Iron Maiden, wouldn’t I?