Union Meeting

Me and The Boy have just come back from our first Union meeting. Drove all the way to York on a cold October evening only to find it didn't start until 7.30pm so rather than queue outside the really ugly City centre combined shopping precinct/pub/entertainment venue which was a bit of a concrete wind tunnel we opted for a semi-historical tour of the nicer parts of York. Not a lot of shops open or services offered even just after the workers have left for the suburbs which is typically English and a shame as there were still plenty of people milling about. The larger shop chains will however have identified through very expensive Market Research that the demographic of those in the central York City area after 6.30pm are either hard up students heading for a happy hour in a pub, foreign language students looking for a McDonalds or affluent tourists determined to get a table at Betty's famous tea rooms without having to stand in line, outside, for two hours. I can personally verify that the results of the research are true especially on a dark, chilly wednesday in late autumn. My own shoppers survey did involve perching on a high stool and eating an extra-value Big-Mac listening to a large group of young students wearing identical yellow cagoules and backpacks bearing a logo from "The Oxford English School" or similar.
Surprisingly for such a genteel place as York there was a lot of siren noise from emergency vehicles as though something big had kicked off. We left the loosely termed restaurant and, hit with the cold air of the night, walked quickly towards the venue for the Union meeting. There were some dodgy characters about and they all seemed to be heading in the same direction as us. Bald headed and thick necked men who looked like nightclub bouncers, senior citizens with long straggly hair and the possibility of a small pony tail, spotty faced youths overheard recounting word for word the scripts of Monty Python whilst wielding their best Warhammer Claymore against fictional middle earth residents, a few accompanied women certainly reluctant wives and girlfriends of their T shirt clad menfolk and then our sub-group of very normal and quite boring Dads and their sons. I had to accept responsibility for my son, aged 16, in a verbal pledge to the doorstaff and was given a wristband which was cool for a 48 year old although it was well-hidden under my sensibly thick coat sleeves. The Union had booked a very dingy room down a series of  stairwells very much like a bunker with low ceiling height, camouflage webbing concealing potential structural cracks and, as a hazard to anyone over 6 foot, a thickly set , sharp artex plastered coating to the reinforced concrete ceiling which made any enthusiastic leaping or pogo-ing fatal. Me and The Boy mingled with the murmuring crowd. There were two licensed bar areas and attendees were four to five deep at the bar which only seemed to serve draught beer. Under foot there was the constant crunch of discarded plastic glasses. The atmosphere was already a bit charged. On the stage area there was a warm up act, a group of southerners who complained that their van had broken down as an explanation for their late arrival. They were followed by a very noisy group of Irish and Scots, a bit militant and inconsiderate to the York crowd by insisting that the city was famous for Vikings (correct, thanks Wikipedia) and Pies? They did not really have much to say and I could not identify with their words and actions. I did have a good view of the stage but for some reason and whatever crowded situation I find myself in  I am always in the position where people cross through the room
directly in front of me or push in. A chunky man, shaved head tried to edge me out by standing immediately to my right and then shuffling and manouevring his left shoulder in very delicate movements to get in front of me and block my direct view. I countered his every move and he eventually gave up the micro-chess game and I later saw him stage right but doing the same thing. The room lighting dimmed and the stage lights pulsed red and white. The audience cheered and clapped. The PA system started to play a song I hadn't heard for some considerable time but I automatically knew the words, as did the crowd. "You won't get me I'm part of the Union, ditto, ditto.....'til the day I die". To this raucous introduction the band came on stage and launched into the current single from their second album. The Union had started their UK tour and 90 minutes later me and The Boy, ears ringing, were singing and humming ,either openly or quietly in our head, on our way to find the car before returning home.

It will all make sense with the following....................
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03ELlaWWADk