Everything on the tube is built around the Oyster card now. Wonder how they thought of that name. They obviously have different thought patterns to me.
We tube it down to Wembley Park which is a mistake. The tube is quiet at first but fills up with Derby fans at Harrow. We had intended to get off early to find a pub but my Dad gets talking with fellow fans and so we end up at Wembley.
Wembley itself is still the dump it's always been and there are still no pubs to drink or eat in, so we get back on the tube and go one stop back up the line. Still there's nowhere to eat or drink but we do find a café to have lunch in. AF though. They microwave something that was once a lasagne but at £4.50 it's far cheaper than a Wembley burger. The apple pie however is much better.
The famous Wembley arch looks good from a distance but when you get close you realise it's basically just scaffolding tubes and it's not a patch on the twin towers. For all the money they've spent you'd have though they'd have come up with something better. Can't see it becoming an international symbol like the towers were.
Once inside the stadium it's definitely an improvement because for a start we are much closer to the pitch, so we can actually see the players without the use of binoculars. However if you're in the cheap seats which are approximately half a mile above my head, I can't see you seeing much from up there. I've got a very good view but it's raining and I'm still getting wet. Mind you want do you expect for £60 and there's still a mile long queue for the loos just like the old place.
It is an impressive stadium but only really because it's so big, it is after all only another identikit stadium and despite it being sold out there are 15,000 empty seats. These are the notorious Club Wembley seats purchased on a 10-year debenture (£3,000 down, £1,300 a year or something like that. Ten games a season at £160 a game) but are not valid for this game. The ticket holders have the option to buy but most appear not to have done so and the seats have not been resold. What a farce.
Only one team change from the Semi-Final, Pesch is in for presumably his last game for the Rams. A nice way to go out. As expected West Bromwich play most of the football but Derby outsmart them for the first hour of the contest and the score is deadlocked at 0-0. Exit Peschisolido, job done, enter Giles Barnes fresh from his holiday in Lourdes (a Billy Davies joke concerning the speed of his recovery from injury, at least I assume le was joking). Howard sends Barnes down the wing, he crosses and Pearson slides it in. 1-0 and game over as Derby sink deeper and deeper to defend the lead. Half an hour of vintage Billy Davies style hanging on and it's over.
Derby are back in the 'big' time. Half of Wembley rejoin the rest make for the exits.
So that's the end of quite a season. Derby back in the Premier League and now there is the daylight of a whole division between them and the 'mighty' Leeds United. Possibly though the highlight of the whole season was Nottingham Forest's capitulation to Yeovil in the play-offs. So next year it's the two former champions of England, Leeds v Forest in the Third Division. Book those tickets now.
Head home and we escape from London in good time. I head straight to Rock City where L is waiting for me. Tonight we're there to see Modest Mouse.
They are a new band to me, although they've been around for quite a few years. They have a sound that I reckon is a cross between Talking Heads and the Pixies but with a host of other influences thrown in as well. Apparently their name is derived from a passage in a Virginia Woolf story "...and very frequent even in the minds of modest mouse-coloured people..." modest mouse-coloured people? What does that mean?
The bands main claim to fame of late has been the addition of former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr and some people are obviously there just to see Marr because many appear to drift away when the music turns out to be light years away from what they were expecting. It's their loss because tonight Marr is good, his head nodding along to the beat, which belted out by the band’s two drummers.
The band also uses several bass guitars, including a double bass, as well throwing trumpets and accordions into the mix as well. At one stage with everyone else occupied on an instrument a roadie picks up the bass for one song. On another the bass player disappears all together.
There's an awful lot going on onstage but nothing though can upstage lead vocalist Isaac Brock. You can tell he really wants to be Black Francis by his mannerisms and the way he barks half his lines. In truth he is more Black Francis than the real McCoy is these days. There's an awful lot of banter from Brock between songs that I can't hear much of it despite the fact that L has reserved us a really good spot.
The polished finish of much of the stuff on the new album is stripped off tonight and songs such as the single Dashboard sound better for it. The biggest cheer is for the bands 'hit' of a few years ago Float On, which proves that the audience are not there just because of Marr's presence. Towards the end a fan (male) storms the stage to kiss Marr on the cheek; nobody dare attempt to kiss Brock.
It's a good gig, although I can't help feeling that if they laid off on the drum and bass a bit the songs might have shone though a bit more.
Afterwards we head up to the Ropewalk to slake my thirst that has been rising all day. I have two Bombardier, which are very good. L is back on the beer or more precisely the Leffe. We get home around midnight and feast on L's prepared Keema and I watch the highlights of the Rams victory.
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