I predict a riot...ously good night out

It was a win-win all around on Friday night. Zac got to spend the evening with his grandparents, they got to spend time with him, and Heather and I got a rare pass for the evening to go to Wembley Arena to see the Kaiser Chiefs on the final date of their UK tour.

And what a gig it was too. Wembley, with its elongated layout, can lack atmosphere as a concert venue, but from the moment the Kaisers fired up the opening bars of 'Spanish Metal', pretty much the entire crowd was on its feet and belting out the songs in full-throated unison. No gentle ripples of polite applause between songs here.

What followed was 90 minutes of relentless foot-stomping, fist-pumping, lung-bursting magic - it's all heart-on-sleeve stuff; they don't do quiet introspection - with Ricky Wilson barely pausing for breath between songs, racing across the stage and pogoing up and down like, well, as their own lyric goes, a powered-up Pac Man.

Ricky Wilson in 'standing still' shocker

The band raced through a 16 song set which sprinkled in tracks from the latest album 'Off With Their Heads' - all of which sounded infinitely better live than they do shackled by the constraints of tight studio production - with the old favourites: 'Everyday I Love You Less And Less' and 'Everything Is Average Nowadays' early on, 'Ruby' and 'Modern Way' in the middle, and a run of four to close the set which included 'Never Miss A Beat', 'I Predict A Riot' and 'The Angry Mob', by the end of which the not so much angry as deliriously happy mob was doing its best to raise the roof by punching out the chorus at an increasing volume.

A fair few people drifted out between the end of the set and the encore. (I'll never understand why people do that. Did they have trains to catch? Was the gig not entertaining enough? Did they just not know there was going to be an encore?) Those who did missed the emphatic full stop on a mega evening, with a rousing three song coda ending on the Pac Man-referencing, football chant of an anthem that is 'Oh My God'.

It was a brilliant, brilliant night. I've been humming Kaiser Chiefs songs under my breath all weekend and only now, fully 72 hours later, do I feel that I've finally shaken off the hoarseness in my voice. The Kaisers have never managed to replicate the commercial success of their debut album, 'Employment', but the quality of their output - particularly when heard in the flesh - has never wavered, and their reputation as a great live band remains intact.

Roll on the next tour. We'll be there.

One small step for a boy, one giant leap for boykind

It's actually a few weeks since Zac took his first steps, but he's such a proficient crawler that he hasn't really had a big incentive to switch to full-time walking.

Until this weekend, that is.

I'm not sure what the trigger was. It could be that he wanted to show off to his grandparents, who were staying with us for the weekend. Or perhaps he wanted to join his peers, several of whom have been toddling around on two feet for a while now. Or maybe he decided it was just time to make the change.

Whatever the reason, he has spent much of the last two days strutting confidently across the room in the manner of John Wayne after a really long day in the saddle. (Although in the picture below he does appear to be doing a version of Peter Crouch's famous robotic dance, or thinking about karate chopping the father who's trying to take photos of him at 5.30 in the morning.)


Anyhow, the genie is out of the bottle and there is no going back. It won't be long before we are having to chase after him everywhere we go; I'm fully expecting he will run like he crawls: at top speed. He's already zooming around the house to reach up and pull books from bookshelves, wine bottles from wine racks, and basically pretty much anything he can lay his hands on.

A new phase has begun. At times, I imagine it's going to be hell. But it's also going to be lots of fun. With spring - and its promise of longer, warmer days - fast approaching, I'm very much looking forward to getting outdoors with a football and teaching Zac to kick it. (I don't imagine it will be long before he is teaching me, with my two left feet ...)

Incidentally, in a separate but related footnote, I'm currently reading Rohan Candappa's Autobiography of a One Year Old. It's brilliant. I wonder if that's how my little boy looks at his world?