Never mind the Botox: Tales from the middle-aged mosh-pit

We, four suburban forty-somethings, had all but ignored live music, proper live music, for twenty years - The Banshees, Buzzcocks and The Smiths happened so long ago that they might have been in a different life. Live music now was a mum from Doncaster pretending to be the blonde one from Abba, and we needed help. Thankfully, it came, as our children found indie-rock, and demanded to see it up close. A night at Wembley with The Killers kick-started a five year odyssey of seventy nights, a hundred bands, and all of this – Superheroes in spandex, Viking Metallers in a strip-club, cross-dressing sax players, foam-parties, typewriter solos, half-eaten birds, demented babysitters, homicidal ticket-touts, terrifying body-art, the world’s laziest roadie, and of course, some dad-dancing. We’ve met an 80’s legend playing drums in a punk covers band, and been stalked by a masked man in a gay night-club. We’ve been derailed by the Pope, and insulted by a singer who then bought us all a drink, and even, briefly, had rock stars’ arse in our hands. Well, in my hands. Fleeting it may have been, but he hasn’t called, or even sent a text. Never Mind the Botox is a journey of mild, middle-aged rebellion, as once or twice a month, we try not to stand out in a crowd thirty years younger - we usually fail. Sometimes the children keep us company, others we leave them at home, but there is always, along the way, some fun to be had. And so what if we can’t hear the next morning. Old-people need rock’n’roll too.