Tag Archives: Food

Blue Funking Raw Food

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Shit happens.  Actually, quite a lot of shit happens.

I last posted a year ago.  At that time, I was in reflective mood.  The truth is, I had reached a point in my life where everything had changed.  It was a year since my Mum had died and 4 months since my Dad had followed her.  I was 3 months into my 3rd job in 2 years.  I had been an arthritic for 30 years and I was beginning to allow this thought to define my life.  I was looking back and worrying about what lay ahead.

Rewind 18 months and I wasn’t in a great place.  The effects of stress were beginning to impact every aspect of my life.  My health took a prolonged downward turn and my arthritis flared beautifully, which just fuelled my stress.  I even found that music wasn’t lifting my spirits.

Music has played a big part in my life since I was a teenager.  Not just listening, but playing, writing and recording.  I’ve played in bands since I was 15 and I’ve been very lucky to end up in some great bands with great people. I have lovely gear – just check out my see-thru drum kit!img_2021

But, I wasn’t happy playing with my mates.  Setting up for a gig left me stressed and angry.  Little issues (there are always issues when setting up) got right up my arse.  By the time we were going on stage, I would be wound up and, sometimes, I felt like walking out and giving up.  Not like me at all.

When my Mum died after a long decline into dementia, there was some relief.  She hadn’t known any of the family for a long time and I was happy for her that she had been released from her lonely world.

My Dad, my hero, was her carer even though he was well into his 80s.  He gave my Mum the dignity of dying at home with her family around her –  a promise he made when she was more herself.  A few months later and, instead of his life being more relaxed and less stressful, my Dad discovered that he was dying from a massive tumour in his colon.  My brother, sister and I became his carers and we took shifts staying at the family home to look after him.

My stress turned into depression.  The blue funk.

We buried my Dad in the same week that I had the interview for my current job.  As well as interview prep, I was in the middle of preparing a eulogy and rehearsing a song – yes, I played the ukulele and sang at my Dad’s funeral.  After, hopefully, making everyone laugh with a song taking the piss a little (I think my Dad would’ve liked it) I stood and delivered the eulogy in the church where he had been an Elder.  The day after the funeral, I got the job.  That whole week is a blur.

kickballsMy doctor took an aggressive approach.  I don’t mean he slapped me around and kicked me in the bollocks, which may have helped, he prescribed a drug regime to rid me of the self-destructive and negative thoughts.

It worked to a point.  But recently I feel like I’ve been going round and round in a circle with no corner to turn to get out.

Trapped.  Stuck.  Eating the wrong food and drinking too much.  All of the things opposite to the paleo lifestyle that gave me such amazing results 5 years ago.  My health was shit, my head was full of shit, I was a complete shit and I felt powerless.  I had to do something different to make the change that I needed to help me move forward.

Luckily, I have a partner who loves me and cares about me.  My wife Anthea knows.  She knows how I feel, what makes me tick and watching me struggle hasn’t been easy for her AND she has had to pick up my slack when she’s busy enough herself.  It’s been shit.  But, she offered me a way out.

I was 50 in June.  Anthea’s gift to me was for me to piss off out of the house for a week.  “Just go away!” she said.  No seriously, she bought me a week at a health retreat in Spain.  I must admit, I didn’t immediately take to the idea but the more I thought about it, the more I got excited about going.

I went.

I’m just back from an amazing week at Laughter Cleanse run by two wonderful people, Jo and Claire.  I was one of four guests.  I wanted the chance to reboot, to get my head in order and to break out of my circle.  So, what happened……..?

Cleansing and Detox – we had foimg_2106ur and a half days of fresh vegetable and fruit juice, 5 times a day with some dietary supplements thrown in.  Nothing solid to eat.  Now, you’ll be thinking that I’d be bloody starving but not at all.

Then there were the enemas.  Oh yes!  The most exciting bit.  One each day during the detox period and I felt the need to keep Anthea up to date as I went along.  In fact, on the Thursday (the 4th day) I was so dissatisfied with the results of my enema that I did another one.  Ah, that’s better.

I recommend everyone do this.  You really don’t know just how full of shit you all are!  The volume and colour of the stuff that’s probably been languishing in my colon for years was pretty impressive.  I took photos but I won’t share.

A big part of the week for me was our morning routine:

  1. 10 minutes of laughter – everyone lying on the floor pissing themselves laughing, releasing enough endorphins for the whole day
  2. Joy Fit – getting the lymph flowing
  3. 45 minutes of yoga, which I just loved, loved, loved
  4. 15 minutes of meditation – awesome!

img_2103Then there was the location.  How can you NOT feel good being in a place like this?

Loads of time and space to do your own thing, chill, snooze, read, chat, listen to music, have another enema or two, whatever.

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Nutrition – the juices were bloody lovely.  We had either ginger or turmeric shots each morning, followed by delicious vegetable and/or fruit juices freshly made from organic produce.  Awesome!

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We also had this disgusting stuff called Spirulina twice a day – the trick was just to get it down as quickly as possible.  It’s pretty awesome stuff but tastes horrendous.  I won’t go into its many health benefits, just Google it people!

Friday was solid food day.  Raw.  Vegan.  Now, I bet you’re thinking that raw vegan food is bland, tasteless, dry, all nuts, salad, cardboard and hemp washed down with water.  Well, that’s the image I had in my head.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

We ate glorious pad Thai, amazing Mediterranean olive and walnut bread, banana and ginger ice cream, key lime pie among other things.  All raw, wheat free, dairy free, sugar free and more delicious than you can possibly imagine.

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Why raw?  Well, we still have the bodies of our hunter gatherer ancestors.  Same idea as paleo.  In the last 200 years and especially in the last 50 years, we have moved to processing pretty much all of our food.  We add chemicals to make it last longer, sugar to make it taste nice and bulk it out, E numbered compounds that we have no idea about, MSG, etc.  The list goes on.

Yet we still have the genetic makeup of hunter gatherers.  A few hundred years isn’t enough for evolution to allow our bodies to adapt, that would take a few hundred thousand years if not more.  The bulk of what we put into our bodies is unnatural and toxic to us.  Again, same idea as paleo.

The difference between raw and paleo is cooking – duh, no shit Sherlock!  Cooking kills the enzymes – the life force – of the food.  Now, I’m not turning into a hippy and I’m not about to grow a long beard or anything like that, but it does make sense.  We’re designed and we’ve evolved to live in harmony with nature and our surroundings.  Our bodies are geared up for raw food, using the natural enzymes in it to help us digest and pull nutrition from it.

It all sounds very Avatar but why shouldn’t it be like that?

Raw food (either completely raw or dehydrated) maintains the life of the enzymes.  It made me feel really good.  My body is an amazing thing, as is yours.  It wants to heal itself.  It’s desperate to be given the clean, non toxic fuel to help it do just that.

The Future – So, what was my outcome?  Did I reboot?  Was it the change I needed?

You betcha baby!

Days 1 and 2 were odd.  I was tired.  I retreated to my room and slept a lot.  I needed the privacy to be with myself and reflect.  Day 3 was odd.  I had a sore head all day and a grumbly tummy – not through hunger, I hadn’t given myself long enough on the bog after my enema.  I squirted all day and almost followed through a few times.  Nasty.

On Day 4, I woke up and felt superb.  I literally jumped out of bed (I haven’t felt like that for over 3 years) and when I looked in the mirror, there was a healthy person looking back at me.  My energy was up.  My head felt more clear.  I felt happy – that was unusual!

Day 5 was even better.  I slept so well the night before (again, something that hadn’t happened a lot).  I felt energetic.  Feck, what’s going on!?

Day 6.  More of the same and more.

Day 7 and beyond.  Well, I’m on day 11 today.  I have, with the exception of a couple of meals, maintained a raw diet.  I feel great.  I’ve had a sore and swollen right ankle which has given me a limp for around 3 years.  It’s getting better.  The chronic inflammation in my hands is receding.  My right shoulder is less sore.  I have a little more stamina.  I feel a little stronger.  My head is more clear.

I’m going to continue.  I have to.  I owe it to myself and my family to give this everything.

In my last post I talked about having another 35 years to go.  If I’m lucky and that’s the case, I’ll have been living with rheumatoid arthritis for 80% of my life.  A scary thought?  Maybe.

Maybe I won’t have to.

 

Sweets, Swelling and Selfies

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This post was going to be called “Man Boobs No More”, but I changed my mind at the last minute.  I will, however, come on to my man boobs later.

Er……oops, that could be read a number of ways!  What I mean is, I will refer to the subject of my man boobs a bit later on.

I’ve been feeling a wee bit guilty about not writing.  I do love writing my blog and I was VERY surprised to find that my last post was in May last year.  Last year, 2013!  I would say, in my defence, that life has been awfully busy in the last 8 months or so.

So, what has happened?

Well, first of all I left one band and joined 2 others.  This meant getting down to quite a punishing rehearsal schedule and, in total, I had to learn around 50 new songs and be gig ready pretty quickly.  In the last 8 months, I’ve been in more random rehearsal spaces and done more music stuff than I can shake a stick at.

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Practise

Mad, brilliant fun but completely knackering.

It has also meant a lot of practise on my wee electronic kit at home, which is supposed to be the quietest way to get some practise in.  I still manage to disturb everyone in the house, though!

Then we had our summer family holiday in France, which was awesome.  I’ll get to that in a moment.

Then after months of delays, we were finally granted permission to extend the house.  We appointed a builder and the work started.  This introduced a load more distractions in the 10 weeks that followed.  The build was finished on the 20th of December, so Christmas brought new bedrooms for the kids, BUT, it still isn’t completely furnished or decorated and there is still some internal work to do (which is my job) so I have a few more distractions.

With all this going on, could I have found a couple of hours to write some stuff for my blog?  Yes, of course I could but I kept putting it off.

Then, this week, I received a reminder that my blog was due for renewal.  So I logged on and found a message from a fellow arthritic dated July 2013.  I hadn’t seen it.  Now, I make a point of replying to everyone who gets in touch via the blog, so I felt really bad that I had failed this time – and that it was from so long ago.

Closing her message, Sue wrote, “Please do keep posting.  Your blogs are incredibly helpful and inspiring.”  I suddenly remembered why I started this thing in the first place and felt quite humbled, so thank you Sue for giving me a wake up call.  And thanks also to Jono (my wife’s cousin’s husband) for telling Sue about my blog.

Right.  The last time I blogged I had reached the point of no return and had felt the need to take my medication.  This has happened twice since then and I seem to have settled into taking the drugs every 3 months.  I still haven’t had the courage to sit through one of these ‘mini flare ups’ and see if my joints settle down.  I get a bit scared.

I know that, at some point, I will have to try powering through these tough times but life just gets in the way.  There is always family stuff to do, my job, a rehearsal, a gig, stuff to do around the house and a whole bunch of other stuff that demands attention and action.

Lots of stuff!

And, let’s not lie about it, it’s bloody painful.  I lose all the strength in my limbs, I have no power in my hands, even to the point of struggling with cuff links and not being able to turn down my shirt collar.  I have trouble with stairs and my ankles and feet are sometimes too painful to carry my weight.  Enough really is enough when you have to ask your daughter to help you get dressed.  So, I give in, inject, and within days I’m feeling better.  Whether I would feel better anyway without taking the drugs is something I’m just going to have to think about trying – but I really am a bit of a scaredy-cat.

But, I could be helping myself a bit more.  Since France, I’ve been in and out of eating clean and I have the results to show for it – this is the Sweets and Swelling bit.

I know that eating wheat is bad for me.  I have an immediate reaction to it and it’s not pleasant.  Everyone should read a book called Wheat Belly – everyone!  Anyway, at a very nice restaurant in the tiny French village of St Avit Senieur, I ordered a pudding which was lovely but made with flour.  The kids told me off.  My wife shot me a disapproving look.  I knew what I was doing.  I had a leaky gut for a couple of days after that.  I stay away from wheat.

Processed sugar also has a very bad affect on me and I’m finding more and more that the longer I stay away from processed stuff, the more extreme the reaction when it gets into my diet.  I don’t have much willpower.  My colleagues at work will tell you, if there are ever sweets on our desks and I have one, you can kiss goodbye to the rest because I’ll have the lot.  I fall off the wagon now and then.

SportsMixWhen this happens, I’ll drop into Sainsbury’s or Tesco on the way home and pick up a bag of Sports Mix – they’re my favourite.  Give me 10 minutes and they’ll all be gone.

I’m just a sucker for them.

In the last few days, my wife has been at a networking event for people from her industry.  There were bowls of sweets on the tables and, because her friends and colleagues know we have 3 kids, she kept being given sweets to bring home for them.  We ended up with tons and tons of sweets and they were all like this, just processed sugar on a stick.

SweetsFor me, that’s a red rag to a bull and I ate quite a lot.  The result, crippling, painful swollen fingers and eczema.

Sugar really is nasty stuff.  Here are the results of my lack of willpower.  A beautifully swollen pinky joint and the nastiest eczema breakout I’ve had in ages.  If I stay clean, the condition of my skin is amazing.  If I don’t, this happens.

Finger and Hand

So, that was today, Thursday 6th February.  Give it a few days and my joints and skin will be back to normal.  Sugar really is poison and we should all stay away from it.

So, I’ve covered Sweets and Swelling.  What about Selfies?  Back to France.

Our holiday in France was amazing for so many different reasons.  We had a beautiful villa with a private pool, the weather was superb, the people were lovely, the little bastide towns were gorgeous, the countryside was beautiful and we discovered that the Dordogne is one of the most fabulous parts of the world.

I did what I always do.  Completely in love with the place, I was in a fantasy, talking about buying a farmhouse, selling up and retiring there and I slowed the car at every ‘for sale’ sign we passed.  All nonsense, of course, but great to let one’s imagination wander.

The food was a big surprise.  I found that I had a huge choice.  Ordering in restaurants was easy.  I did make a few poor choices, but I knew what I was doing and anyway, the kids let me know about it so I was shamed mercilessly.  For the most part, I was able to eat like a horse!  When in France……

Anyway, here are some of the things we ate.  Lots of meat, lots of veg, lots of fruit, just what paleo man would eat.

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We ate a lot of food – everyone did.  But, it was all good stuff.  We had a large cooked breakfast every morning, we drank LOADS of the local wine and ate a big lunch and dinner.  The entire holiday was really just hopping from one eatery to another, but, I have never felt so good and I actually came home 2.2 kilos lighter than I was before the holiday.

When does that ever happen?  People who lose weight on holiday normally have a dose of the squits or some other tummy troubles.  I caught myself in the mirror having a shave one morning and I thought to myself, “Blimey, you don’t look too bad”.  Following in my eldest daughter’s footsteps, I reached for my phone a took a selfie.

Selfie1With Twitter and Instagram at her fingertips, Catherine is definitely one of the selfie generation and we’re always trying to give her good advice, trying to keep her safe and generally giving her a hard time about it.  So, here’s me not taking my own advice, with clothes and without.  

selfie2I think I look OK for a 47 year old chronic arthritic who takes little to no exercise.  This is all diet, nothing else.

Which brings me to my man boobs.  3 years ago, I was growing a pair.  Now they’ve gone.  I’ve done nothing except change what I eat.  Aside from a few misguided lapses of willpower, I have kept my diet as clean as I can and I’m now at a steady 73 kilos, just perfect for my height.  My BMI is smack bang in the middle of normal.

3 years ago, my BMI put me in the overweight category.  Not now.  Even better, I know that I can control my arthritis with food.  I know what works and what doesn’t.  I’ve moved on from constantly experimenting – I don’t feel I have to do that any more.  I just have to do better and stay clean.  Maybe I can still be free from the drugs completely.

Maybe.

Is Remission Possible…..

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…..and is it within my grasp?

A couple of weeks ago, I popped off to see my consultant rheumatologist.  It was my annual visit and I had a very interesting time.  I’ll tell you about that in a minute.

When I saw her at the end of 2011, I was four months into eating paleo, nearly at the end of installing a new kitchen, dropping weight, feeling great, gaining muscle, feeling strong and reducing the drugs.  When I explained what I was up to, instead of giving me the standard medic’s sceptical response, she was very happy for me to continue.  In fact, she arranged a few extra tests to make sure there was nothing else going on.

Her parting shot was, “Don’t lose any more weight!” I didn’t.

One of the extra tests was a coeliac screen.  There is clinical evidence linking rheumatoid arthritis with coeliac disease, which just shows that gut health plays a part in autoimmune conditions.  My coeliac screen was inconclusive, which was kind of annoying.

Anyway, I didn’t need to see her again for a year.  So throughout 2012, I continued to eat as well as my willpower would let me, started writing about it, didn’t take the drugs as often as I was supposed to and experimented with bringing some food groups back into my diet.

After much experimentation (some of which is documented in previous posts) I can now say with confidence that anything with a sniff of wheat brings my symptoms back and they come back very quickly.  Now, I know I’m not coeliac, but my gut really doesn’t like wheat and shit really does go down.  Here’s a good example.

Since Christmas and our magnificent paleo dinner, I have been feeling pretty groovy and quite awesome.  Last week, I was out for a lunchtime curry with colleagues and had some pakora and, yes, it was in batter.  A little rice (not too much) with my bhuna and by the time I got back to the office I was feeling sluggish, tired, my hands were a little sore and the pain in my right elbow was coming back.

That’s the power of food.  Amazing.  Since then, I have had a persistent and very annoying problem with the index finger on my right hand – for the last nine days its been swollen and mildly painful and it doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon!  I’m tracking all of this in my log.

Oh, my log, yes I’ll tell you all about that in a minute too!

So, back to food.  Along with wheat, I also know that dairy doesn’t agree with me – a little more difficult to put my finger precisely on what’s happening but I just can’t stomach it any more!  I was beginning to think that dairy was making my skin bad, but not now.

It’s sugar!

Jeez, stuff with a lot of sugar in it brings my psoriasis back with a vengeance!  I have some patches on my forehead, on the back of my head under the hairline, on my lower back and on the backs of my hands.  Sugary foods and sweets just make it flare like a beacon and, unfortunately, alcohol too – and it’s very unpleasant, itchy, sore, unsightly and, what’s more, my wife can always tell when I’ve been up to no good!

So, even after all this time, I still have this going on…..

BrainFight

I have been constantly battling with myself.  As they say, you only cheat yourself and it’s been a slow realisation that I just can’t have some types of food, not even just a little bit.

So, I’m being clean, cutting down on what I drink and staying away from the stuff that makes me unwell.

I am really out to prove a point because I am now completely off the drugs – officially!

This is what happened when I saw my consultant.  When I was called into her room, she was elsewhere so I saw her Senior Registrar.  He didn’t know my story so I had to summarise the events of the last 16 months in a couple of minutes.

Now, for someone who has a reputation for talking at length about just about anything, is left to the end of the meeting to give an update (so that everyone else around the table has a chance) and who is the butt of many a joke about brevity at work, home, everywhere else, this was no small feat.  My colleagues won’t believe that I actually managed to do it.

But I did.  I got quickly to the part about only taking the drugs every 6 or 7 weeks and I wanted to know what I should do now.

Incredulous, flummoxed, he made a noise like a horse snorting and said that it was very unusual for someone to come off strong anti-arthritis drugs so quickly, or to only take them at 6 week intervals and that he didn’t quite know what advice to give me.  He said, “In fact, I’ve never heard of anything like this.”  That disappointed me a little.

When you consider that there is a wealth of information and credible evidence kicking about the place, readily accessible to anyone who might be interested, you might think that the docs would have a look too.  I wonder how much doctors really are interested…..

…..when the drug companies are paying the bills.

Anyway, that’s a completely different tangent and I’m trying to be brief.  He went off, shaking his head, to speak to his boss.  They came back, asked a few more questions, listened, then asked the most important one.  “What’s your ultimate goal, Scott?”

Well, I hesitated.  This was the crucial question.  The one I’ve been asking myself for the last year and a half – almost.  Did I feel that, with little flare up after little flare up, I could really achieve my goal?  Was I prepared to put my mouth where my money was?  Could I maintain the willpower, stop fighting with my brain and actually stick to something?

My wife’s words echoed – look how far you’ve come!  She’s right . I got a little emotional and said, “I want to stop taking the drugs.”  My consultant said, “OK, go for it.”  But added, “Let’s see you in 3 months and assess how you’re doing.  My clinic is very full, but we’ll squeeze you in.”  I wanted to say, “Why is your clinic so full?  Your patients should be on a paleo diet.  You could save money, time, effort, etc!” but that’s a conversation for another time.

I couldn’t have said anything anyway because, for the second time, I was in tears in my consultant’s room.  This time, though, for a much better reason.

So, that’s that.  For the time being, I am drug free and feeling a little scared.  I do think I was using the drugs like a crutch – there if things weren’t going well, there if I just thought I should have them, when I felt guilty that I hadn’t taken them in a while.  I must say it feels a little weird.

But I have my log.  Yes, I can now tell you all about my log!

I thought I should have some evidence of how I feel physically so that, after 3 months is up, I can take it to my consultant and be able to have the above conversation!  I have a spreadsheet (no surprise there – I have a spreadsheet for most things) and I am recording, daily, how I feel in the morning, how things feel during the day and (really important) how I slept.

So far, I’ve had to record far too much in my log because of my dodgy index finger, which is annoying in so many ways!  But, it will give me a brief history of how it feels to be completely drug free, no matter what happens in the next 3 months.

Am I even more determined?  Damn right!

Brain vs Brawn image provided by Yau Hoong Tan and is on the Flikr photo feed at this address: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tangyauhoong/4474921735/

Hands, Knees and Woops, My Shoulder!

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Well, it’s a week since my (mini) flare up, following some less than Paleo food while on holiday.  Am I any better?  Mostly.  My hands are still a bit of a problem, though, and I have been rather silly again!

I was at a funeral last Monday offering some support to a friend who had lost her Mum. Although very sad, we had some fun looking through a library of old photographs and recalling some good times everyone had spent together.  Coffee, tea, a wee snifter and some food.

I had my daft hat on again.  Now, Paleo as I am, I do love a good sausage roll.  Oooooh, sausage rolls!  The ones on offer were particularly nice.

I had 3…………..followed by a sandwich…….

……and 2 cakes.

People who know me will be either shaking their heads or snorting loudly right now.  In my defence, I would say that I’m the same as everyone else, a wheat addict.  Having wheat addiction means that when you have wheat, you must have more wheat and more wheat and more wheat.  That’s why I couldn’t have just one sausage roll, couldn’t stay away from bread and then had to have a cake or two.

Wheat is the only major component of our food that has an addictive effect.  I’ve said before that wheat (pastry, bread, cakes – just what I’d been eating) releases endorphins.  This isn’t strictly true.  Endorphins are produced by the brain – but gluten exorphins are produced by the ingestion of wheat.  Similar effect on the brain, different route.  No other food does this and that’s why it’s addictive like no other food.

That’s why you can’t just have one piece of that ‘moreish’ bread.  You say, “moreish,” I say “addictive.”

If I was an alcoholic, my long-term recovery would depend on me cutting out alcohol completely for the rest of my life.  With wheat, I need to treat myself like the addict I am and stay away from it completely.  The reason?  Well……..

…….the reaction to my loss of control was nothing short of spectacular!  Now, I should have shown a little more intelligence after my experience with holiday food, but let’s treat this as another experiment, for science’s sake.  That’s my excuse anyway!

By the time I drove home (just half an hour) my hands, knees and my right shoulder, which hasn’t been a problem for well over a year, were indescribably painful.  Especially my shoulder.  I was genuinely shocked by this.

I had overdosed!

I went through almost 2 years of dealing with a seriously painful right shoulder, which was a big problem at gigs, caused some vascular damage and disrupted everything in my life, most of all my sleep and my ability to give my kids a ‘carry.’  There is a unique joy to be had from lifting your children into your arms and really giving them a cuddle.  I found doing that really difficult.

My shoulder had been OK for about the last year – getting better around the time I changed my diet.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Since Monday evening, I have been back to my usual diet and I’m almost back to my normal self.  I have been really amazed how quickly, with a clean diet, I have been able to reverse the horrible effects of a diet with wheat in it.

My hands are almost back to normal, my knees are good, my feet are fine, I don’t have a sore ankle any more and my right shoulder has settled, just as quickly as it flared up!

I can do this now.  Holding my hands together like this is almost impossible when my fingers swell up.  I couldn’t do this a week ago.

And I know now, categorically, that it is wheat. I’ve had a moment of clarity!  I’m not coeliac, but I know enough to know that one can have an intolerance to wheat and have a different autoimmune response.  Me – rheumatoid arthritis. Other folks – eczema, psoriasis, IBS, etc, etc.  Try a wheat free diet for a month (and I mean a REAL wheat free diet) and let me know how you feel?

One highlight of the week was seeing Muse in concert at the SECC in Glasgow.  Here’s a picture I ‘tried’ to take.  Great show, great lights, superb visuals.

I do love Muse.  They remind me a lot of Queen, in that they can do anything, covering R&B, Rock n’ Roll, Progressive Rock and big Orchestral pieces, even really weird shit (like ‘Unsustainable’ from their new album and the show’s opening song) and completely get away with it.

Their sound is big and complex but the engineers did an amazing job, it was clear and dynamic.  Really interesting to see the sound guys using a big old school analogue mixing desk with lots of outboard signal processing – rather than the ‘all on board’ big digital desks that are more common these days.

Woops, sorry, just dropped into Geeksville for a minute there!

Anyway, they were a real joy to watch and listen to.  Every time Dom slammed the kick drum, it hit me in the stomach.  Gorgeous!  As a drummer, I love watching great drummers do their stuff and Dom Howard is a great drummer.  There he is, look, drumming away and being great!

I did have one worry, though, with sore feet, a dodgy ankle and grumbling sciatica (yup, I have that too – people with a chronic disease don’t have JUST the disease, remember) I was thinking our standing tickets maybe weren’t such a great idea.  But then, the whole show was standing, so that was that.

So Scott, just shut up and watch the show!  I needn’t have worried.  In my recovering state, I was grand and I even managed a small mosh when they did Plug In Baby.  Well, you can’t not!

My only issue at the end of the gig was a slight tightness in my right knee – otherwise fine.

So, my resolve has deepened and a wheat free diet it is for me and I heartily recommend you follow one too.  Oh, and if you get a chance to see Muse on tour, grab it.

Awesome!

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