1999, Brixton Academy, Nine Inch Nails.
(Not that you asked, but under “worst things experienced in life so far”: 1999, Brixton Academy, Atari Teenage Riot. That I told everyone how brilliant ATR were magnified this. You don’t have to take my word for it, for some insane reason ATR actually put out a live album of this.)
Dinner at the Freemasons at Wiswell in 2015, I think it would’ve been. Pine-smoked wild hare. Amazing. Was the wildcard at the end of a trip I took with my dad where we partially emulated The Trip. When we dined at Hipping Hall there was only one other couple dining that evening. Two nights later, we stayed at the Angel Hetton, and they were there too. “I bet they were at the Yorke Arms yesterday”, I said. And when we spoke to them again later, I found I was right - I believe that, unlike us, they did the full Trip. Of the few holidays I managed to take with my dad before he died, this was probably the best one.
It’s tricky to think of more things than that. I put it down to being half-Scottish and thus apparently having inherited Calvinistic tendancies leading to resistence in deriving pleasure from anything.
Perhaps as a catch-all, the places and views I see when I go walking. Last summer I went up Pitch Hill in the Surrey Hurtwood and the view was astonishing. Everything drops away before you there; west, east, south, everything. That day was as clear as anything and I could see all the way to the South Downs, what I think must’ve been Shoreham-by-Sea, some ~25 miles distant.
(This year I aim to walk more canals. The vistas may be less expansive, but the experiences should still be interesting and diverse. The peak goal there would be the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. I hope to figure out a way of doing that in one period.)