Hello Moon

Last Friday was an experience of many emotions: fear, apprehension, excitement, disgust, happiness, confusion, anger... but most of all, a feeling of sheer ecstacy.

No I'm not a druggy or a sex addict. I'm talking about Hyde Park, London, dead grass, bottles of beer flying around like insects, sun, speakers, guitars, drums. I'm talking about the blur concert.

We arrived in London at about 1:30, after setting off at around 12, so we had make excellent time. However it took us another half an hour to find the correct entrance to Hyde Park. Which is actually fucking huge. More like a battlefield for joggers and picnic baskets than a park. So thanks for putting the gate name on the tickets, blur. What a fun adventure that was. We finally figured out it was the Marble Arch entrance, and after about 67 years of my Dad giving us advice and instructions, (mostly along the lines of 'don't get crushed in the crowds okay?' to which we replied 'oh haw haw, please this is a blur concert. The fans will be intelligent individuals', oh I was so naive) We finally joined the surprisingly small queue for the entrance.

We made it amazingly close to the stage, but it was a frustrating 4-5 hours before blur finally came on. During this time we watched 4 supporting acts:

1. Wierd, tiny Chinese girl mostly singing gibberish whilst pretending to play a bass guitar (I'm not being racist, it was literally gibberish e.g. 'bom ba bom ba bom ba bom BAM BAM' I rest my case.
2. Florence And The Machine, bloody brilliant performance, Florence has an amazing voice and some serious charisma (also she waved at me. We are now BFF's)
3. African band who were pretty cool, but also said things in a language that no one understood. We still cheered though.
4. Vampire Weekend, Good performance, but I think people were getting a bit restless by this point.

The next few minutes the crowd seemed electric. Once all the band equipment was sorted, the stage was empty of movement. Every time the speakers stopped playing some 80's songs, the crowd started cheering, only to be let down by another song. Finally the music stopped, the cheering was frantic, smoke spilled from the wings of the stage, and through it came blur.

I promised myself I would celebrate my excitement upon their presence with dignity. But as soon as I saw them, strolling through the smoke in a kind of Charlie's Angels 'It-is-I' kind of way, all dignity was forgotten. This was my Twilight. I didn't cheer in a standard 'Woo', I fully on screamed my lungs out, jumping about like a loony on loon pills and waving my arms as if they'd caught fire. I literally could not believe it, I was flooded with joy, I almost cried.

No doubt the performance was unbelieveable. Nothing could have been improved. However, seeing as we were astonishingly close to the stage, it was slightly mental to say the least. Beer bottles kept flying past me or exploding on people's heads, and not necessarily filled with beer. The heat was intense, and we were contantly surrounded my sweaty blokes about twice my height and weight meaning I was pushed and shoved in all directions. My feet suffered intensely, they were trampled upon mercilessly and i now have the cuts and bruises to prove it. At one point it got so violent Damon Albarn had to tell the nutters at the front to 'enjoy themsleves a bit less', the responce to this was much booing, at which point my friend J turned to me with a look of pure horror on her face and said:

'You can't boo Damon!'

But it was so worth every pain-filled second of it.

My favourite song had to be Tender. Mostly because of the atmosphere, the entire crowd sang the lyrics. Alex James was grinning like a moron throught the entire night, Damon did 'The Jog' and I'm positive that without a doubt, we will all be voting for Dave.