Day Three: Saturday 24th June, 2023 - P!nk, Summer Carnival 2023, BST Hyde Park, London.

And so we come to the main event, the impetus for heading down to London: P!nk. She wowed me at Hampden on the last tour and Trustfall has been my favourite album of the year so far so I was excited to see what she would do in Hyde Park.

We began the day with an issue in the hotel room: water pouring down the wall and dripping from the air con unit in the ceiling. We reported it to reception and went for breakfast at The Rocket pub across the road. This was another one in the same chain as O'Neills, offering the same breakfast. The app still didn't work properly so we ordered at the bar. The floor was sticky which was offputting but the food was fine. Baps today instead of a fry-up. 

Afterwards, we returned to the hotel to discover the engineer had removed the ceiling tiles, left them in the bath, and was using our bin as a water catcher. Concerned, we checked back with Reception that they weren't going to leave it that way. They didn't know but would chase it up. We knew we wouldn't be back till late so hoped it would be fixed and that we wouldn't need to pack up and change rooms in the wee small hours.

We picked up sandwiches and drinks at the local M&S food hall and caught the Victoria Line to Green Road then walked to Hyde Park to queue. The gates for Diamond VIPs opened at 1pm. We sat for a while enjoying the warm day then wandered up early to find our line. We got to hear (not see) P!nk doing her soundcheck, while we ate our sandwiches. She sounded fantastic and it provided a tantalising teaser of what was to come.   

By the time, the gates opened, the queue had snaked across the grass for quite a distance and I was so pleased we'd arrived early. We received our wristbands and made our way to the Summer Garden area, noting the many food and drink vendors around the place. I was immediately drawn to the Hard Rock Cafe stall. The drinks prices were cheaper than I expected, a 500ml bottle of Coke Zero only costing £2.50. A trough of water dispensers next to one of the bars provided free cold drinking water, although it was initially put off as it resembled a gents' urinal. 

We snagged a couple of deckchairs under an umbrella and settled with a view of the big screen beside the main stage. The sun was baking hot so the cover was welcome. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten the sun does not remain fixed in the sky and our protection got slimmer and slimmer as the day progressed until I was forced to move my chair losing my view of the screen.

GAYLE was the first act on the main stage (we didn't bother with the minor acts on the other stages). She was a bit potty-mouthed but was okay. Not really my thing.

We both went through to see Sam Ryder. He was great, lifting the crowd with his joyous music. In his dressing gown outfit, he looked like an eternally optimistic younger cousin of The Dude from The Big Lebowski. There's a touch of Freddie Mercury about him but probably not enough to front Queen. He did well to lift the crowd and seemed to enjoy himself.

I went off to bring back food leaving my wife to save our spot before Gwen Stefani came on. Lots of jostling occurred, particularly from an elderly Welsh woman with a walking stick who, after striking my wife with it, claimed she didn't know how to use it. The woman was with a younger man, whom I assumed was her son until he fondled her bum and kissed her frequently on the lips. Their Welsh village mustn't have many choices on Tinder (unless, of course, it was incest).

The crowd loved Gwen, singing and dancing along to all her hits. I found her very professional but didn't warm to her. It was a little too much show and not enough substance. Fun though.

Rapping with special guest, Eve.

Then things got really cramped. As the DJ, KIDCUTUP, did his thang, getting the crowd going with his anthem-filled, singalong set, the masses descended on the Diamond VIP standing section. It felt like a cattle market as all the branded heifers pushed into the dwindling space (sidenote: there was more ink on display here than in any Waterstones - P!nk fans love their tattoos). 

The only DJ who selects the shade of his hair
from a urine colour chart.

P!nk was simply amazing. From the moment she appeared between the lips of her Summer Carnival sign to the aerobatic finale of So What, she delighted and entertained in equal measure and put on an unforgettable show. She's such a force of nature: good-humoured, bullshit free, and talented in so many ways. Her audience shows their appreciation with many gifts: boxes of Maltesers (for her bath?), lots of drinking cups, loads of toy frogs, including one pair of frog slippers; someone even brought her a giant wheel of cheese (no idea how they got it through security). The best gift on the night, though, was a decorated, long denim shirt which P!nk chose to wear for a couple of numbers as it was more comfortable than the hairy jacket she had on previously. The warmth P!nk shows to her fans is touching. 

There were so many highlights (not just the moments when she was suspended in the air):  When her daughter came on to sing, the sheer pride on P!nk's face was emotional. During TRUSTFALL, when the dancers fell off the platform and bounced right back up again, using unseen trampolines, that was quite a spectacle. Even just listening to her sing and play the piano without all the pizzazz was special. 

I'm not saying everything was perfect (this is me, after all). With the Diamond VIP section only on one side of the stage, inevitably the view was never going to be straight on. It would have been nicer to have been further back in a less cramped space but that wouldn't have been an option without going further to the side.    

We walked back to the city centre afterwards, following the masses, and went for a drink at the Shake Shack, where Andrew suddenly became Sandro for identification purposes. Then we caught the tube back to the hotel to discover the air con was out of commission. We slept well though in the warm room, happy to have experienced P!nk yet again.

Ticket price: £299.95 each for Diamond VIP (via AXS BST Presale)

Setlist

Act I

Intro Montage

(includes elements of "Raise Your Glass", "TRUSTFALL", "What About Us" and "Get the Party Started")

Get the Party Started (includes elements of "Sweet Dreams" by Eurythmics and "Gonna Make You Sweat" by C&C Music Factory)

Raise Your Glass

Who Knew

Just Like a Pill

Try

What About Us (Dance remix)

Act II

Heartbeat (Interlude)

Turbulence (Aerial stunt)

Family Portrait (Piano interlude)

Make You Feel My Love (Bob Dylan cover) (P!nk played the piano)

Just Give Me a Reason

F**kin' Perfect

Just Like Fire (includes elements of " Heartbreaker" by Pat Benatar)

Act III

Please Don't Leave Me (Acoustic)

Cover Me in Sunshine (with Willow Sage Hart)

Kids in Love

When I Get There

I Am Here

Irrelevant (Extended outro)

Act IV

Smoke

No Ordinary Love (Sade cover) (extended outro)

Runaway

Are You Gonna Fall? (Spoken word interlude)

TRUSTFALL

Blow Me (One Last Kiss) (with band introductions)

Never Gonna Not Dance Again (with dancer introductions; extended outro)

Encore

Last Call (Extended outro)

Encore 2

So What (Aerial stunt, extended intro and outro)

Photographic highlights:

Showtimes

The Great Oak Stage (before it got busy)

Everything was signed

Merch stall

Posh toilets

The Summer Garden

There's always someone who pushes in

    

Day Two - Friday 23rd June, 2023. "ABBA Voyage" (The ABBA Arena, Stratford, London).

Friday morning brought breakfast at O'Neill's on Euston Road (nice Irish sausages but the ordering app was faulty so we had to order drinks separately) then a trip around the stalls at Covent Garden. One vendor was selling nice alternative Dalek prints but I wasn't prepared to pay £40 for a card with three images no matter how fine art they were. No photography was allowed but you can see what I'm talking about here (link to Stu Mackay Fine Art).

We chose somewhere for an early dinner then wandered back towards Leicester Square. As it was another warm day and my wife insists on hydrating regularly, we paused at Amorino Gelato. There, while I was browsing the ice cream selection, an attractive young woman with tied-back, wavy brown hair came in and enquired about the designer bags the vendor gifted with selected purchases. She didn't want an ice cream, having had one elsewhere, but wondered if she could just buy the bag, or maybe two. She pulled a pleading face like it would mean the world to her. Unfortunately, the gelato artist, a pretty Muslim girl in a hijab, explained she was unable to sell the bags separately. I placed my order on the touchscreen and waited while the assistant made my wife's cappuccino. The woman waited too. Then, atypically for me, I started a conversation with her.  

"So what's the deal with the bags?" I thought that was a good opening line. I'd rehearsed it in my head first. Surprisingly, it came out intelligible: no verbal stumbles, no stutters and at a volume she could hear. 

"Oh, they're amazing," she gushed. "I love the designer. I wear his clothes all the time. They're such good quality."  

Overhearing our conversation, the gelato artist explained the bags could only be provided with a purchase of a regular cone or tub. Typical, I thought. Being a greedy sod, I'd ordered a large tub. 

"So do I not qualify?" I asked.

She thought about it, then smiled. "Yes. You can have one." She handed me a bag. 

I turned to the woman. "You wanted two. Would you like this one?"

"No," she insisted. "Give it to your wife. She'll love it." 

So I kept it and gifted it to my wife. And she did love it. As I did my ice cream: Coconut, lemon and red berries. 

We'd planned to see a film that afternoon figuring a lovely, air-conditioned cinema would be the perfect place to escape from the heat. I was surprised the Vodafone 'two tickets for £7' deal at Vue cinemas included their London locations, especially Leicester Square, where ticket prices are extortionate, so it was even better getting a bargain. 

My wife chose the film: The Little Mermaid (2023). 

By halfway through, my left knee was burning with pain. I'd made the mistake of sitting on her right so had left myself no legroom to stretch. Not a happy experience and not just because of the film. There wasn't any air con either so the cinema was sweltering. My wife thought the film was great though and enjoyed all the songs. 

Afterwards, we returned to Covent Garden to the All Bar One for some food and refreshments. It was a great place to people-watch. A delightful young waitress with a bouncy pigtail beamed her bright smile at every customer, charming them with enthusiastic service and getting rewarded with big tips. She was practically dancing on the spot after one sale, holding the receipt to her face, flaunting it to the other staff. They genuinely seemed happy for her congratulating her. She deserved it to be fair, though I suspect the hefty tips were partly due to her being Ukrainian, a fact she told everyone who was interested.      

Feeling rather tired from all the food, we left later than intended to travel to Pudding Mill Lane Station for our visit to the ABBA Arena. This was the second biggest draw of our London visit. (What was the biggest, you ask? All will be revealed in the next blog."

The ticket suggested arriving an hour before showtime and thanks to my diverting us to the wrong Underground I knew we weren't going to make it for that time. To be honest, I had no clue how to get there, having left that task to my wife, who'd been there before. In the end, it didn't matter. We strolled through security in seconds, with no queues to wait in, despite the show being sold out.

With minutes to go, I was surprised to see two empty seats in front of us and another four in front of them. It was only when a gruff German latecomer demanded I remove myself from his and his wife's seats, I realised my mistake. We were in row K, not J. Muchly embarrassed, I stepped down into the row below, whereas my wife had to do the shimmy of shame past everyone already seated. She was not amused with me. I reckon it was the heat. She thinks I'm getting senile.

The band respectfully request that no footage is taken during the show, either as photographs or video, so I didn't. That also meant I could pay my full attention to proceedings. The show is amazing. Aurally and visually, it's a spectacle. The whole arena becomes part of the show, completely immersive. Most of the time you couldn't detect you were looking at digital avatars. Only rarely, when you looked closely, could you detect the occasional video game-like expressions between them.

If this is what they can do with technology today, I can't wait to see what they do tomorrow. I think a KISS version of this would be amazing. Get on it, Gene Simmons!

Ticket Price: £286.85 for two,incl fees (face value £129).

Pre-show 

Post-show

Day One - Thursday 22nd June, 2023: "Mission Impossible UK Premiere", Odeon Leicester Square and "Moulin Rouge! The Musical", Piccadilly Theatre, London.

We crammed so much into our first post-pandemic holiday (without the dog), I've had to break down the posts into days. This one details the first day.

We got the bus into Paisley (putting up with the extended rendition of Baby Shark from one excited young girl), then took the train from Gilmour Street to Central Station, where we'd booked seats on the Avanti West Coast Line to London Euston. 

Arriving in London without incident, we managed to find our way to the Premier Inn too early for the 3pm check-in. They wanted an extra tenner to allow us into our room at that time so we explored the local area until the designated time. The queue when we returned was long as everyone it seemed had had the same idea as us, only they returned sooner and waited in the lobby. We were given a room on the ground floor, which was pleasant and quiet, despite the heavy traffic outside the window. The air con did a marvellous job keeping the room cool.  

"Moulin Rouge! The Musical" was our first scheduled event, but before this, we got a little distracted by a certain UK Premiere taking place in Leicester Square. Perhaps to minimise the risk of the talent being assaulted/ insulted or maybe to rake in a profit from the exclusive event (tickets from £1500), this Premiere was behind closed screens with high, curtained barriers and scaffolding stopping passersby from seeing what was going on. Even the motor vehicles bringing in the talent had blacked-out windows. What we were able to see, though, was a giant screen above the Odeon Cinema, carrying the event live (my images are all taken from this screen, hence their fuzziness) so we ended up watching everything from the park in the Square, behind the TKTS booth. Fortunately, we could also hear the interviews clearly as they were being broadcast across the event. I missed taking snaps of all of the guests, such as Vanessa Kirby and Rebecca Romjin, but here is a sample of some of the better ones. 

Tom Cruise on signing duties

Simon Pegg explains how his role got bigger

Hayley Atwell

Rebecca Ferguson

Cary Elwes

Tom Cruise

Ted Lasso star Cristo Fernández and his sister, Paloma Cinco

Mark Gatiss

Frederick Schmidt

Esai Morales

Anson Mount (Captain Pike from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds)

Indira Varma

The day was incredibly hot and it only got hotter by the time we made our way to our seats in the Royal Circle of the Piccadilly Theatre on Denman Street. 

The great thing about the West End is how shows inhabit the theatre, transporting you to another world. 

All very Rouge

Even before the show started, performers in tight leather pants (males) or stockings and bustiers (females) move slowly around the fringes of the extended stage to the background music, some even joining us upstairs on the Royal Circle to dance seductively in the cages on either side. On the stage, gentlemen in top hats engaged with the performers adding to the atmosphere, that of nineteenth-century Paris. 

The show itself is not a direct lift from the film but instead distils its essence for the stage. The music is different including more recent songs. We both really enjoyed everything about the show: the lighting; the staging; the choreography; the singing, every part pitched perfectly. We were glad we were upstairs to take in fully everything going on. Cleverly, a lot of the dialogue contains snatches of song lyrics, the familiarity engaging the audience as they recognise the words. My only disappointment was that the souvenir brochure did not reflect the current cast and, unable to stretch my leg as we sat, the pain in my left knee was almost unbearable. 

This developed into a painful theme for the holiday.