Stop, Look and Listen

When I first heard that Belle & Sebastian were playing London in May, I was seconds too late to buy a ticket. Then, as I stared in disbelief at the ticket screen, a second date popped up... I got tickets! This was months ago. It's a real treat when something planned a long time ago is suddenly here. This is happening a lot in May – I'm very busy!

Fred met me by Temple and we walked to Westminster and found a basement pub that had a wondrous veggie burger. Central Hall was right nextdoor. Since it's a working church, we had to buy tokens for alcohol and no alcohol could be drunk in the main hall. This suited us fine – we were drinking tea. Before diving into the main space, I perused the marvellous merchandise, and it was of a very high quality. I bought only two items – a signed album and a dog brooch (see the extra photo), which is fabulous. Dog on Wheels is one of my favourite B&S tunes.

The support act, Lower Dens, were superb – kind of 80s. I'll definitely seek out some of their music to have a kitchen disco with.

Before B&S came onto the stage, we were shown a public information film about Glasgow in 1980. It was quite interesting, especially how the concrete high-rises, shopping centres and motorways were seen as such wonderful visions of the future *shudder*.

B&S were fun to watch and dance to, especially "Boy with the Arab Strap". I was mesmerised by the film that accompanied Perfect Couples (it's shown on the screen behind the band). At some point, the film The Waterloo Bridge Handicap was shown – it can be pretty much like that on the bridge in the morning!