Stars aligning

Just occasionally a day is so good it deserves two. Like yesterday. So, purists, leave now. This is a photo from last night. I could pretend I’d travelled rapidly east and it’s really from 2 May elsewhere in the world but it’s not. It’s absolutely Oxford. It’s Bellowhead’s last gig.
 
Actually, it is still yesterday. My head is full of the songs from last night, the exuberant leaps around the stage, the pogoing audience, the whoops and cheers, the communal singing, the laughter, the camaraderie, the tears…
 
When I knew, months ago, that I’d missed tickets for Bellowhead’s final farewell in Oxford I found the nearest gig, in place and time-to-the-end, and bought six of the last 17 tickets for Reading. And there I was, ten days ago, bang in front of the stage, loving every moment. Since then I’ve been looking in vain for gold-dust tickets for the Oxford gig. None. I was almost totally resigned to not going so when I missed yesterday’s mid-afternoon tweet selling a few unwanted band extras it just felt like the way things are.
 
But late afternoon I went up to the town hall to see if anyone in the queue had returns. My plan was to start at the front, work my way to the back then wait there for new arrivals. But the front of the queue told me that the solo man on the other side of the steps was the returns queue. So I joined him. He’d travelled about 25 miles to see if he could get in. I didn’t admit to having cycled for three minutes. Still less after the couple from Amsterdam joined the queue behind me. Then the people from Wolverhampton.
 
A hi-vis man came out and told us that any returns would go on sale at 6pm. We waited. At 6pm the hi-vis man came back and said tickets would be released at 7pm – 30 of them. What?! 30? I was second in the queue! The man in front wanted three. All the people behind didn’t want more than about 20 in total. I phoned daughter, H, and 15 minutes later she joined me. The hi-vis man came out and said the seats would be in the balcony. H and I know the small town hall and its low balcony, we knew where on the stage each of the band members would be. We knew where we wanted to sit. We knew which direction we were going to run.
 
At 7pm we were let in, ahead of the people who already had tickets. What?! The man in front had to wait for his wife and daughter to arrive. As H and I raced past John Spiers on the stairs he laughed at us, ‘First in!’ Oh yes. We got front row seats just above the front left of the stage. The best, the very best. The people who got tickets in the two-minute sell-out last June ended up with less choice than us.
 
And the gig? Such joyous fun. Even though the town hall is definitely not a professional performance space and its small stage gives 11 performers almost no room to move, they leapt from the risers, danced and fooled. There is no lighting rig so when they needed a spotlight, a crew-member grabbed a footlight off the stage and held it up at the right angle. But the most heart-warming bit? Before Bellowhead existed I’d heard Spiers and Boden play together, on this stage, in tune with each other in every way and mesmerising to watch and listen to. When I saw Bellowhead at Towersey Festival last August they played superbly but Spiers and Boden seemed barely to  communicate on stage. At Reading ten days ago they were at least together. But last night, looking at each other and laughing and supported by the rest of the band, they did two melodeon and fiddle duos. Full circle.


Sorry about all of that. Back to normal tomorrow.