So, here we are on what feels like our very last Michael concert forever. Over the day we had to remind ourselves constantly that we will be back in just twelve days time. Sigh……. (sob, why didn't we do the whole lot?????? Okay for reasons of sensibility…… SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH…. Like … having no money….. SIIIIIIIIIIGH…… uhum…. Right, okay, …….. enough self-pity, we know we are blessed to see 13 shows, believe us: We know. It's just so hard to leave, when you have such a great time).
Bradford , stage door…. Right…. We managed to write him a little card (just in time not to miss him at the stage door). When we got there it was not too crowded. Surely many people must have been driven away by the surroundings of the stage door and the fact that it's midweek and some people actually have to work.
So we could still get close to the stage door (as hardly anyone was there) and speak to friends from Germany , who had just arrived. Now we had a huge problem. Sabine, one of said friends, did not want to know anything about the show. Hum, tough one. But we had been good! Really good…. Though it was so hard to shut up about songs and what Michael does and so on…… and the jeans…. OH THE JEANS….. Uhm… are we losing credibility and dignity? Did we ever have it? Anyway, so we stood there, at the doors of the equipment truck and were speaking about the tour without speaking about the tour, which was difficult, but we coped. When suddenly, no one realising, the doors of the equipment truck opened and a stage hand carried out “Count Fosco” (well the card-board Fosco) and guess what! The photo side of the cardboard was turned towards poor Sabine. What a give-away! Or not? LOL we still don't know, what she made of it, but she almost collapsed, bless her!
Michael arrived early, looking gorgeous and wearing a rosary around his neck. He dropped his Ray Ban sun-glasses, we just hope they did not get scratched. At least we hope it was him and not a fan.
Unfortunately we had to give Lucia a miss for the first time this tour. A pity really, but what can you do, when you are soooooo far away from the venue and don't get ready in time (hey, we still had to cross this one street to get there! ;) ).
St. George's Hall: Our first frustration about our tickets went before we entered the Hall…… What we believed to be row J and therefore row 10 turned out to be rather row E and therefore row 5, YAY…. They started counting with row E on the side blocks and there was no row I. WOW! Who'd expect that? We weren't complaining.
The theatre itself was high, narrow and hot, unbelievably hot! And that's before Michael went on stage!
When we finally squeezed into our seats the lights went out pretty quickly, and there he was… looking gorgeous as ever and still wearing the rosary above his shirt (for the record; that's necklace no. 3, which goes quite well with bracelet no. 3).
He got a rousing reception, even if most fans seemed to be further back or in the circles. Nevermind, they made him feel very welcome.
One of his first remarks was about his last show in Scarborough , which is “Lovely, stuck in 1977, but lovely….. we had fish and chips and Callum got himself a tattoo!” he joked. No offence you people from Scarborough .
He caught the severe ushers completely by surprise with his group flash. They were scanning the audience intently for cameras and suddenly this singer tells everyone to get them out and that he would not mind non-flash cameras! Their exasperated faces were a picture for the gods.
Interesting piece of information: Michael explained, how he could not go into the details of the “Woman in White”, because they were made to sign a contract, which actually forbids to reveal anything about the content!
Highly motivated from the enthusiastic response of the audience he gave it a 150 % and so did Missy. She delivered an ace performance running from hand to hand, not ones, but at least four times. You could see he was very proud of her (oh and mind you, this time we were asked, if we wanted to STROKE his furry precious! You bet we do!).
Again he enquired, whether we had a problem with rats. “Some people are really scared of them…Aren't they Callum?” Big grin!
The sound was a delight from where we were sitting. More Michael than band, which is ideal!
Asking for his usual favour to sing along to Bread of Heaven the audience obliged more than happily and he enjoyed every second of it, even exclaiming: “ Bradford , you sang like angels!” What praise! As a logical consequence he asked whether we would want to come along to every of the remaining concerts.
What a special night to round off our first tour trip. As an added bonus, we could not believe our luck, when we got out of the side entrance and did not only end up directly at the stage door, but his coach was still standing there with doors open, waiting for him.
For the first time after Nottingham two, we actually saw him leave the venue. Mind you, now more than ever we understood, why he is usually out before anyone else. It was only a short way and he was tired. Nevertheless people grabbed him and kissed him and it took him two bodyguards to finally enter the coach. And then he was gone.
We were left to say our good-byes to our friends. So here goes the list of those people who made the last 13 days extra special (apart from Michael, Callum, Lovely Louise, Dynamic Dean, Amazing Annie and the fantastic band of course! AND MISSY!):
Pat, Stella, Linda, Gerry, Pam: You rock!
Pam H. for sharing her secrets
Audrey for inviting us to stay with her in Aberdeen (brave girl, come to Ipswich !)
Katie for being Katie J
Gill and Maureen you must feel stalked by us now ;-) (we even met them in the pool of our hotel once ;-)
Joan, Sharon always good to see you girls!
Rose, can't wait to see you again J
Sue for being brave enough to come and speak to us (we hope you don't regret that by now. Go to that concert!)
So now it's in the middle of the night and we had a long day at the airport after another flight nightmare (one being delayed by 4,5 hours, the other one re-scheduled for the next day, EEEEK! So we are still together, bunny Kerstin giving shelter to bunny Julia, until she can get her train home tomorrow, but that's another story!) we hope we did not forget anyone, if so please bear with us, we are so tired!
We had a great time and we really loved working on the website after the shows. Hopefully we can keep that up in the future. Fingers crossed.
Your tour correspondents
The Bunnies
|
