Our birthday present to each other was a huge success as we gave ourselves tickets for the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park on Saturday. I felt positively tearful when they came on as it was the first time I had seen them live. It was fabulous. Mick Jagger said the set was a cross between Wimbledon and a pantomime which it was with two huge trees on each side of the set. Near the end the stage went dark and they said goodbye and left. The audience was nonplussed until a few minutes later the lights came on and two female choirs sang ‘You can’t always get what you want’ before the band erupted back on to the stage.Of course they had to finish with ‘Satisfaction’ or rather the lack of it and then there were showers of red paper flowers dropping out of the sky followed by fireworks. There were people in the audience who had been there in 1969 and near to us an Austrian family who had brought their children along to hear the ancients. Not that you’d know they were ancient apart from the wrinkles, the playing was terrific and the bits where the guitars ‘talk’ to each other I love. We were in Tier 2 which was pretty close to the stage, a camera on tracks was just to the left of us with the poor bugger doing the boring bit, the big wide on a gantry above us. The camera work on the big screens was really good, hire that director.
During the afternoon we holed up in the backstage bar, sedately drinking wine in the shade before moving on to passion fruit mohitos, seriously delicious. This was a quiet area with good loos, no queues and the best Indian fish and chips ever. You do however have to pay an awful lot for the privilege! It was so hot that when you ventured out to hear the supporting bands you could only manage a few minutes. The Vaccines were quite good, at university with Joshua it turns out. Chas did not approve of The Temper Trap, just noise, he said with an unbearable bass thump throughout. It did make you realise just how extraordinary the Stones are.
In the morning, as a contrast, we went to the Vermeer exhibition at the National Gallery in the Sainsbury wing. An excellent exhibition with some beautiful musical instruments of the period on display too. We had lunch in the National Dining Room – it was quiet, cool and the food first class. We went by bus and Chas revealed that this was the first time he had ever been on a London bus even though he lived in London for years. Actually Chas also revealed that he had seen the Stones years ago in the USA (twice) when he was in the business but has absolutely no recollection of the concerts. Texts were exchanged with our London living sons who were in Lisbon about how you get an Oyster card…and then we were away whizzing about in the new buses.
Getting out of Hyde Park was a bit of a nightmare. I have never seen so many people in one place and there weren’t many exits and they looked rammed. We hung around for a while until I realised some people were getting out via the very VIP area, we snuck through just as the security men were massing to stop anyone else. As we got to Hyde Park corner Chas caught sight of the right bus to get all the way back to Tom and Matt’s flat in Gospel Oak. We were on it in a flash!