This weekend started off fairly normally: 21 has started again for the autumn term so we were helping out there on Friday night.
On Saturday we did a bit of shopping – a Waitrose has opened up in Colchester, fairly near us, so we went there for the first time. It was incredibly busy, but looks like it will be a good place to shop. Phil was very excited as she is a big fan of Waitrose, I think we will be back there fairly often!
After lunch we headed down to Wembley Stadium to see Coldplay. They were on at 9PM, but there were a few support acts beforehand. We got there one or two songs into White Lies’ set. They were pretty good, although I didn’t really know much of their music. Ditto for Girls Aloud, and Jay-Z. I must say I’m not really a fan of rap music, but Jay-Z seemed pretty good at what he did and I enjoyed it even if it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea.
Coldplay were brilliant. I didn’t quite know what to expect, but they played most of their well-known songs, a few older songs such as The Scientist, and quite a lot of their newer songs (from Viva la Vida and Prospekt’s March). Chris Martin seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time wriggling round on the floor, which was quite amusing although a bit strange! I laughed when he got half way through playing ‘The Hardest Part’ on the piano and then said ‘Oh wait, that’s wrong’ and had to correct himself as well.
My favourite song of the evening – well, couldn’t really say, but ‘Glass of Water’ and ‘Life in Technicolor ii’ were both great to hear live. The latter is probably one of mine and Phil’s favourite newer songs of theirs.
The only downside was that we were quite a long way up – a long way from the band! They did have screens up, but it wasn’t quite the same. When we were at the Keane gig in February we were standing quite close to the stage. Although there are pros and cons to that as well, I think in general you get more atmosphere down there. Still, we got into it and had a good time nonetheless.
The real problems started after the gig. Coldplay finished at 11PM, and our train was at 00:18. It took us about 10 minutes to get out of the stadium, and then about half an hour to get to the tube. At this stage we were a bit worried, but thought we could just about make it. Then the tube train only went two stops (to Baker St) before turning round and going back. So we had to jump on another tube train – but unfortunately the next one only went to Moorgate (i.e. one stop before Liverpool St)! Long story short, we missed the last train back to Colchester.
We basically just spent the night wandering around London, which was quite fun in a surreal kind of way! And then we caught the first train back at about 4:10AM. Unfortunately (again), due to engineering works we couldn’t go directly to Colchester. We had to go to Stansted and then catch the bus. Ah well, chalk it all up to experience! If we go to Wembley again we will know what to expect. We finally got home at about 7AM!
Not surprisingly, we didn’t do much on Sunday! Phil went to church in the morning and I went to Sunday@6, but nothing much to report apart from that.
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