Mika concert!

Sorry for not managing to write this update sooner. I've had a rough week since the concert, but it was definitely worth it as I had a fantastic time :D Full update about everything else coming soon, but I thought Sun deserved a post of its own :)

I managed to get 12 hours sleep last Sat night (10.30pm til 10.30am) and woke up feeling much better on Sun than I had on Sat. That morning I listened to Mika's albums in preparation for the concert and also painted my long nails dark purple :)

We had a bit of a muddle trying to find the train times as the times on the Internet weren't the same as those in our paper timetable, so we weren't sure whether the train went at 4.06pm or 4.26pm. So we decided to head for the station in time for the 4.06pm train and if it was the later one we'd just have to wait for a little while. A road on our route to the station was closed due to flooding so we had to take a bit of a detour. We arrived at the station about 4.10pm but luckily the correct train was actually the 4.26pm one so we were in time for that. Mum forgot her rail card though, so our tickets cost £21 each whereas if she had had the card with her they would only have cost £13 each. Mum joked that it was my fault for not reminding her about the card :P We found out that our journey back would be a bit disrupted due to engineering works, but at this point we didn't realise exactly how disrupted... I listened to more Mika on the train and then when we got to Kings Cross we tried to find out more about the engineering works, but no-one really knew what was happening.

We made our way on the tube to Hammersmith station and once there we easily found the venue. It was pouring with rain, but we didn't have to join the queue like those with standing tickets did as we already had allocated seats :) I met the dad of the girl who I was selling my final spare standing ticket to and that went fine.

Then me and mum found a little Lebanese cafe round the corner (wonder if Mika realised it was there - he's half Lebanese) so we went in for drinks and to shelter from the rain. I was in contact with H via text as she was on her way in the car with her parents, sister and brother who would be seeing the concert standing, whereas we had seated tickets. Then we heard that H's parents and sister had forgotten their tickets, but her brother O had his and we had H's. H's parents rang up the venue but there was no way that they'd be able to get in without their tickets and they didn't think they'd be able to get home and back in time for the concert. So they dropped H and O off at a tube station and they made their way across London on their own while the rest of their family went home. H's sister was upset that she wouldn't be able to see the concert so her parents took her to the cinema instead as a distraction.

It was now almost time for the doors of the venue to open and the rain had stopped so we left the cafe. We had to join the long queue to get into the venue but luckily it moved quickly. We entered the venue just as H and O came out of the tube station. They joined the queue and mum nipped back out to give H her ticket. I managed to get to the front of the merchandise stand and bought myself a new Mika t-shirt (it's dark blue with his latest album cover on the front and tour dates on the back) and a pack of 4 button badges (which cost £8!). Then we made our way upstairs and I met up with H in the huge queue for the toilets.

We went in and found our seats. We could see everyone standing downstairs in the stalls. We were in the 4th row of the circle near-ish to the edge. And no-one sat in front of me! :D We saw Mika's dad and brother seated just along from us! Mum nearly went to introduce herself but we weren't sure at that point whether it was them or not. I'm not too bothered that we didn't speak to them though. And we saw Mika's mum and one of his sisters at a previous concert. We also saw an old lady who looked about my Nan's age (probably somewhere in her 80s) dancing along to Mika :)

Because we were a bit late making our way to our seats we only had to listen to the last 3 songs of Erik Hassle's set. After seeing him live for the 2nd time I'm still not a fan. It was then a while til Mika came on so me and H chatted a lot as we'd not seen each other for quite a while. And H popped out to get a drink and to try to buy a Mika t-shirt but there weren't any left in her size.

Then Mika came on stage and he was amazing :D The set was great - there was a huge notebook at the back of the stage which showed different animations for each song. Sometimes it was a bit distracting though and I ended up watching the notebook for one song instead of Mika :P And lots of good props were used too - Mika wore an amazing colourful coat for Doctor John and played with a puppet of him for Toy Boy. Mika had loads of energy. As well as singing and dancing he also played the piano for some parts. And he often held his microphone out to the audience for them to sing a line and even when it wasn't from a chorus everyone knew it. I sang along to it all and had nearly lost my voice by the end of it. And I stood up and danced to some of it, but my legs were quite sore, even when I was sitting down which is unusual for me. The set wasn't all working though - some inflatable props wouldn't inflate, the smoke machine went into overdrive so I See You became I Can't See You, the keyboard stopped working and I think Mika lost the backing tracks at one point too. So this led to lots of swearing, but Mika asked the audience to get more involved to make up for the equipment not working :)

Mika performed 10 out of 12 songs from Life In Cartoon Motion (all but Over My Shoulder, which I don't like, and Ring Ring, which I like) and 9 songs from The Boy Who Knew Too Much (all but By The Time & Pick Up Off The Floor, which I don't like, One Foot Boy, which I like, and Loverboy/Lady Jane). The finale was his 2 most popular songs, Grace Kelly and Lollipop, and involved huge balloons, glitter and streamers coming out into the audience :D We all really really enjoyed it :D Sorry I didn't take any photos, we were quite far away from the stage and I prefer to enjoy the concert in the moment rather than worry about taking photos.

Afterwards we met up with O who had been standing and all headed back to Kings Cross together on the tube. When we were on the tube a woman who was standing was going to faint so I let her have my seat. She'd seen Mika too. We just missed a train at Kings Cross. H and O left us and headed home on their train. We then tried to find out what was happening with our journey home and the engineering works on our line and the man we spoke to told us that we wouldn't be able to get home! We had heard that coaches were replacing the train between 2 stops due to engineering works, so at 11.30pm we caught a train to the first of those stops hoping that we'd find a coach there. Along with a group of other people we ended up standing in a freezing cold car park at 12.30am waiting for a coach. Mum spoke to one of the other coach drivers there who let us all sit on his coach (which was going somewhere else) to keep warm. Here's a photo that I took of mum on that coach:
After a while that coach had to go so we had to stand back in the car park again. I watched rabbits hopping around the car park while we waited, but mum was winding me up by saying I was imagining things. Then she saw the rabbits so I made her apologise to me for doubting me :P

At about 1am our coach arrived and we got on it. We thought we'd be getting back on the train in a couple of stops time, but more of the line had been closed than we expected so the coach would actually take us to our local station. The coach driver wasn't allowed to leave til 1.20am though. There was a great atmosphere on the coach as the people were lovely as was the coach driver and we had lots of laughs together. Here's a photo I took of mum and the coach driver while we were waiting to set off (sorry for the bad quality, my phone camera doesn't cope very well with poor lighting conditions):
Someone who was going to the stop after ours asked for an estimated time of arrival and was told 3.20am! The journey that was estimated to take 2 hours on the coach would take 30mins on the train! On the journey we went via lots of other stops so I listened to Ellie Goulding and Pixie Lott on my iPod. Me and mum accidentally woke the man in front of us up at the wrong stop (we thought it was his but it wasn't), whoops! Luckily we ran a bit ahead of time so were dropped off at our local station at about 2.30am. We picked up the car and headed home, but on the way we discovered more flooded roads so had to take a long detour. And we passed the coach again at it's next stop :P We got home at 3am. The journey home from Kings Cross would usually have taken one hour, but that night it took 3 and a half hours!

One of my friends with ME saw Mika at a different venue last week and she got to meet him. I'm very happy for her but a bit jealous too as I'd love to meet him. Hopefully I will some day.