A Very Long Day

A and her friend J have had tickets to see YouMeAtSix at Brixton Academy for about four months now. This would be their last concert together and A was really looking forward to it. Following the success of this band was the first British thing she embraced when she got here so it seemed appropriate that this would be her last concert before leaving. She wanted to go down to Brixton really early and it’s not an area where you send your kid alone for several hours. Inevitably I ended up spending more time in Brixton than I was planning on Saturday. There was some drama surrounding getting the girls where they needed to be but by show time it was all okay.

Before we went to Brixton we went into Fortnum and Mason to round out the gift for the French family with some tea. A mentioned it first. The crazies seemed to be out in full force Saturday. Strangers struck up conversations with us. As we rode down the escalator, A standing behind me, she put her chin on my shoulder and told me to slowly turn around and look behind her. There was a bald guy in a peach cardigan with nothing on under it. The V in the cardigan revealed the thickest carpet of chest hair I think I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t a good look.

When we arrived at the venue the line was already crazy long so we thought we’d explore a little bit, check out Brixton Market and get some lunch.

The girls had downstairs tickets. I had a balcony seat where you weren’t allowed to stand up during the show. A license to stay seated, that sounded good to me when I’d been standing in line with her for hours. By the time I got J home it was about 2:00am. H had only been home about an hour and I had to be up by 6am to get A to her bus for her French trip.

She woke up in a foul mood, no surprise after 3 hours of sleep. After a few tense conversations between us I drove her to the bus in silence still in my PJ bottoms so unlike the other parents, getting out of the car was not an option. I was tempted to yell out the car window as I left “Hope you’re nice to your French family because you treat your American family like crap!” I thought better of it since I hadn’t had any coffee yet and driving a car AND trying to make a statement would be considered multi-tasking and at that hour without caffeine something could go horribly wrong with that plan. Oh yeah, and I wouldn’t want to embarrass her.