This is the point in the set where I got cut off last time

A festival hat-trick!

Back to Hyde Park with the other daughter this week - personally, I would have chosen Billy Joel from the weekend (I've seen Bruce before and whilst he's impressive, his gigs are a bit of a slog) but it worked out very nicely for my eldest because a load of her friends were already going to Lana del Rey, so she was "forget thinking you have any choice in the matter - THAT'S where we're going!".  And so, dear reader, we did!

Which, quite obviously for a gig where the gates were opening at 1pm, involved leaving the house at 9:40am (loaded up with "we love you Lana!" banners sensibly packed in a cardboard tube!).  And the first barrier to progress was the ticket dude presenting the kids with a bewildering array of train ticket options, which resulted in us missing the train - but fortunately we had just enough time in our schedule to allow for such things and we were soon on our way into London with me sat quietly in the corner whilst a load of teenage girls sat several seats away squawking at a million miles an hour.  I left them to do the navigating and I'm pleased to report that we were safely delivered to Hyde Park by about 11:30 (I didn't say they took the quickest route!) - at which point, the eldest's friends were given the privilege of joining the first of several queues for entry, whilst the pair of us wandered off to fill some time before picking up our tickets at noon.

At which point - horror of horrors!  We've only got free general admission tickets this week - no fancy gold circle and guest area access for me this week.  All of which made it fortunate my eldest had her friends there because she wasn't going to use such things anyway - and I was just planning to sit and read my book for most of it, which I could do anywhere!  However, it did mean we couldn't get in until 2pm - but fortunately there was a fiendishly complicated queuing system which allowed us to waste some time trying to work out where we were supposed to be.  It seemed to have two starts, which actually looped round so that they were joined up and then there were various branches off the loop which meant it had several ends.  Everyone was being very tolerant though because no-one seemed to have the faintest idea how it all worked...

...until they opened the gates to the next queue, at which point everyone just bundled forward, resulting in a massive gridlock.  Oh well - they tried I guess.  Soon enough though, we were in a "proper" queues with a winding snake of barriers and everything - and only 50 minutes to wait now.  Which passed quickly enough sat on the grass provided you weren't stepped on by the various people walking in both directions along the queue for no obvious reason.  After that we just had one more queue to join and then we were in!  Yay!  Which meant we only had to find her friends and she could totally ditch me for the rest of the day - what3words is great for such things if you haven't used it, but it can still be surprisingly tricky to see people five metres away from you in a crowd.  But, with daughter delivered/father ditched we'd both achieved our initial goals for the day and could go on to enjoy it in our own very different ways.

My day involved mostly sitting in the sunshine reading my book and listening to music - and I'd have to say it was a pretty good selection.

Riopy

Well - these were instrumental piano pieces (as one of the girls put it later "I just thought the songs had REALLY long intros") - not at all what I was expecting.  They were very nice instrumental piano pieces though with a lot of skill involved - he played one piece with his hand inside the piano and I couldn’t quite work out what he was doing, but it made some very interesting sounds.  He was there because Lana had picked up one of his pieces and incorporated into something she did, but he'd never been to a festival before and he'd only met Lana an hour beforehand, so he was a bit flustered by the whole thing - but in a nice way.  He was also pleasingly open about his mental health struggles and how music had helped him - and he had a lot of fun saying “Lana del Rey” for no reason other than to make the crowd scream.  It’s also weird to hear a Frenchman say “pardon my French” when he swears.

Syml

Never heard of him, but he’s got a very nice voice - I was trying to decide who it reminded me of going through The Xx and The Magic Numbers before finally deciding that Bon Iver was the name I was looking for.  He did a really nice cover of "Mr Sandman" (a 1954 track originally by The Chordettes) and there was absolutely gorgeous violin work on one of the tracks - festival artists really should be more careful to announce their track names both before and after they play them, because the audience is very different from one of their own shows.  He also, very amusingly, repeatedly told us "I go by Syml but my name is Brian" - he's far too cool to be a Brian but he doesn't want us thinking he's forgotten where he came from.

Kings Elliott 

I only caught her on one of the smaller stages because I needed a wee but she had a lovely voice and very fine blue hair as well.

Gang Of Youths

They were much rockier than I was expecting from the previous offerings, but it was pretty decent rock and it didn't scare the kids - it had a definite Killers vibe to it.  The lead singer did struggle with his audience interaction - at first I couldn’t decide if he was bantering with the crowd or really pissed off with them.  It did become clear as time progressed that he was having a lovely time and I think he was just a bit gruff (and very c wordy!).  I did like one of his song intros though - "this is a song about fucking giving a shit about stuff".

The Last Dinner Party

So along with Elton, this lot are the people I’ve seen most often this year - a whole two times!  They still sound like they’ve been listening to Siouxsie, but there was some Kate Bush mixed in there as well this time - all in all it was a nice quirky sound.  They had very Lana appropriate outfits on as well and they drew quite a decent size crowd for one of the smaller stages.

Father John Misty

He was exactly as was I expecting being very brooding and mysterious - he made me laugh with “given our headliner, I suspect you might be up for a few languid ballads of despair”.  He has a very nice voice, quite Glen Campbell-ish and the band were very decent musicians as well.  He seemed genuinely humbled by the reception - I don’t think he knew quite how to react to all the screaming.  It was also a nicely varied set because as well as the languid ballads of despair we had some rockier upbeat numbers - and they all certainly went all out for it with their final number.  They rocked out!

Lana del Rey

Well, she was late - but fashionably so rather than unacceptably so.  And one of the first things she did on stage was to have her hair done - she’s still not happy with Glasto!  I'd have to say it was a slow start to the set - I know she's known for her slow, melodramatic songs but for the first thirty minutes all she was was slowly wander back and forth across the stage (prancing about up there is not her thing - the difference with BLACKPINK could not have been more marked!), singing songs which all sounded the same with absolutely no audience interaction between them.  However, things did improve in the second half - we had some rockier songs (I really liked "Summertime Sadness"), she engaged with us a bit more (and did a front row walkabout that they all LURVED!) and for "Video Games", her finale, she even got on a big swing!   She was very ably supported by some very fine backing singers, a talented band and some dancers who looked pretty good to me, but what do I know?  Overall, I wouldn't say it was the best gig I've ever been to, but I still enjoyed it.  However, it's fair to say that most of the rest of the audience loved, loved, loved it - it was a giant karaoke and screaming session from start to finish.  

I was a bit sad I didn't have my baby with me to see how much she was enjoying it - but hanging out down the front with seven teenage girls was not an option!  It's fair to say her experience of the day was somewhat different to mine - they got to the barrier at the start and some of them didn't move for nine hours.  My eldest escaped once to go the toilet, buy pizza for everyone (three guesses who paid for that) and then fight her way back to the front - I couldn't be bothered at my age, but she had a good time and that's what matters.

Like last week, the crowd was very happy and smiley with no sign of any aggro - the fact that it was 70-80% female is probably not unrelated.  The fact that the bars weren’t all that busy probably helped as well (although apparently one of the BST concerts with the highest bar takings was Take That - women of a certain age, I guess!).  There were also a lot of same sex couples in the audience - I was impressed how the whole atmosphere was very relaxed and accepting.  And, once again, there weren’t exactly too many people my age there (but there were more than last week!).

My one concern about the gig was meeting up afterwards to get home but I'd got it all sorted and arranged a meeting point that nobody could miss - which was obviously cordoned off when I tried to get there at the end of the evening.  The girls had also split into three groups by this point, so a frantic round of calls was required with very little phone signal to go round - but we managed it.  So then all we needed to do was work our way through the massive crowds to a tube station which we weren't entirely sure where it was, without losing anyone - and believe me when I say that was considerably less fun than you might imagine.

But all in all, it was a great day out - although Lana isn't my absolute thing, "she" pulled together a good variety of music, a lot of which I really enjoyed both from a musical and skill level and some of it was quite unexpected as well.  It was a bit of a shame I didn't get upgraded this time - the view from the gold circle is considerably better and at times it did feel like I was just watching a gig on TV.  However, it feels somewhat churlish to complain about such things and I'm not expecting any sympathy.  It also very much helped that the rain held off - I've been very lucky with all my outdoor festivals this year, so thank you weather gods!