In May (in what turned out to be an extremely busy month for us) I went to my first live concert since Covid took hold of the world. In 2019 I had bought tickets for The Wife© and I to see Bryan Adams: two and a half years later, we were finally going to be able to redeem them.

I am not the greatest fan of the guy, but I left the show with a greater appreciation of his work than when I had arrived, which is the best you can hope for. He was on stage for one hour forty five minutes without a break and knocked out all the hits, and he was in pretty good voice throughout. He had a three song segment where he asked for audience requests from his back catalogue, which I thought was quite novel – I had never seen that before. It must have taken quite the effort for him and his band to have an arrangement prepared for anything the audience threw their way.

It felt a little strange to be in a building with eight or ten thousand other people, with hardly a mask in sight, but it’s surprising how quickly you forget about that and just enjoy yourself. There were a few empty seats beside me though, so I didn’t feel too intruded upon.

All in all, Bryan Adams was a great eighties legend to tick off the proverbial list, proving that at least some of those old cats can still rock well into their autumn years without embarrassing themselves.

I bought The Fiancée© a couple of tickets to see Bryan Adams for her birthday in February. He was due to play here last night but the performance has been pushed back until next year because, well, you know…

Not to be disheartened we sat down to a private concert, courtesy of YouTube… which was pretty good, apart from all the buffering we had to endure. We clapped after each song and used the torch on our phones during the slow ones (in lieu of a lighter).

I’ll be honest, our sofa is much more comfortable than those flimsy chairs you often have to deal with at arenas, and we had refreshments brought to our seats as well. We didn’t have to strain to see past anyone standing in front of us, nor did we have to squeeze by people if we needed the toilet. Pause comes in handy there too.

Parking was simple, there was no overpriced merchandise to steal our money during the interval, and there was no traffic when we left the venue afterwards either.

We just pressed stop and went to bed.