Sometimes strange patterns emerge from seemingly random occurrences; I get the feeling you’ve had déjà vu, and we've all had thoughts about people only to have them immediately phone you, and autistic people know all about the obvious causal links between three red cars in a row and ‘Bad Days’! But I think I’ve spied a nice little pattern which, of course –according to the Law of Sod (and perhaps more pertinently because I’ve mentioned it), will now probably never happen again. This is checking into a hotel and seeing a superb and unplanned concert that night. Let me explain by listing these occasions in order.
1) About five years ago I thought I’d treat Brenda to a dirty Birthday weekend at the Mandarin Oriental in Macau. To top it all, I knew that a lovely New Joysey jazz singer, Stacey Kent, was also singing that night at the ski-jump designed Macau Cultural Centre. So, after a long day’s pampering in the overpriced spa and a superb dinner in the hotel, we tottered over the road to the wintry wind-swept concert hall complex and took in a wonderful jazz evening. (This one I had planned so perhaps for those stickers for detail amongst you the spontaneous nature of the trend is automatically negated, but Brenda didn’t know anything about it, so for me it counts as 50%.)
2) Last year Bren and I took the kids (and their boyfriends) to the beautiful mountainous region of the Picos de Europos in northern Spain for our last family holiday (where we pay for bloody everything). We drove to the beautiful old Galician city of Santiago de Compostella and stayed in a rustic converted mill house beside a rushing stream a mere stone’s throw from the centre of town. (For those stickler’s for detail amongst you I concede that it was not strictly a hotel, but we paid hotel prices so that’s also a 50%.) On the first evening we wandered up to the main Praza do Obradoiro (lit. Workshop Square) outside the enormous baroque cathedral and saw a concert stage being erected. At the other end of the magnificent square a ticket booth advertised, ‘Lou Reed in Concert’ and indeed he, along with Laurie Anderson, played in the square under a cloudy Galician night sky. An expensive evening for me (buying six tickets!), the performance was nevertheless a greatest fusion of Lou Reed’s romantic poeticism and Laurie Anderson’s astounding intellectual exercises.
3) This week Brenda is attending a conference in Belfast and we have arrived early to spend a couple of days exploring the city. Booking the hotel over the phone, the receptionist told me that I’d be lucky to get a room “because of Rod Stewart”. Now, I have always assumed him a bit of a lothario, but wondered how even he would get around to performing in all those rooms! We got in early in the day at The Hilton, wandered over to the Odyssey Arena and purchased our tickets. It was pissing down so we took in Toy Story 3 before the show –what a great little movie and perhaps worthy of its’ own weight in blog entries. From 8 until 10.15 a sterling Rod and the excellent band wowed the 20,000 Ulstermen and women in the packed arena with a top show, the consummate showman clearly enjoying doing what he does best –singing a career’s-worth of the last 40 years with an accomplished and infectious enthusiasm. Such were the number of hits, he inevitably had to leave out, more's the pity, but it was certainly worth the £65. (And for those stickler's for detail amongst you this one meets all categories.)
So there you have it, three shows and three hotels. Anyone else have a pattern as good as that?
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