Wednesday 9th July MANCHESTER -
ELO CONCERT!
This morning, I had a gloriously quiet ‘down day’ in our
lovely Manchester flat, and got lots done – I washed everything I could, got it
dry, and spent a lot of time transferring and copying photos onto an external
hard drive and into the cloud. The weather was warm and fine, and this helped a
great deal with all the washing. Lex also had a busy morning with finances, and
has paid off almost all of our remaining accommodations now.
After a cuppa and a lemon biscuit (our favourite brand is
Borders – they are a bit expensive, but crisp and delicious) he headed off into
the city to meet up with Glen. He was travelling here by train, and after he
arrived, they went to visit the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry. They
said it was good, but quite a few sections were closed and undergoing
renovation, so it’s just as well that admission was free! Manchester, of
course, has a huge industrial past. You can see lots of huge brick buildings
that were once factories, and the canals run through the city too.
They arrived home a bit before 4, so we had a cuppa and Glen
and I planned our travel to get to the ELO concert, which was on at the Co-op
Live. We settled on a train to Picadilly in the city centre, then a tram to the
Co-op. After an early tea, Lex dropped us off at the nearest train station, and
the adventure began. We found the trams fairly easily at Picadilly, as they
were set up and ready for the concert, and we hundreds of baby boomers arriving
for the concert were shepherded expertly down, around and onto our tram, where
we were packed in like sardines, thankfully only for about ten minutes before
we reached the venue.
Then we all streamed towards the building and were met by people pointing where the entrance lines were. It really didn’t take very long, and by 7 we were inside. We had a look at the merchandise – there was a line a mile long, and t-shirts were 40 pounds (that’s about $85AUD) so both of us lost any enthusiasm we had for an ELO shirt. There were heaps of people wearing them, though, so obviously others felt differently. Glen bought a smallish can of drink and it cost him over 7 pounds, so he was in a minor state of shock, but the woman in front of us in the seats said that she had paid 35 pounds for two large cups of beer!!! She and her husband both had new t-shirts, so the evening certainly cost them a bit. We were up fairly high, but had a pretty good view, and of course there were huge screens.
The support act, Dhani Harrison (George’s son) started at 8. He sounds exactly like his father, but his music style is very different. You could tell that the crowd weren’t impressed, as after about 2 songs you could see heaps of people on their phones. Glen and I decided that he only got the gig because his dad was one of Jeff Lynne’s best friends! After 45 rather long minutes, he finished, there was an interval, and about 9.15, ELO came on.
Now, sad story, but poor Jeff Lynne was knocked by a taxi
the other day. He has a broken hand and a sore leg, and I’m pretty sure was on
some serious painkillers to get through the concert, poor man. He’s 77, and
that’s not something he’ll bounce back from in a hurry. Anyway, he obviously
couldn’t play the guitar so just stood there to sing.
The crowd went berserk and were so excited for the whole concert – lots of the people around us sang every song. (Admission: I also sang every song I knew, which was most of them!) The band, orchestra and backing singers were excellent, and covered for Jeff when he couldn’t hit the notes fully. They did all of the big hits, and my night was made when they did Rockaria, which is my all-time favourite. As expected, the light and laser show was awesome. Dhani Harrison did redeem himself in the eyes of the audience when he came on and they did two Travelling Wilburys numbers, Handle with Care and End of the Line. They had him singing George Harrison’s lines, and were showing some of the clips, and it was brilliant.
Towards the end of the concert, you could see that Jeff was
really struggling, and they brought in a chair for him to sit down. They just
did the encore, Mr Blue Sky, without the traditional walking off beforehand,
thankfully for him, then turned the lights on! Despite his problems, it was
still a wonderful concert, and we were so glad to have been there.
Of course, then the fun really started….thousands of us had
to get out of the venue and towards the tram again. They had us funnelled into
a long queue, and it took us about 45 minutes to finally get onto one (and play
sardines again). That had us back at Picadilly at a quarter to midnight. Then,
we discovered that we were living the lines from one of the night’s tracks: Last
train to London, just leaving town…. Yes, we’re on the London track, and yes,
we’d just missed the last train. In the end, we just took a taxi home which
Glen very generously paid for, and we were very grateful to finally get home
about twenty past 12. It was a long evening, but a very good one.
Thursday 10th July MANCHESTER -
PEMBERLEY! (I MEAN, LYME PARK)
It was a very, very slow start to the day this morning, and
after 8.30 when we all crawled out in search of caffeinated beverages. Lex and
Glen had sat up talking until the wee small hours, and I hadn’t been able to
get to sleep (a combination of concert high and the chocolate I’d been eating,
I suspect….) so we were all a bit weary. Cait and Danny called, and were
impressed to see our lovely sunny garden. This morning dawned fine and sunny,
and has stayed that way, with a top temperature of 29 degrees. It’s the nicest
day we’ve had since we arrived. It’s also the first day that I haven’t carried
a jumper or raincoat with me ‘just in case’!
Once we all felt human, we dropped Glen off at the station;
he was planning to have a look around the city centre, then take a train home.
Our destination for the day was Lyme Park, a glorious National Trust stately
home which achieved lasting fame in the 1990s when it was the outdoor setting
of Pemberley in the Colin Firth series of Pride and Prejudice (a huge personal
favourite of Cait’s and mine.)
The house is huge and absolutely glorious; this is actually the view from the back.
Lyme was just over a half hour’s drive from the station and is really not far out of Manchester. The mansion is hundreds of years old, and has been remodelled and restyled in that time. For six hundred years it was the home of the Legh family until it was given to the National Trust in the 1940s. Our first stop, in the old servants’ wing, was the café for lunch, then we headed upstairs. It was a wonderful house to look around, with volunteers in most rooms to explain things and chat to. They also had a dress up room, so I got to channel my inner Jane Austen, and waft around in a Regency dress and fetching bonnet for a while!
We took a long walk around the gardens, too. We went down to the lake, but alas, no Colin Firth emerging from it. Sigh. (When we looked closely at the lake, it’s about a foot deep. No wonder they filmed the swimming scene in a tank!) The flower gardens are just beautiful, but if we have much more hot weather, they will be in real trouble, as many districts are introducing hose bans this week, and no rain forecast for a while. (Maybe they can pump from the lake?) We spent over an hour wandering around the grounds, and climbed the hill towards ‘The cage’, which we assume is a type of folly, but is currently being renovated, so it was almost fully covered. There was a panoramic view of Manchester from the top of the hil. I went back to the house, while Lex carried on walking for a little longer. I had a most enjoyable look around the gift shop until he came back.
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