Delegating on a Wednesday or ‘we are not what you think we are’

I worked in the morning, Ady dropped Davies and Scarlett off with Julie.

Work was good, I like Wednesday mornings as they are very busy with all the delivery to unpack and the books leaving to get packed up. Wednesday is often the biggest delivery of the week as it tends to be the day that books reserved on Saturday arrive. We have four staff, two of whom are called Sarah. When I was at school about the half the class were always called Sarah, Nicola or James, clearly the most popular name choices back in 1974. It’s comforting to be at work with two Sarahs and a James 😆

I topped up my Jean Auel display which is proving popular – will get a photo of it tomorrow. I had a visit from one of the librarians to apologise in person for the whole Chatterbooks debacle on Monday and she showed me the email from one of the senior people that had been alluded to in an email I’d had and I was quite curious to see myself. It was very complimentary which was nice and the only real criticism was that I wasn’t perhaps aware of the ‘after school baggage’ that attendees come along with. An interesting, and true point I’d raised myself but for me yet another reason why we shouldn’t be trying to do an ambitious programme straight after school on a weekly basis.

I nipped into the book shop to pick up a couple of the WBD books as I know they sell out pretty fast and then drove over to collect Davies and Scarlett.

They’d had a lovely morning with Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna including a trip to Arundel to walk round the lake. They were all very muddy of trouser, rosy of cheek and bright of eyes thanks to some fresh air, exercise and time to be crazy with cousins :). I stopped for a cup of tea and a chat with Julie.

Home again for a very quick turn around of scoffing some of my hot cross buns and getting changed from work clothes into clothes that would see me through standing around on Brighton seafront for a few hours and then standing around inside the Brighton centre for a few more hours, then jumping up and down, singing and dancing pressed very close to many, many other people for a few hours- tricky wardrobe dilemma that, but never one where the answer is jeggings.

Ady and the kids dropped me off in Brighton and I walked through the lanes down to the seafront. I had a plan to find a coffee shop to sit in nearby and kill a couple of hours (they dropped me off as the parking costs more than the Mika ticket, it’s cutting it a bit too close for the last train home and I’d have to walk 15 minutes from the station through Lancing at night which isn’t nice. But they needed to be back in Worthing for Badgers so had to drop me off early). But when I got to the seafront there were already about 15 people standing around queuing. At which point I decided if I was killing time anyway I might as well do it in a queue really. So I chatted to the teenagers and their Mum (she didn’t stay) next to me for a bit who didn’t really believe me that I had a friend coming to meet me and kept saying things like ‘but do you, like feel that like all of us are your friends, joined in love for Mika and that?’ and sounded *just* like Catherine Tate’s Lauren.

I was very glad when Ros arrived nearly 1.5 hours later 🙂 and I was able to prove I really did have a friend! We spent the next hour in the queue catching up and finally got let in. Last time we went they were pretty good at maintaining the queue order from outside so being very near the front of the queue meant you were first in. This time they had several entrances open and it was a bit of a free for all when the doors opened. I was slightly pissed off that having been about 15th from the front we still ended up about four people deep back from the very front – we should really have made it to the actual front row. But we still had an excellent spot and when I looked behind us afterwards I realised just how many layers deep the standing crowd went.

We made friends with Colin and Emma who were standing nearby, to the extent that Ros ended up giving them a lift home as it was on her way and they were cutting it fine for the last train home. Lovely couple 🙂 although Colin did seem to have a very weak bladder ;).

So we stood for a further hour or so, then the support act came on and did about 5 songs. The drummer was very pleasing to observe but the music was not at all to my taste and just made me feel old. A further half an hour or so and then finally, a mere five hours after I first joined the queue outside Mika came on 🙂

He was fantastic, put on a fab show, sang wonderfully and utterly entertained us for the whole 90 minutes he was on. It was utterly fabulous, over the top, crazy costumes, glitter and balloons falling from the ceiling, women plucked from the stage door earlier in the evening paraded on stage with corsets and fancy headgear and we very quickly forgot our aching feet and need to have a wee and jumped up and down and sang our hearts out along with him. I was quite hoarse this morning :).

Ady and the kids picked me up and on getting in the car I realised just how tired I was. The kids went to bed as soon as we got in, I had a bath and ate the shepherds pie Ady had made for me before stumbling up to bed myself.