The Thrill of What You Already Have - Barbra Streisand Edition!.....or...I bought the T-Shirt......

....at which point you're probably wondering what on earth Babs has to do with Floss's April pic for the ongoing 'Thrill' series?......

.......well, shall I tell you?

When I looked at the poster my first thought was that I'd only been to the Granite City once a very,very long time ago so wasn't akin to talk that much about it but then the colours brought to mind Barbra's purple outfit that she wore in this scene from 'Hello Dolly'.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6aiOkvZfDQ&feature=related

....and the colour of the bridge in the pic got me to thinking about her blonde hair on the t-shirt I have with the rest of her emblazoned on it.......

..... so without further ado, I shall tell you about the time, 5 years ago, that my Soul Sister rang me up to tell me Barbra would be in town that summer and would I like to go and see her in concert? Well, since we've both been life-long fans of the Great One, I very definitely said 'yes' so Soul Sister booked our tickets for the concert and when the time came, I made my way merrily to London in excited anticipation of the Great Event. Now, I don't know about you but I had always assumed that the 'O2' aka the Millenium Dome at Greenwich, being of a rather flat but domed structure would therefore be quite small inside!!!!WRONG! Once inside, we were instructed to make our way to the escalators which would take us to the level where our seats were located. So...... we got on the escalator......and it went up......and up......and up a few more times.....almost to the roof (or so it seemed) and on disembarking, we found our level and proceeded to go through the little tunnel which would lead us to our seats. HOWEVER, no-one told us that we would be in the 'cheap' seats, which could have easily have been reached by trapeze, although we'd paid £100 each for our tickets (an immense fortune and an experience I will never repeat, not even for a personal audience with Gorgeous George!). So.....out the other end of the tunnel and there before us was the grandeur of the O2 in all of its vast,expansive,choc-a-block with people,overwhelming glory! At which point, my legs started to go very,very weak and my head was swimming....clearly a massive vertigo attack was about to release itself on my unsuspecting person. Soul Sister had gone on ahead to find our seats and when did, she plonked herself down and called to me 'just keep looking at your feet'!Well, I'm sorry but my feet were the last things I wanted to be looking at and instead of joining her, I started the climb back up the stairs to find the  blessed exit......only, backwards and in a crouching position! I honestly thought I was going to fall off the edge!As far as seeing Babs on the stage, forget it....she would have been a dot on the horizon....good job there were massive video screens at either side of the stage otherwise we may well have forgotten who we'd actually come to see! Seeing my plight, Soul Sister left her seat and accompanied me to the Customer Service desk, where a very nice young man gave us different seats on a lower level......or so he said! Picture the very same scenario as last time because there really was no difference in the actual height and once more, off we went to Customer Services,this time clinging to each other for dear life, where a very nice young lady, obviously concerned at my colourless face and inability to speak, finally allotted us two seats at ground level. Phew.....what an absolute relief to put our feet on to terra firma......and best of all, we were about 10 rows from front of stage.....result! The nice young lady had told us that they keep so many seats on ground level free for such circumstances and good job too because I wasn't the only one suffering....there was a very long queue at the Customer Service desk by the time we returned there a second time, full of people complaining. Our new seats must have been the very expensive ones because we were sitting a few rows up from Meryl Streep and John Lithgow and my friend was sure she had spotted the top of David Beckham's head but don't quote me on that! Turned out, the concert was everything we had hoped for and more....a truly magical, unforgettable evening .......and yes, Babs was a bit older and a little bit rounder (who isn't these days?!)but the voice was very definitely still there!Here's a little taster of that very same night....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUBNKCS1ICc

.....and of course, here's the t-shirt!......

....they only had extra-large left....and also, I'd like it to be known that I've never gone out in public wearing this....it merely hangs in my wardrobe as a reminder of that fantastic, thrilling and enthralling evening.....and the fact that I can no longer climb to heady heights of any description!

Have a great weekend y'all.

See you soon.

x

ps on the way out of the O2 that night, we walked side-by-side with Philip Schofield and Shane Ritchie,both of whom are much better looking in real life than on tv...funny old world, isn't it?