Comfortably Numb

Well, the footie is all over for England in the Quarter Finals again, on penalties, AGAIN :(

I ended up watching the game in the Hard Rock Cafe that has been temporarily erected in Hyde Park for people going to the festival...And boy was it hot! The air con seemed to consist of large fans in either corner of the tent (which was huge) and so had absolutely no effect on me in the middle.

The journey there was a bit of a nightmare temperature-wise. I squeezed onto an already hot and humid Piccadilly line train, consoling myself with the knowledge that I would only have to endure the conditions for less than twenty minutes down to Hyde Park Corner.

But the train didn't go anywhere. It just sat in the platform for a couple of minutes with no update from the driver over what was going on, whilst we all sizzled. I could feel a trickle of sweat forming in the small of my back.

Then a half full train pulled in on the adjacent platform. I hopped off to get onto that only for the driver to tell everyone that the train was terminating!

So back to the first train, and as before it just sat in the platform for another few minutes before the driver came on the tannoy to tell us that the signals for the two trains had been switched and the other train would be going first! *sigh*

Weirdly enough this does seem to happen to me every few weeks or so but the heat made it just that little bit more annoying. I got of the train a stop early at Knightsbridge, relieved by the relatively cool temperatures in the station. *phew*

I directed some tourists to Hyde Park, bought myself a Coke and headed off to the park.

As it was, whilst in the Hard Rock Cafe, I heard Starsailor and then half of Texas' set before the game was over and I made my way to a surprisingly good spot in front of the main stage to watch the rest of Texas' performance. I'd seen them live recently, so missing half of their set wasn't such a big loss.

The lead singer Sharleen Spiteri signed off her last song by singling out and swearing at a member of the crowd who had thrown a shoe at her during her last song!

Then it was the star attraction, Roger Waters. The music was brilliant. He had a quad speaker setup so it was like being in a surround sound arena. He did a few mixed songs, mostly from "The Wall", and premiered what I think was a new song inspired by a night he had been put up by strangers in Beirut. It was emphatically anti-war, anti-Bush and Blair and the crowd loved it.

Then after a short intermission Nick Mason came on to support and they performed "Dark Side Of The Moon", which was very cool. It was a bit strange though that it was still quite light as it's not getting dark in London until after 10pm and his set finished at 22:15.

After that he did "Another Brick In The Wall" and "Comfortably Numb" (quite appropriate after the footie) to finish. An awesome gig , even if I did miss most of the music due to hope springing eternal for England in the football. Oh well. Better luck next time.

Tomorrow is The Zutons, Razorlight and The Who!