Meeting a famous

So the weekend involved leaving Dunedin.  Like I almost never do.

Back in March 2009 I met Amanda Palmer (a pic from then attached here) and then a year later I met her again and met her future husband (also with a picture (I am including the two old pictures as my old web dairy format didn't support pictures)).

That was a good week, all my fandom coming together when they were still in the early sages of coupling up (they didn't marry until years after).

I last saw her in 2011, after making a bad decision and missed her 2012 Dresden Dolls concert in Wellington because I thought I was investing in someone worthwhile (I was not).  I think I may be repeating things I have already repeated on here in the last week.

So when I heard she was coming back to NZ for a tour (and I am no longer all out of doing stuff because of reasons of Shitlord), I had to sort going.

So I did.....

As I think I mentioned last time I wrote, saying I sorted it may be exaggerating my capacity to function as a person.  I made only the most superficial efforts and hoped for the best.  So much hoping for the best.

So Friday evening I went to the supermarket in the evening to by travel snacks and soda water, all the things I had wanted to buy were sold out.  None seem emergency panic buy things, so it was irksome.  I mean, budget soda water.  No-one would panic stock up on pre-bubbled tapwater. Surely.

Saturday morning, I slept through my alarm for over an hour but managed to be up and mostly ready by the time my father arrived.  And then it was loading into his car and heading north.
We didn't really stop anywhere, just headed straight to Rolleston.

And into Pineglades.  Where I would be staying in my dad's caravan.
I had driven in before, but not got out of the car there before.
It is surprisingly normal, for a bunch of tiny houses with communal facilities.  And a cult of nudity meaning it was populated with leathery old people.  They were all so leathery.  Too much sun.

Then dad dropped me into the city so I could catch up with someone I have been chatting to since October, before the concert.

So I got to Christchurch proper.  Dad showed me how to get to the concert venue, the one-the-nose named Piano: Centre for Music and the Arts.  It is shaped a bit like a piano and was to house the piano based act I had travelled to see.  Had I been on facebook then I would have seen the tentative cancellation warning, but I was not.

I got dropped off down by the museum and had a quick nose about there to kill time as the new friend I was meeting was running a little late.  We met.  We ate gelato.  We got along.  He walked me to the concert venue, leading me to a souvlaki shop on the way so I could get delicious Sabry's Souvlaki dinner and have eaten something that counted as real food (with the driving I had skipped lunch).  It was nice, and reminded me that people are worth the effort sometimes.

Then to the concert.  It was not cancelled, hence my having a photo of myself with Amanda Palmer where we are both 11 years old.  She has much less eye makeup on.  I have much less hair and generally seemed to have aged MUCH MUCH more than she has in the time.  She may look pretty good in this photo from last night, but I would like to still be the me in either of the above pictures.

The concert was nice.  I quickly realised the venue would not have cared if I had worn shoes (where I found the shoes and pants I wore suggests I have worn neither such thing since October at the latest - it might have been Shitlord's citizenship ceremony in September when I last wore them). I got to the venue basically as the door opened, like a nerd.  I waiting and nosed at the merch table until the auditorium itself opened and then poured in with the rest of the early people.  But I got there and got to anxious about people to actually get a good seat.  I got a decent one, but really could have done much, much better if I had been less averse to sitting near anyone instead of waiting and having people sit near me.

The concerted started with her just wandering through the audience talking to her lighting engineer and a couple of other staff, and back to the stage to announce she wasn't up to doing the four hour concert as she had spent the day coronavirus stressing and needed a gentler evening.  So instead of the new album and a lot of talk about abortion and miscarriage, it was a requests show with reduced (but still significant) talk about abortion and miscarriage.  But also covid-19 talk.  And a lot of talk about her marriage and how covid-19 stress was affecting the dynamic.

It is nice to listen to someone who overshares as much as I do but actually has interesting stuff to say in it....
I ramble about nothing too much.

After the shorter than advertised but still very satisfying show I spent too much on merch, including a rather too snug t-shirt that was the largest they had left, I got the albums I had bought signed by Amanda and got that new picture.

Then dad picked me up and drove me to Rolleston to sleep in his caravan while he slept in an old van - which is apparently a normal non-weird thing for him to do...

Today we came back in a harrowing trip as dad had two flag poles on a trailer, but also sticking feet in front of the car.
We got breakfast Subway in Ashburton and successfully delivered his giant flagpoles to his house without disaster, somehow.
Stuff achieved.

And that was mostly that.  I am very tired and should be sleeping.  So I ought go do that and stop rambling.