littlemoose

The fuses blew while I was spellchecking this prior to posting... luckily I'd typed it in Word - autorecover is the best invention ever!

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That was one of the maddest, slashiest, and quite frankly brilliant nights of my life.

Got to the Odyssey early, spent fifteen minutes in the toilet queue from hell and then dad and I went for coffee. Which is what we do *g*. Got my heart rate under control, kind of, and phoned

m_l_h, who was just finishing off a pizza. We met up outside the café, introduced her mum to my dad, to bemusement all round, and then the game was ON.

(I must take a moment here to thank dad, who – without a word of complaint – took me all the way to Belfast, then spent three hours reading in a café while I boogied with my mate, then supplied me with food after. I know I'm lucky, believe me.)

Anyhoo, we got past the security checks (the bastards confiscated my lucozade!), got inside, discovered we had AMAZING seats in the upper tier and got settled.

Sophie E-B rocked a fine set, I reckon… I spent a lot of time drooling, much to

m_l_h's amusement…

Then when she buggered off and the lights came up there was lots of slashy talk, and musings on who would make good supporting acts… I think I am now doomed to write the adventures of the Top Gear House Band on tour, especially as

m_l_h texted

dracothelizard to make sure to remind me about it while I sat beside her and facepalmed…

And then…

Some beautiful animated dreaminess on the big screen as we're zapped through a whistle-stop tour of the galaxy (including comets and random seahorses, for some reason) while a string quartet and the rather amazing Lloyd belt it out on the mini stage and then the zooming in hits Earth, and a building that's a very familiar shape from the air, and from the ground looks very… Ever seen The Triumph of The Will? Yeah, keep that in mind for this bit… lots of very bold TT logos and black banners and the boys are behind podiums wearing electoral rosettes and belting out Reach Out like it's a party manifesto. And then we move from Politics to sleaze as the podiums spin round to become padded chairs, complete with lap dancers, and we're into It Only Takes a Minute.

The dancers are giving the boys a serious show, and there are pole dancers either side… but then something changes and the girls rip the lads out of their clothes and take to the seats themselves, and Gary and Mark are lapdancing while Howard and Jason spin on the poles!

It is at this point that it hit

m_l_h that she was actually seeing Take That live, and the look on her face was just wonderful! :D

Meanwhile, back on stage, we're being welcomed to the show, and then Howard hits Beautiful World and

m_l_h nearly combusts!

Then the segment of the show I like to think of as Gary/Piano OTP, as they twinkle their way through Hold On and I'd Wait for Life.

It doesn't stay stripped down for long – Lloyd's back on the mini stage with a skull-topped staff giving it serious voodoo, while the dancers on stage bring a prone girl down on their shoulders – ah, Relight My Fire approaches! It all goes crazy for a bit, then it all goes Crazy as we get a bit of Gnarls Barkley thrown in for good measure. The boys end up on fire. No really - Gary's arm, Jason's foot and Howard and Mark's hats... I think...

It's mental!

m_l_h and I just kept grinning at each other!

This slides really nicely into Rule the World, which I have to admit has really grown on me – I wasn't too sure about it at first. This saw them on the mini stage, and involved the mother of all disco balls and a spectacular laser show.

Then the disco ball went up, bringing out of the centre of the mini-stage a piano, and Gary ploughed into a slow, gorgeous version of Could it Be Magic with huge circular light rigs that came out of the ceiling and floor and tilted around the disco ball like the rings of Saturn – with dancers standing on them!

Mark: "Ladies and Gentlemen, Gary Barlow!" (And kneels and bows as he says it…)

m_l_h: "So when he thinks about Gary, he falls to his knees?"

They followed this up with Back for Good, which was just as spine tingling as you'd expect, especially when they cut the music and just had the audience singing along.

And then, we hit the slashy motherlode. Gary asking Howard if they can do a duet… and them doing Everything Changes! Up in our row, the squee was deafening. On stage, they'd all just gone mental – Gary and Howard were all over each other and Mark was rocking a pair of flashing devil horns he'd had lobbed at him. And then Mark shoved one of the crates the string quartet had been sitting on over so Gary could climb up onto the piano (again with much bowing and scraping)…

m_l_h: "You can tell who's on top in that relationship!"

So, back to the main stage and… Jason. Wooden Boat. Just Jason, the strings, a drum and a couple of guitars… it was glorious, I had a serious lump in my throat.

Tranquility did not last long, though. Howard appears behind a set of massive decks, there's some mad dancing and then… Give Good Feeling! YES! They did the stage crawling bit… Mark managed to look good in a hoodie with neon pink bits on it, and it was mental and fab.

This segued into Sure, which broke down in the middle for a mental dance routine, and the obligatory introductions to everyone… and then Jason had a question – could Howard, as an old man of 39, still back-flip?

Yes. He can!

And Jason can still break-dance, and Mark can still caterpillar (and Jason kept telling him he was very sexy doing it!) although there was a gag about him needing Howard to wind him up for it! And then Howard was all "But there are four of us in this band!" This led to them all looming over Gary while he sat on the edge of the stage reading a newspaper.

Gary: "I knew I should've joined Westlife! And the scary thing is, I'd've been the best dancer in Westlife!"

Gary proceeded to treat us to some dad-at-a-wedding dancing, and things could continue.

With Never Forget. Oh god – the whole arms in the air everyone singing, everyone clapping thing is just amazing... it gives you goosebumps! And they had such a clever routine for it that required split second timing, as people come and go through a screen and appear on video and on stage, it was amazing, and I don't know how to describe it to do it justice.

The encore was a blasting rendition of Shine with Mark stomping his stuff on a silver piano, (and wearing what was really a black scarf, but looked SO much like a collar. We agreed he is clearly Gary's bitch) and one final, lovely blast of Pray.

And then it was all over, and

m_l_h was taunting me with fic ideas as we navigated the scary crowds and then we were out.

It was an amazing night, I only had one minor wobble of panic that I managed to squash pretty quickly, and

m_l_h is utterly, utterly lovely (and I hope I didn't traumatise your mum too much!).

Life is good, Take That are better! ;)