Lady in Red, Black and Blue
Arriving at a Chris De Berg concert in smudged red lipstick, flushed red cheeks, a grazed red knee, clasping a bottle of rather cheap red wine and seeing red, lots of red, from under a frowning brow is hardly the lady he had conjured up in many a person's imagination. My sopping sludgy wet shoes (from falling into a river whilst trying to sneak through the bushes) were not fit for a slow dance under the stars. The twigs in my hair did, however, manage to give me that slightly wild 80s Shiva Queen-of-the-Jungle look, which I think may have helped out with the camouflaged-shrubbery debacle I found myself in later on in the evening.
When the bramble finally cleared and a small walking path revealed itself under the moonlight my heart only dropped a notch further. The concert had been moved to the other side of the gardens and wrapped up in giant chicken mesh! On closer observation, and after being spotted by the rarely spotted guard in bright red I settled for defeat and limped around the edge of the herd to a small dark spot behind a cactus. It was the best seat in the garden, I discovered as the red wine emptied itself down my throat. The two ultimate middle-aged frumpish fans, who roared to the fence (basically trampling down half the garden) to see Chris prance about the crowd seeking his Lady in Red were worth every scratch. They even did some kind of slow motion roly-poly poll solo dance just for us.
But the night turned into chaos, as these kinds of nights do, and one of the fans jumped the fence and got herself lost. The other attracted the guard's attention and I found myself diving under plants to hide from spotlights to a cacophony of sounds. Needles to say I escaped. But one thing is for sure. Romantic is the last thing I'll feel the next time Lady in Red comes on the radio.
