15 Again

For about 2 months I have been waiting patiently for the big day when Duran Duran would be playing at the Rugby 7s ground in Dubai.  When the day arrived I was really keyed up and ready for the evening, but being one of the more 'maturer' members of our team I silently hid my excitement and listened to some old tunes on my Iphone.  When 5.30 pm arrived I almost ran out of the office and drove home at high speed.  Well not that fast, I always keep to the speed limit. I've never had a speeding ticket in my life (not like some people I could mention 'my youngest son', who I'm sure wakes up some days thinking he's Lewis Hamilton).

Anyway, back to the plot. 

I used to be a massive fan of Duran Duran, Simon Le Bon was my Hero.  From the age of about 14 I was obsessed.  I used to kept a scrap book (whatever happened to scrapbooks? do teenagers still keep them?) probably not, far to geeky for kids nowadays.  At the time the band used to wear trilbies and being the wild child that I was I wore mine constantly.  It used to drive my mother crazy but I was young and rebellious and I didn't care lol.



In the early days with said trilbies

At 15 I went to see Duran Duran at the Queen's Hall in Leeds.  I went with an old friend of mine who I recently connected back up with on Face book.  She remembers coming home for the gig without any shoes.  OMG, honestly how rebellious were we?  To be honest I can't remember the no shoes scenario (good god it was 31 years ago!) but I can remember screaming my head off and shouting madly at Simon in the hope that he would see me in the crowd.  Our eyes would meet and he'd dive into the crowd, pick me up and take me away from it all.  But for some reason he never did.  I was gutted and I was even more gutted when a few years later he married miss supermodel Yasmin.  My god, what did she have that I didn't?  Bet she didn't have her own trilby.

We got to the 7s ground with loads of time to spare.  At first it was a little quiet and there wasn't much atmosphere.  Both my hubby and my good friend were ill with a cold, so they weren't really up for it.  They were both driving too, so no drink for them.  To be honest, I actually only had two.  But, they were two glasses of cider.  Well I thought if I'm having a night of being a teenager again, I thought I might as well drink like one too.

The place soon filled up and I was amazed to see so many 'middle aged' men and women all as hyper as me.  Usually at these events there is a good mix of ages, but I would say the majority of the crowd were between 35 and 55.

Whilst the band were getting ready we were entertained by 80's and 90's music to get us in the mood. Some woman off the local radio came on stage twice between 9 and 9:30 to tell us to be patient and how excited she was because she'd met the band and how gorgeous Roger Taylor was.  All I could think of was what to b**** how cruel is that to stand on stage going on and on about have fab the band members are, knowing us poor minions would never get the chance to meet them.  And I bet she didn't even know who they were she was only about 12!

Anyway, the waiting was over and at 9:30pm they came on stage.  OMG it amazing.  Simon Le Bon looked great, he hadn't changed a bit (apart from a little more facial hair).  My hubby and friends did point out he's a celebrity, has lots of money and is married to a supermodel, so yeah he should be looking great.  But I hadn't realised he was 53!  For a second I was thinking more 47 or 48, but then I'd realised I was mixing him up with Marti Pellow from Wet, Wet, Wet who I feel in love with after Simon ditched me for miss Supermodel.  

I did laugh though as my friend who is 14 years younger than me, kept saying it was like watching her dad on stage.  I was horrified at this remark, how dare she say that about Duran Duran?  Although I knew how she felt, last year hubby and I went to see Joe Cocker and my god, it was like watching my grandad on stage, never mind my dad.  I honestly thought the poor bloke was going to have a heart attack, and spent most of the night waiting for an ambulance to arrive.



This used to be one of my favorite pics

It was a great mix of new and old songs.  To be honest, when they were singing their new songs, that was the time we took to have a comfort break. Although, I'd not heard them before they were pretty good.  But the old ones are always the best and that was what we were there for.   So we were treated to rendissions of 'Planet Earth', 'Ordinary World', 'The Reflex', 'Wild Boys', 'Hungry Like the Wolf', 'Girls on Film', 'Notorious', 'Reach Up for the Sunrise', 'A View to a Kill' and 'Rio'.  You can imagine the crowd were going wild,  the atmosphere was electric, they were fantastic and the songs just kept coming, we were having the best night ever. 

And then it was all over, they went off, came back on, did an encore and back off.  Was that all that about? What happened to my favourite song of all time?  Where was 'Save a Prayer?'  I could not believe it, all those fantastic songs and they didn't sing 'Save a Prayer'.  Everyone was gutted! I was devastated.  We waited and waited, we watched the fireworks at the end and then nothing!  Overall, it was an almost perfect night, I am still a little upset about the song but they are forgiven.