Woody Guthrie celebration feat. Billy Bragg - 16 September

Mr and I were again back at Southbank for a show last Sunday. This time, Billy Bragg and his special guests were celebrating Woody Guthrie's legacy. As Billy himself says, he's not sure how he got the job of putting Guthrie's words to music, but if you've ever heard Mermaid Avenue, he did a good job of it, IMHO.
And that album introduced me to Wilco, which is quite an excellent band to drive to. Live, they have too many guitar solos for my taste, but Mr actually likes long guitar solos so we agree to disagree on this point.
So, here were all were at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Prompt, because it struck us as that kind of gig. The first up was Grace Petrie, who BB said was following in his footsteps or something like that. She was very personable and got the audience on-side with her banter.
She played a few protest songs: Maggie Thatcher's Dream is one of the tunes. I keep thinking, after 20-odd years, don't we have any new Conservative bogeymen? Thatcher's pretty much done to death. Surely someone can come up with a decent protest song about the strangely large foreheaded David Cameron.
But never mind, five songs and she was off, with much applause. Then, Joe Henry was up. The liveliest he got was when he was singing Woody Guthrie songs. Which was kind of the point. He had a nice voice but not a load of charisma.
After a decent interval, the man himself arrived on stage. Billy produced an amiable set and kept the audience entertained with Woody songs. My Flying Saucer is a personal favourite. The other two then joined him onstage, which was the highlight of the whole show. They all have very good voices and it ended the show on a high note.

Marks out of 10: 7.5, up and down, but mostly up.

Fascinating Aida, Southbank - 12 September

Left Mr at home for this one because he's not into comedy singing, it seems. Wanda bought the tickets and Martina came along as well. So it was all good fun. We didn't realise it was actually at that summer-only setup on the Southbank. I've never been there before. I thought it was a carnival, and they do have some rides nearby. We did spend a bit of time wandering around looking for the ticket office, and then we found it, Wonderland. Just went the wrong way on the riverside. We had a drink outside at the bar (brrr! autumn is here) and then went into the Spiegeltent, which was kind of a posh one. Had booths and everything.
Fascinating Aida has been going for 30 years. As Wanda said, you know they're good when they've been going that long - they're entertainers. She wasn't wrong. They started off the show with a song about the current bank issues. Part of the fun was the fact that these lovely women with lovely voices were using a very rude word or three. Just a good time.
Their famous song is Cheap Flights, which is a howler. I also quite enjoyed Down with the Kids. I resisted the urge to roll on the floor laughing.
Afterwards, we had another G&T while the ladies signed CDs and so forth for appreciative audience members. A fun night.

Marks out of 10: 8. Not everyone's cup of tea, but perfect if you want to hear a lot of good singing and very clever lyrics. That's entertainment!

Equestrian, Sitting Volleyball, Athletics & Goalball, plus Tennis: 1-2, 8 September

I am sorry for the delay in posting this, I have been busy being a complete Paralympics freak. On 1-2 September Mr and I dragged Jr and friend Gavin (he of Olympics fame) back and forth to various venues: Greenwich Park for equestrian, ExCel for sitting volleyball, and to the Olympic Park for athletics and goalball.

We saw three medals - Natasha Baker's gold in dressage, then a gold for Aled Davies in discus and the silver for Stef Reid in the long jump. Also watched strong contender Bosnian Herzegovina's match in sitting volleyball, beating Brazil. Apparently Iran is the team to beat in men's volleyball. The US at least won out over Slovenia for the women's match.

The athletics stadium on Sunday was excellent. Loads of photos of us with the torch and so forth. Jr was less than impressed with it all although the wheelchair racing interested him. They had to shoo us out of the stadium.

I liked goalball myself, which we popped into afterwards. Algeria beat Canada. Algerian supporters ran to the edge of the stand to high five the team afterwards, but of course they missed him. The coach got them to come back and high five the guys. Pretty funny! I can see myself playing goalball as I am pretty blind myself.

The next Saturday was tennis. We had an excellent time and Mr got photos and autographs with Jr of the tennis gold medallists. I will try and download some. It was also a lovely day out, sunny and warm. We sat at the very top of the stands and ate lunch while watching some amazingly adept tennis on wheels. The women's doubles were particularly impressive.

We then walked back through the Olympic park with all the twinkling lights, high fiving the gamesmakers as we left Eton Manor.

But now it's all over. Sob.

Marks out of 10:  Like Spinal Tap, it goes up to 11. Thought the Olympics were excellent, and the Paralympics were just as good.