Pictures of you

At the risk of stating the tediously obvious, it's been hot.

It's been so hot that my speech has melted out of my mouth in a waterfall of utter gibberish and my damaged eye has glazed over leaving half the world viewed as if through dirty perspex.

I have been mainly hiding indoors, hugging the fridge, berating my wretchedly hot foot boot and grad..ua..lly  wi....nd.....ing   d....o.....w.....n.

So it has not been the time, one would sensibly think, to head to Hyde Park surrounded by thousands of hot, sweaty bodies to see a collection of bands play upwards of eight hours in the sun with one friend and two people I barely know.

Quite an MS challenge wouldn't you say? Intense heat + failing brain + toilet queue pressures + fatigue + potential for social ineptitude.

And I can't say I wasn't worried. And I can't say I almost didn't go.
But The Cure were headlining and this was their 40th anniversary tour and their only European date. They had sound-tracked a fair bit of my youth; its optimism and upsets, its mistakes, its learning and its intensity. So I went.

And it was glorious. So glorious that I shed a few tears (undercover of darkness when people were too busy looking at the lovely Robert Smith to notice me) because I'd got there.

I'd managed it thanks to the following:

• these instant ice packs - really helpful to bring temperature down quickly
• this UV-blocking umbrella - would NOT have got through without it
• old friends - one who sent me the brolly; one who drove to London and made sure I was okay (and put up with some inane wittering fuelled by relief on the way home)
• new people - who were delightful and hilarious and warm and welcoming and managed to quieten down the "don't sound like a twat, don't sound like a twat" mantra which usually streams through my head when meeting new people - especially when I'm meeting these new people in the kind of MS-heat that would fell an elephant

It wasn't all plain sailing, there did come a point during the afternoon where I knew I was going to struggle to speak coherently and my eyesight was really failing. 

Of course, the bonus of outdoor music is you can just lie back on the grass, shut up and listen - people assume you're thoughtfully appreciating rather than silently cursing Uhthoff and his phenomenon.

However, this was a small price to pay for a day of musical delight and the sudden resurgence of youthful images, bursting like fireworks from a mighty blaze of memory.

:: Picture of you by The Cure