Luminaire

What a freaking great gig. What a beautiful venue! What lovely people! The Luminaire is my new favourite venue (North of the River, that is, becaues the Windmill is still my local.)

I'm always a ball of stress before gigs, and there I was in full-on stress mode, manager missing, half the band having to work late and totally missing soundcheck, trying to field a bazillion and one text messages telling The Boy when and where to go, limping about on a swollen ankle, 30 seconds away from total diva - Andy and Molly were lovely, showed me to the beautifully mood lit backstage, filled me with tea and generally did their best to make the evening pleasant, as well as smoothly running. This makes *such* a difference, and I thank them.

Anyway, we soundchecked the best that we could with Cat and Ruth from the Kissing Time filling in. And then it was the "sit around and wait" game. This is what I hate most about headlining - soundcheck first and play last means you have FIVE HOURS sitting around getting more and more nervous. Couldn't even get drunk, as that helps with the nerves but destroys your performance. Barely left the venue, except to go and get curly chips at Kilburn Fried Chicken, and then I had to hurry back like an agrophobe. Though the girls' bathroom was a flurry of dresses and makeup and hairspray - one of the other fun things about a line-up with loads of women. Good thing, as both Emsk and I were utterly flummoxed by my hair ornament.

At least it helped that I really enjoyed the other bands. My mind was taken off my stress by watching Sande and the Memory Machine and the Kissing Time (even joining them for a wonderfully shambolic Kissing Curves version of Just Like Heaven) - but by the time YSN came on, I was in too much of a flap to enjoy them. AMP like them - I liked their clothes.

All of our mates were there by this point, and I was doing my best to be a bit of a social butterfly. It was Matt DC's birthday, so he brought a truckload of drunken people in the mood to party. Hurrah! My Boy arrived, having driven instead of taking the train, and I was being flummoxy about him, too, worrying that I wasn't paying him enough attention, and forgetting to introduce him to my friends. Though he did seem to enjoy the backstage pre-gig rituals of titty-shaking and the like.

And then we got onstage, and all of it disappears, the stress, the annoyance, the "argh, I don't enjoy this, why do I *do* this?" just goes away when you perform a song perfectly, the sound fills your heart, the audience claps, and you can look out and see all of your friends enjoying themselves, laughing, dancing, shouting requests between songs. The sound was.... perfect! It's actually a bit scary to have sound that good when you're used to not hearing anything. (Well, my sound was perfect, though, for some reason, the two who missed soundcheck had complaints. Imagine that.) And we asked the audience to move up and fill the gap, and for the first time in gigging history, they actually *did*. Hurrah.

There was pink wine (swigged directly out of the bottle, as we were not allowed to take glasses onstage - classy!) and dancing and fun. Though if anything, it was a bit weird being on such a big stage - I felt quite far away and a bit separated from the rest of the band, especiallly Marianna, when we usually ham it up onstage. It's better when we're more intimate, interacting with each other. And it's funny, because several different people have described seeing us as like being let into something a bit private and secret, being allowed the join the sleepover. Which I like.

We did a fake "encore" of Noyfriend (time to formalise that spelling) and then there was the panic of trying to pack everything up. I was actually quite pleased that The Boy offered to help, carried things, but couldn't figure out why he was hurrying me along until finally he says "come on! I've got champagne chilling backstage!" Yay! So eventually we invited the entire audience (that was left) backstage and had a big party.

Best VD ever. I *hate* Valentine's Day, but this year was definitely the way forward. Thanks to all of you.