Rained out

It's hard to begrudge the rain, the beautiful, solid, healing rain, but it certainly got in the way this weekend.

We went to see the Ten Tenors at Centennial Vineyards, Bowral, on Saturday night. It didn't occur to me that it would rain, as it was stinking hot in Wollongong, and besides, it hadn't rained in ages. As we arrived, were directed to a parking spot, and hiked the 20 minute hike to the outdoor amphitheatre with all our picnic goodies, I started to lose confidence. The sky had a definite threatening look to it, and despite the compere's insistence that the cloud was going to split in half and go either side of us, I was starting to get wet.

As we passed through the security checkpoint, I was surprised to find that umbrellas weren't permitted past that point. I'm yet to think of any reason for such apparent insanity - perhaps they thought that a bunch of wine-loving, ten-tenors-concert-goers were going to start stabbing each other with them or something. They helpfully threw them in a pile to the side for collection on the way out. As I've said, rain wasn't on my radar, so I didn't lose my much pilloried coral reef umbrella, thanks be.

We settled in and cracked open the champagne and nibbles. Grace Knight was on first, and she sang all the same songs she's been singing for years, which was nostalgic if not particularly interesting. James Morrisson was much more intersting and personable, but by this stage the rain had forced me to retreat to a port-a-loo, from where the sound quality was distinctly non-optimal. As the rain got harder and harder, I found it harder and harder to justify hiding in the loo when other's might actually need to use it, so I turned my collar up and made a dash for it..... but of course, there was nowhere to go. I got back to our patch to find the gang, drenched, packing up and starting to head out. I was leaning towards sticking it out, but the temperature had dropped, the sun was down, and they were all soaked to the skin. It seemed I'd weathered out the worst of it in the loo.

The scene at the security checkpoint was chaos, with people trying in vain to find their umbrellas in the pile, before giving up and just taking one off the top. By the time we made it back to the cars, I was as wet as anyone, and almost as miserable. We wrung out our clothes as best we could before getting in and heading home, without having had even a glimpse of the ten tenors.

The concert being cancelled (as far as we were concerned) and the picnic being adjourned to the dining room table, we nonetheless had a lovely dinner, complete with metal cutlery, real plates, and dry clothes.