Very Scary Katy Perry (part 2)

For those of you who have been playing along at home, you might remember that I took my 5 year old Mairead to the Katy Perry show last Friday night. Here now, for your reading pleasure is a timeline of how that day went. From start to finish…

Friday, 7th November, 2014.

5.10am Mairead comes screaming into our bedroom screaming ‘IT’S KATY PERRY DAY!‘
5.11am Mairead is sent back to bed
5.17am Mairead screams from her bedroom ‘IS IT TIME TO GET UP YET?’
5.18am Baby wakes up
5.19am I hide under the doona and make various elaborate mental deals with the devil in return for making the kids go back to sleep for 2 hours.
5.20am Everyone’s up
8.20am Kids fed, watered, dressed, brushed. School bag packed. ‘Roar’ video been played on repeat on my phone at least 30 times.
8.30am Drop her at school
8.45am Back at home. Put finishing touched on Mairead’s Katy Perry costume. Boring house stuff (you don’t want to hear about that, believe me).
2.30pm Collect Mairead from school. Mairead announces to all and sundry that she’s going to Katy Perry. Numerous kids ask their mothers why they aren’t going to Katy Perry. Get dirty looks from other mothers.
2.40pm In car. Mairead realises she has left her gluing creations at school on the drying rack. I tell her if we go back to school we’ll be late for Katy Perry. Mairead accepts this. WIN!!
2.45pm Home. Mairead has a shower and puts on her costume and tells me she’s ready to go.
5.30pm We actually go.
6.00pm Think I’m being clever by parking away from the arena in a carpark on Murray Street. Give myself mental pat on the back.
6.10pm Car parked. It’s freezing. Mairead is wearing a leopard print halter top and a fake grass skirt (like Katy Perry in the Roar video, but not skanky). She won’t wear a cardigan because Katy Perry didn’t wear a cardigan.
6.11pm We walk down to Perth Arena. At least four different carloads of people beep at us and sing ‘Roa-or-or-or-o-o-o-o-ar’ at us. Mairead loves herself sick.
6.15pm Arrive at Perth Arena. A little girl looks at Mairead’s costume and says to her mum ‘Why didn’t I get that?’ A big ladyl looks at Mairead’s costume and says to her friend ‘Why didn’t we do that?’
6.20pm See my mates Heidi and Woody from 92.9fm doing an outside broadcast. Woody says on live radio to Mairead ‘Well, you’re a little live wire, are you excited about Katy Perry?’ Mairead squeaks ‘Hello!’ and runs away. Great radio.
6.25pm We start to line up at the merchandise stand.
6.35pm Still lining up at the merch stand.
6.55pm Still lining up.
7.10pm Get to the front of the merch stand. Mairead doesn’t know what she wants.
7.12pm The t-shirt Mairead wants is $60.
7.13pm Regret telling Mairead I will buy her a t-shirt.
7.14pm Buy the fricken’ t-shirt.
7.20pm Go into the Arena. Look for food.
7.30pm The only food is rubbish but we have no other options. Buy hotdogs and chips and drinks.
7.35pm There’s nowhere to sit and eat other than on the concrete stairs. Memories are made of this.
7.45pm She’s eaten about 3 chips, none of the hotdog and doesn’t like the orange juice. FML.
7.56pm I give up trying to make her eat and decide to go in to watch the support act. We find out door and open it. The noise is so cacophonous Mairead immediately covers her ears with her hands and is terrified to go in. The door lady looks at us with sympathy and says ‘If I was you I’d go and buy ear plugs – this is only half as loud as it will get. Plus when Katy Perry comes on they’ll start screaming.’
8.10pm Ear plugs purchased. Toilets visited. We sit in our seats.
8.11pm Mairead says ‘Mum, that’s not Katy Perry.’
8.12pm ‘Mum, where’s Katy Perry?’
8.13pm ‘Mum, I’m sick of waiting for Katy Perry.’
8.14pm ‘Mum, this is boring’
8.15pm ‘Mum, I’m hungry’
8.16pm ‘Mum, I’m cold’
8.17pm ‘Why is Katy Perry taking so long?’
8.18pm ‘Mum it’s too noisy in here’
8.19pm I put the $60 t-shirt on Mairead. It looks like a dress. It also looks like it will fall asleep after one wash. I feed her some cold chips. I let her play with my phone. I tell her all about the stage and the big screens and the sets. I ask her what song she thinks Katy Perry is going to play first.
8.31pm Katy Perry concert starts.
8.42pm Please enjoy my daughter’s enraptured reaction to seeing her idol live on stage for the first time….

She fell asleep. She fell asleep in the third song and woke up intermittently throughout, raising her head, checking it out and then going back to sleep. On my arm. So I couldn’t stand, clap, dance, nothing. She did wake up during the last song, Firework, because there WERE actual fireworks going off onstage.

I carried her back to the car, were she fell straight back to sleep (the lucky sod, considering it took 55 minutes to get out of the car park, I actually considered having a quick cat nap in the driver’s seat until the traffic thinned out).

So as much as it pains me to admit it, my kid was too young to go to a Katy Perry concert. I don’t mean the content – there’s was no twerking, bad language, excessive tongue exposure or suspicious foam finger activity like a certain other recent pop star I could mention. But it was too late, it was too loud and it was too crowded. It freaked her out. And I was so disappointed. I invested so much time and energy organising this special night out for us, but if I’m honest, maybe the show itself was more about what I wanted and not what my kid wanted or needed. So that totally sucked.

Saturday, 9th November

7.15am I casually ask Mairead if she liked the the Katy Perry show.
7.16am ‘No,’ Mairead says, ‘I like Katy Perry better when she’s in your phone.’

Can’t win ‘em all.

Very Scary Katy Perry (part one)

I’ve never been the sort of mum that buys her kids toys every time I’m at the shops. Years of practice have given me a steely reserve. I don’t hear their incessant demands, and I don’t see their big ‘don’t club me’ watery baby seal eyes. But I can never say no when they want to see a show. We’ve seen The Wiggles (the proper ones, not the new ones), Hi-5 (both recent incarnations), Sesame Street characters, Dora, Peppa Pig and Charlie and Lola. I don’t buy the merchandise, either. One of these days my kids are going to work out ‘Mummy left her wallet at home’ is a big lie. I’m not looking forward to that day, I can tell you.

Months ago, I told my 5 year old Mairéad that I would take her to see Katy Perry. Because I’m an idiot. First, I had no idea how much the tickets cost. Second, I didn’t investigate the release date for the tickets, which resulted in both the shows being practically sold out before I’d even started looking.

I started to get desperate. I went to Ebay and Gumtree seeing if I could get any there. There were some websites I’d never heard of the claimed they had tickets, but they were hundreds of dollars, and I just couldn’t justify paying more for two concert tickets than return flights to Bali for our family of four.

Time was ticking on – last week I even put this status update up on Facebook ‘Hey Perth, Does anyone know anyone with 2 seated Katy Perry tickets for Friday night for sale? I’m getting desperate. Desperate enough to admit on Facebook that I want Katy Perry tickets.’ Still no joy.

Then I had a stroke of luck – I found an ad on Gumtree for two tickets, seated, on Friday night, wanting only the face value of the tickets (PLENTY of people on there want more than double face value, they’re the reason why the tickets sell out so quickly – what complete a-holes). I texted the seller and they responded that the tickets were sold, but if the buyer fell through, they’d contact me first. I didn’t feel confident.

Imagine my surprise when on Tuesday, three days before the show, I got a text saying the those tickets were available. I could not believe it. I told Mairéad we were in and overjoyed she promptly decided she wanted to dress as Katy Perry from the Roar video. I drove an hour and 20 minutes to collect the tickets, gushed my thanks to the seller, even saying that he’d made a 5 year old girl very happy and went back to my car triumphant. I sat down in the driver’s seat to look at the glorious tickets…and saw that they weren’t seated together. They weren’t even in the same block of seats. And this wasn’t mentioned in the ad.

What was I supposed to do? Actually sit separately? Go and somehow find the people sitting near us and ask them to swap? Attach her to a leash that ran across the length Perth Arena? I was nearly crying. In the end, the seller agreed to take the tickets and refund the money. Thank God.

So I drove back home with no tickets and a sinking feeling in my guts.

And then, my friend told me on Wednesday that he was giving me his tickets. He couldn’t go, and he knew (from my Facebook whinging) about what had happened and how long I’d been looking. I still can’t get over his amazing generosity.

So, with thanks to him, we’re actually off tonight. I’ve made her the Roar music video outfit, a leopard boob tube (she wanted a bra top but that’s a bit much for a 5 year old), and a grass skirt, with a floral headband. I showed it to Mairéad when she got home from school last night, and she hasn’t taken it off – she even wore it to bed. I asked her what I should wear tonight, and she said I could go as the elephant. Nice.

What a drama it was getting these tickets. I was hot, I was cold. It was yes, it was no. I was in, I was out. I was up, I was down. But I’m grateful we have them. And I’m grateful to my friend. And I’m grateful that I don’t have to disappoint my child. But mostly I’m incredibly grateful that my kids as yet have no clue who 1Direction are.

But I think, for a while, I’m going to stick to the shows that have pram parking and not an over 18’s section. Just for a while.