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The plastic poncho as fashion statement

Singin' in the rain

A good 90% of those at the Andre Rieu concert were wearing plastic ponchos. Very classy, Judi. Mind you, those without ponchos were experiencing poncho envy. At one stage the guy sitting in front of me put up his umbrella, totally blocking my view. My tap on his shoulder was very polite, though he could possibly hear the grinding of my teeth.

The published timetable said that there would be eight buses in total to take people from our rather large bit of north-western Sydney to ANZ Stadium. This was obviously not going to be anywhere near enough, so we drove several kilometres past our nearest bus stop (and past queues of wating people) to pick up a bus earlier in the route. I should have known that Sydney has learnt valuable lessons from the Olympics. The published timetable bore no relationship at all to reality, and, by the time we had parked, there were plenty of buses.

As we were walking from the bus to the stadium, we were able to enjoy the full fury of a thunderstorm. There were pathetic groups of people (including the six of us) clustered under any shelter they could find.

We bought bubbly (in rather cute plastic flutes) on our way in. The rain diluted it somewhat – it’s quite difficult to drink when you are trying to keep dry under a poncho, even if the thunder and lightning have stopped.

We were in row 10 in the tiered stands. It was a great view, but we figure about row 20 would have had us under cover, without significantly reducing the view. It did stop raining about half an hour into the show. However, when it was time for interval, Andre announced that more rain was on the way. He skipped interval; this meant he was on stage for three hours without a break. Quite impressive. The queue for the ladies after the show was also impressive.

We had some luck catching a bus home. There were two routes servicing our area – 5A and 5B. There was a very long queue, but there was also a 5B sitting there with almost no-one on it. We went up to a lovely lady who was ushering people into buses. She had been trying in vain to get people onto the 5B. We were very happy to get out of the rain and take the seats.

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