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Tuesday, March 2, 2010

The Concert That Almost Never Was (For Me)


We planned it carefully: Bought our tickets months ahead, booked the flight well in advance and left our hotel in central London two hours before the concert was to begin in the Wembley Arena. Despite all this me and my wife almost missed Elvis Presley In Concert thanks to the city's public transportation system.

Not only was the underground station where we were supposed to take "the tube" to the arena closed due to an emergency (we never found out what the emergency was). For whatever reason the fastest line to Wembley was also out of order that evening. And on top of that, the replacement buses didn't arrive.

But thanks to a guy dressed like Elvis that we talked to on the street (wasn't that hard guessing where he was heading) we soon found ourselves in a taxi together with Gary Aron – The Scottish Voice of Elvis, his fiancĂ©e, and another couple that, hearing we had come all the way from Sweden, "apologized, on behalf of England."

Funny how Elvis can bring together people that way. Despite being in a hurry, we had a pleasant drive to the arena, chatting about things having to do with the King, if we had been to Graceland and if we'd seen the show before, things like that. But even though the cab driver pushed the pedal to the metal, we arrived about a quarter of an hour late to the arena.

So from the taxi we ran, and were shown to our seats as Elvis belted out "Steamroller Blues" on the big screen. I looked around me, amazed by the number of people in the audience, then turned my attention to the stage and enjoyed the show. More about that in my next post.

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