Being a good girl, for once

I spent today at the O2 Arena in Greenwich, formerly known as the Millennium Dome, at a professional conference - the same one I went to at Lord's last year. Actually, this one was in the excruciatingly-named IndigO2, a mini-venue inside the massive tent. The size of the damn thing never fails to amaze me.

As it happened, who should be playing there tonight?

This meant we had to endure an extremely lame crack by one of the speakers about the economy being "even more depressing than Leonard Cohen". Weak.

Furthermore, one of my fellow delegates had a spare ticket going. And was willing to sell it for less than the £75 (ouch!) face value. And I already at the venue so wouldn't have had to trek across London to get there...

But I took a deep breath, put my sensible hat on, and declined, for a number of very good reasons:

• Tonight was a gym night not a going out night. I've lost a stone so far in the attempt to look better in the wedding photos, and those calories won't burn themselves.
• Given our over-exuberance with booking entertainment for said wedding, I really shouldn't spend the money, even at less than face value. Hell, what with the depressing economy and the sinking of the pound to only $1.50 for the first time in years, I've just decided I mustn't buy any more yarn from the States (or anything else in dollars) for the foreseeable future. I shouldn't buy concert tickets either, even in sterling.
• I actually saw Mr Cohen on Tuesday night this week, in Bournemouth, my home town. He was brilliant, of course. He is a god. This wouldn't have been half as good, being in the cavernous O2, and on my own as it was only a single seat on offer (I don't mind going to concerts alone as such, but wasn't up for doing so tonight). The show in Bournemouth was amazing, he did "The Partisan" this time so there was even singing in French, and our seats in the BIC were even closer than at Manchester. I didn't take my camera though.
• Oh yes, and because I vowed earlier in the year that I would never set foot in the O2 again for a concert, because it is so horrible. Back on that blog entry, I even said that I would not go back there, even for Leonard Cohen. Mind you, that was before he was touring, when I thought he never would again. Still, I do keep my word.

As an aside, the person offering the ticket has seen Mr Cohen twenty times this year, so far. And you think I'm obsessed?! Even though I've seen R.E.M. another three times since I last blogged about them (Southampton, Twickenham and Copenhagen over the summer), that only makes 18 in my whole life. I'm jealous, of course.

So I headed off home to the delights of sitting on the exercise bike watching MTV. However I did stop to purposefully walk back and forth across the Prime Meridian a few times:

I have photos, not yet blogged, of me doing much the same on the Equator in Quito, back in May, and I have a small sense of satisfaction at having been to both zeros in one year. I would like to go to 0,0, just to say I've been, but that seems to be somewhere off the coast of Nigeria so I think it's unlikely any time soon. Instead I am now sat at home listening to a bootleg of the Manchester concert and only just regretting not taking that ticket...