the evening suddenly improved when the folk singer girl support act finally left the stage. it wasn’t that she sang badly, and really, she only played her guitar out of key once. her banter seemed a little self-indulgent, given that if she had not chatted as much, she could have gotten off stage quicker. maybe it was just that we thought bruce cockburn would come on at 9.30, and since it was actually folk singer girl who started keening about war at that time, we figured that the show wouldn’t be over until at least 11.30. way past bedtime. so not roskenroll. plus, it was like watching phoebe buffay.

the boy had said, as we walked up to the basement, “i hope he doesn’t just play all new songs.” having heard none of anything, they would all be new to me. it turned out that they were all things of beauty. how does a man play a guitar and make it sound like two guitars and a bass? and with just ten fingers! and what’s with that “sufi-rockabilly”? i was torn between wanting to listen to him all night, and wanting to go home to bed. fortunately, two encores took us past bruce’s bedtime too, so he said.

(i’m a poet and i don’t even know it)

midnight, i was finally able to step away from the annoying angelica houston lookalike who over the course of the show had been stepping backwards and backwards and rubbing her ass on me and flicking her scrubby ponytail into my face and sticking her handbag into my arm. but even she couldn’t spoil the big night out. yay bruce!

also, in an attempt to reverse the blood donation-induced anaemia, i had a hamburger (with beetroot) for lunch. all round, a pretty good day.