Dear Diary, I saw the Eras Tour, and found my people

It was rare, I was there, I remember it...

(Bonus post this week, because I’m going to need Friday’s newsletter to talk about the anonymous hate mail my 6-year-old got this week: don’t say I didn’t warn you…)

First up: guys, I wore the sequins!

I’m calling it my ‘Tortured Poets Department’ look. Let’s just pretend that works…

Not the original sequins, I hasten to add. Those sequins didn’t look right with the winter coat I knew I was going to have to take — IN JUNE, lest we forget how much this has annoyed me — so these are the last-minute emergency sequins I had to pay extra to have delivered the night before the show, and then wear with my trusty thermal vest underneath, a denim jacket on top, and then the aforementioned winter coat tied around my waist.

Anyway, the good news is that I didn’t actually have to wear the coat until we left the stadium. And the even better news is that the concert was straight-up amazing. Amazing.

The ACTUAL Taylor Swift, in a photo taken by me!

I read a review of it in The Scotsman where the writer said “it was weird seeing her human-sized”, and that was my main thought, too. I just kept thinking, “Wow, she’s actually REAL,” as if this was some kind of major revelation that I could not possibly have predicted. At the same time, though, everything about her is so familiar it’s almost as if you know her personally. At one point she waved at the crowd, and I found myself waving back enthusiastically, before remembering I was actually just looking at her image on the screen, because she was at the other end of the stage at the time, and not even looking in my direction, let alone at me.

But I guess that’s part of the magic, isn’t it? That there can be over 73,000 people in the stadium (the largest crowd to ever attend a concert in Scotland), but when she sings your favourite song, it still feels like it’s just for you. That you can have seen so many clips of the tour online that you know exactly what’s going to happen at every single stage of it, but still be amazed and delighted when it does. It’s not the least bit surprising when the flower petals pull back and Miss Americana strikes up, for instance, but you scream with excitement at it anyway, because you know you’re witnessing something iconic, that you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

Honestly, I’ve been to quite a few concerts in my time, but I have never, ever experienced anything quite like this, and I’m not sure I ever will again. Right from the moment we followed a trail of glitter onto a bus filled with women in sequins, the atmosphere was just incredible. I think I’d cried about five times before we even made it into the stadium. And then, standing there surrounded by thousands of people who all know and love the same songs I’ve been quietly obsessing over for years was something else again…

I’ve always been something of a solitary Swiftie, if that’s a thing. She may be the biggest artist in the world right now, but there are very few people in my ‘real’ life who’d count themselves as ‘fans’, which means I don’t really have anyone to analyze lyrics with, or compare notes on our favourites. On the few occasions when her music does come up in discussion, I always seem to end up having to defend myself against accusations of liking something that’s “just for kids” (‘Cos little kids are going wild for The Tortured Poets Department, obvs. Apparently Down Bad is all the rage at soft play parties this summer…), or explain that yes, she does actually write her own music, and not all of it sounds like Shake It Off, give me strength.

But then suddenly there I was, surrounded by 73,000 people who also knew every word to every song, and who screamed themselves hoarse at the sight of a cleaning cart being wheeled towards the stage, and I think it was quite possibly the first time in my entire life I’ve thought, YES. These are my people. I am finally with my people.

MY PEOPLE

If you're going to the Eras Tour this year, I hope you have the best day, and find your people. I also hope your weather is kinder to you than ours was on night two in Edinburgh: and, if it isn't, I hope this post will at least help reassure you that two pairs of tights and a thermal vest may not be 'rock-n-roll', exactly, but they should do the job...