Months and months ago I bought tickets to see Mika play in Stockholm on March 18. I had wanted Olof to go with me, but he doesn’t travel unless he absolutely can’t avoid it, so I offered the second ticket to Lydia. She’s not a huge Mika fan and her response to my invitation was lukewarm at best, but the lure of big-city shopping ultimately won her over. Her best friend, on the other hand, loves Mika, so I decided to invite her along as well, figuring it’d be fun to see the show with another fan, and also counting on her to act as a buffer between me and Lydia.

To be perfectly honest, I’d been dreading the trip and looking forward to it in equal measure almost since I started planning it, and it turns out my ambivalence was not unwarranted. Lydia is thirteen, which pretty much says all you need to know to be able to work out how the trip went. One of these days I’ll laugh about it, I’m sure.

The concert was amazing, though, and totally worth the hour-plus of queueing outside in freezing temperatures we had to do to get decent spots. When the show started, I was in the third row back, and for at least a couple of songs I was in the second row (thanks in no small part to the crush of people pushing me up from behind). About a third of the way through the show, the heat and lack of air and badly-behaved teenagers up front were too much for me, and I moved back a few rows to where Lydia and Alicia had ended up.

Just a glance at Lydia’s expression told me that she did not share my opinion of the amazing-ness, and although I wasn’t surprised, I was disappointed when she said she wanted to leave. After another song or two, I cleared a path through the crowd for the two of them, and they returned to the hotel while I spent the rest of the concert off to the side. Luckily, it was a small venue, so even then I was close to the stage and had a good view of the rest of the show. It did suck, though, that from that point my attention was divided between wondering what they were up to and watching the performance. I even caught myself a couple of times wishing for it to be over soon so I could get back to the girls, which is absolutely *not* where I wanted my thoughts to be just then.

Still, it wasn’t all bad, and I’m glad we went. Like I said, the concert was amazing, and I spent a handful of really excellent moments watching the girls experience Stockholm together. Believe it or not, I would take them again, as long as it was just for shopping and sight-seeing, and not for something that I really wanted to do myself. Concerts are right out until further notice.