OK, so snow happens pretty much every year, and it’s always pretty much the same, yet it still manages to be exciting all over again every time. Maybe it’s because we rarely had snow when I was growing up, as I did, in the sunny South. Or maybe it’s just because snow covers a multitude of sins and makes the world a quieter, prettier place.

So Andy and I took Isaac out for a (very short) walk in the snow yesterday and I thought I would blog a few of the pictures we took while we were out, so here they are.

Getting ready for an Arctic expedition, or so you would think!

Trekking through the snow with daddy…

I told you snow makes the world look pretty (Andy took this one!)

Insisting on being carried by (pregnant) mummy…

I love snow!

OK, I’m testing out the “better late than never” theory again because I have been wanting to blog about the Coldplay gig for ages but never got round to it. It actually happened almost 2 months ago now (how time flies!) so maybe the moment’s passed, but hey, if no-one reads this, it doesn’t really matter.

So my lovely big brother Huw paid for me to go with him to see Coldplay at Wembley for my birthday and it was AMAZING!

(This is going to be a long post, by the way, so if you are planning to read it, you might want to get yourself comfy with a cup of tea before you start).

I’ll start with the support acts. Actually, no I won’t, I’ll start with the venue. For anyone who has not yet had the privilege of going to the new Wembley Stadium (sorry beb), it is immense. We entered at the end of Wembley Way at ground level and were directed up an escalator which was getting on for being as long as most of the London Underground escalators. We were then directed around a corner, and up another similar-sized escalator. From there, we walked around maybe a sixth of the circumference of the stadium before being able to emerge onto the stands. We showed the steward our tickets and the instructions that followed went along the lines of “go up those steps, keep going a bit further up, then go a little bit further up until you’re about as far up as you can get, then you can sit down”. We were far up, but it was cool, and didn’t actually matter too much due to the massive screens on either side of the stage which showed all the important stuff anyway! So, basically, Wembley Stadium is quite large and there were quite a few people there…

So, the support acts. We missed White Lies, but they were on at 4:00 in the afternoon, so I’m not thinking we missed much there… I had been quite looking forward to seeing Girls Aloud (guilty pleasure…) but they were also on very early in the evening, and we just arrived in time to see the last one and a half tracks. And even that small amount managed to be a huge disappointment. They didn’t dance at all (OK, so they may have danced earlier in the set, but you’d think they’d finish on a big dancy one if they were doing any like that) and just stood at their static microphones, which were about 8 feet apart from each other, so they didn’t even look like a coherent group. And, granted, it may just have been because the sound was all set up for Coldplay, but they sounded terrible. Much as I love Cheryl (and for some unaccountable reason, I really do), I just can’t think of a single good thing to say about them.

So then we had Jay-Z. Huw and I kind of unspokenly agreed to give him a go and see if he was any good, but after a couple of tracks I leant over and said “I feel very old. I just don’t get him” and Huw agreed. In addition to just being old and middle class and white (all of which, I feel, had an impact on the experience), there was the added issue that the sound was, again, terrible, and rap loses a certain something when you can’t understand the words. Like, the point. Anyway, we ended up using the time to get some food (more on that in a minute) but before we left the arena we did experience the most awesome moment of the night (so far) in Empire state of Mind. Oh my word, Alicia Keys was incredible, and worth enduring four tracks of unintelligible rap just for the experience of hearing her amazing voice. I’m running out of superlatives to use. She was good. Very good.

So, the food. That wasn’t really what I wanted to comment on, but it is related. At the front of Wembley Stadium there is a balcony which over-looks Wembley Way. Pretty cool in its own right but if you turn around, and look upwards, you get a fantastic view of the arches over the stadium, which looked really beautiful against the dark night sky. We took our standard stadium-fare meals out onto said balcony and enjoyed the view far more than we would have enjoyed Jay-Z.

And on to the main event. Coldplay came on stage at about 9:00 in the end. The stage was awesome, with these massive globes which came down from the ceiling of the arch (hard to describe, but none of my photos really showed it properly so my inadequate description will have to do. The picture below is just quite good) over the stage, with various images projected onto them, or maybe from inside them, I’m not sure, but it looked cool, anyway.

I wish I had blogged about this nearer the time because I would have remembered the details of the tracks they performed and how they did them much better than I can now, but suffice it to say that Viva la Vida was brilliant. Yellow, which, controversially is not one of my favourite tracks, was great, with a load of massive yellow balloons being released into the crowd at the beginning of the track. Mysteriously, they had all but disappeared by the end of the following track…!

Fix You was suitably melancholy and touching, but also very beautiful. I have to confess I didn’t know all the tracks they played (and still don’t) and consequently the ones I did recognise are the ones that really stuck in my head. There was one particularly memorable moment, though, when they walked through to a little square stage in the middle of the standing spectators down on the pitch and, on the way, were joined by Simon Pegg, who then joined in with the next track. Slightly bizarre, to say the least! I can’t remember what songs they did (I really should have blogged about this weeks ago) but they involved harmonicas, which are always good for entertainment!

They ended with a big track (can’t believe I can’t even remember what they finished on!) with confetti falling from the ceiling in huge quantities. You can’t tell from the photo, but each piece of confetti is shaped like a butterfly. Bit girly for a rock band!

The final challenge of the night was to find the way back onto Wembley Way. Instead of following the crowds, like any normal person, this girl-who-has-no-sense-of-direction decided it would be better to go against the flow and ended taking us about twice as long as if we’d just done the sensible thing to start with! Still, we eventually made it back onto Wembley Way and joined the crowds heading for the station. The image below and the sound of thousands of people spontaneously bursting into the refrain from Viva la Vida will stay with me for a long time to come.

Thanks Huw.