Saturday dawned warm and sunny, growing more and more humid during the day - the perfect conditions for seeing Ray Davies in an outdoor gig at Kenwood House in Hampstead. Ha.

While on the train, the clouds started forming like in a Harry Potter trailer and by the time I got to Finsbury Park the heavens had opened. The Northern line was all upsy-dutch with stations closed due to flooding and we then had to wait at Archway station *35* minutes for a 210 bus to take us to the bloody place.
Like... Ray I know this is your manor but why not play somewhere adjacent to a bloody tube station? Needless to say by the time we schlepped over the muddy grounds to the stage I had a face on me - not helped by the Candice-Marie & Keith types who were there with their picnic hampers, scraped-back hair and sandals, golfing umbrellas etc. who made up most of the audience.
Ray Davies appeared on stage without announcement while I was queuing at the burger stand and Owen was in the lengthy bar wagon queue. Finally grabbing a burger for me, a bun for Owen - so much for Hampstead being a vegetarian paradise - and a couple of cans of Coke we managed to plonk ourselves in our centrally located deckchairs about 10 rows back from the stage. I was just getting into the swing of it... when I felt the raindrops.

I toughed it out as long as I could in my lovely new Pet Shop Boys cap but as it got heavier and the umbrellas started popping up I had to concede defeat and shelter under mine. Owen proved necessity was the mother of invention by ripping open his polythene rubbish sack we had nicked from by the burger wagon and fashioned himself a very punk all-in-one rain cloak but eventually he too had to give in and get the brolly out.

So the rest of the evening was spent doing one or all of the following:
a) rearranging my polythene rubbish sack over my legs to keep them dry
b) try and arrange my brolly so it didn't dribble all over Owen's shoulder
c) laughing hysterically at the sheer absurdity of it all...

Yet despite all this I enjoyed Ray Davies a lot! He gamely carried on with his set which combined songs with his band and a selection backed by the Crouch End Choir as heard on his new album "A Kinks Choral Collection". It somehow seemed so appropriate... listening to Ray singing his caustic but loving songs of plucky Little Englanders as we huddled under umbrellas in the rain in the grounds of a stately home.

And what an amazing set list - "I'm Not Like Everybody Else", "Where Have All The Good Times Gone", "Come Dancing", "Celluloid Heroes", "All Day And All Of The Night", "Sunny Afternoon" - ha!, "Shangri-La", "Victoria", "See My Friends", "Dedicated Follower of Fashion", "A Well-Respected Man", a medley from "The Village Green Preservation Society" and "You Really Got Me". I sang along with "Days" - singing the Kirsty MacColl version of course - and despite the rain, despite the absurd surroundings, when he sang about Terry & Julie crossing over the river in "Waterloo Sunset", I happily blubbed. I have no idea why that song effects me so strongly.
He followed all of these with a great version of "Lola" which we happily sung along with.

After all this we couldn't face the journey back so Owen called for an Addison Lee cab which whisked us home - well until we hit the crowds leaving Neil Young's show at Hyde Park!
I know which Sixties icon I would rather sit through... rain or no rain.