We drove into town for the show and grabbed a KFC. This was to prove to be a mistake!

My husband noticed that I was in wearing khol around my bottom eyelid. He thought it looked quite cool.

We got to the Guildhall twenty minutes before the show was due to start. The bloody door people confiscated our sweets and water! They gave us a ticket to reclaim them later.

The Guildhall in Southampton is a Hellenistic piece of civil architecture. The inside is a little tired looking, but has a large stage and a high ceiling. We’d been in it one summer when small stalls were inside for Pride.

When the lights dimmed for the show to start, the hall wasn’t even a third full. It looked like there were a couple of hen parties that had come to make it part of the celebration. There were a lot of couples who looked like they’d retired, or weren’t far off it. There were young people as well

ABBA is timeless.

The band came onto the stage. There was some hesitancy from the audience about whether they were supposed to clap, but when the women came on the applause rang out and filled the hall.

The first number was Voulez Vous. There were a couple of sound issues. The Agnetha character shouted down the hall at the sound guy that they couldn’t hear themselves because it was too loud. I guess that got fixed. There was the occasional feedback screen, but I guess you have to expect that from live music.

Throughout the performance, the performers pretended to be Swedish, which was kind of funny – except that Agnetha had forgotten to put the voice on when she was shouting at the subs guys.

The whole show lasted two hours, with a fifteen minute interval. It was hit after hit, and the music and singing was faithful. Anni-Fryd had a bit of a vibrato.

Even the guys could sing, and the musical solos were awesome!

The drum solo hurt my ears and was like a helicopter taking off.

Throughout the whole show we sang and danced along with most of the other people in the room.

The room might have been less than half full, but the band were completely professional and performed as though it was a packed house.

Earlier this year, we went to see ABBA Voyager in London. This was much better than that! The effects in Voyager were incredible, but I came away feeling robbed because there was so much that was missed – and it wasn’t as though the Abbatars were going to get tired.

Not a hit was missed.

Returning to the KFC: this plus the diet pepsi created an unstable mixture and at the end of the evening I felt quite nauseous.

When we got home, we put Strictly Come Dancing on so that we wouldn’t hear the winner announced in the radio before we seen the show. I’m happy with who won.

It was 1am by the time I got to bed, and my tummy was quite upset; I barely slept.

This morning, while brushing my teeth, I was sick several times, and have been ill all day. This isn’t the way I hoped that would go … I’d told my husband that is double pumped the testosterone, which was a sort of hint that I was “up for it”.

I could have gone to ABBA on my own, but to have a really great time I needed my husband. It was a smashing evening together.