My daughter, me, and India.Arie

A couple of years ago, at least, could be more (told you, I'm terrible with dates), I discovered the glorious singer India.Arie. Since then, India has been walking beside me, through my sad times, through my happy times. She's just that kind of a gal.

One day, I introduced India to my daughter, and then I got a bit jealous, because they seemed to like hanging with each other more than with little ol' me. But that's the risk you take with introducing friends. I could deal with it.

About a year later, I was browsing through the paper and was struck dumb by an article which declared that India.Arie was coming to Sydney. She was scheduled to perform live - LIVE !!! - at a theatre not more than a 20 minute drive from my house. I bought tickets on the spot and left the newspaper clipping on my daughter's bed with a note which said "guess where we're going Saturday night?" Oh my. There were shrieks of delight, much hopping around, and then a frantic dash to the stereo to put on some India.Arie and groove in front of the mirror. And that was just me.

That Saturday night we arrived at the theatre very, very early because, you see, we had purchased tickets which allowed us to stand RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE STAGE, and we wanted to be in THE VERY FIRST ROW OF PEOPLE in the front of the stage. Our plan succeeded, we were in fact so close to the stage we were touching it. It was quite clever of us to have brought snacks and drinks with us, because we had a good hour to kill, standing there, touching the stage.

At this point, I would like to show you a picture of what my daughter and I looked like touching India.Arie's stage, but I can't, because we decided not to take any photographs. We wanted to enjoy the moment, and not obsess about taking photos every minute (I forgot the camera).

I can honestly say that the concert which followed was one of the happiest couple of hours of my life. It was that good. What added to my enjoyment was that from our vantage point we could see the people standing in the wings backstage, and one of these was India's mother. At a certain point during her performance, India's skirt moved a bit down. It was only an extra centimetre, but I could immediately see India's mother was NOT HAPPY with the extra skin on show. Then, dear reader, she actually signalled India to come to her in the wings. And India actually laughed and said to the audience "hey guys, I want you to meet my mom, come on out mom. My mom thinks my skirt is too low so she's gonna fix it for me while I play my guitar a bit for you." And that's what they did.

I simply adore India.Arie's mum, and if you want to see what she looks like you can watch the fabulous video of "I Am Not My Hair". She dances from 1.13 to 1.15, brief but spectacular.

So now I'm sitting here on my sofa, no I'm NOT still in my pyjamas, I've got my grotty dog-walking clothes on. So, yes, where was I...I'm sitting here on my sofa and thinking that I would like to show you a video of India.Arie singing live. However, my daughter just walked in and was TERRIBLY SHOCKED at the quality of the video I have chosen. So she is making me insert the lyrics as well (with apologies to badger, whose Song Lyric Saturdays are legend).

This song is called "There's Hope", and it's cheering me up on this rainy Wednesday morning: