I think I might finally be ready to talk about my first Libera experience from May 2010 in Arundel. As I came back to Paris, I just couldn't write everything down, as it would mean that everything was indeed finished.
Good thing I took notes during the concert, and the memory of their performance is pretty clear !
First of all, i have to set the circumstances in which i left. It had been already about two months that we knew that a concert would take place in Europe, following the Asian Tour. At first, it seemed impossible to me that I would go, because of my parents, who have a significant importance in something big like a trip to London. But because of a good optimistic point of view that I had decided to take, I thought that I might as well try. So I started to see how much this trip would cost, including hôtels, the train to Arundel, etc. It was the only thing I would do when I came back from school, the point being to find the cheapest way trip possible.
I had of course already told my parents about this concert, and they had been pretty « cool » at the idea of a trip to London (which kind of surprised me.). But after a while, their opinions got less good, because of the cost, and of my exams at the end of the year.
Two weeks before the concert, I created a diaporama/presentation on London, Libera and Arundel. You can find it here, if you want. Needless to say I had a lot of fun creating it :) After showing it to my parents, they were back to being OK about this project, and they were supposed to give me an answer the next day. Finally, only two days before the concert, my parents said yes, under conditions of course.
We had decided that my Mom and I would take the Eurostar saturday morning, we would stay in London saturday night to go to mass on sunday morning. It was the perfect plan !
Saturday the 15th had finally arrived, my Mom and I were in the train. After 40minutes, it stopped. There was a fire in the Chunnel. I started to lose hope, since the train stopped for 2 hours, at least. As you can imagine, since I'm writing this, the train started again ! :)
We finally got into London, quite late, we just had time to drop our bags at the hôtel and go back to Victoria Station to take the train to Arundel. Now, that train, we almost missed. This day was quite full of emotions !
After an hour and some, we could see the Arundel castle in the distance. The excitement was really high, all this was completely surreal to me.
The town of Arundel was very pretty, we stopped in a couple shops, one of which was a candy shop, whose salesman had been to the last Arundel Libera concert, and who asked me if he should go this year too. What kind of a question is that ?! We then went over to the cathedral, where I knew a couple members of the french forum were already queuing for a while already.
As we got to the cathedral, at 4:45pm, we could hear the rehearsal more particularly : Ben's Exsultate. It was like a dream to me, I was over excited, I was explaining to my Mom who was singing, that you had to remember his name because he's really important in the current Libera history, etc. I'm actually not sure she understood everything, i was talking so fast !
During the next 10minutes, I tryied putting names and pseudonyms to the faces I was then discovering. It's not as easy as it sounds !
We then went with Lorenzom to have a drink in the Inn accross the street. As we were coming out, I noticed i forgot my scarfe inside, so my mom and Lorenzom went back to the cathedral to get back in the line, while I went back to get it. As I was coming out, all the Libera boys were walking past me. No need to say that I was basically under schock for a minute ! These boys I had been listening to for 4 years, who I admired from a distance, were right here, less than 2meters away from me ! I was in Heaven ! I then started taking them in picture, as I saw everyone else was doing the same (I wasn't sure that I was allowed to). When I rejoined the rest of the group, we saw Big-Ben, Mini-Ben and Luke come out of the cathedral, smiling from ear to ear.
An actual line was starting to form, and the french community, in the front, was passing a test on the different choristers that we had to recognize on the pictures printed on the programm, which had just been handed out. We were discovering new names, some that reminded us of an other boy, like Matthew Madine (Josh's brother) and Jude Collins (Luke's brother). Other names didn't ring a bell at all : Matthew Jansen, Alex Godden, Dylan Duffy...
Finally, after a long wait, the doors opened...
