I didn’t watch the royal wedding, not because I’m a rabid anti monarchist or a hater of inbred gits (I’m not). I just had somewhere better to be.

I took my 11 year old daughter out for dinner and then we went to see the Indigo Girls do their last Australian concert.

We went to Chinta Blues in Acland Street for dinner. We scoffed down garlic prawns, san choi bao and green tea; away from the shoes on the lounge room floor and the unstacked dishwasher we talked about the things we forget to talk about in every day life. What it’s like being taller than all our friends (handy when you want to see over a crowd or get something from a high shelf, but it can make us both feel awkward and self-conscious some times). How awful it is at school when you totally suck at sport and only your very best friends will want you on their soccer team. Why I studied accountancy at university (“it seems a bit silly mum, you can’t even do multiplication tables”) and how sometimes the most sensible choice is not always the best one. What she wants to do with her life (journalism and science) and how many things there are out there for her that she hasn’t even heard of yet. Boys and how it’s weird that they smell more than girls. She offered to promise never to have a boyfriend if I will buy her a pony (taken under advisement). How her friends are lovely, strong, interesting people who treat her with great respect and kindness and that this is not something she has just by luck. That one day she might actually like having an older brother and until that happens maybe she could stop trying so hard to annoy him (also taken under advisement). How awesome it is that she can now fit into all my shoes. What it’s like when you wake up at 4 in the morning and feel overwhelmed by the weight of being you. How utterly crap the Twilight books are and what an irritatingly dreary little drip Bella is. What a brilliant cook my mother is and how much it means to all of us that she and my daughter have so much fun together.

We had so much to talk about that we were late to the concert and missed most of the support act, which was a shame in a way because Henry Wagons was hilarious.

Then the Indigo Girls came on. We had very good seats, close enough to see the Girls clearly. I says Girls, but they’re older than me and they’re deliberately, gloriously unglamorous. Emily Sailers, in jeans and a big t-shirt, could have passed unnoticed in a Country Women Association meeting. Amy Ray was a little bit Deitrich in pants, waistcoat and tie, but she wore it in a way that made you think of Deitrich lying on a couch on a Sunday afternoon with a glass of wine and a good book.

After 30 years of playing together their performance is utterly effortless, without the slightest touch of ennui. They told the audience their band was at home sulking because they couldn’t afford to ship them all out to Australia, and with just the two of them and endless series of slightly differently tuned acoustic guitars, banjos, mandolins and mouth organs they put out a show soaked in warmth, fun and magically perfect harmonising.

For my 11 year old, raised on the self conscious performance art of Lady Gaga, Avril Lavigne, Evanescence, Pink and Brittney Spears, this was something of a revelation. There were nearly 3,000 women, 4 or 5 blokes and us; when we all stood up under the Palias Theatre’s near perfect acoustics and roared out the chorus to Galileo, the sound was like nothing I’ve ever heard before.

In the car on the way home, as we sang along tunelessly to Become You, she looked sideways at me and said “they don’t ever use autotune or anything like that do they, they can just sing. And they write their own songs too, don’t they?” That was when I had my first fuddy duddy mum moment, I looked at her over my glasses and said “yes, it’s called being a musician, it makes quite a difference doesn’t it?”

And, as proof that the entire night had been an epic win, she didn’t roll her eyes, toss her head or say “whatever”, she just looked thoughtful and said “yes mum, I think you’re right.”

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