We generally avoid London at the weekend. It’s usually a bit of a disappointment and the journey back is horrible. So this time, as we’d planned a Sunday night out, we decided to do things differently, and booked ourselves a ridiculously cheap hotel for the night. It was £40 between two. It should have been four times that.

What a difference it made. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I was actually quite excited about going into town. We trundled up late on Sunday afternoon and checked in to our small top-floor room. It was hot and basic but clean and comfortable, and somewhere to leave our bags as we headed down to the South Bank.

We’d booked tickets to see Saint Etienne, about which I know very little and Rich knows an awful lot. The last time we’d seen them was as they performed the live soundtrack to This is Tomorrow, their film about the Festival of Britain. A big part of that festival had centred on the Royal Festival Hall, and the film was a behind the scenes documentary on its first big renovation, more than 50 years later.

Anyway, that wasn’t yesterday’s concert. Yesterday it was part of a three-night festival celebrating the Heavenly record label, called Forever Heavenly. I’d not knowingly heard of Heavenly before, but as well as Saint Etienne it was the musical home of the Beth Orton and Edwyn Collins.

Neither had I been to the Queen Elizabeth Hall before. It’s not too large to be impersonal, yet blends well with the concrete brutalism so characteristic of much of the South Bank. As such, even though we were in the upper half of the seating, we still felt fairly close to the stage, even after a big surge of fans had seen half the audience relocate to the aisles and walkways down at the front.

It was a short concert, but a good one, and I recognised more than I’d expected and I’d certainly not hesitate to go again. Even the supports were good, and they both opened our ears to some music neither of us had heard before.

As we came out at half ten, it felt great to know we didn’t have to catch the train home, and we celebrated with a drink at the Skylon, before catching the last tube (to our albeit temporary) home.

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