At the end of King Of The Mountain though, everything changes. There is an explosion and we are showered with confetti that quotes Tennyson’s poem ‘The Coming Of Arthur’. A screen fills the front of the stage and we see a film of an amateur astronomer in conversation with the coastguard. He is agitated, having received a phone call that a ship is sinking and there may be people in the water. This is not the sort of thing that happens at a Kylie Minogue concert. The film ends, the screen drops and what happens next is the most surreal, brilliant, inventive and emotionally arresting experience I have ever seen at a music gig. Kate performs The Ninth

At times Bertie plays the part of a painter in front of a massive canvas while behind Kate there are enormous rear-of-stage projections of birds in flight and stunning sunsets. A puppeteer appears on stage with an almost full size human artists model which he manipulates through the set. It has a childlike quality and is totally believable as another person on stage. At one point Kate sings over a blackbirds song in perfect unison. On paper, this sounds like a crazy idea, but in the context of the show, it is another jaw dropping moment. The band, the backing singers and half a dozen extra performers all taking on various roles in costume, acting, dancing and singing.

At the crescendo of the final song Aerial, we see the wooden puppet come to life and run around the stage having escaped from its puppeteer, the trees that the artist painted earlier are made real and come crashing down from the roof of the theatre right through the grand piano she plays, it snows on stage, the band turn into birds and feathers fall from the rafters and all of this building confusion and noise comes to a single point where at the end of the song and, propelled to the edge of the stage by the rest of her band, Kate runs forwards and we realise she has turned into the blackbird she mimicked earlier on. She spreads her immense blackbird wings and flies off the stage and hovers twenty feet above it in mid-air before the lights go out. It is another amazing moment in a night of amazing moments, and 3,400 people collectively gasp in astonishment as she defies gravity.

Coming back for an encore and trying to follow such a spectacle was never going to be easy, but follow it she does, and in the most beautiful way. She walks on stage to another standing ovation, this time alone. For the first time that evening, and under a single spotlight, she accompanies herself on the piano as she sings Among Angels from Fifty Words For Snow, a bluesy torch song about needing support in a time of crisis and not realising that the support you crave is somehow all about you. After an absence from the stage for all this time, the line ‘There’s someone who’s loved you forever / but you don’t know it’ has a particular poignancy. It is a line that anyone in the audience could have sung to her. Now heard without the rest of her band, her voice can be heard to be a true thing of beauty, and the only sound apart from her and the piano, is of 3,400 people holding their breath, their eyes full of tears.

It is an utterly sublime moment, and it is beautiful beyond compare.

The band come on for a final song, a rousing singalong version of Cloudbusting. Everybody is smiling and laughing – the audience, the band, Kate and even the security guards in the venue cannot quite believe what is happening, there is nothing but love and joy in the room.

All too soon the show is over and we are walking out through the snow, the confetti and the feathers and pushed back into the harsh reality of West London traffic system, every last one of us stunned by the preceding three hours.

Those of us expecting a straight performance of the greatest hits probably went home disappointed, but then again, Kate Bush has never done we expect her to. No other artist writes songs from the point of view of an unborn foetus, or an aboriginal getting knocked down by careless drivers or a woman mourning her dead soldier son. There were no songs from the first four albums or The Sensual World, so no Wuthering Heights or Babooshka….but nobody went home disappointed. They went home stunned and amazed and running out of superlatives to describe an event that employed music, mime, performance, creative set design, puppetry, film, lighting, drama and dance with all of those elements displaying flair, imagination and creativity. There were no video walls just for the sake of them, nor pointlessly extravagant costumes or needless special effects. Everything on stage was there for a reason, to aid the telling of the story, and it showed a remarkable dedication and clarity.
A personal note posted on her website before the gigs asked people not to use cameras or take photos as it would help both performers and audience share in the experience, and such is the respect that people have, there was not a single camera or phone raised towards the stage.

Once again, and just as she did 35 years ago, she has reset the bar incredibly high. Maybe these concerts will once again reshape the future of live performance for those brave enough to take risks and fully realise an artistic vision….but then you realise that there aren’t that many artists these days that have an artistic vision, that can draw together so many different artforms into a single cohesive experience. While she took a massive risk in the scale and scope of these shows, it was a risk that paid off handsomely.

After 35 years of waiting, I’d all but given up on the idea of seeing her playing live again, so it was a concert I never thought I’d see.
It was an event I waited 12,294 days for, and it was worth the wait.

If music has a goddess, it is Kate Bush.