We have played for these folks three times: twice at their festival and once for their concert series. We had to air the room out when we first arrived -- the groundskeppers seem to do a great job on the football pitches that surround the building but the building itself is getting a bit long in the tooth. Between some floor finish (linseed oil?) which never completely dries, and a healthy growth of mold on a back wall, the air was a bit thick. It improved when the doors and windows had all been opened and the ceiling fans turned on.

While the venue freshened itself up, we went into town and did a little shopping -- seems we're always doing a little shopping -- at the grocery store and the drug store and a second-hand store where Robert found a Suddoku-Rubix Cube. Just the thing for Terry it appeared although, in truth, it seems to have much more to do with Rubix than Sudoku. Among the groceries were a couple of barbequed chickens and two meters of baguette as well as some eat-this-right-away stilton. We did. And not just the cheese.

As we were finishing dinner, the staff arrived and the place became a hive of activity. With everything prepared, the doors were opened and in poured a capacity crowd. Mike and Nina opened the show as usual though without their fiddler this time. We had a rousing couple of sets with a really lively audience. We stayed in a hotel fairly close by and in the morning headed out across the Fens toward Cromer, a town with a great festival from all reports, and a place that we have neither played in nor even visited.

We played in the theatre at this artsy high school last year, so we were looking forward to coming back. This
day we did a workshop in the afternoon with a bunch o  Year 7 kids who were really easy to get along with and who had some interesting thoughts and questions about us and about music. We played and sang a bunch and then deconstructed vocal harmonies and instrumental bits. It was well received. I gather that they do theatre and dance as well as music and it sounds as if perhaps music is not the most desired of the three among the kids. Perhaps we may have raised their interest level a bit.

After the workshop we had a few hours to kill so we watched a Lyle Lovett concert on DVD, shot some hoops,
drank lots of coffee, watched a bit of a belly dancing class, and ate dinner. After dessert and coffee, it was
showtime. The theatre is not large but they were able to bring in chairs to increase their seating capacity by
about one third to accommodate everyone. Last year the stage was well lit but the audience was completely in the dark. I find it much easier to make contact with people if I can see their faces so we had the lighting tech put some light on the seats and we had a more interactive show.

We went home after the show and then turned around the next morning and headed back up to York for a tourist day. That was fun as ever. We went off in separate directions and just crossed paths occasionally during the day. I didn't actually do a great deal; just walked, read, drank coffee, had a sandwich, climbed the wall, walked, read, drank coffee, bought a couple of CDs and then went to Evensong at the Minster.

The settings for the service were by William Byrd and were both interesting and really beautiful. The choir was the men and the girls this time. In the very middle of the bigger girls, there was a pair of little red-headed
(twin?) novices, one in the decani and one in the cantoris, who hadn't earned their surplices yet. They were unbelievably tiny and as sweet as could be. It sounded terrific (as usual). When that was done, we assembled
under my favourite medieval stained glass windows and then it was off for dinner and back home.

When we first played in York, beginning about 9 years ago, it was in the second floor concert room of the Black Swan pub. The Swan is about 500 years old and was once home to General Wolfe (when he was just a pup and had not yet 'saved' Canada). Playing there was always a riot but the room had a capacity of about 40 people... we always put in about 70 making it was pretty tight but great fun! So, while we looked forward to a seating capacity increase of about 400%, it was with a slightly wistful aspect that we regarded a move across town to the Centre for Early Music.

By its name you might expect it to be a bit stiff. This 700ish year old church was wrescued from wrack and wruin and turned into a performance venue about eight years ago. Many interesting folks from all genres of music have played there and we are delighted to be numbered among them.

We drove up to York in the early afternoon and loaded in. The stage was not really wide enough to accommodate our collective breadth, but it was a bit deeper than we needed so (it being a modular unit) we simply converted a bit of spare depth into extra width and -- presto -- we had the stage we needed. We were soon set up and ready to go.

Between soundcheck and the show we ate biscuits and drank tea. Ahhhh. Then a bit of wandering through town and a bit of reading (for me, anyway). I finished Siddhartha; I was not surprised and felt quite pleased to find that the ending was much more uplifting than the raft of Indian-subcontinent-based books I've read before. Siddhartha of course is in no way a slice-of-life like those other books; it is philosophy in the guise of a novel and, in tracing a journey toward enlightenment, it is not surprising that Hesse left me with a good taste in my mouth.

If there is anything 'stiff' about the venue, it didn't trouble the full-house that came to see us this night.
They were nicely warmed up when we took the stage. Our shows have been going well and Robert, who has been fitting in very smoothly right since the beginning, gets more relaxed with each show; he's now getting involved in the fun and nonsense that goes on between songs.

A modular stage is not without its drawbacks: as it consists of a wooden deck on metal substructure, this one bangs a bit under our busy feet. This is most noticable in such numbers as 'Hard Work' which has one of those summon-everything-you-have-and-exude-it-through-your-boot type stomps at the beginning of each of its 108 bars. We managed to find more-resonant and less-clacky spots to stomp and got through that song and about 15 others, all quite nicely. On the other end of the dynamics scale, we did our Earth Hour rememberance, singing 'For the Day' off mic and off stage. This was a lovely room to do that in!

Bedale is charming and we had a great time at this private concert. Particularly notable were the locavore-friendly foods. Are you familiar with the idea of eating locally grown and produced foods to reduce the carbon footprint? That's what locavores do. Also delightful was an angelic choir that Steve assembled after sound check for a very short (in duration and in stature) impromptu afternoon concert.

That night, we B&B'ed in town at The Green Dragon. Unlike some B&Bs which are attached to pubs, this one did not give the impression that the rooms were an inconvenient afterthought. It was very comfortable. After a
full-English breakfast the next morning, we went to visit with our hostess for the concert before heading home for some R&L (relaxation and laundry).

There you have it so far. Next we are off to York to play at the National Centre for Early Music. Terry was speculating that perhaps the 'Early' meant that we would start at 7:00 rather than 8:00, but I'm not just sure :)

This is a brand new venue for us in a brand new town. The Platform is a converted railway station with the big stage standing just where the passenger platform would probably have been... the tracks are gone :) The staff was helpful and pleasant. The building is at a good distance from the streets surrounding it but barriers were removed so that we could drive through and we were able to get to a handily close door for load-in.

The sound system set-up went even more quickly than the night before and, again, it sounded excellent even though the hall is just a bit bangy. Dinner was quite nice. We finished eating just before the doors were opened and in came the audience.

The turn-out was very good for a first gig. Not full but more than ample. We'll look forward to building on  that next time. There were a number of Footheads who had come from afar (Sheffield, for instance!).

We were at The Elms that night (didn't see any elms...hmm) which is a very comfortable hotel. We were even so fortunate as to be able to get a bite to eat at the hotel after the show in the Garden Lounge (didn't see any garden). After a nice wind-down we headed off for our rooms and eventually to sleep. But perhaps a little news first? Any hope of hearing about the Montreal Canadiens playoff fortunes evaporated; I'm not holding my breath but I have crossed my fingers. All sports news is focused on football -- like Leicester getting relegated for the first time ever! And that was done by Robert's favourite team: Stoke City.

Next morning's itinerary required of us nothing more onerous than a noon departure. Breakfast was served from 8:00 until 9:30 so we all indulged. Then we dispersed in several directions. My direction was toward the
aforementioned Garden Lounge (where I *could* see the garden because there was light outside) with my paperback edition of Siddhartha in my jacket pocket. A pair of French doors in the lobby opened through the south wall of the lounge. I moved across to the far corner of the room where the windows that form the north and west walls meet; there I settled by a coffee table in one of four comfortable, low-backed chairs upholstered in a particular pink velveteen. The fact that this material has not been available since the early 1960s makes it quite remarkable that these chairs, though they have clearly been used regularly for all these years, showed no signs of wearing out.

There were seven or eight other seating groups like mine, each consisting of a coffee table surrounded by three or four easy chairs (sometimes a love seat and two chairs) of various complementary styles. Aside from these, the room had a bar and a small, natural wood-coloured grand piano: lid down, large vase of spring asters, daisies and zinnias smiling toward every corner. As for people, I had the place to myself but for a couple of couples. They were as old-school British as could be: all tea and tweed and taffeta, here a blackthorn walking stick, there a silver brooch with amethyst and the pervasive weight of perfumed talc. I ordered tea and digestives (could I have doneotherwise?) and sat down for a read.

I think this may be the tour of catching up on important authors that I have never read. I made a major effort in that direction about 12 years ago when I found that somehow I was familiar with many authors and their styles even though I had never actually read any of their work. This is probably because all my friends at school were English majors while I was reading History. So in the mid-90s I set about reading Kafka, James Fenimore Cooper, Virginia Woolf, Cervantes, Swift, Jane Austen, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, G. K. Chesterton, J. B. Priestley, Mary Shelley and a bunch of others so that I might be conversant.

Being conscious of baggage weight I only brought one small paperback with me: Steinbeck's Cannery Row. So I have scanned the shelves at Bedford Manor (many shelves, well stocked) and have now also got Hesse's Siddhartha, and Paradise Lost by Milton on the go. One being 300 years old and the others having  been written in the 1950s, these three books stand in fairly sharp stylistic contrast to most of the books I have been reading this year, which have all been written in the last ten or fifteen years.

After reading The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy), Baumgartner's Bombay (Anita Desai), and A Fine Balance, as well as Family Matters (Rohinton Mistry), I was beginning to wonder if anyone (other than Kipling) had ever written anything cheery about life on the Indian subcontinent. Siddhartha seemed quite positive at the start; it moves quickly and is very instructive and constructive as it continues. But now, at the three quarter mark... it's getting pretty damned depressing. My guess is though thatit will end on a more upbeat note -- let's hope so.

Noon arrived and we set off through the Yorkshire National Park on our way to Bedale. We stopped in a little town along the way where we went for a roast beef and Yorkshire pudding lunch in an old-fashioned British cafe. Heaps of food, just the way grandma overcooked it :) Then we continued until we arrived in Bedale: another lovely town with cobblestone streets and a river running through it.

Sold-out and rocking, every time. We ran into a bit of Friday traffic on our way up the M1 so we arrived a bit
later than planned. Still we were in loads of time to meet Ian, load in, set up, sound check, have tea, relax a bit, go out for dinner and still be back in time for the show.

This was the night that we got to try out our new sound gear for the first time. Wow! It's computerized, motorized and extremely portable -- even smaller than the compact rig we've carried around in the past. And it sounds GREAT.

There was a flood of familiar faces and a wonderfully warm reception right from the moment we came on stage.
Apparently the venue had to turn away about enough people to fill the place a second time. We should probably talk about doing two shows at the Harlequin next tour.

I know I have said this before but I will say it again: this is a stunningly beautiful place -- several hundred years old, formerly a church, now a really well-equipped and well-staffed concert place.

We arrived early enough to drop off our gear and then go out for a wander around the town and a bite to eat. Robert and I went to a Portugese chicken place that he was familiar with (I was not). Nice and spicy. Mmmmm. We perused a couple of thrift shops and saw some interesting(though not interesting enough to take home) stuff. We did pick up a couple of road necessities (clothing bags, batteries, tape, white-out, cotton batting, hemp line, toothbrushes, razors, boot black, a coal scuttle, latex gloves, false-bottom steamer trunk, the 1973 Encyclopaedia Britannica -- missing the J-K vol. -- beefsteak tomato seedlings, uncooked duck fat... the usual) and then headed back to the venue.

Worcester is near the home (estate) of Robert Plant who apparently attends shows at this venue from time to time. So we scan the audience each time we play there to see if one of our musical heroes is listening. Not this time. He's probably on the road with Alison Kraus :(

The show was fun. Lou, the sound engineer, got us set up and running very smoothly. Robert got to use the big Steinway as he got used to playing with us. It all went ever-so nicely right through the first set. At the end of the interval, the front-of-house manager, who is quite a character, came out and, prior to re-introducing us, conducted a raffle for some very funny prizes such as CDs the staff doesn't like, a royal wedding mug, a monkey tea towel; I'm not sure where they get some of these things but it is fun watching them being given away. We did our second set and some encores to finish the night.

We have still not filled the hall but attendance on this night was up from last time. Always a good sign. When we were done, we headed up the motorway a bit and got ensconced in our hotel. In the morning, we had a bit of a lie in and a leisurely breakfast before heading off to Northwich.

Our flight to the UK was mercifully uneventful except for a small adventure at the check-in desk. We realize that prices, particularly fuel prices, have risen dramatically so we would understand if that extra burden were spread among the passengers flying. However, in an effort to keep ticket prices down, our airline has shifted the burden of payment to those who have luggage. My own suitcase was well under the allowable weight limit; I made sure of that. However, the tools of my trade (without which the flight would be fairly pointless) put me well over the limit. I understand. More weight = more fuel. I understand. I am less clear on this: my bass weighs half what I do; it doesn't get to sit in a seat, eat a meal or watch movies. My ticket cost about the same this year as last. My bass cost twice as much. In fact, we paid about the cost of three extra fares to bring our instruments over here. Hmmmm.

At the airport, we began to get acquainted with our piano player for this tour, Robert Graham. He lives near Kingston and is a college music instructor for a bunch of really young, fit (and probably beautiful) singing/dancing/acting musical theatre types. He'll feel right at home with us... okay, well, we sing...

Robert has split his life about evenly between Canada and Australia. Every now and then, there's the slightest hint of an accent but, to our great disappointment he has not yet offered to put a shrimp on the barbie nor has he whipped out a gargantuan knife (sorry, 'knoif'). He seems a fine fellow and I think we'll keep him :) Oh, yeah and he can really play and sing which is very handy.

We have a couple of days to acclimatize ourselves and then we're off to Worcester.

We have not played the Limelight Theatre before but we will certainly be happy to go back and do it again. It was a beautiful summery day and we arrived early at this unassuming building tucked into a residential neighbourhood with narrow streets and tightly-packed houses. Our under-the-weather contingent had time to stroll into town and find a chemist so as to get some symptomatic relief. Sandra continues to improve but is not out of the woods yet; Terry was feeling much better for a while and then his cough came back; Bryan and Steve are actually relatively quite well, though both are still coughing. Argh! I have been really lucky to have missed everything.

Malcolm of the theatre's tech team arrived and let us in. Because we are nearing the end of the tour and have had so much practice, we had a very quick set-up, soundcheck and tea/coffee before heading off to walk into town and get a bite. Along the way, we met Jo and Rob and Sarah who had come all the way down from Blackpool (!) to catch last night of the tour. They were heading for dinner too so we went together and they treated us to a fine meal at an excellent Italian restaurant which had a most diverse and interesting pizza buffet some things you might expect (Hawaiian, three-peppers, three-cheeses and some (like chicken curry pizza) that you might not. All that combined with a big salad and fruit bar made for a great meal with lovely company; life is good.

We emptied the tanks in those last two sets of the tour and the audience seemed to appreciate it. This is a new area for us so there were a whole bunch of new faces but we were delighted to see a bunch of folks who had travelled some distance to see us. These included Julia, Sarah and Chloe who came (at least in part) to see the show but (perhaps more importantly) to bring us chocolate tea cakes! Well, they are everything they were cracked up to be and I felt hard-pressed to offer to share them with my bandmates. But I did. Mmmmm. I did not meet but heard from someone named Dave (he had to go at the interval but left a note behind) that the latest edition of Spectator magazine has an article comparing Mad King George III to George Bush II. How interesting. I wonder what made him think of that? :)

It was a good finish to the tour. We said our general goodbyes to most of the audience and then, after we were packed up and ready to leave, to Carol and Charlie, Kathrine and Daina, Brian and Rosie, Jo, Rob and Sarah, and drove to the Travelodge. In the morning, we got up and were getting ready to leave when we locked the keys in the van DOH!! We fiddled around for a bit with a coat hanger but eventually gave up in favour of calling the RAC to come and rescue us. We went and had tea and toast for a while and in about an hour, the orange truck turned up and before long we were on the road. We got home in time to sort out all the last-minute details and prepare to head for the airport quite early tomorrow morning. But that will not happen before one more late lunch at the Sovereign (our local) and one more green Thai curry dinner at home. Eating well is so important. I attribute my good health to it.