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Friday December 12 2003

And in a flash it can seem like it never happened. I am now sitting at home in my little office and have just put the washing on and can hear it swishing away in the other room. It seems almost criminal given the effort usually required to clean ones clothes while on the road. Apologies for the expanse of time since the last significant tour entry. The Italian schedule was so full that we didn’t have any chance to get to the internet at all. I’m not even sure where to pick up the story. Spain feels like a thousand years ago now, but I guess I should start there. The van really did die on us on the way to Valencia. I was huddled in the back nursing my pneumonia (which, btw, it all better now) when strange noises started from the engine. Before too long we were at a service station in what felt like the middle of nowhere and by which time the van had decided it would no longer move. I really don’t know how, but by some small miracle the Spanish promoters managed to get us and the van to the venue in Valencia without missing the gig. Mind you it wasn’t cheap as Karl and I endured a very silent 3 hour journey with a Spanish truck driver, while Marty and the tour manager made the trip by taxi! Anyway, we made it and got another van and got Barcelona and back to Italy without too much drama. We are still waiting to hear if we have to pay for the van motor that blew up which would be a sheer catastrophe for the band’s finances, so fingers remain firmly crossed. After Spain things got better as we were on much more familiar turf and travelling with Luca (our main European promoter) who is great fun to be around and has the knack of making things going your way with a minimum of stress. The shows in Italy all went well, but some were better than others. It was great to catch up with old friends and fans that we had met on previous tours, and the food, as always, was in abundance and consistently incredible. A great thing that often happens in Italy and not really anywhere else in my experience is that there is a kitchen at most venues seemingly for the sole purpose of preparing food for the musicians and crew. After soundcheck huge trestle tables are set up in the middle of venue and everyone sits around and had a two or three course meal and wine and coffee etc. Then not usually much more than 5 minutes before doors open it is all whisked away and everyone gets back down to work. Cool huh? And to them it seems like totally the normal thing to do. The other great thing about playing in Italy is that the local promoters are usually a bunch of young folk running some kind of ‘cultural organisation’. I’m not sure how they make all the money side of it etc work, but they do a great job and the whole experience had a really personal vibe about it. Anyway… I’m starting to ramble now. So in the end extra shows were added and we payed the night before we left in Milan. We knew that the drive the next day would be a killer (about 7 hours at best), but weren’t expecting to awake to the first day of snow there this winter. So of course the traffic was chaos and as soon as we got of Milan we had to cane it all the way to Rome to get our flight. We got there in the nick of time and were on our way to London. So after a 2 hour flight, on the back of a 9 hour drive and a combined total of less than 12 hours sleep in 3 days prior, we get to Heathrow and are confronted by the most harrowing of scenes. It turns out that there was a little fog about which had pretty much shut down the whole airport and flights were getting cancelled left right and centre, and the lines to speak to anyone were so long they were eventually going up the stairs onto the next level! The officials were saying that they knew nothing and that if your flight was cancelled there was no accommodation and no news about rescheduling etc. So you can imagine the mood. Somehow, although I still can’t believe it, we managed to find out while standing in one of these huge lines that our flight was still flying and were were able to get our boarding passes from some obscure customer service desk upstairs. Unbelievable given the number of flights that were cancelled and that we only had an hour to sort it out. And I can’t tell you how glad I am not to be stuck at Heathrow right now!!!! The flights were OK and 24 hours later we were back in Melbourne bracing ourselves for our routine customs grilling (which for the first time never actually happened). It seems that in the chaos our instruments got lost so Misty and Karl’s guitar are still floating about out there somewhere, probably in foggy London, but apparently we should get them back tomorrow. So, I guess it is time to sign off from this tour diary. Thanks to you all that have been reading it and passing on your encouragement. Also big big big thankyous to everyone who played a part in this tour - the promoters, the labels, the venues, people who let us crash on their floor, the multitudes of kind citizens who gave us directions when we were lost, people that fed us, the truck driver that got us to the gig in Valencia, and mostly of course - everyone that came along to the shows. See you soon. Cheers - PC