Cournon-d'Auvergne 29 June 2013

5:30 a.m.  Wide awake and not going back to sleep.  Coffee, more coffee, e-mail, gym.  At that hour, in this hotel on a Saturday morning I had the gym to myself for the whole time.  Back to the room and managed to nod off for about 40 minutes.  This might be a strange day.  I laid low for the rest of the morning and afternoon, practising and reading.

Once more the fleet of Rovers delivered us to Le Bourget Aeroport for a short flight to tonight's destination, Cournon-d' Auvergne.  The second team of drivers and Rovers met us there and took us to the gig, another Zenith Arena.  A new and modern arena, they are now built with large shows in mind, room for equipment trucks to loads in and out, proper catering areas and in this case multiple, comfortable and clean dressing rooms.  One with an outdoor veranda and couches.  It was a late arrival for us and we by-passed soundcheck, something not often done.  Straight in to catering for a minor miracle.  One of the four entrees was tortellini stuffed with fresh crab meat in a broth of light coconut milk, asparagus and chillies with hunks of fresh lobster meat.  They weren't kidding about fresh, the lobsters were still alive just minutes earlier.  They were kept in the freezer which according to Chris, puts them to sleep prior to the final wake-up call which doesn't bear thinking about.  Incredibly delicious, and that lobster was sweet and tender as any I've had.  Hat's off to Chris, Dave and Georg our culinary heroes.

Another packed house tonight, wonderful audience, great show, though I had a hard time keeping focussed due to lack of sleep.  It doesn't matter how many times you've played the songs, if you begin to drift you're sunk and I sure took a couple of good dunks.  Still, I managed to recover without inflicting much collateral damage.

A runner back to Paris.  Sleep tonight.

So long,

Richard