Copenhagen, Denmark

The Hotel D'Angleterre was a grand old palace in its day with Hans Christian Andersen being one of its celebrated, frequent guests; however, at the moment it's just a little moth eaten. Nonetheless, it has a top drawer gym and pool and that's where I spent this morning. Following that it was back to my room where I pecked away at a room service breakfast. The Scandinavian breads are fairly dense and dry and in the basket was some kind of whole grain roll that tasted like a piece of farmland. Today is a national holiday here in Denmark, so the streets were quiet, cool, breezy with showers and not particularly inviting to go out into, so it was another day of conservation, reading and finishing up the new Hawaiian thing I've been working on.

The Forum was a short drive from the hotel and it was the third time we've played this venue since 1996. Every seat in the house is a different, bright colour - blue, red, yellow, green, purple, aqua and in no particular pattern so it looks like a crazy quilt. I was told they did this because a lot of concerts were shot there for TV and if attendance was off it still looked like a full house on the tube. Either that or they got a great deal on odd lots. It was Paul Crockford's 47th birthday so a stripper was hired and dished up a well deserved measure of humiliation. The big item on tonight's dinner menu was a fab Beef Wellington, thank you Darren.

Everything came together tonight for a wonderful show, good sound, great audience, MK and band rested, relaxed and playing well. Back at the hotel I met up with my old friend Kalle Oldby, longtime radio personality on Radio Sweden in Malmo. He and his friend Jens, also with Radio Sweden in the news department, had been to the show and stopped in for a couple of drinks and to catch up. As I've written before, one of the best parts of traveling is getting together with friends I've made over the years in far away places.

So long,

Richard