Edinburgh, Scotland

We arrived late last night after our gig in Belfast and it became a later night still having a couple of nightcaps with Danny and Guy before retiring. This morning I made it down to the well stocked but very warm hotel gym for a hard 90 minutes which left me drenched and a little wiped out, due mainly to the heat. I'd fully intended to get out today, Edinburgh's a vibrant town, always something happening, wonderful people, but ended up going back to bed. I got up feeling so much better but with time to do little more than shower, pack and go down to the venue for tonight's show. So, another perfectly good tourist opportunity bites the dust and I'll hang on to past memories of Edinburgh until I can create some new ones.

We played a wonderful old theatre appropriately called The Playhouse, capacity 2,950. While we love playing in theatres, it's hell on the crew particularly these old and small houses. Everything was an inconvenience with few modern amenities and little room to maneuver. Added to this was the gear arriving late so by the time we turned up at 5:00 in the afternoon, things were still a long way from looking like a show would be happening any time soon. Our valiant crew came through as they always do and a 7:30 show commenced at 8. From my vantage point on stage it looked like every seat was sold, the Playhouse's two balconies filled as well as the floor. After so many arenas and stand-ups, it was a real pleasure to play a theatre again with it's smaller audience, permanent stage and good acoustics. We took advantage of the situation and extended the middle section of the show to 5 songs and played Shangri-La as the final song of the night. Hero Of The Day awards go to each and every member of our crew who made this show happen tonight. Trooper Of The Day award goes to Glenn Worf who informed us on the plane after the gig that his in-ear monitors were in-op monitors for the entire show, in effect making it nearly impossible to hear what everybody was playing and thus extremely difficult to play along with much accuracy. Glenn's so good that nobody knew there was a problem and we were amazed when he told us.

After the show we flew to Newcastle where we'll spend the night and play tomorrow. G&T's and shepherd's pie on the plane and before we knew it we'd lightly touched down and were whisked to our hotel Tyne side.

So long,

Richard