Stra, Italy

There must be some phenomenon with touring, regarding endurance. I don't think the number of dates has much to do with it but rather an inner clock that is set for the duration. In our case the 10 week European run. As we head into the final few days, I can just about drag myself out of the bed and get on with the day. Really knackered. And that's how today has been, never left the room until it was time to go to the plane at 4:30. No food, no coffee, nada. So, by the time we did get to the plane I was ready for both.

It was a short hop and a bit of a drive to the little village of Stra. We played an open air show in the gardens of what appeared to be a government palace. I never bothered to find out what the hell it was and that's due in part to the above paragraph. It was a strange set up in that half the audience was seated and the other half standing, split right down the centre. I suppose that's one way of solving the problem of each point of view having their way, but it was too weird looking out at it. Guy and I were on the 'standing' side of the stage while Mark and Danny were up the middle and Glenn and Matt on the 'seated' side. It was a distracted show if I had to put a word to it, in part due to the seating/standing arrangement, partially because the sound never seemed to gel and finally because we're all very tired. Having said that, it was still a good show, the audience was wonderful and hopefully only we noticed the distraction.

All the Italian shows are beginning at 9 rather than 8 which put our return to Milan back an hour. Not much interest in nightcaps tonight, sleep is on the menu.

So long,

Richard