Old lady calling

So I'm back from my French and Spanish tour. It was good to be back in the game even though there was hardly anybody I knew from 7 years ago. Though, sitting on a coach for 10 days made it quite easy to meet knew people. The more South we went, the lovelier the weather was. We had a day off touring in Nice, which was beautiful. I met Courtney, Danny, Courtney's aunt and sexy Aussie Jeff, had lunch and dipped my tow in the Mediterranean to then realise it definitely wasn't summer yet. Moving onto Spain was a bit of a disappointment as we pretty much had rain every time we got off the coach. I guess taking a bikini and flip flops must have tempted faith...

The hotels were all fabulous and the bathroom freebies immediately disappeared in my suitcase. I also got some very inspiring ideas for future bathrooms, the more expensive the hotels, the more designery the rooms. One hotel had a telephone on the loo and a fabulous massage shower which managed to keep me happy for an hour and a half!

The shows were cool to sing again and the artists were not all bad, so all in all, I think we produced quite a show. I was very impressed with the way things have moved onto a much more professional manner. The choir had proper headsets now with individual mixing between your own voice and the rest, the conductor of the orchestra must have joined the AA as he now managed to hardly/not miss any entries, the catering was superb whereas 7 years we sometimes refused dinner as we feared food poisoning, the lightening was brilliant - a show on its own and finally we were chauffeured around in a sleeping coach so plenty of leg space.

Obviously sometimes things went wrong, as they do. A full blown power cut 30 seconds into the opening Overture was pretty spectacular and made the audience even more excited. (Not sure if they realised everything was going tits up!). And also the one time they forgot to put in the diagonal bars of the stage (we're about 5 metres up!) was pretty interesting... The numerous times the coach driver managed to go the wrong way and may be the times we had to wake up ridiculously earlier weren't always as pleasant. But all in all, I had a wicked time.

One thing I've realised now is that I'm getting old! I simply can not do the whole partying trick after the concert anymore (we were usually back in the hotel around 00.20). All the youngsters go to the bar and have a few drinks - I'm still with them on that, only it's usually one drink in my case and I'm ready to sleep. They stay up until 5 or 6 in the morning, have breakfast and sleep all day on the coach. I tried but failed significantly. I can assure you, I was barely human. I've now resorted to simply accepting I'm not 18 anymore and need a bit more sleep to keep going...

There's a 4 week German tour towards the end of the year so I might do a bit of that. (Won't be able to do Antwerp and Rotterdam as we will have moved back to T.Wells by then) Next year, they will drop France and do more shows in Spain, combined with Scandinavian countries. Sounds like a good idea to me - they can count me in!