After the marathon trip from Portugal, yesterday was a day off in Paris and just about everyone in the band spent it sleeping. When we did finally surface a few of us lounged in the pool and/or went to the gym where there was a power plate sitting idly in the corner. Now we've all heard about these things so I decided to give it a whirl so to speak. It wasn't switched on and there was no mains cable attached so obviously I removed one from another machine to get it fired up. As it's name suggests it's little more than a powerful vibrating plate on which you stand or do press-ups etc. What I didn't know was that it was unplugged because it's 'forbidden' to use without an instructor. That of course will cost you 65 Euros! Crap. I spent a few minutes on it and learned of it's powerful bowel movement potential.

In the evening it was all out for a band meal at a restaurant called Allard on rue de l'Epiron. A stunning old rustic French restaurant without a trace of pretention, just good old fashioned French cuisine. What the French don't know about in the kitchen ain't worth knowing we agreed. The picture, taken on my phone includes Pete Mackay, Glenn, Danny and Richard's son Nick who is in Europe playing guitar with Philippe Solal (Gotin Project) on the Moonshine sessions tour. After the meal a few of us decided to have a nightcap in the 'lovely' bar (so described to me by a hotel employee after I'd requested some pre-dinner wine glasses in the room for Richard, Danny Nick and myself and he's refused suggesting that I drink my wine in the 'lovely' bar) Of course the bar is pretentious with the most annoying pseudo modern poorly sequenced beat/lounge music piping out of the ceiling designed to drive away anyone with the merest modicum of musical taste or anyone over the age of 30. To cap it all, a round of 7 drinks was 125 Euros. A bit steep methinks. Tu te fous de ma gueule!

It snowed too.



After a solid 9 hour sleep it was back to the luxury that is the pool and 60 laps this time before we departed for Toulouse from Le Bourget. Bernie and the drivers skillfully avoiding what turned out to be another eventful Olympic Torch-carrying procession down the Champs Elysee.

 

After arriving at the Zenith we learn of the dust which accumulated on every piece of gear and case after the Granada bullring show the other night. Of course the crew religiously cleaned the lot! Including cases. See above said shiny boxes. I sense they were pretty relieved to be in a 'proper' venue again with nice facilities after their epic bus ride from Southern Spain.



Simon and Mark joke about the lights.

The strange view from the dressing room and a shot of Mark trying out an adjustment that Glenn has made to the action of the MK Strat. Tonight was our first show with a support act and we're delighted to welcome once again Bap Kennedy and James Walbourne.

Our show was really great and we all talked afterwards about the unexpectedly attentive standing audience. They seemed to be hanging on every note but at the end they went nuts. It looked as if they were seriously enjoying it, well we were as usual.

John's beautiful fiddle which he's owned for 12 years or so has a body on it which is well over a hundred years old.

After the show, another runner to the plane and a quite farcical 20 minutes trying to get through the main airport terminal with far too many regulations for it's own good. As it was quite late in the evening there were no other passengers about and the ground staff handed us our boarding passes (weird). One of the cleaners saw that Pete was carrying a box of drinks from the venue and alerted security who did their utmost to relieve us of them. "It is forbidden" "yes, we know but it's a private flight". The police were called and said it was fine and onto the bus we hopped still in stage gear and onto the plane once more for the return trip to Le Bourget. The staff were very nice though. Our stewardess Alex delighted us with some Lebanese after show food and as we finished up, a look out the window to the right revealed the Eiffel tower on our approach to Le Bourget. A few quiet drinks in Mark's room, after a brief redesign of his lighting system (the lights in this hotel are an over complicated nightmare) that was it.