June 19, Plymouth to Bournemouth

We awoke to a very pleasant morning, the usual full English breakfast (in my case, the Full Veg), and started the day in shorts.  I’ve found Plymouth to be a tough town to navigate by car, and one can tend to go in circles.  Employing everything at our disposal, a Google maps directions printout, a SatNav, and a full spiral bound book of maps of the British Isles, we got out into the lovely countryside without delay.  The Blackdown Hills were just gorgeous, with the steep valleys covered in grass, trees here and there, with cows and sheep, trees growing over the road, high hedge.  Justin even mentioned how he'd missed seeing the lovely English countryside at this time of year, and maybe the band should come back at this time of year.

We stopped in Lyme Regis for lunch and a stroll in this beach resort town, which looks very old, full of character, with some nice shops, featuring fossils from the Jurassic coast.  There’s a lot of limestone on this coast with fossils.  I’d remembered it fondly from the year I had first rented a car in England and drove along the southern coast all the way to Lands End and back.  Lorraine thought Lyme Regis looked much like St. Ives in Cornwall, and I agree, just smaller.


 It was a very popular place this day, with people strolling, sitting outside with ice cream and sandwiches.  It was actually hot and dry, and my skin felt like it was burning after a while.  We walked along the beach and saw interesting structures like this... a river running between buildings.  Imagine when it floods.











































Then we headed on to Bournemouth.  The central park was under construction, and we didn't have spare time for a stroll anyway.  Once at the Bournemouth International Centre, we contacted friends and had a bite to eat at the outdoor café in front of the venue before the Storytellers.   I was surprised to learn that the new box set had no input by any of the three band members, either conceiving or supervising it.  Some people at Universal were given full rein and access to a vault of stuff, audio and video, located near to Bournemouth.  Inside, waiting for the show to begin, I had an orange juice at the bar for only 1.70 pounds.. surprisingly inexpensive for a venue bar! 

The Storytellers was interesting, as usual.  John, Justin and Graeme were quite at ease, as you can see.

The concert was notable for a few reasons.  Thanks to MBT, the Storytellers people were clearly in the front right section for the first few rows, with the fifth row entirely free (looks like MBT didn’t release the row, and people were moving up into it by the second half).  I was in the fourth row center having paid a pretty penny for Gold Storytellers.  So after each song, the front right section was all standing ovations, and the left center was not, which must have looked peculiar to the rest of the sitting audience.  It seemed fairly dead like that until Nights, when some people started drifting to the front, swaying to the song.  More and more went, so I did.  The band seemed to enjoy it.  I was surprised as this kind of behavior is more associated with the US in my mind.  Welcome nonetheless. 

 It was a big group up there by Question, many more than Plymouth.  I was right in front of the ground level speaker / monitor? In front of the stage at John’s side.  I was amazed to hear just vocals coming out of that, so pure and clear and Loud!  I’d never heard the harmonies sound so good.   Afterwards, I mentioned it to the sound man who seemed to think that whatever came out of that speaker came out of the whole system.  Not.  The other notable issue of the night was Justin’s voice.  It was not just a few cracks.  He was clearly babying it by the end, and I saw him put his hand to his throat at the end as he seemed to excuse himself for not talking.  Somehow seemed more than a cold or allergies, but hard to be sure.  I took quite a few more pictures this night with my big camera.  No videos.  At the end, I asked John for his pic.  He reached and threw it at me, bounced off the stage in front of someone else who took it off the floor.  Nice.  I spent some time on my hands and knees looking behind this big amp, and someone else in the audience provided light from their smartphone.  All I found was a lot of water on the floor.  I wonder where it came from!

I was happy to see some of the new backgrounds up there on the big LEDs.

They gave Graeme a microphone so he could sing the chorus of Higher and Higher at the end!

Afterwards we went across the street to the Exeter Hotel bar for some drinks with friend Nancy and new friend Gary from Blackpool (another orange juice, in my case), talked about the concert, then Lorraine and I walked up the east hill to our digs (surprisingly good deal at a Best Western).  Every night I have been doping out the plumbing for shower, and most of the time it’s not too hard, even though each night is different from any before, it seems.  But this night, where at least the bed was comfortable, the switch and the hot/cold water knobs just did not seem to want to work and ended up taking most of my shower with cold water streaming at my feet, not draining fast, and not much coming out of the shower head.  Now you know another reason why I don’t have enough time every night to write Everything, and perfectly enough to publish on my blog.