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!
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.
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.