To Holland and back
I leave my blog for 5 minutes (well, a bit more than 2 weeks actually) and I find myself back in the land of ham and cheese. Which, can I just say, is not a bad thing. As far as sandwiches go, you can do a lot worse than ham and cheese. I want that set in stone from the offset.
It is safe to say that quite a bit has happened since I last sat down to do this. That royal wedding thing happened for a start. I remember that just before I went to bed in some west coast hotel room, I flicked on one of the multiple channels covering it. I was lucky enough to see David Beckham showing his wife up (again), arriving at the wedding, rather stylishly decked out with his OBE medal, whilst she was wearing a hat that went as far down the forehead as possible. I turned over and went to sleep for what was actually quite a full night in American tour terms. When I woke up and turned the telly back on, Bill and Kath STILL hadn't got to the palace. No wonder everyone having street parties and royal wedding pub crawls in Britain got so utterly smashed. As an aside, I am happy to join the bandwagon here and state that Kate's sister, Pippa was indeed looking very hot - and I told my wife that too.
So, I bet you all thought that was the event of the weekend right? Well, you're wrong. Despite the criminal lack of TV coverage, event of the weekend have to go to our show at The Roxy in LA the following day. We seem to have been to LA loads for one thing or another, but that was only our second time doing our own show there, so to go there, play such a notorious venue and sell it out a week up front was pretty special. And if any of you were there, well, you made it even more special. What a great crowd. And just when any of the crowd were thinking that they were having the best night in ages, we made it even better, and pulled out our never-seen-at-a-Boxer-gig-before joker in pack. Actually, I say that like we had anything to do with this, but other than agreeing to it, we didn't. We had a lovely email from a fan a few days before the show to ask for a very special favour. We had our first first marriage proposal, live on stage. Trust me, standing at the back of the stage, it was like something out of a film. I think it goes without saying that she said yes (she wouldn't have got out of the venue alive otherwise!), and we have a great video of it knocking about that you should check out.
The American trip finished in a blur of tired goodness, as you can imagine, so our week at home could not have come soon enough (except for Nathan, who had the pleasure of a friend's wedding and a week's holiday in Jamaica, the lucky git). I'm not convinced I've ever suffered jetlag/tiredness as much, which was not helped by me, as best man, having to arrange and be part of my brother's stag do (bachelor party) only 2 1/2 days after getting back home. It was a 15 hour day that set me back a good couple of days I can tell you. I will not lower the standards of this blog such that I will tell you how many times he worshiped the porcelain god, but I can reveal it was more than once.
So that week was largely spent trying to sleep without waking up at 5am, and then trying not to drop off to sleep in the afternoon. And everyone knows how unpleasant it becomes in the mouth to eat something, fall asleep for an hour and then wake up. Not nice. We were also treated to a week of bitchy politics in the UK as not only did we have local council elections the day after our return but also our first national referendum for decades on a slightly watered down version of the electoral reform that one half of our coalition government wants. Firstly, I shall never understand how low election turnouts generally are, particularly for local elections, which day to day, probably affect people more than general elections. Secondly, our referendum awareness was poor enough that as a country, we have just voted no, and blown the chance of electoral reform for probably more than a generation. The councilor I voted for also lost her seat, so it was a double whammy for me. Elections do suck for the underdogs. The week of news following was not a pretty one for the two parties in our coalition. I am not the first to say that I don't think it's going to last very long.
So after about probably a day and a half of feeling back to normal, we are back out in Europe. Not all of Europe sadly, but as I'm sure people are aware, there are other areas we will cover just as soon as we can. Fortunately, Holland wanted us back very quickly, and the first few shows this week have been really fun times for us. The first show in Den Haag was part of a festival called Walk The Line, a great festival set in a few venues right in the heart of the town. The show on Friday was great, and Saturday was largely spent drinking some nice local beers in the sunshine, watching a few quality acts. A big 'word up' has to go to The Staves, a set of 3 sisters who put in a stint of some of the finest harmonies you will ever hear. They are friends of ours', but I'm pretty sure it was the first time we have all seen them. If you have the opportunity, you should do the same, and they are recording their debut album in June, under very special circumstances, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
So after playing our first ever shows in Rotterdam and Utrecht we are now just about to embark on our first show ever in Eindhoven. It is remarkable how far removed these drives are compared to what we just did in America. We drove here last night from Utrecht, which took just under an hour, and now here we all are, with loads of spare time, sat in the lobby (due to the lack of in-room wifi) on our various Apple products, in almost absolute silence. If any of you thought hanging out with the Boxer Rebellion was an exciting experience, right now, you might change your minds. We'll ramp it up for this evening, I promise. Must go. I'm off to study how much of Ireland's money (that they don't have) that the Queen's visit is to cost in security...
