The angry overflow man did not take revenge on us in the night. I had thought he might get up early and make a lot of noise, but maybe he slept in. At breakfast I was sizing up people at the other tables trying to work out if one of them was my nocturnal enemy. Perhaps he was trying to spot me too. But we didn't find each other. I we had I might have let bygones be bygones and let him come into my room and have a over bubbled spa bath with me. There is no argument that cannot be solved by the two sides getting naked, getting in a spa bath and ignoring the rules about minimal use of bubble bath.
So I had a bubble bath with my girlfriend instead.
We were going to meet some friends for a picnic in the park and it was a sunny day so we thought we'd walk there. It didn't look too far on the map on our phone. But it turned out that it was quite some way. My girlfriend was doing the nagivating and about 30 minutes she estimated that we were 5 to 7 minutes from the park. It turned out we were about 45 minutes away from the park at this point, but I had fun for the rest of the day reminding her of her bold and incorrect assertion. I realised that we should probably have got a cab when we found ourselves walking into a different town. We didn't think we'd ever make it to the picnic and the park was really massive and we were becoming increasingly convinced that we were at the wrong end of it. There came a point when I just wanted to lie down and die, but then that would have meant I didn't get a chance to do my hilarious "Would you say we were five to seven minutes away now?" joke to the unamusement of my girlfriend.
Eventually though, somehow, we found our way and were sitting down by a pond with swans on it. The picnic tasted all the better for the trek that it had taken to get here. I made friends with a baby too, though as much as she was enamoured with me today I have a feeling that if I called her tomorrow she wouldn't know who I was. Such is the nature of friendships when you can count your life in hours.
I vegged out a bit, realising I would have to reserve any remaining energy for my third show in Norwich. But it's been terrific to have an atypical weekend, socialising, drinking and eating nice food, rather than sitting in a chain hotel on my own eating Shredded Wheat with water out of a cup. It's been a great little working holiday in Norwich and I managed to find enought energy for the show. And then we were heading home.
I had entered East Anglia with some trepidation, but was leaving it in one piece and having had some of the most enjoyable gigs of the tour. The end is very much in sight. There is still the epic Scottish leg of the tour to go, but with 83 gigs done even that doesn't seem too daunting.
