7859/20800
I was up early and wandered round Leicester looking for food (found a nice cafe and had avocado toast) and then hung around waiting for the Richard III visitor centre to open.
It's a pretty good attraction, which could only be improved by a voice at the start telling you to leave behind your humdrum lives and some kind of mechanised track to take you round (maybe featuring a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse).
But there's lots of interesting history and stories about the dig and I liked the computer window that showed you how the area outside had changed over the centuries. Good to see the reconstructed head of Richard III in the flesh (or wax or whatever they use) and I just love the crazy story of this discovery and the brilliant and crazy people who made it happen. At the end you get to visit the spot where the king was found and it's quite profound. The drive of those Ricardians was really something else. If only everyone who was a little bit nuts (all of us) poured their obsessions into something relatively benign and (unusually for the breed) actually fucking right as well. Even though they were wrong about the spine!
I am slightly in love with Philippa Langley - she's intense and obsessive and a little balmy, like all my girlfriends from the 1990s! Plus she found a king's bones and I've never been out with anyone who's done that.
As we prepared to leave Leicester the Heavens opened (just as they did when Richard's bones were found) and there was thunder and lightening and the heaviest rain I've seen for a while (luckily I was in the car) and I felt very much like it was Richard III telling me that I should get his bones repatriated to York. I am sure of it.
Onwards to Leeds. Last time I'd gone here I'd got stuck near Leicester (King Richard III again) and nearly not made it, but we were in good time today. I wanted to sleep but my credit card reader had broken (it had been playing up last night and stopped working, but I think I might also have caught it in the car boot) and I had to find another one. So my afternoon was taken up scurrying up to Currys and then setting up my account with the new service. I got a cheap one made by Square (who I'd never heard of - the assistant had told me it was Sumup and I only noticed when I got back to the hotel) and I worried it might not be great, but transactions went through much more quickly and easily than with my Zettle set up.
With the admin out of the way I sampled another Pret a Manger restaurant, facetimed the kids and then did my show. It was probably the best one yet. Leeds City Varieties never disappoints (except when you're interviewing rock stars) and it was an exceptional audience and I rode the wave all the way home (sadly only metaphorically). An usher told me that there was another guy called Richard Herring in the audience. He'd proven it with an ID. I assumed he'd come and say hello (I might have met him before though - can't quite recall) but he disappeared into the night. I assume he was me from the future.
