Current page: Concert Diary 2006
Current page: Concert Diary 2006
Linda Simpson writes - We were expected at 10am, which meant we had to set off at about 8:30am. Working it out backwards it's not hard to figure out that we had to start getting up at 7am (four hours sleep - yippee!!)
I don't do mornings very well - I don't wake up until after 2pm so this is not good news to me - but it's all part of the game if you want to promote an album so we sort of grumbled ourselves into life and were ready to go on time.
It was a beautiful sunny day (which helped considerably) we didn't run into any traffic jams (another plus) and at 9:50 we were 10 minutes away from the station. All we had to do was cross the bridge and drive straight to it. It was all going too well so we were not really surprised to find that the bridge was closed and the diversion was a torturous route, which added another 30 minutes to our ETA. We called the station and said we'd be there as soon as possible.
PANIC!! You can't ask them to hold up the radio show so the heat was on. We got hopelessly lost so we called the station again and they had to guide us in. We were then instructed to park in a public car park and walk the rest.
With 2 guitars, a violin, a mandolin (all in flight cases), a bag of guitar stands and another large hold-all containing all our 'might need this' bits and pieces (which weighs about 30 kilos) we struggled across the road and down the alley to the station. We thought it was about 100 yards (90 meters), but it was more like ¼ mile (1/2 a kilometer) and by the time we got there, with our arms hanging out of their sockets, we were not happy bunnies.
It's amazing what a cup of coffee and a few nice smiles can do to make things better! They were very nice to us; that really does make all the difference. We got settled down and did a quick sound check and realised that we were feeling almost human. It all went smoothly, the songs and interview were fun and we left in a much better frame of mind. Chris managed to get the vehicle to the station so that we didn't have to carry everything back to the car park.
To avoid the bridge we went out the other way and had no problem at all... in fact if we hadn't got the instructions from the internet we would have chosen this route in the first place - I vowed to check carefully next time!!
Back to Soest we went, where we sorted ourselves out and did manage to close our eyes for an hour before Jan turned up to take us to Ijmuiden.
Yes we know that Ijmuiden is only twenty minutes from Haarlem - but we didn't need to be there for another 5 hours and, with a vehicle full of highly expensive instruments, you can't exactly leave it somewhere and go shopping so the options are limited.
Druten, Holland
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Den Haag, Holland
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