Geddington, Mon April 4th

As predicted, I didn’t see the band this morning, apart from Phil, who has opted to travel in the van with Nick and Rodders as he’s going to Stansted to catch a plane home to Sweden. ( a decision he will come to regret ! ) Big John, Rodders, Tomps and Junior have already been up and into town for breakfast, making my creeping about the bus so as not to wake anyone seem a little redundant. Nick, rather unusually, has not surfaced yet, so I’m despatched with the pokey stick to wake him up. As I approach the bus the door opens and a vile monster steps out….oh, hang on…no, it’s just Nick, but he looks like he’s been dragged through a hedge backwards AND forwards, and then gone to sleep in it. Sensibly, Rodders takes the first stint at the wheel and Nick is poured into a passenger’s seat until he can finally emerge from his cocoon like a beautiful butterfly. Or something. It really IS parting time now, and so it’s handshakes and hugs all round. As Tomps and I attempt the latter we realise we’re not actually getting much nearer to each other; he looks down at our comfortably capacious stomachs and comments ruefully “ I think we both need longer arms ….” . A last wave and the vans are off, the adventure over and just the last bit of grunt work to do. We’re dropping our kit at our storage facility in Northamptonshire, and due to a peculiarity of the geography on the site even half a centimetre of rain can make the approach to it turn into something from The Somme, but our luck holds today and it stays dry, so everything goes back where it came from with the minimum of fuss and effort. Arthur drops me off at home, and as I walk up the hill towards the house and the recommencement of “normal” life I think back on everything that’s happened, not just over the five weeks of the tour but also of the many months leading up to it. We still don’t know how the tour has done financially, so there’s all that to work out, but whatever happens, one thing DOES shine through, which is that Clive continues to recover from his stroke, and that helps keep things very much in perspective. If HE can keep smiling through all that, then so can we. I think of the stress, the late nights, the logistical nightmares, the budgetary fun and games and all the little foibles and farragoes that accompany the preparation of a tour like this, and as I begin to try and put things in some sort of mental order, one thought burns into my mind……” I wonder if the pub’s still open ?”………..

Tony Henderson
Geddington, Northamptonshire
Tuesday April 5th