There is a certain trudge about touring. Wake, breakfast, travel, check-in, relax, explore if there’s time away from promotional business, sound-check, dinner, play show, relax, sleep, wake, breakfast, travel.....always the travelling, moving around and about. But as a saving grace there is always the place at which we arrive to consider: the town, the city, the place; almost always worthy of respect and consideration. Could be worse.

Copenhagen: to see Soren again, and his fab and beautiful daughter Christina (have I spelt it right?), such a thrill.

Oslo: Finn, my dear friend of many years, sound check and dinner; chatting to band and absorbing.

Finn even brought beautiful young women along (how?), and we all stared in awe backstage before boarding bus.

And Morten: Universal and always welcome. These guys are a million miles away from my everyday life, but they are always friends when we come to their towns. Always.

Finn: so slim and fit and rocking.

We meet all sorts, some not so wonderful as others: such is life. But5 we met almost always good and helpful people as we trudged across Scandinavia.

Life could be a lot worse for someone who writes songs and tries to play the guitar.

People make it happen.

Johnnie Walker came to Bristol. Sat through sound check and took photos which he has sent me. I’ll get some to the website. Great to see an old mate, one who helped my career right from the start and still encourages me, saying the kindest words about Stranger Comes To Town. Our two night sojourn at The Stables turned out to be the joy it always has been.

Dublin already seems history, the time passes so quickly out here. But it rocked and so did Belfast. Club venues, but the air was buzzing both nights with good fans who came out for a good night, and it gave me heart to see how the new set, littered with new songs, affected them. Seems they had the good time they went out for. We did. We were ready to play in public. Rehearsals in themselves are exciting for musicians. We gel, we blend and harmonise, personally as well as musically. These are fine people. A fish rots from the head down, so I choose carefully.

Missed a day of rehearsals for The Ivors. The idea of doing so was a stress. But I like that awards very much. I was, for the third time (9^th time on jury) chairman of the jury working on Best Song Musically & Lyrically. I think I’ve posted before on that. I am a songwriter, a musician, the proverbial wandering minstrel, and so committee stuff is not really my stuff. Juries not really for me. We do what we do, we move into this demimonde, onto this extracurricular plane, in order to get away from the real world. Makes us sad? Inadequate? Insecure? I expect all those and more are true. But those involved in the travelling-constantly world normally don’t care. I don’t care.

Death has preoccupied my mind somewhat of late. My two friends were far too young to have suffered that way and to be taken. And the deeply emotional tasks the relatives face once such important people have gone, this has plagued me. It’s hard for those of us hurt by the loss. You want to help, but you’re not there, you’re not involved. You’re not family. You feel their terrible suffering and want to console them, but you’re not there. They must move in a sort of purgatory, a middle land where reality is blurred. I had a call today from a very good mate, but again one I go a year or more without actually seeing. No lunch. No dinner. No bottles and tales, nor late confessions. But we love each other as close friends do. And I know it, and hope he knows it. His call came soon after he’d read my on-line diary. There are those you should keep in touch with. Stop putting it off. Manana, manana.......today! Do it today, I am telling myself. You drift, but true friends know this happens and do not take it personally. But I don’t want to drift too far from the few really good, important friends I’ve made and kept. I determine to make more effort.

Bob died.  I hurt. Thousands grieve.

Two separate emails received Friday gave news of two separate old friends being diagnosed with lung cancer. Two friends. Lung cancer. I was keen to get a copy of “Stranger Comes To Town” to Paul Evans, maybe the world’s leading collector of Bloomsbury Press (mostly Virginia Woolf) literature. I called the hospice late Friday afternoon; he’d been taken there a couple of days earlier. Asked if he would be able to hear it if it arrived by post Monday. Perhaps better if you brought it tomorrow, the nurse told me. It was heavy news.

Home at last. And, really, I had it easy. The tv pictures of the stranded thousands at Frankfurt airport, a few kilometres from my hotel, were heart-breaking. Families with young kiddies; the old and infirm; the once-a-year travellers, desperate to get to a wedding, a celebration, an anniversary. They all told their stories and I listened with a heavy heart. We managed to book pretty much the last seat on a Eurostar for Monday, and I arrived at Ebbsfleet last night, after moving on to Brussels for a night and a couple of days.

Had a wonderful time with Werner Reinke on HR1 Radio in Frankfurt last night. When I get more time and better internet access than now I will tell more. Since the evening came to a close, after 4 hours on air, we have done little but fight for a way back to England. The ash cloud sprung into terrible life minutes after my flight landed from City Airport on Thursday morning.