Tuesday 24 November 2009

Hôtel de la Cathédrale, Rouen (enjoying the French ads on Spotify)
Sunday’s rehearsal at Clare’s went extremely smoothly, and after a sociable evening and a night’s kip, Alison, Clare and I were off early to Ebbsfleet to join the Eurostar that Matt and Pamela had got on at St Pancras. French trains on yesterday’s experience are efficient and colourful …

One of the many highlights of our evening at Clare’s was the game where we tried to construct coherent sentences by providing one word in turn round the dinner table. Clare’s youngest, Laila (7) was the easy champion of this, finishing off many sentences so that no-one could continue any further for laughing. Her pièce de resistance was the final word of ‘When I die I will go upstairs and kill God’ which could be a Tiger Lillies song.

Our hotel here is far more interesting than most: it’s dingily lit, and there are obstacles of abandoned old furniture and hidden steps everywhere to trip up the unwary, or at least leave you with a bruise or two.  Adrian Huge followed Matt and me around with his video camera when we arrived, filming us bumping into things as we tried to find our rooms. But the peeling paint and the odd damp patch on the wall can be forgiven, because the place has lots of character, is very friendly, and the free wifi works! So it’s all fine.

the hotel cat at breakfast this morning

After attempts at afternoon naps, we met for dinner and headed off to the rather spectacular if unexpectedly concrete Cirque-Théâtre in Elbeuf for rehearsal.  Martyn is going to play harpsichord and organ in a couple of songs, so in return I’m playing piano in one and guitar in the other: he has a brilliant little Yamaha travelling guitar, which I covet as it’s halfway between being a guitar and a ukulele. Needless to say I’m very pleased at getting to wield it on stage between Matt’s theorbo and the two Adrians. 

We ran out of brain power at about 10pm, at which point an unfeasibly large amount of pizza was delivered, and someone in the crew somehow managed to locate some beer. So we ate ourselves insensible and came back to Rouen to sleep the sleep of the just (or at least the very tired).

I’m going to take a quick walk round the block and peer at the cathedral before lunch and we head for Elbeuf again …

[I had photos of this, but I have lost my camera ... I think it disappeared from the stage at some point on the performance day, unless I left it in the dressing room. Photos above from new iPhone]