On the long drive from snowy East Anglia to a sunny Devon I had plenty of time to contemplate how easy it must be for the person booking the dates on my tour to put me in two towns so far away from each other on consecutive nights.
You can imagine the logic -
“Exeter and Norwich are both in southern England, obviously, so it can’t take that long to get from one to the other. And it’s not like there’s any danger of adverse weather conditions at this time of year. Yeah, great, let’s put him in Norwich, then Exeter and I reckon we could get him into Wolverhampton the next day. I mean I tried for Ayr, which would have been better, but Jethro is on there on Sunday. That bastard managed Aberdeen followed by Penzance followed by Ayr. That’s what I call tour booking.”
Until I did the trip I wouldnÂ’t have imagined that the journey from Norwich to Exeter would be equivalent to going to Scotland. But Britain is a surprisingly large place. Luckily I wasnÂ’t driving, and thank God for CNPS (41-45 all spotted without even trying all that hard!)
When you live in London it is nice to be able to get out and seeing the beautiful landscapes of England. Passing through all those pastoral idylls made me understand better all those odd people who come to my town every now and again in support of countryside.
Now, I am a big believer in countryside too. You understand what I mean, don’t you? Like regicide is the murder of your king and fratricide is the murder of your brother, countryside is the murder of those “idiots” who take part in fox hunting. Don’t know why they spell it “countryside” in this instance, but if their marches result in the death of just one member of the landed gentry then the formation of the Countryside Alliance has been more than justified.
(I was very proud of myself for making that joke up. But I find it hard to believe that no-one else has ever thought of it. Please let me know if and when youÂ’ve heard it before.)
The Exeter gig was fun, if a little unpredictable (and it was sold out. They even brought in extra seats!). They particularly enjoyed my joke that the smell in Bridgwater is due to the unwashed genitalia of the male populace there. God bless Bridgwater, the whipping-boy of the M5.
But towards the end of the show, one man took issue with my metaphorical assertion that men and women, like the European Community, could do with a common currency. I berated him, quite severely.
Apparently I could have been lynched for my pro-European sentiments. The Devon community are generally opposed to European Union.
Sometimes I think that countryside is too good for these people.
