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Just 2222 entries to go to 10,000. That can't take too long. Probably this time next year.
The one off (or in this case two off) RHLSTPs continue to prove more draining than a regular tour. Usually if heading to Scotland you would make that part of a run of a few gigs in a row so you can work your way up there and work your way back. But we can't do that with RHLSTP due to research time and how crazily exhausting it is to perform (even when I let the guest do most of the talking - which you'll notice happens more as the tour progresses) and it's not really practical to drive to Glasgow in a day AND do the show (just about possible, but Bec lives 2 hours away from my house and Glasgow is six and a half hours away (without breaks) and we can't go by train because we have too much stuff to take with us.
So we left for Glasgow a day early, leaving my house at 12.30pm and getting into the city around about 8. I managed to zone out and do a bit of admin, listen to an audiobook and play games on my phone and so it didn't feel that long. We could feasibly have been in America in the time this took. We stopped a couple of times, including at the delightful Tebay services.
I sat on a picnic bench outside. A huge black bird (maybe a raven, I am not a twitcher, even though I am a Twitcher) was sat squat on the table next to me. It was not perturbed by my presence and didn't move a muscle, just a weird ball of feathers with a sharp beak and eyes that looked at me as if it was considering pecking out my eyes (which to be fair it probably was). It was almost cuboid and pretty big close up and I thought about its dinosaur ancestors and how they might not actually be ashamed of this black colossus. I ate a fancy caramel chocolate egg which I'd bought from the fancy farm shop (which in hindsight was somewhat insensitive of me, given my company) and enjoyed sharing the beautiful landscape with this frightening creature. We weren't friends but we were at peace with each other and happy with the way things had turned out.
Then another possibly-raven landed on the table and started bullying my almost-friend. It hectored them and pushed them and the cuboid bird got up and gave up and flew away. The victor (who weirdly looked like a triangle even though it was the same species) strutted around, happy to have fucked up someone's day and then just hopped off the table. It had chased the resting bird away for no other reason than fuckwittery. What a bird cunt it was. What a cloaca.
The journey continued, counting down the last few miles of the tour and when we finally arrived in Glasgow I had done such a good job of turning off my brain that it seemed surreal to "suddenly" be in a new city and a different country.
It's also odd to travel somewhere just to go to bed and not do a gig. I idly folllowed the football and stayed up later than I should have done and missed my family a bit more because for today at least I wasn't even working, but was still away.
