New Day

It is a new day.  We have played a couple of times now.  They were both all acoustic which is not by my estimation the best way to experience Cosmo's Dream.  We did have a good night at the Iron Horse. There were some old friends which was bittersweet as it reminded us of the friends who have passed on.  It was a good crowd though.

As I have mentioned before, jet-lag has been a concern but is now tapering off and not so much a problem.  We were concerned enough that we made sure we arrived at John Snowball's house early enough that we could take a nap before playing.  John and his wife Janet fed us and entertained us before and after we played.  We enjoyed them immensely.  They let us stay until after noon on Tuesday.

We didn't have far to go on Tuesday, just up to Washington where we have rented a hotel room for a few days.  On the way we stopped at Tesco and purchased some groceries and things to help us with our modest lifestyle on the road.  Gen and Rebecca are staying at an Air BnB in Darlington.

Yesterday we played outdoors at a park.  A friend, Jim Wigfield, had arranged it. Jim and his wife Allison made us feel welcomed and appreciated.  I don't really like to play outdoors where people are talking, not close and there is a lot of other ambient sound in the area but we did play.  We got about 15 pounds in tips.  Jim played a couple of his very funny novelty songs that were both set in a rural setting.  We made chicken sounds along with him on the solo part of the song about chickens.

 Kristi and I spent our share of the tips on dinner that night.  We went to Darlington and spent some time with Gen, Rebecca, and their lively Air BnB host Martin.  We wandered around the very pretty Victorian town center.  He wanted to take us to a pub which had an event going on and lacked seating for us to stay comfortably.  We went to a very good Indian and Bangladesh restaurant for dinner.

Darlington B n B

Kristi had looked up places for us to attend sing-a-rounds etc. and had found Tynefolk in Blaydon for Thursday night.

These days getting ready for bed has become very procedural in that we have a lot of digital devices that use rechargeable batteries. That means that we spend some time finding electrical outlets, figuring out how to get everything plugged in so we have a working computer, phone, camera, movie camera etc.  It can take up to ten minutes extra to get ready for bed.

Kristi @ the Washeteria in Chester Le Street

Some days we just have to get varied errands done.  That's part of what we did yesterday.  We went to Chester le Street (odd name for a town?) to use the Washeteria, do some grocery shopping, and go to a bank.  Visiting a town high street is always interesting to me.

It was a busy time of day, kind of warm.  Our first chore was the grocery store.  Our GPS didn't find the Tesco there so we had a postal code for Morrison's which is where we did our shopping.  We found everything that we were looking for.  If you have never been to a UK grocery store I can tell you that a few things are different.  For one thing when you get a grocery cart you shove a pound coin in a coupling to get the cart.  The pound is returned when you bring the cart back.  You get someone else's pound when you shove the coupling back into the socket on the next cart in line.  I'll have to take a picture next time so I can show you.  

We bought laundry detergent at Morrison's.  The way they package laundry detergent here keeps changing.  Now it comes in little plastic capsules that dissolve in the wash.  It used to come in solid tablets.  They still dispense powder at the machines in the laundromat. 

After the laundromat we returned to Washington and prepared ourselves for a trip to Blaydon.  We had heard from Gen via text message that he would meet us in Blaydon.  The time on the text was 1:14 am.

We rely on our GPS these days to get us from one place to another.  It usually works well but can occasionally have some glitches.  We are also glitchable.  In this case it was a combo.  We didn't follow the directions of the GPS exactly, and it couldn't find our new location.  We were only lost for about 5 minutes, but it seemed much longer as we were on a deadline.  As it turned out I need not have fretted.  Gen and Rebecca were waiting at the Black Bull when we arrived.  The four of us were alone.  Kristi had called ahead and so we were sure the sing-a-round was happening.  We just were not in tune with the personal rythyms of the Tynefolk FC.  We were expecting to start at 8 and sure enough just a little after eight people started arriving.

It was a lovely night.  Gen and Rebecca left at the break.  We had played three songs, one sung by each of us.  The club is a very traditional singers club so we got to hear a lot of songs relating to life and culture in the Northeast.  There were at least two songs about being "made redundant", or in American vernacular being laid off.  There was the "national anthem" of the Northeast written in 1862 about a trip to the "Blaydon Races".  I hope that they felt that we shared some of our culture with them as well.  Kristi and I sang four songs at the end of the night.  We felt very well received.

Tonight we play in North Shields.  It should be a very good night.  I'll let you know.  In the meantime keep the home fires burning.