The Road to Austria
If writing about moments of personal fulfilment in an interesting and inclusive way is a challenge then writing about a day spent in a van holds little hope for an engaging read.
Despite the good bed and hearty breakfast I was in a melancholy humour all day, I suppose you could call it an emotional hangover from the previous evening’s unrelenting good times. In recent years I have become something of calculated optimist (rather than naturally positive). With hours of road ahead and a gigless respite at the other end I felt the euphoria of our Parterre show shrivel and blacken within me, an ugly notion that maybe I’d just glimpsed the perimeters of my own capacity for happiness. But it is natural for humans to sabotage their little victories, maybe it’s nature’s way of keeping us from dwelling on them unhealthily. Or maybe I’m just greedy and never satisfied. Whatever the reason, inactivity has always brought with it an attendant dark mood - I remember the last tour was no different when we had a day off in Ebensee.
But onwards we went, through sauna country to fields of horses, barns of cows and pens of goats, past gingerbread houses and through long tunnels. As we crossed the border Fran played the Austrian national anthem (stirring but with a certain irresolution that I found unsatisfying), then as we approached the alps we switched to Wagner’s Ride Of The Valkyries and spirits soared once more.
That evening we went for a very good curry then polished off the last of our Duisburg Budvar back at the hotel.
The band is now spread across Innsbruck, the weather a drably furious concoction of mist and rain, the mountains that provide the beautiful visual context hopelessly lost in a greyness chiming drearily with the concrete foreground.
Tonight we play Weekender Club.
