Day 20: Glasgow
Welcome
Yesterday we played our last show of our Europe/UK tour at Barras Art and Design, in Glasgow.
I breakfasted at the hotel buffet and enjoyed porridge with berries and yoghurt, toast with Marmite, and toast with Marmalade.
We had a late call time for our Glasgow show so we decided to detour through the Lakes District National Park for some scenery and lunch. Jonathan earned a strong point for scouting a good pub, where we stopped and enjoyed Sunday roasts, and English Ale served at a great temperature.
Unfortunately Jonathan lost a point for leaving his bag at the pub but Tristan made the most of this blunder, picking up a +1 for remembering it. After lunch we walked down the road to have a look at the beautiful Windmere Lake, and Liz picked up a point for touching both a goose and a pigeon.
We pulled up in Glasgow at 7.30pm and were met by none other than old mate, #1 promoter, and Beth of the day alumnus Gerry Blythe who as usual made us feel right at home.
The Barras, the old market district where our venue was located.
The show went well and afterwards we did the fastest merch selling of our careers as the security tried to hustle everyone out of the building before curfew. As is tradition after a show in Glasgow we headed to Broadcast for a quiet drink followed by an early night. Liz earned a point there for ordering two White Russians. Beth of the day goes to Rikki.
Rikki is our friend from home who now lives in the UK and kindly agreed to join us as a guitar tech for the UK leg of the tour. He scored a point for immediately falling asleep in the van after lunch (literally within a minute), for packing up all of our gear while we tried frantically to sell merch, and for quickly drinking the White Russian he ordered just as everyone was leaving.
Congratulations Rikki, you've been working hard in the background for the past week and it makes me extremely happy to see you get some recognition.
It has a been a long stretch of touring for us and I'm happy to say that we are now heading home to enjoy the New Zealand summer. I would like to thank Liz, Jon, and Tristan for being such wonderful people to tour with and for supporting and assisting me with the blog. A huge thanks to everyone who came out to see us play, and of course a massive thanks to you - the reader. Without you this publication couldn't exist and I am eternally grateful for your support.
I will leave you now with a final faucet of the day that we experienced just this morning in our last hotel of the tour. The Cat's Teats is a complex design that uses a three way flow controller to direct water to either the fixed shower head, the hand-held nozzle, or the twelve sprayers set out in dual vertical columns at torso height. Sadly the lack of pressure in this installation provided an underwhelming experience but I still feel that the innovations in the design are paving the way for our future generations of faucet designers.
Please excuse the portrait video, I felt that it was the only way to properly frame this invention.
Cheers
Ben