I’m trying my best not to be disappointed. That’s especially difficult when you haven’t had much sleep. It was Lucy’s last show last night and afterwards we went to The Tent (the marquee with a bar where cast and audience mingle after performances) so we could make our farewells. There had been the odd rumbles of distant thunder earlier in the evening but the skies were pretty clear. Within half an hour we were in the grip of a full midwestern storm. …
I went to San Francisco with very few preconceptions. I’ve seen the Steve McQueen movie “Bullitt” a couple of times and various other films set in the city. So I knew it was hilly, that it had cable cars, the Golden Gate bridge and Fisherman’s Wharf, but that was about it.
I took the BART train from the airport, as it seemed the sensible thing to do, and it wasn’t at all bad. It’s a subway train really, though who thought it a good idea to put carpet in a subway train is clearly someone who doesn’t travel by public transport very much. I was downtown in about half an hour. …
If you find yourself in Saint Louis and in need of breakfast, I have just the place for you: Uncle Bill’s Pancake House. There are two branches, open 24 hours a day, and we’ve now been go the one on Kingshighway twice. It’s not much to look at. The neon sign is broken and it is half-timbered on the inside as well as the outside. But once you’ve slid into a booth and one of the long-serving waitresses has given you an iced water and your first cup of coffee you realise you’re in American breakfast Nirvana. …
Life for me in St Louis isn’t all blogging, swimming pools and smokehouses. No siree, no. I am actually squeezing in a bit of singing too. And, oddly, I’ve actually quite enjoyed it.
Now, if you’re not a professional singer, if indeed in singers’ parlance you’re a “civilian”, you possibly won’t get that remark. You would naturally assume that we singers enjoy singing all the time. Well, no, that would be an amateur who does that, in the literal sense of the word. I’m not saying that professionals never enjoy singing. I’m just saying that professionals don’t have the luxury of singing exclusively when we feel like it. We have to do it an awful lot of times when it’s about the last thing we feel like doing. And I’m not saying that professional singers don’t love singing (and I use the word “love” advisedly); it’s just that, like all affairs of the heart, it can be something of a stormy and complex relationship. In fact I’m finding these days that it’s a bit like dealing with a parent that’s going through the onset of dementia.…