Logistical conundrums

Sometimes the travelling can all get a bit too much.

In the early days of my life in Blowzabella we seemed to be travelling every five minutes and leaving the country every ten minutes. In those days you had to travel with enough cash in enough denominations to get you across Europe and a carnet document listing what you had in the van. Technically customs could insist on you taking everything out either on leaving or returning to check the carnet was accurate and mostly to check you weren’t illegally exporting eg taking a lot of instruments to sell or importing for the same reason. All to do with tax dodging. It could make those moments unpleasant even though you knew they were only doing their jobs.

Some of those things may yet return.

This summer things have gone a little pear shaped due to the amount we’re doing. As it’s Blowzabella’s 40th celebration we are doing tons of festivals here and abroad, other gigs etc. In days of yore Paul James took on the roll of pretty much doing everything except the money and merch which I did. He was a full time musician at that time and therefore meant he had some time to devote to the minutiae of travel arrangements and the like. Now he has a full time job but still does most of the admin for the band…at least until next year. The reality of this is ideally over this year we could have done with someone else being the ‘tour manager’ to keep their eye on trips that needed booking, channel tunnel, flights or what ever. This is in no way a criticism of Paul as he has miraculous kept things afloat, admin wise, pretty much single handedly over years despite working full time. It’s more by way of saying – none of us have had the time or energy to keep that side of things in focus.

If you play in other bands like many of us do this ‘celebratory year’ is in addition to all the other things we do, other bands, workshop weekends, rehearsals etc….I.e. much the same as having a full time job although often longer hours to most normal jobs especially when you factor travel into the equation which takes hours and hours of your time. Most of us have barely had the time to turn our suitcases around before heading off again. This can also mean emails don’t get answered etc. You end up skimming through them trying to work out what has to be dealt with now and what might be able to wait. If, as in my case, you factor in border line dyslexia it takes me a long time to process written things properly and I can often get the complete opposite of a meaning if I haven’t had a chance to read it more than once or digest it properly.

So all in all none of us have been able to keep an eye on things in the future but just about coping with focussing on what’s happening next week…or in the next ten days.

Then when you realise certain things are about to happen the reality can come crashing in on you.

This week we are off to France and Italy due to arrive in France Thursday evening, join a session, play on the Friday and then leave for Italy to a gig that’s five hours further south. Because of the band going from one country to another and particularly because of where the French festival is, Anost, it just isn’t possible to fly so it’s a band and van situation. It’s basically 6 hours from Calais to Anost, without stopping. You have to get to Calais first of course. Then on the Saturday Aosta is 4.35 hours further South and again that’s a google maps calculation and does not involve stopping.

The plan is to travel all the way back from Italy on the Sunday. Well that’s a minimum of 8 1/2 HRs without stopping to Calais, then a crossing and then another 4.5 hours the UK side as we have to collect the relevant cars and then drive on etc…..I hope you’re following all this!

That means the return journey home will be somewhere between 14 and 16 hours in one day most of which will be travelling in a van and then a car apart from meal, wee and coffee stops….as few as possible….oh and driver change overs on the van.

Well I looked at this and particularly the 830 miles from Aosta to Car Colston, where I live, and panicked.

The thing is that, as many of you know, I was diagnosed five years ago with an incurable but highly treatable cancer called Follicular Lymphoma. The really dangerous bit, a grade four tumour which occurred as the Follicular lymphoma morphed in my groin into large B Cell diffuse lymphoma, was dealt with very efficiently at the time. I’m not going to go into the details now. However living with something you know is incurable, especially one that relates to the ‘C’ word takes a little getting used to. Mostly I survive with a subconscious awareness that involves me cracking on with life at quite a fast pace and enjoying every minute for what I can squeeze out of it. Within that I am told by my specialist that I am supposed to look after myself and get plenty of rest. I view ‘living’ and the joy of music, laughter, and good pals as the right choice as, within reason, they make life very enjoyable and I am sure the happiness generated by that actually contributes to my well being. The ‘getting plenty of rest’ is a mute point that I do pay attention to but don’t focus constantly on.

I have arrived at a more comfortable way of living alongside my cancer, mostly ignoring it and not letting it define me.

So when I looked at this trip instead of the dreaded disease being in my subconscious and being something that I live along side of instead of defining me it thrusts it out into the open and pushes it right in front of my face and says……you can’t do this. WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN’T DO THIS. I’M YOUNG AND I CAN DO ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING!…..well not really. It just isn’t a good idea. Not only is it the toll it will take on my body but my recovery time is longer and there’s still a lot of summer to get through. So the first thing that upset me was the subconscious reality being thrust well and truly into the open and forcing me to focus on it.

I looked at all that and thought…hmmm… what can I do to help myself here. Aosta is not that far from Turin. I could fly back from Turin on the Sunday, hop a train to Newark and go home then drive the next day to Andy’s and collect my instruments and merchandise etc etc….This idea tinkered away in the background but I couldn’t quite decide to do it. Why? Because I felt guilty. Obviously everyone couldn’t fly back because the van would have to get home somehow and the instruments, merch etc. It makes you feel like a selfish diva although what it actuallly is is self-centred in the positive meaning I.e. I need to do this for me. But I procrastinated a lot. I contacted a dear friend of the band’s in Italy, Anna Faudone, to see about the possibilities of getting to the airport in Turin were as I knew she lived in the area and was also hoping to come to the festival. No problem she said…..the kindness of others often makes me weep! I checked flights and there was an afternoon flight to Gatwick….do I do it…do I not….

Part of the guilt is that I tend to be one of only three-four names drivers in the band. If it ended up being only three then there would be only two of them to drive all the way back.

Eventually I bit the bullet and booked. Whilst it didn’t make me feel any less guilty or selfish the decision at least made me feel better.

At Broadstairs Folk Week things took another turn that would effect all of the above.

When we leave via the Chanel Tunnel Andy usually comes and picks me up the night before, he drives me to Kent and we stay with our lovely pals Chris and Kerry. Paul arrives the next morning with the van and anyone who has already met up with him etc. This is because we all live in very different parts of the country….and one in France of course. Well two things happened. Firstly, due to none of us really being able to think about this in advance Paul couldn’t get us a ‘chunnel’ crossing and had to go for a boat. Because of the amount of time needed driving the other side and our designated arrival time in Anost being 5pm Thursday, it had to be a very early boat. Jon then said from his experience the security checks for the boats were taking longer and longer and we needed to factor even more time in. So Paul is collecting us from Chris and Kerry’s at 4am on Thursday morning (or Weds night depending on how you look at it,). The next thing that happened was Andy realised he wasn’t travelling from home but from a Leveret rehearsal in the Cotswolds so could drive me to Kent.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…….

So there I was in Broadstairs, due to leave on the Monday morning to drive to Nottinghamshire. Then I would have had to turn round and drive back again on the Wednesday meaning my car would be in Kent. On the Sunday I was looking at flying in to Gatwick (already booked now), getting a train into London, going across London, getting a train into Kent and still having 200miles to drive home. Also turns out that neither Chris nor Kerry were going to be home Sunday night so getting from a rural Kent station to their house was also going to be complicated and not stress free.

At this point you’ve probably either lost the will to live or arrived at the conclusion that I should stay in Kent….but I had to go home because…oh yes….my passport was in Nottinghamshire. No choice …or was there?

I thought about this and discussed this with various people. No-one at home to courier the passport down to Kent etc etc.

But there had to be a way! At Broadstairs not only was I playing with Blowzabella but I was also playing with Narthen. This meant it was a busy and utterly exhausting weekend on top of a nightmare 8 hour drive over from Sidmouth. Narthen happens to include my sister and brother-in-law and my brother in law is now retired from his day job. My sister said, if you ask him nicely, he could go over with your house Keys (only an hours drive each way!!) collect your passport and deliver it to Andy who had to go home anyway. That way after his Leveret rehearsal he could bring it to me when he came to stop at Chris and Kerry’s rendezvous point tonight (Weds). After some wakeful hours on the Saturday night at Broadstairs that is what I decided to do.

I gave my house key to Barry after the Narthen vocal workshop on Sunday morning, they left and I then did the Blowzabella Dance workshop and dance in the evening . I decide to leave that night for Chris and Kerry’s as the dance finished at 9 and they were only an hour away. Barry said he would go to my house between 9am and 10am and would ring me to let me know everything was ok.

Monday morning arrived and Barry rang to say that he had found my Sanef toll thing, my euro purse (don’t ask) but no passport. I was very very close to tears at that point as it meant I would have to drive the 200miles home to look for it and then 200miles back again. He said look…I’m not in a hurry let me carry on looking.

I have a travel file and that’s where my passport lives. It only doesn’t live there when it’s with me or on those occasions when I have been too busy or distracted to put it in it’s allotted place. I was totally flummoxed as I had a certainty that I had put it in my file after my last trip abroad.

We/he found it in the end in my scanner. Just before leaving for Sidmouth Paul had asked for copies of various documents so that we could sort out the drivers for the van. I knew there would be little or no time on return from Broadstairs to do this and they might need time to process it so I thought…better do it before I leave….but not quite having the time and brain power to remember to take it out from under the printer lid and pop it back where it lives…I’d arranged to pick up Mum on the way to Sidmouth so I had to leave and I did so completely forgetting about the passport.

Barry having ransacked every surface in the house and was back in my office and at his wits end when, just as I said, ‘it isn,t on top of the printer is it? He had the good sense to look under the lid. Thank god for brother in laws.

My separate travels cost me – not the band , and therefore I will almost certainly end up with less than I earn. That being the situation I thought right, while I have a day off and am relatively unpressured now I’ll deliver my car to Gatwick, short stay car park so that when I fly in Sunday I can just get in the car and go home. I won’t have driven before that on that day. Anna is going to feed me a lovely pasta lunch in Italy and take me to the airport and I should still be home before Andy is with all my gear. Just the collection to do on Monday after, I hope, he has had a lie in.

I expect you all feel tired now. I do…but then I’m still recovering from the fabulous summer gigs I’ve been doing so far.