The cab office sends
the only replacement car it has. It turns out to be a Ford Escort
with doors that don't shut properly.
It's being driven by a recently released from 'Her Majesty's Pleasure'
(it means: prison to people
not too up on the English slang)
psycho; and to complicate the issue all your stuff will not fit
into the car without an awful lot of pushing and crushing.
You are nearly an hour late for the departure time.
Stress level rising fast!
9. You cram your instrument
and baggage as best you can into the Escort as the driver sits
in his seat.
He stares at you struggling with all that baggage,with a weird
maniacal grin on his face.
He is eating a pie of some description and smoking at the same
time (something that some
mini cab drivers have down to an art).
All the time you are looking at your watch and the words of the
tour manager are bellowing in your head.
"Don't be late or you'll be left behind"?
These thoughts and more
are flashing through your mind,
What if they have left without you?
How are you going to pay all the monies that you've deferred until
you return, if you aren't going anywhere?
How come every time you have to go on tour it is the same disorganised
chaos before you can leave?
You make a commitment to yourself , next time you will more organised!(some
hope)
You try to call the
tour manager on your mobile only to find that you,ve been disconnected
for non-payment of account.
You can receive calls, but you cannot make them.
You go into the house to find that the phone company has also
barred outgoing calls from your home phone where as 5 minutes
previously it was working.
It's a saturday night at 8'clock and the phone company has engineers
disconnecting people.
You would have thought they would have had something better to
do on a big, big saturday night.
You will not be able to sort it until monday morning when the
administration staff are in.
But you won't be able to because you won't be in the country!
You decide then and there not to inform your other half.
It will only cause more confusion and they are going to find out
for themselves anyway.
Besides it was them that ran up the bill!
So you go back outside to finish loading the car the best you
can.
Stress level very high!
10. Your other half is watching you cram your stuff into the car and with a sarcastic snarl shouts
"You are late
now anyway and they have most probably gone without you."
"If you were that important they would have come to pick
you up!"
You don't have time to explain or argue the point, so as you finally squeeze yourself into the cab you dig down deep into your soul and extract from your repertoire that essential gift all musicians have in their talent arsenal…'The Cuss'.
"F**k off and leave me alone!" is your measured response.
The sky darkens and
silence now descends upon the land as the air takes on that decidedly
polar feel.
They turn and go back into the home, slamming the door behind
them.
You are thankful that the door is double glazed because that slam
would have shattered a normal door.
You are now for want of a better word……screwed.
You are now faced with
2-3 weeks of trans-european / trans-atlantic phone calls where
icicles will form
on your telephone receiver every time you phone home and they
answer, due to the coldness of their
breath.
The phone bill will be enormous due to the long silences that
these calls will have.
A quick 5 minute phone call will have 4 minutes of silence.
If you have children
they will be put on the phone as soon as your other half realises
that it is you.
Your other half will have all the time you are away to plot how
they are going to make your life a misery
when you get back. That is if you ever get to go.
11. The mini cab pulls
away from your home and as you look back you can see the curtains
twitching as
your other half and / or your kids are watching you leave.
It is then that the mini cab driver utters those immortal words,
"Where is it we are going? I don't come from this part
of London."
They say that a few words can tell you a lot about a person, and
these few words tell you a lot about the
driver.