2am, on the road back to Halifax from Lismore (both Nova Scotia, not Yorkshire and Argyll)
Well, things got more complicated on Saturday. I got to Halifax to stay with DG and his family, but my suitcase 'Big Red' didn't. In preparation for this for sort of thing, I was carrying all the music for the first couple of concerts and a melodica, but it's still a bit tiring to get to the end of a long journey and not to have clean underwear.

As the afternoon dragged on yesterday with no sign of it (underwear or suitcase), DG and I decided to go to the airport and get it ourselves, which is not the ideal preparation for a tough evening concert. The staff at Continental airlines are great when you finally get to speak to them, but you have to negotiate either their interminable phone system or a customs official at the airport first. ... By late afternoon I had a suitcase, and DG had an exploding nose with the stress. He went off to lie down while I practised Geminiani. 

The concert was hot and sticky (we were both soaked through by the end), but had some great moments. DG played a breathtaking Robert Mackintosh sonata, and for an encore we played 'good to get home' live for the first time. A guy in the front row said 'all right' as I let go of the last note...

Then today (yesterday?) I spent the morning catching upon email and practising, and we drove off to Camp Geddie near New Glasgow on the north coast of Nova Scotia. It's a presbyterian summer camp that just happened to have its hall free for the day, for the promoter to book it. A dilemma: will we rehearse or will we go for a swim? Can you guess? We dropped the harpsichord off at the hall, and Jennifer and Derek Grout took us off to their beach house so we could get in what are supposedly the warmest waters north of Carolina, and in the ocean we met Vivi, our host for dinner. We had a very short rehearsal, and then I sat and got increasingly anxious about the harpsichord not staying in tune, as we had all the doors open to get the temperature down, and it was sitting in a cross-breeze. After an hour I decided I was too hungry to tune any more, and off we went to Vivi's for some fantastic food. After that the tuning was easy. A friendly audience, nice and close, and a fun concert. I briefly left the building by one of the many doors during my melodica solo, and then once I was outside I started to wonder what was going on back inside. This unexpected anxiety transferred itself to my breathing and all the phrases came out a bit short. I also got bitten by various insects in the course of the show, and at one point David had to carefully remove a spider that was occupying his part of the stage in mid-air ...

Back to Vivi's for more food & beer, and then what with the full moon and the beautiful night, a midnight swim was too good to resist. So five of us headed down to the shore, swam in the wonderful warm water, and toasted hot dogs and marshmallows by the fire, playing tunes and singing. Perfect. We got a ride back up the hill in the back of a pickup and set off for Halifax at about 1.45.