Elbow Tour 2014 – London Part 1

This Blue World: Wednesday 16th April

Whoever decided to try and get me somewhere to travel before noon, is either brave or stupid. The person in question is very important to me and has been responsible for quite a huge amount of the happiness my life has seen, so it’s not stupid…. must be brave. And we are going to that London, where folk stare at me more than usual and not for the same reasons as at home either, in London I found that folk’ll stare at you for saying hello and appearing happy.

A few hours into London and the happy bouncyness drains from me. It’s warmer down south, so I’m going around in my Elbow t-shirt (free advertising, as I was later told by Jupp). No wonder everyone looks miserable here though, everyone’s in a rush to get somewhere and no one has a clue how to get their. Also, I’ve never seen so many people on one side of the road waiting to cross, it’s like some epic Abbey Road remake where the four Beatles have been replaced by thirty tourists with cameras, add a few proffesional types with phones stuck to their ear.

Wonder if the Queen is in. Bet she knows the way to the Ibis. For the record their are loads of Ibis hotels here and we must have found all of them before finding the one we needed.

Apologies if you were on the overground, or the underground (I cant remember which) and you saw a crabby bitch of a Bury lad and a blonde with a map. We had our own conversation and I stopped at one point to find a bemused German couple staring at me with a half smile. Of all the people we met today, those two probably had the clearest perception of what was going on.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to shift around London? It’s pretty simple as it goes, until you ask people, then it gets harder. It turns out that being ‘from there’ gives you no geographical advantage whatsoever. We did well, we only got lost twice, but we asked the transport people who are supposed to know these things and one fella was more interested in my map than he was in telling us how to get places. My map was apparently better than the ones he gives out because it was a wheelchair access of the tube. Dude, love that you haven’t seen the map before, I mean, you work for the company so what’s that about but… I’m very tired I’ve been wheeling around this place for hours and if we don’t get to the hotel soon I’m going to miss Jimi.

The boys got down here earlier in the week so they could do Jools Holland. Jools had some weird pronunciation of the bands name though, he kind of stressed the second part and it sounded like some new wave weird Spanish one man band; el bow.

They performed My Sad Captains and New York Morning and Guy wore his glasses. They recorded Real Life (Angel) and Charge and I think they are going to be on later in the week or month. At this point I have no idea, I’ve gone over too many cobbles and my mind is mushed.