Back in Nuremberg, after our splendid walk, Bettina took me to a party – three minutes walk away from her flat.
A well-endowed, golden-haired girl called Connie loitered in the kitchen, catching my eye instantly. Well, one has nothing to lose by grabbing a bottle of red off the table, approaching with a quick and resolute step, and introducing oneself.
In fact, ‘Whatho, I’m English, don’t you know,’ turned out to be a capital opener. German parties, it transpires, are not to be sneezed at.
All good things come to an end however, which is where I find touring so irksome. Just when I meet somebody both intelligent and attractive, I have to move on to the next city.
Sulking, heart torn asunder and plunged into lugubrious dejection, I’m off to Leipzig. Connie will have to plod through life without me. It might be the other way around, actually – I’m sure she’ll be fine.
It isn’t just my heartstrings that are in dire straits, though; my notes are a shambles, too. Though still using the old moleskin notebook from Grandpa, I now
have a “half and half” system in progress.
Namibian’s writing pad is dog-eared and full of my doodling, yet somehow I still have tea-stained scraps of foolscap in various pockets (I sometimes take the rash option of carrying neither notebook nor pad).
To make matters more complicated still – call it inefficiency or gross ineptitude, if you like – I have occasionally been caught with none of the above, nor indeed even a pen. In those situations I’ve used text message drafts on the mobile phone to record anecdotes.
So to recap, writing the blog lately has been an exercise requiring a good deal of poor organisation. Not that anybody appreciates it..
Perhaps, before we continue with this outdoor leg of the AC/DC tour, you should know that we now have nine more trucks. Good grief, you ask, what on earth do twenty-nine trucks carry? Well, this and that.
Don’t quote me, but as well as Namibian’s ‘load of crap in the back’, there are two other lighting trucks, various sound trucks, a couple of rigging trucks, two trucks just to carry the train for the stage, video trucks, and a truck for catering. You get the picture – add an inflatable doll and six cannons, and the fleet rather starts adding up.
And all those trucks mentioned are only the ones that go to every show. There are also three stages on this tour, each of which is carried by about a dozen or so trucks. The stages are set up well in advance – for us to plonk our “production” gear straight onto.
Erection of the stage takes a few days…and so three teams of “steel” drivers are needed – to leapfrog to every third show. It is a huge operation, employing a lot of people. Now you know all that, we’ll probably steer things back to tourist attractions..