Navarone Again

Yet another Alistair Maclean film... I can't believe that I used to avidly read every book and then go to see these at the cinema when I was knee high to a grasshopper!
Today is the last day of no-emails. The big girls computer with its top-heavy workload gets switched on tomorrow, early in the morning, and the brain will grind back into action.
It was my birthday yesterday and the girls cooked me a roast dinner. Apart from that I did practically nothing at all, apart from saying goodbye to Martin as he headed back to the Ross-shire routine.
It's been a busy time; first the Helen and the Horns gig and all the rushing about to do with that; then The Daintees in Leeds and Newcastle; then family doings.
The Newcastle gigs with The Daintees were touching. The band is on top form at the moment, having   spent a week recording most of a new album at The Premises a few weeks ago. But the move from the Cluny One with it's side bar of rabbiting boozers and its dressing room with a sofa with a huge hole in its seat (you always forget and sit down heavily, only to end up with your Harris in Australia), to the more intimate Cluny Two, was a good one. Cluny Two is a blacked out room with tiered seats to one side, a seated balcony and crucially, no bar in the room. The sound guy is amazing (the Cluny One sound guy is good too, but you can see this one from the stage!), the sound is amazing and people still manage to haul themselves up the stairs to the bar, but they don't talk while the bands are playing. Fin the percussionist was playing with the band, and Martin was on top form with the wit and wisdom of a Geordie expat who can remember every street in Washington and every club in Newcatle, especially the dives. It was fantastic to hear the band playing so tightly yet so fluidly; you can hear the bits in each song that each member likes playing best; nobody overplays and they are disciplined to a whisker: if a song unexpectedly ends, they are on it immediately.
The album California Star is doing steadily well. Lets hope 2014 is the year of The Daintees! There is a tour coming up in the spring....