Feb 11^th – After Dark Concert Series – Middlebury Vermont – A long drive north as delayed jet-lag soaks into the band, and into the instruments. Guitar, pipes and fiddle are all affected by this new climate, very dry, very cold. Another good gig though, and again a regular stop for Jez – he was here solo just last year. The very laid-back and polite audience is momentarily thrown by one of their number who rushes to the stage after IN MY TRADE, shouting "Wow! You really NAILED that, Man!", before being restrained by his companions. At the hotel afterwards (straight out of the movie "White Christmas"), we get a call to say that tomorrow’s show in Maine is OFF due to a massive snow storm that is sweeping up the East Coast at that moment. It would be pointless to attempt the seven hour drive the next day. This is bad news so very early in the tour. Plans are altered, and we head for Albany NY a day early.

Feb 12^th – We find ourselves in Albany, staying at the same motel where the performers were housed during the nearby Old Songs Festival, three years ago. Snow is falling. Bill Spence, co-organiser of Old Songs Festival, a fine musician himself, and a pal of Jez's for over 20 years,  joins us for dinner, general tomfoolery and the first Margueritas of the trip. Later that night, Andy and Sean are mistaken for Mexicans in a nearby liquor store...

FEB 13^th – Old Songs Concert Series, Voorheesville NY – The Bad Pennies were the first act to play this hall two years ago, and they return in triumph. Tonight will be remembered as one of the best gigs of the tour. Half an hour before showtime, Kate is being interviewed "live" on BBC Radio Five Live about Radio Britfolk. Andy and Sean mingle with the crowd. Jez keeps what is to become a characteristically low profile before the performance, changing guitar strings every night backstage. Outside the Upstate New York night is cold and clear. There is much cake and coffee, all generously handed around. Ceremonial photos are taken with volunteers, band and crew.

FEB 14^th – CHERRY HILL New Jersey – A long drive down the New York Thru-Way, passing Woodstock, with no time for Jez to make a long-desired pilgrimage to Big Pink; down the Garden State Parkway, and a confused and busy search for tonight’s venue. A small audience, unfamiliar with the band and their songs. Early on, a woman with the strongest Jersey drawl we've ever heard, complains that she can't understand Jez's accent. Jez gets the giggles over this remark, and throws in a curve-ball, as they apparently say in the US, and counts the band in to CALICO, this song’s only appearance on the entire tour, and the one that this crowd immediately identifies with! The rest of the night goes well. We stay with Jez’s friends Carol and Justin, who live in Princeton Junction, in the precise location cited by Orson Welles in his famous radio broadcast of War of The Worlds, as the supposed site for the alien landing! Kate and Sean stay up late to watch the skies!

FEB 15^th – Tunkhannock, PA – Another regular stop for Jez, a great concert series run by ace singer-songwriter Lorne Clarke and his family and friends. Lorne is very much a soul-mate to Jez, an understated songwriter with a strong social sense to his writing, who typically has chosen not to appoint himself as opening act at tonight's show. A new venue, this time, an old theatre in the high street, where The Bad Pennies are sharing the bill with Steve Martin in The Pink Panther, showing in the cinema upstairs. Jez and Andy go missing, and are found watching the movie, minutes before they are due on stage. A fine show though, sold out, and a long, late evening around Lorne’s kitchen table afterwards, with much talk of songwriting, touring, and beer.

FEB 16^th – Back to Boston for a free day at Frankie Lieberman’s house in Cambridge. This is home from home for more than a few visiting musicians during the year, and Frankie is one of the band's favourite people, to the extent that they have persuaded her to join them on the forthcoming Antipodean leg of the tour. There is much to plan and talk about. By late afternoon, the whole band has seperated out and disappeared into the city. They reappear in the early evening, and eat Indian food. In the streets below, the remnants of last weekend’s snowstorm have all but disappeared.

FEB 17^th – Framingham Massacheusetts – The band head across town to the studio of W-UMB, the famous folk music radio station, where they are the featured act on their "Live at Noon" spot. Host Marilyn Rea-Beyer is a long-time champion of the Jez’s music. Afterwards, station DJ Dave Palmater links Jez up with the BBC Radio Ballads team back in the UK, so they can record voice-overs for the website for the series, which will start the following week. The wonders of modern technology. Then it’s a slog up the turnpike for tonight’s show, at a church hall in a classic New England town-square locale, and which again is full of people familiar with the band’s music, and where the cake and coffee flow and crumble freely. Sean talks basses with the sound crew, Kate arranges CD sales to overseas relatives of some audience members, Andy finds (and dismantles) an electric organ backstage, and Jez re-writes lyrics for A FEW FRONTIERS. Returning to Boston that night, they get hopelessly and hysterically lost in Brookline, one of the city's more colourful suburbs, and end up in an all-night diner, chatting to the friendly Asian staff. The long crazy journey back to Frankie's seems to involve crossing the Delaware Memorial Bridge...

FEB 18^th – Hartford CT – Temperatures of minus 15 degrees and falling don’t prevent a full house and a great gig, here at the Wilde Auditorium of Hartford University. It’s one of Jez’s favourite venues and the site of what he considers to be the best ever gig by the original Bad Pennies, Bev, Bob and Billy, back in 1995. There is a display outside the hall showing an poster from that very show. Jez denies that he is wearing the same striped shirt tonight that he wore back then. A local journalist, covering the show, asks whether folk music today can ever be relevant to anyone under the age of 30. At least two Bad Pennies answer in the affirmative. At the end of the night we realise that every CD, DVD and songbook at the merchandising table has been sold. After a minor fracas with over-zealous campus police as the gear is being loaded into the van, The Bad Pennies drive off into the freezing night (minus 18 degrees) for the early west-bound flight from  New York's JFK to sunny California.

FEB 19^th – Berkeley CA – A long flight to San Francisco, via Los Angeles, and straight to tonight’s show at the infamous Freight and Salvage concert hall in Berkeley, in the heart of what was once the radical hippy capital of the USA. Instead of the usual rental van, Jez somehow manages to emerge from the Hertz parking lot at the wheel of a brand new Cadillac. We are all mightily impressed, as we glide across the Bay Bridge, past Alcatraz and Treasure Island, towards the luscious Berkeley Hills. Backstage is crowded with friends tonight - booking agent Nancy Carlin, long-time buddies Gloria Rosson, Maureen Brennan and Shay Black, with yet more friends in the audience. This is the debut of this line-up of the band here at the Freight, and the crowd lap it up, even though no-one has really slept on the overnight flight. The set-list is peppered with requests from the crowd. Andy's pipes solo reaches a new height, Kate's ALIBI CHILD is a big hit, and Sean is smothered in accolades for his bass-playing from discerning musos at show's end.  Afterwards, we stay with our good friend Sally Greenberg, who’s dog Amber provides Jez with his first canine fix of the tour.

FEB 20^th – Back to Los Angeles, to catch the flight to New Zealand. LAX airport is a zoo. Tantobie co-founder Andy Smyser lived in the nearby town of Azusa until recently, so Jez has spent a lot of time going in and out of this place over the last ten years. Last time he was here, waiting at the baggage claim, he found himself engaged in a long conversation with a man who turned out to be Nick Mason, the drummer from Pink Floyd, passing through on a book-signing tour, about work-permits, visas, and instruments lost and broken in flight. Another time he saw Dolly Parton boarding a plane for New York, and Al Jardine of The Beach Boys in an airport bookstore. Today however, celebrities are few and far between. Instead, we find  Frankie Lieberman, our friend from Boston, ready joining us for the rest of the tour. We discover her waist deep in luggage in the Qantas lounge, reading a book on kangaroos.

FEB 22nd – After losing February 21st entirely somewhere in mid-Pacific, we arrive in Auckland, and check into a family unit at an airport motel. Is it the flight, or America that has rendered us so exhausted and disorientated? Suddenly it’s summer. In minutes we are all in the hotel swimming pool, along with a couple from Liverpool and a large Maori family up from the South Island. Later we eat in town at a famous Chinese restaurant, amidst some sort of student rag-day celebration that has taken over the city centre. Auckland is a strange collision of the modern and the not-so-modern, and happily it doesn’t seem to care. Again, the band disperses and takes in the city’s vibes for the rest of the day. Later in the evening, back at the motel, the same thing happens as we each wander off into the local neighbourhood, as if trying to find some orientation in this hemisphere. This is the last free night for some time, and everyone crashes out early in a haze of Kiwi beer and piles of laundry.

FEB 23rd – Hamilton Gardens Festival – Jez disappears in the morning for a solo appearance on Radio New Zealand to promote the tour. Then we head south to Hamilton, for an open-air show at the beautiful Hamilton Gardens Festival, a maze of a place, with pavilions, bandstands, a lake and a breathtaking array of foliage and fauna. The Bad Pennies are booked to play in the English garden. Kate and Frankie visit the Chinese Garden, and are so enthralled they wonder if the show can be moved there, but it’s not to be. As it is, the band’s New Zealand debut is a huge and enjoyable success. Jez meets friends from previous visits, Lindsay and Stevie, exiled Geordie bagpiper Helen and her husband, as well as tour organiser Gill Winter and her husband Peter. A lot of wine flows post-gig.

Feb 24th – Kati Kati – We head south west to Kati-Kati, to meet up with Tony Ricketts and Jenny Kilpatrick, with whom Jez formed a lasting friendship on his very first visit to New Zealand, all of ten years ago. Tony is again, a songwriter and soul-mate, and he and Jenny are people that Jez often talks about, living as they do in a Garden-of Eden-like spot at the far corner of the world, a far cry from the never-ending spiral of traveling and touring that dominates the band’s lives for so much of the time. The concert that night is in a typically wacky venue, the sorting house of a fruit orchard, and is all the more enjoyable for that.

Feb 25th – Titirangi Folk Club – A day spent at Paradise Beach for the band, being pounded by the surf and roasted by the sun. Then on to Titirangi, further up the coast – these are the people who first brought Jez here for the Auckland Festival a decade ago. The set-list this evening is designed so that the band can play a different set of songs at the next night’s gig, in nearby Devonport, many people are coming to both shows. So tonight’s show suffers somewhat from a sense of “hesitation”. Everyone is happy enough, but at the party afterwards Jez is clearly underwhelmed, and spends most of the night deep in conversation with Tony Ricketts, who has come up to tonight’s show to help with the sound. Kate and Frankie retire early, but Sean and Andy go the full distance, and end up playing video games with the master of the house until 4 am.

Feb 26th – The Bunker, Devonport – One of the world’s legendary venues – a former ammunition storage bunker high above Auckland Harbour, run by Roger Giles, a legend himself, and on form tonight. This show is another highlight of the entire tour, with a set-list that swerves vigourously from the regular. THESE COAL TOWN DAYS, THE SODA MAN, LAST OF THE WIDOWS, and more. Kate brings back ALL TRAWL AND NO TICKLE for the first time this tour, and it is destined to remain in the set. Her former singing partner Jacqui, whom she has not seen since she returned to her native New Zealand six years ago, shows up for an emotional reunion.

Feb 27th - Christchurch – Jez is involved in a radio interview, by phone, early in the morning, as the band re-assemble for the flight to the South Island and tonight’s show in Christchurch, where a surprise is in store for our leader. His long-lost cousins, Andrew and Guy, whom he has never met before, show up at the gig. Andy thinks they are the Mitchell Brothers from Eastenders, but they turn out to be charming and funny. Jez is in shock. The concert is in an old music hall in a quaint but run down dock area on the outskirts of the city. All the cars are 1960’s English models. A poster for a James Keelaghan concert from eight years ago dominates the dressing room. Sean, Kate and Andy go swimming in a public pool in the high street. The show goes OK, but by 10pm the town is deserted, the bars are closed, and the Bad Pennies wander the anachronisms of streets, anti-climaxed in the warm, salty night air.

Feb 28th – Nelson – “Everyone wants to live in Nelson” is an often-heard maxim as we travel around this country, and when we finally get there, after a long but scenic trip up the east side of the South Island, we can see why. The concert, in a publicly owned mansion-turned-community-centre overlooking the city, is another tour high spot. The organisers and volunteers are equally charming and hospitable. A couple from England, piping friends of Andy’s, show up at the gig, and announce that they have just been married here in Nelson. The audience is young and enthusiastic. Many on-stage photos are taken, and we are given a CD of then the next day, showing the band looking particularly animated, Jez coming over as particularly possessed. He and Frankie are entranced by a display of sepia-stained photos of this house, dating from the late 1800’s, looking exactly the same, but populated by crowds of women in Victorian costume. A meagre shrub in one photo, surrounded by children in pantaloons and petticoats, is now a sizeable tree, towering above the balcony where Kate and Jez stand later that night, signing CDs for the audience.

March 1st – Wellington Folk Club – The ferry ride across to the North Island the next morning is picturesque, but uneventful, apart from a floating fish farm that has broken its moorings and is wandering aimlessly across the shipping lanes. Little did we know – by the next day, conditions between the islands had become so bad that no further crossings would take place for a week. Meanwhile our final show in New Zealand is highly enjoyable, another chance for Jez to meet up with friends from previous visits, and well received by a sizeable audience. The band drives off for another night flight, across to Sydney this time, without really having had time to look at this fabulous country, or sample its way of life. There is no-one to wave us goodbye. Meanwhile Australia beckons.

Part 3 - AUSTRALIA

March 2nd - The Bad Pennies arrive in Sydney amid some confusion, exacerbated by a weariness from three weeks constant gigging and travelling. Even the thrill of being in sunny New South Wales fails to overcome this. While three quarters of the band plus Frankie make it safely through immigration and into the busy airport arrivals lounge, Sean fails to materialise. This could be due to the fact that Jez has Sean's passport in his hand, as well as his own… Once we reclaim our bass-player, we then find that the rental-car reservation, showing it was booked and paid for back in the UK last month, has been eaten by the computer system… Finally we escape into the suburbs of Sydney, and show up at the house of our good friend Margaret Walters, a fine singer herself, and something of a mother hen for Jez ever since his first trip down under a decade ago. While the rest of the band settles in, Jez is whisked away by Marg for an interview at the downtown studio of ABC Radio National. Later there's time to wander around Circular Quay in weather more typically British than Australian, but enjoyable nevertheless.

March 3rd - Leaving Frankie behind to enjoy the hedonistic pleasures of Bondi Beach, the band head straight off to the first concert, the same gig with which they opened their first Australian tour as a band in 2002, The Merry Muse in Canberra. Greeted by our host, the inimitable Bill Arnett, there's time for a short rest before the gig itself, which after a few sound problems, shapes up to be a fine start to the tour. Driving back to Bill's house on the outskirts of town at around midnight, Sean screeches the van to a halt to avoid a close encounter with the first kangaroo of the trip.

March 4th - Kate, Sean and Jez are up early enough for a stroll into the bush behind Bill's house. Jez takes a few photos on the new camera that he got at Wellington airport. (Months later, one of these will end up in the booklet of Kate's new solo CD, LITTLE CANAAN.) Then it's back to Sydney for a gig at The Harp, a regular folk gig, where the promoter, John is someone who Jez knows well from previous tours. It's a good gig, and old friends Bob and Marg Fagin are in the audience, along with lots of other familiar faces. Margaret Walters and her singing partner John Warner open up the night, making the whole thing rather like a family get together.

March 5th - And a real family get-together is essentially what happens today, when more of Jez's long-lost relatives turn up at Wollengong Sports Club where the band are due to play an afternoon show. This time it's cousin Margaret who turns up to meet Jez for the first time, and she and her husband seem to enjoy the concert a great deal. The gig is run by the Jambaroo Festival gang, yet more old mates from past trips. There's a barbecue afterwards, after which the band commandeer the house of Bill Montgomery down the coast at Kiama where they'll be staying for the next few days, their first free days since leaving America two weeks before. "Monty" has open house for many of the visiting musicians who pass through at this time of year.

March 6th - A day filled with laundry, email, instrument maintenance (Andy's pipes are taking some punishment with the extreme changes in weather), and an hour or two on the nearby beach, but with the sun at its hottest, we follow advice from the locals not to risk too much time beneath its merciless rays. Monty's house (which he has kindly vacated for the duration of our stay) is liberally filled with books and records, and its comparative coolness eventually tempts us all indoors for an early night. Kate and Frankie chat most of the evening, Jez is reading a book on Richard Nixon, while Sean and Andy scramble through the collection of Scottish fiddle recordings that fills a shelf in the lounge. A visit to the blow-hole on the nearby headland rounds off the day, though this strange geological feature is not at its most active tonight.

March 7th - Another free day. The weather is beautiful, the sea inviting, the hospitality generous, yet everyone seems restless somehow. We settle on a drive in land to a rain-forest near Jambaroo, which turns out to be a great day out. There's a two hour walk through an extraordinary jungle-like landscape, punctuated by elevated viewpoints and water falls, that even this jaded bunch of foreigners can't help but feel impressed by. Later, Jez insists on a couple of hours rehearsal, to try and bring in a few new songs to the concert set. One of the songs we try is called WILL OF THE PEOPLE, a new one that Jez had previously earmarked for his solo repertoire. Indeed, the song never does make it into the band's set on this tour, eventually surfacing again at the first UK rehearsal a month later. March 8th - A long drive south to Cobargo for the next gig of the tour, which turns out to be the smallest audience of the whole trip. The hall is way out in the bush, and as it's only three days since it hosted a folk festival of local acts, the audience has obviously had enough folk music for the time being. Nevertheless, it's an enjoyable show, and we see some of the wildest countryside of the entire tour, as well as some of the wildest characters!

March 9th - The band flies into Melbourne at midday, where their concert tonight is part of the famous Brunswick Arts Festival. Jez has played here countless times, and it's a great show, good sound, nice hall, and sizeable crowd. Jeanette Gillespie is our host, who along with Jenny Simpson and Helen Wright, were the first Australian act to ever cover a Jez Lowe song on CD, over ten years ago. (It was LAST OF THE WIDOWS). Melbourne is Jez's favourite Australian city, and an exciting place to spend time, but this time the visit is brief. Tomorrow it's an early start and a long drive to what is touted as the high point of the entire tour, The Port Fairy Festival, where the band are playing mainstage tomorrow night.

March 10th - The town of Port Fairy is swarming with musicians, tourists, wild men, loose women, performers, children, pensioners and loons of all shapes and sizes. The band have been given a house to stay in, about 15 minutes walk from the festival site, which itself consists of a maze of marquees, stalls, tents, trucks and caravans. We're all as high as kites with the excitement of it all, by the time we head down to the soundcheck at stage three at around 6pm. Everywhere we look there are familiar faces. Backstage, Kate is talking to Jim McQuarrie, our tour agent on this trip, Andy is swapping tunes with a fellow piper, who turns out to be Superintendent Jack Brennan of the Victoria Constabulary, Sean is in conversation with Gill Winter, our New Zealand agent, who has flown over for the weekend, while Jez is avoiding everyone, before finally bumping into Andy Irvine in the performers area. They have a conversation about mutual friends around the world, during which we get the call to report for duty. There are about three thousand people in the marquee when the band takes the stage, and everything goes amazingly well. David Francey from Canada watches from the sidelines, and asks Kate afterwards for a tape of ALL TRAWL AND NO TICKLE, a song which seems to have taken his fancy. The evening winds down afterwards with a beer or two. Chris While and Julie Matthews, with whom Jez was touring with when he was last at Port Fairy, show up, along with Enda Kenny, Martin Pearson and Bernard Carney, a gathering that sets the tone for the rest of the weekend.

March 11th - Another concert spot, and a chance to catch a few other acts, including Richard Thompson, Mosaic and Sharon Shannon. At some point Bernard Carney persuades everyone to join him for a Beatles Singalong in the bar-tent later that night. Expecting some kind of informal gathering around a corner table, all the invited performers are astonished to walk into a full sized venue, with several thousand very YOUNG Beatles fans, and a full rock band as back-up. David Francey does Ticket to Ride, Chris While does Something, Mundy-Turner do Back in the USSR and Jez does Here Comes the Sun. The crowd goes bananas.

March 12th - The band have the day off, but Jez is on stage at a songwriters workshop with Kristina Olsen, David Francey, The Wailin' Jennies and several more non-Aussie acts. It's MC'd by Robyn Johnston, a well-known Australian radio personality, who has done a great deal over the years to promote Jez and his music down-under. All the performers are on-stage together, but stick to their own turf, without jamming on each others' songs, as is usual at such gatherings. Nevertheless, the audience lap it up. Jez and Kate are heading across town later, when Jez is mistaken for a famous Australian country singer Brent Parlane. He's treated to several minutes of verbal adulation before admitting that it's a case of mistaken identity. Kate dissuades him from investing in a Stetson from a street vendor, and everyone meets up for dinner at a restaurant recommended by Enda Kenny, a man who knows his onions.

March 13th - After almost five days in the same closeted environs, the band play one final concert on Monday morning, and slip away from the festival for a long drive west to Adelaide. We also say goodbye to Frankie Lieberman, our friend and confidante, who is heading east and home to the USA after visiting old college friends in Melbourne. Her involvement in the trip had started as a joke, a light-hearted quip when we had been staying at her house in Boston a year before. In fact, she had provided us with much-needed balm throughout the mid-part of the tour, and we are all very sorry to see her go. Coupled with the inevitable down-feeling that comes with the end of a festival, it's a solemn group of musicians that head across the plain to South Australia. Within an hour, however, things liven up considerably when we are stopped at the state border for a speeding violation. The young cop goes against type however, by advising us to tear up the summons once we cross into South Australia two miles further on, as no-one will ever bother to follow it up. We drive on into the darkness towards a new set of friendly faces, 500 kilometres down the road.

March 14th - We awake in splendour at the home of Pete and Annie Thornton, who have so kindly offered to house us for the duration of the Adelaide segment of the tour. There are two free evenings ahead of us. Their house is filled with instruments and CDs, but it's down to the sea we go this first morning, where the almost deserted beach and crashing surf prove irresistible. It's only later, after spending a good few hours in the waves, that Pete brings up the subject of the flurry of shark attacks along this stretch of coast in recent months. The rest of the day is spent on dry land. There's still a post-festival pall in the air, until Sean decides that he wants Andy to teach him to play Irish style whistle. Ear-muffs are distributed and the lesson commences. March 15th - We spend the day in Adelaide. Jez does another radio interview for the local ABC station, with Julie Cavanagh, we meet up with Henk de Weerd, a local CD distributor who has handled the Tantobie catalogue in this part of the world since the company started, and have time to head out to the Barossa Valley for a tour of wineries, following an invitation from Julie, who's non-radio life is as a wine producer. The rest of the afternoon passes by in something of a haze, until we find ourselves at a music session at an Irish pub in the city. A fine time is had late into the night. At one point, Andy strikes up a conversation with a lady who admits to being a close friend of Julien Sutton, of the locally based   Kathryn Tickell band, and a fine musician himself. The world shrinks for a moment, and then another set of reels strikes up.

March 16th - Tonight's gig is in Port Noarlunga, and run by Pete and Annie, our hosts. It's a fine show, with a friendly audience, and a surprise opening spot from Don McGeoch, who with his wife Brenda runs the Brantford Folk Festival in Ontario, Canada, where the band played only six months previously. They are visiting relatives in Australia, and thought they would surprise us by showing up tonight. We were all really taken by one of Don's own songs about The Grand River when we last heard him, and he performs it tonight, throwing a strange feeling of disorientation over us weary travellers, pulled together this night from different corners of the world.

March 17th - St. Patrick's Day finds us back in the Barossa Valley for a concert at Tanunda, We share the bill with up and coming local band The Audreys, who are great bunch of people. Unfortunately, the gig is a bit of a nightmare for all concerned, due to the worst sound problems we have ever encountered! Jez stops the show after one verse of the opening song GLAD RAGS AGAIN, as a squeal of feedback has the audience running for cover. We never really recover from this, and the show limps along for the rest of the night. The theatre crew are apologetic, but the damage is done, and the sound continues to fluctuate from the barely acceptable to the downright impossible. It is the ultimate nightmare, due in part to the economics of such a long tour around the world, which means we cannot bring our own soundman with us. It is the only gig of the trip where we have any problems of this sort, and it is a sobering and dispiriting experience.

March 18th - In the street the next day, Jez and Andy run into a bunch of people who had attended last night's show. The sound problems have in no way dampened their enthusiasm for the gig, and this manages to cheer us up somewhat. Tonight's concert had fallen through some weeks back, so we head back to Pete and Annie's place for an evening's r and r, watching the UK series Midsommer Murders on TV, and drinking Pete's Aussie beer. March 19th - It's the last Adelaide gig, at Clarence Park, and it completely makes up for Friday's show, from which the much-maligned sound crew have shown up tonight as part of the audience! This is one of the best shows of the tour, with a capacity crowd, big CD sales, and an Indian meal afterwards. One image sticks in our minds however. Before the show, we go walkabout in the neighbourhood, and end up in an antique shop. It is filled with strange and bizarre objects, odd instruments and weird bits of machinery, including something that looks like it came out of Doctor Who's Tardis, but turns out to be a huge electro-magnet attached to a surgical table. The shop's owner tells us that it is in fact a machine designed to magnetically extract shrapnel from wounded soldiers during the Korean War. This is so horrific a concept, that we all leave the shop stunned, and head thoughtfully off to the gig. Later that night, DOVER, DELAWARE is brought back into the set.

March 20th - A long flight to Perth, for the final concert of the tour. We are greeted at the airport by the incomparable Ray Downes, the man who first brought Jez to Australia back in 1995, and has remained his agent ever since, until handing over to Jim McQuarrie for this tour. Ray is a one-man wonder of the folk world, and is promoting our concert at Kulcha in Fremantle tomorrow night. Fremantle itself is something of a home-from-home for Jez, and he guides the band around its merry streets late into the night, ending up at a fish and chip restaurant on the quayside, where we dine in the warm darkness of the West Australian evening.

March 20th - Jez and Kate head off for an early morning radio appearance to promote tonight's show, which is already all-but sold out. We all then meet up in town for lunch, and spend the rest of the afternoon gearing up for an early departure back to England on the morrow. Jez and Ray chatter on about all things folk, before we all troop down to the nearby beach for a last splash in the warm Antipodean ocean. Then it's soundcheck time. The audience is already queuing at the door when we finish, and a spectacular gathering of old friends join us for this last gig of the trip, including the debonair figure of former BBC folk man Jim Lloyd, who now lives nearby, plus many of the local musicians that Jez first met when he came here, and with whom he has built up a relationship of mutual respect and friendship. The gig goes well, the vibe is great, and the band ends up tired but elated at evening's end. In the street outside, Kate stops a German tourist to ask him to take a last photograph of the tour, and everyone dissolves into hysterics. Fremantle is closed for the night, so it's back to Ray's for a nightcap. Tomorrow's plane trip looms large over the proceedings. We weren't to know that the punishing 21 hour trip would take even longer due to an unscheduled stop in India when one of our fellow passengers is taken ill mid-flight. Thoughts tonight turn to getting home, the late winter weather that will greet us, and a tour of Holland that will start in eight days time.