LLFF on tour

I'm back from France. God it was fun. Here is what happened.

It was Thursday and Astrid, Rob, Suz and I flew to Lyon, got in our rental car and I drove us on motorways and through vineyards (where we stopped for lunch in the 36 degree heat but quickly had to take refuge in the aircon) over to the obscure town of Romans-sur-Isere, where we'd decided to spend the night. It used to be a shoe-hub. Now it is not up to much and I probably wouldn't say it justifies a detour even if you are driving directly through it and have several hours to kill, but we are all really fun and nice so we had a brilliant time. Harry and Aidan joined us for dinner.

[Chorus] We had too much to drink.

Then it was Friday and the six of us drove in convoy to a Cistercian (sp?) abbey somewhere deep deep in the glorious mountainous countryside. We took some self-timer photos in the churchyard and then we went inside to look round the abbey. Rob suggested that we sing something. Aidan objected on the grounds that it was really arrogant to force our music on other people, but by then it was too late as Astrid had asked the lady in charge of the church and she had enthusiastically accepted our offer. Five of us (minus Aidan) sung Jonathan Dove's Into Thy Hands and it was pretty lovely to sing something so whopping in such a quiet, empty space. But the debate with Aidan continued after our performance. I'm really not sure where I stand on it. It is arrogant. But then, as Aidan kindly pointed out himself, if you extrapolate his argument to its furthest conclusions, all performance is arrogant. Anyway, fortunately on this occasion the assembled eight people seemed to like it and we drove off thinking it had probably been an okay thing to do. We took a road up an unbelievably big mountain to reach a famous view point, but when we got there, we couldn't see anything because it was too cloudy at that altitude. Then we went for lunch. Then we drove on to... god, where did we go on tour again? My memory... Argh. It was in the Ardeche region. Okay, I've checked my Gmail. We went to Saint-Agrève, which is a small village in the middle of nowhere, about 1100 metres above sea level. Glorious. In our hotel, we met with the rest of the choir, about twenty of us in total I reckon, and an amazingly nice bunch.

[Chorus]

We played music loudly on Harry's iPod speakers in the hotel dining room and did lots of dancing to Thriller and others, and then we got complaints, so we went up to the second floor and listened to music loudly there instead. Jess chucked water in Leo's face because he asked her to. Some people kissed. Other people did more than just kiss. Other people did more than just kiss and it was very naughty because they should be committed to other people. They were Tour Single (i.e. not really single but single while on tour). We were also keen to find out who may or may not be Tour Gay. Having been initially sceptical, many people drank from the box of acidic rosé I had bought.

[Repeat chorus]

Then it was Saturday, and some people thought that maybe they should have drunk a bit less the night before a day on which we were expected to rehearse from 10am to 1pm, then from 6pm to 7pm, and then perform a concert from 9.15pm to 10.30pm. But we battled through. In the evening, the girls rehearsed outside while the boys rehearsed inside and Jess was sick because there was a grass snake. Then we went over to the concert venue and did the concert, and we got three encores which was really nice. Afterwards we all piled into the tiny little sauna room they'd provided for us and Aidan said, "This is where we turn off the lights and play a quick game of 'Who's In My Mouth?'" Then we went back out into the concert venue/barn and had wine and local produce with the locals.

[Chorus]

Then we went back to the hotel.

[Chorus]

We started on the second floor but then there were complaints so we moved down to the first floor. We gave each other massages competitively. Someone who shall remain nameless got a text message from one of their friends saying 'Please come to dinner next Friday - no orgy this time, I promise!' Then we locked Rob in the room and straightened his hair which was so funny I thought I might have to go to bed through exhaustion brought on by laughter. But then there were more complaints, and we went outside into the hotel grounds and I woke up. We played Aidan's glow-in-the-dark frisbee for a while. Then it all gets a tad blurry but it involved cartwheels and handstands and lying on the driveway looking up at the Milky Way and Gilly trying to pour the acidic rosé from the box into Jess's mouth but missing and instead getting a lot of it in her eyes and Jess seriously thinking she had been permanently blinded and then we did a bit of running around doing piggybacks. We got to bed quite late.

Then it was Sunday and we had to get up very early to check out and then drive for 45 minutes up winding roads to another tiny village where we sung Byrd's Mass for 5 voices at the Catholic church service, and then when we had to walk forwards in front of the altar to perform the anthem, I tripped over my trouser hem and fell flat on my face and found it hard not to giggle all the way through the next few minutes, which wasn't great. Then we had lunch in the village hall and the mayor said nice things and a couple of local men sung us a local ditty and it was all rather lovely, and then most of the choir caught their bus back to the train station, and Rob, Astrid and I drove slowly to Tain L'Hermitage and looked at some vines and took self portraits of ourselves and I lay on the hot tarmac at the side of the (almost) deserted road because my hangover had kicked in quite badly and I had been banished to the back seat and the windy roads and too much fruit at lunch were not being a happy combo, and then I nearly got run over by a truck, and then we drove to a wine cave and then into Lyon town centre. Feeling that throwing a large sheaf of photocopied sheet music in the bin was somehow wrong, Rob decided to distribute it to the Lyonaise. Astrid taught him to say 'Un cadeau musicale' and he approached total strangers and gave them random pieces from our repertoire. It was quite funny but finding people who accepted our gift was difficult, so after we had a Coke on the river, we started leaving sheets under the windscreen wipers of cars, and then I noticed that the back window of a BMW was open, and so Rob posted a song through the gap and it set off the car alarm, so we had to run back to our hire car and make a quick exit. Then we drove back to the airport and the three of us got the flight back to London Stansted, although unfortunately on arrival back at the airport, we discovered that my luggage had instead taken a flight to Ibiza. Within my luggage had been my housekeys. So that was fun. I went back to stay with Astrid and got up early this morning, came into the City and bought an emergency work outfit. It's been another awesome adventure. Yay.