The waiters and waitresses have started to clap along to a song, and then do a little dance, peppered around the large, colourful restaurant floor; seems like there’s a routine for the choreography that they’re roughly following and there’s a ‘To the left’ and a ‘To the right’ in the song. LHO arrives back from having a smoke, the dance is over and our hotpots arrive. Antny, LHO an me are in a Joe’s Crab Shack, about an hour North of Orlando airport where John, our bus-driver, picked us up. He found an Outback Steakhouse on his satnav and the eleven of us traipsed in, wet off the boat; they didn’t have room for us for twenty minutes so the three of us rambled on to see what else was around. It was about a three minute walk to Joe’s, but it took more than ten minutes with the wait for the green man to allow us to cross the six-lane highway in between. No jay-walking here lads.

The hotpots are class – the two lads got crawfish, LHO got shrimp as well and I got clams, snow crab, and lobster claws – all came with potatoes, corn on the cob and a Cajun sausage. We loved every bit of it. You forget how friendly the staff are over here; it seems a bit over the top at first but you get used to it. Welcome to the USA.

We drove to a hotel and put down for the night, tired after having got out of the bed very early in the morning on the other side of theGreat Atlantical Ocean.

Up early here, I’m not sure even where we are; I know we’re a few miles south of Ponte Vedra where we play the first show tonight. Outside here it’s a sleepy seasidey place; we’re bound by water on both the East and the West; a wide channel on the West, traversed high by a huge bridge – the kind of bridge that’s two-a-penny in this country; the Atlantic surf waves to the East. Down on the beach some SUVs are parked – a gang of four young men half into their wet-suits; a couple sits on fold-out chairs sit beside their wagon. The sun’s breaking through the haze by about ten and a small bit of heat is beginning to build up.

Rickie and myself tackle the small pool out the back; it’s fierce cold but lovely and refreshing. I challenge him to a race but he’s a bit windy and he probably knows better than to take me on.

It’s nearly time for the bus to head up the coast to the venue. Nice to be back; nice to have the good weather, healthy start to the tour as well – it won’t all be like this….

One great thing about being in a touring band is you get to see places you’d unlikely get to see otherwise. Playing in Salisbury tonight and, up the road, about ten miles is Stonehenge. We’ve been to visit before, in the early 90s when you could walk in around the stupendous standing stones but a second visit with the limitation of staying outside the boundary of the rope is no less impressive. It’s a cool, fresh sunny Winter’s afternoon and Dave Feeney has driven Anthony and myself out there for the spin.

You’d have to be a bit short on something not to marvel at the site; the scale of the stones and the distance in time from when they were dragged here and arranged in such an intriguing configuration. Standing on the high plain on this Winter’s Saturday afternoon as the sun declines towards the horizon is quite beautiful and you do feel some sort of vague connection to those who worked mind and body so hard to leave us this spectacle thousands of years later. This is one of the perks of the job and I love it.

Salisbury is a bustling town with a busy and colourful marketplace this seasonal Saturday lunchtime. Dave, Rickie and I mooch around – Rickie buys a pair of runners for tonight, which will be his first full show behind the drums. He’s excited, as we all are, and I’m sure he’ll have no trouble whatsoever, to say the least. And he deserves to have a right good pair of shoes for it.

Davy went shopping and brought me back a blue shirt so I’ll be donning that tonight. My grandmother wouldn’t a been happy about my wearing a blueshirt but them days are gone now Naney!

We’ve been through Oxford since last I’ve been in touch with you, had a mighty night in the 02 Academy and a few relaxed drinks afterwards with the Winter Promise lads; good steam. We had a fire in the hotel in Oxford on the evening of the day off on Thursday. Anthony and myself were up in the room when the alarm went off and we wondered, but presumed, like so many do, that it was a drill or a false alarm. We checked the corridor and nothing much seemed to be awry but Dave Feeney texted me from down below wondering where I was and, sure enough, when I went downstairs and out the back door two fire engines were just arriving on the scene. A crowd had gathered in reception and outside the front door. Apparently a fire had occurred in the kitchen but it was all under control at that stage. Not too much drama……

Leo