To Lombardy...

Playlist

The Tubes – Piece by Piece

King Crimson – ProjeKct One : Jazz Café

Pink Floyd – Meddle

Pink Floyd – The Wall

Dream Theater – Octavarium

The Mars Volta – Frances the Mute

Various – Shine On

Art Blakey – Like Someone in Love

Jonatha Brooke – Back in the Circus

Up at 6 and on to the computer to transfer my latest CDs on to the Jukebox...

Sent out some e-mails to people re the upcoming gigs – I’m not expecting big audiences as the festival’s over and the students won’t be back till October – at which point I’ll probably be out of action due to upcoming shoulder surgery..

Off to Italy today and I made my first faux pas by lifting up one of the cases to weigh it, not realising it wasn’t shut – so some repacking to be done...

Then I couldn’t find the car keys – they finally turned up, after around 20 minutes of searching, down the back of the bed settee in the back room...

First leg of the trip was to Glasgow – 9:15 to 10:15 and we drove to Byres Road for breakfast at the Tinderbox and then a quick visit to FOPP where Anne bought Nick Hornby’s “A Long Way Down” and I bought a 3CD box of mediaeval music...

The sun was shining, the sky was blue...

Then to the airport and, following an argument regarding the ticket for the parking Anne had booked, we forgot to take the wallet of CDs with us from the car – leaving us somewhat limited in our choice of listening in the car we were to pick up at Bergamo airport...

As we waited for the check in to open I bought “Classic Rock” which had a cover mounted CD of new Prog Rock – writing this after coming back from Italy, I can say the stand out tracks for me are by Porcupine Tree, Spock’s Beard, GPS (the remains of what was Asia now the originals have reformed to tour the world), The Flower Kings, Fish and Frost – who is apparently someone who writes hit singles for Atomic Kitten and Ronan Keating...

There’s a new Peckhams Deli at Prestwick and, for once, we didn’t feel ripped off by the price of a couple of sandwiches and a bag of crisps purchased at an Airport...

A quick drink in the departure lounge (after having to remove our shoes to go through the X-Ray machines) and we boarded on time for an uneventful flight to Italy...

At Bergamo, while Anne waited on the bags, I headed to the Hertz desk and got the paperwork done for the hire car. By the time Anne emerged, we were ready to pick up the car – a bright blue Fiat Panda...

What we thought would be a drive of around an hour turned out to be closer to two and a half due to the congestion on the roads and the dangerous twisting trail along the shore of Lake Como and the even more dangerous and twisty road 8km up into the mountains to the village we were to live in for the next week, Veleso...

We arrived in darkness and were greeted by the owners, who live in Milan. They very kindly left us some pasta and sauce and a bottle of wine and we dined around 10pm, finally hitting the sack around midnight...

The inside of the villa was superb and we were looking forward to viewing our surroundings come morning...

Highlight of the Day : The villa is great