Since i have been in Phoenix Arizona i have been eating and not sleeping, eating and thinking about the tour. My back is free of spasm but still in intermittent pain. I have to have a op when i get home to free up the disc from the nerve endings. Stage moves may be limited to the odd twist which is about right for my age i guess. I thought it was just back ache, but its not, its very serious. Squeeze have toured for many years here in America and somehow we survive, the songs may be the ticket. Here we are again another five week meal of road and dressing room, which i think will be fun. The new songs and the band are so great right now so its worth the journey, and people want to see us which is nice. We have got the stage where we have a tour bus, or RV each! I feel like we are REM, they indeed liked to travel separately. We have different needs that need to be catered for, baby sitters, camping requirements and just plain old bed on the road, which is me. At my hotel the cactus grows high and the golf range looks as uninviting as it ever did, the rocks are Flintstone like, leaning this way and that across the vista beyond my dark room. As i say i have eaten more than i should be pre tour, but what else, its a time filler as well as a belly buster. My fight over was as ever very tough going, but the BA crew did a good job of watching out for me, and Charlie, at Rocket, looked out for me too. Mrs D had the difficult job of nursing my far flung imagination which likes to live in the future, which we all know does not exist. I tried hypnotherapy too but all it did was make me feel tired and sleepy. Im sure it has some basis of help. Five weeks of tour lay ahead and today is a day off, a day to sit still and eat, to think and to be in the moment as it remains still. Tomorrow its back to the stage, the over nighter in the RV and some bed hair. Being away from home for us all is something we have to live with, pacing each day and drinking in the now is all i can do to manage my feelings, and my back. I aim to let go and be on this journey. Not easy. I miss my home, i miss Mrs D, but i know she will be fine and nothing much will change over time, the same old issues will survive this tour, the dish washer and the hip hop of life in the country. Jet lag creeps up and takes me into the white sheets of my room, there on the wall the darkness which sweeps my dreams into nostalgic places, i have been here before, many times, but not with this much breakfast, Granola, Yogurt, two eggs and toast, coffee. Im stuffed. I must walk. The Doctor told me that my back could snap back into spasm at any point, so being a ginger puppy is me, I’m walking on egg shells, but not the silent ones. The choreography of life wraps me up in its arms and from the breakfast table i tip toe to the room, via the empty golf range and the distant hills. I have been here before, so many times, yet it still seems like the first time. On our very first tour in 1978 we played in Kansas and were asked to sing Im Henry The 8th i am….yesterday the waiter sang Im forever blowing bubbles, a tribute to West Ham, his football team. A simple lunch was thrown into the past, a man at the bar necked two large shots of Tequila and left for a meeting in his office. The heat was incarcerating my being, today its grey, its quite and the rain has fallen. Im back on tour in America and the rest, will be history. The same but different.