..We just played our first ever show in Poland to an ecstatic crowd of around 2000 people many of whom were in tears from Gabriel onwards. One man at the front cried for pretty much the whole set with that pained look of men who are unaccustomed to such demonstrations of emotion. So when it came to playing Gorecki it was, as I said to the crowd, like bringing it home. It was one of those moments “All I’ve known, all I’ve done, all I’ve felt…”. The feeling of playing that song inspired by a composer this audience are evidently proud to hold up as their own and the emotion it seems to evoke. It was a moment you want to bottle and keep forever, to look at on days when all is dark, to share with your loved ones in years to come.

When the show ended after two encores Andy, eager to show his love and gratitude to the audience, said that we’d sign the free posters that had been given out as people came in. So after a few minutes backstage we re-emerged expecting a handful of people and met by hundreds. Over an hour later we’d signed just about everything put in front of us. It had ceased to be about anything precious and rare, becoming more of a production line than time to spend meeting people and I’d started to wonder what each one took away with them in a hurried scribble or two on a scrap of paper. I started to feel utterly exhausted; somehow it all caught up and all I could think of was a shower and my bunk on the bus.

So I’m sitting here in the shower. I wonder what those people took away with them. I wonder at the way those of us who stand on a stage seem to take on this other-worldly prescence to those who don’t. So much so that a scribble on a piece of paper can mean the world, at least for a moment. And I’m humbled and a little bit overwhelmed. This is the moment, I think, when generations of musicians have sought the drug or the drink that can even begin to match and sustain that feeling of being onstage and the euphoria it brings. To somehow sustain the surreal nature of it all rather than plunge headlong back into the reality of day to day life. Me? I just want clean feet and my bed.......