The first few days of our tour were in Liverpool, so I picked up Nikki at the Junction in Cambridge, we unloaded all the other sets that were in the van and came with me from Berlin, and got on the road. The drive was very smoothly - apart from when i nearly took the toll booth on the M6 with me, which made the toll booth lady giggle. We got to our house in Fairfield, which is quite a rough area in Liverpool. Tommy (our landlord) let us in a showed us around. The house was huge and most beds had satin sheets. Dave arrived half an hour later and the Mechacek family and Bob got there in the evening. The Moberg family flew into London and travelled to Liverpool the next day.
While Dave and Nikki and I were still alone at the house, the doorbell suddenly rang. It was 'We wish you a Merry Christmas', which seemed a bit out of place. Or time. I went to see who it was and found three little girls outside. They wanted to come and play in the garden. I explained that Tommy had left and it was just us there, but they didn't seem to care. 'Open the door! Please let us in! Can we please play in the garden?'
So we let them in and they ran through into the courtyard and started singing and dancing. They must have been about 8 years old. Once they were in, we felt a bit strange, not really knowing whether their parents knew where they were - we had no idea where they'd come from. So we rang Tommy and he said that they usually came over to play with his kids, and that their parents would know where they were.
Then, after they did there singing and dancing, they just left as suddenly as they'd appeared.
The Unity Theatre was very nice, and although we got a little bit nervous about low bookings, the staff at the Unity were completely right when they said a lot of their audiences just shows up at the door without booking in advance. So we had two shows with great audiences.
On Wednesday afternoon we had a press conference with a group of Chinese journalists. They came to interview us so they can write previews in their respective papers for when we go there. It was all very strange. There were 4 journalists, the lady from the British Council in China, and a translator. I was most impressed by the translator. Kjell would talk and talk and talk and she'd just wait. And when he stopped talking she translated the whole lot. Obviously she could have been saying anything, as none of us speak Chinese. But I think she really translated.
They all came to see the show that night.
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