A two massage day, audience taming, and bug catching.

Tianjin is a huge city that none of us have ever heard of.  It's the same size as London.  We arrive after a long journey (made even longer by a detour through Beijing to drop someone off), and our management treat us to a drink at the bar.  The lone waitress panics as do we.  She calls for help and drinks soon appear and then disappear.  It's at times like this, battle weary and broken, we can become rather silly. LIzzy decides that she needs to hug everybody.  What a good decision!

What I love about Tianjin is the road signs.  There's a pictorial representation for a seemingly endless list of do's and don'ts.  These are large and hang threateningly over the wide roads; a man falling asleep at the wheel, a couple primly sitting with their seat belts tightly fastened, and a broken wine glass containing a car.  There's no mistaking their meaning, only I wonder if they're not a little too absorbing.

A trio of us spend the morning at a massage place. We are taken up to a room with three wooden beds and we're each given pairs of tatty pyjamas.  We giggle and prance around the room until three ladies in uniform come in and gesture for us to lie down.  I wonder if we'll still be doing things like this when we're old ladies - the thought that we will makes me very happy.

We are giants

The concert hall is huge and fresh out of the box.  It's set in a complex which looks like a space ship.  The poster of the orchestra in the foyer stretches over three floors of the atrium - we are enormous in Tianjin.  Backstage is very plush and we all line up to use the espresso machine.  After mine is spilt over my dress, I smell like the stuff all day and it's not nice.  

The hall is full.  We begin and I notice stewards at the back of the hall, pointing red lasers into the audience.  I find out later that this is to stop people taking photographs; the laser of shame is pointed onto the screen of any naughty phone or camera.  People are even filming with their i-pads.  

As the concert progresses, the atmosphere in the hall changes from an restless need to recording proceedings to a calmer sense of listening to the music.  We feel we have tamed them after an initial scuffle. The arias from 'Giulio Cesare' are so arresting that the audience become still.  The arias show a potted version of Cleopatra's character development, from her naivety and ambition, through love, to victory. 

After the concert, a quartet of us go back for another massage.  It's open 24 hours and I decide that I'll never have the chance again at a 10pm post concert foot massage.  I wonder what the Chinese masseuses make of us; they whisper and giggle as do we, performing the massage in complete unison.  Lizzy squeaks with pain and everyone laughs.  It's a moment in which language and culture presents no boundaries to understanding, or in other words, it's simply funny.

The next day we are back in Hong Kong and this is my 'bad day'.  I'm feeling sick at Beijing Airport and I sleep throughout the three hour flight.  By the time we land, I'm beginning to feel better but all I want is my bed at home. The next day in our dressing room, I ask the massed Ladies of The English Concert if it's true that everyone has a low day on tour?  I receive a chorus of "Yes" and we leave it at that. 

Hong Kong is a whirl of neon and buildings that leer over you in a threatening manner.  Restaurants are piled high in skyscrapers, each promising a better view than the next. Designer brands line up to do battle and you're accosted every few yards with offers of cheap watches and handbags.  The skyline is stunning with the mountains rising triumphantly over the skyscrapers.  Small areas of thick vegetation lie untouched between roads and I imagine the effort it must have taken to trample it into submission.

I wake in the morning and turn on the radio.  This isn't what I usually do.  The final 'Hallelujah' of 'Silete Venti' comes squealing from  the speakers and the announcer says, "And I was speaking with Harry Bicket who will be conducting the English Concert…".  Harry tells me later that they'd called him in his hotel room only seconds before going on air and the line was so bad that he could hardly hear a word the interviewer spoke.  What a way to wake up.

Hong Kong City Hall.

We have no wifi in our rooms so we congregate in small groups in the lobby where it is free.  I wonder what it was like touring before the internet, so engrossed are we in the act of Skyping home and checking our emails.  The thought that we might have talked to each other more comes first, but perhaps being so in touch with home makes us happier. There's no harm in spending some time away, back in the other reality of home, family, and friends.  This modern life is a tricky thing; I suppose people have been saying that for an eternity.

We are playing at City Hall in Hong Kong. It's an old fashioned building where you walk off the street and straight onto the stage.  There an no espresso machines backstage here; I'm relieved.  We interview Harry this time between rehearsal and concert.  By this stage in the tour, I'm feeling so tired that I just ask him to talk about the music we're playing, and he speaks fluently to camera without hesitation.  Later, he worries that he might have seemed grumpy.  Perhaps he's having one of those days.

By this time, Alfonso has caught my bug and he looks green as we walk onto stage.  He brightens up as we're met with noisy applause from a smiling audience.  He loves a hall that reflects enthusiastic applause with such volume, he says it makes him feel like a rock star. What an imagination!  We begin and the hall has a clear, warm acoustic.  I later wonder at how we play the same music so many times and without feeling bored of it.  Sometimes we must employ certain strategies; I try to think of the audience's enjoyment, finding new elements to listen to, or simply trying to play better.  By this stage in the tour, we have the music securely in our heads and we're enjoying listening and watching the music flying around between us.  

We have no idea what this banner says.

The audience are so enthusiastic that they receive the full compliment of two encores.  Carolyn and Harry sign programs and CD's in the foyer after the concert and I meet up with a friend who I haven't seen in seventeen years.  All this travel brings you to friends in far flung places.  We congregate for one last time in the foyer with our lap tops and newly purchased i-pads for a final, weary chat with our people.  We're off early in the morning to Taipei - a certain kind of tiredness is bedded in by now and only being able to get few hours sleep hardly seems anything to worry about anymore. The physical toll of such travel is equalled by the pleasure of it - or so it would seem.