The Mister was opening for John Butler and Rick Wilson and the venue had a good crowd who, apart from our friendly support group, were there to see Leicester’s hometown music heroes from Diesel Park West and got a great performance from The Mister in the bargain. I had seen DPW some years ago at a downtown club in Manhattan and was hooked. As a duo John and Rick still reign and Butler’s lyrics are stronger than a lot of the singer songwriters I have heard since. It was also nice to reconnect with Rick’s gorgeous wife, Karen. Mr. Lovepenney showed up with his new/old love Sue. Her importance in his life had been kept under wraps for some time, even from an old friend like The Mister and we were well pleased to finally meet the reason for his seemingly sudden shift from muted disheartenment to blazing happiness.

Back on Montague Road, after a solid performance by The Mister—on his birthday, no less—and much imbibed mingling with friends at the Musician’s bar, we dropped off the guitar and made a dash to the local pub at the top of the Contessa’s road. It wasn’t midnight yet but the Clarendon—fondly known as the Clary—had already called last orders and we suddenly knew we weren’t in New York anymore. Still addled by the time difference, we went back ‘home’ and indulged in something the Contessa had gifted us with, cracked open a bottle of the red and stroked the grey Pusskin who lets herself in through one of those ubiquitous cat flaps carved into the back doors of feline-friendly Leicester homes. A cat flap in the door of a New York City apartment would bring more surprises than we could handle, possibly none of them actually cats. We hunkered down to channel surf the telly until the wee hours. Further confounding our tenuous grip on time, we came across the comedy program, Live At the Apollo headlined by our very own brand of bizarreness, American comedian Joan Rivers, which we had already seen back in New York. Didn’t stop us from howling with laughter.