I Drank Joes Smoothie...

Confession...I did it. He did't tell you but I want to thank the very kind Ash fans that Bob and I met at Pinnochio's Italian Eatery in Newcastle who kindly passed a strawberry and banana smoothie to me on Joes behalf. Story was; he got distracted after the show with some old university friends. The smoothie was sitting there in the fridge in the dressing room and you guessed it..I consumed it. Sorry Joe but Mmmm was it goooood!

Had a wacky few days in Scotland. The GPS (Sat Nav for all you Brits) took us across the Cairngorms National Park on the way to Inverness so a 100 mile journey ended up taking 4 hours. We passed Balmoral and Aviemore before nearly running out of diesel. There's NOTHING up there except a bunch of lost sheep, loads of heather, dangerous roads and perhaps a Highland knitwear shop or two once you come back into 'civilisation'. It is moody though. You feel like you are at the top of the world. We had the option of a 25 mile drive either way for fuel and the yellow light was on! Made it though and Inverness was great. Turned out that Mr. Campbell who owns the Ironworks music venue in town also owns the ski mountain at Aviemore.. so he's not short of a bob or two, except that the Scottish skiing of late has been very poor due to a lack of snow! That won't worry us, since some band members, including yours truly, will be taking 10 days out in the middle of our 2008 German tour to visit the French Alps for some serious downhill stuff!

The great thing about Inverness was that on sunday morning after show (great BTW) we arose to hear a full pipe band coming alongside the river where our hotel was. Muddy got the whole thing on video. it was superb. Breakfast included Haggis ( I kid you not). Hi to my cousin David and Carol, his daughter, who drove in from Nairn on the Moray Firth.

A.P.