John Edward Cooper’s Notes

Day 170 Wed 19 June Ecc 1-6

At last: a warm day! — with hazy sun.… The taxi, booked for 1.05pm, hadn’t arrived by 1.10pm, so Janet rang the firm — they’d got the booking listed for tomorrow! They sent a car as soon as they could; it arrived just after 1.15pm, and we got to the station with three or four minutes to spare. We changed from the First TransPennine train to an East Midlands Trains one at Grimsby Town station. This was of a fairly old design, but the interior had been refurbished, so it was in better condition than the now somewhat threadbare First TransPennine train, and the scarlet upholstery looked new. The only thing lacking was a power socket for a computer. En route, though, it proved to be noisy, because it had openable windows, not air-conditioning, and they were open — apart from the one adjacent to us, which Janet closed. When we boarded, there were some 10 minutes till the train was due to leave, so Janet went over the footbridge to where she supposed she could buy canned drinks. There was a sign saying “Coffee”, but no café — only an almost-empty vending machine with one or two bars of chocolate and no drinks. Fortunately, the lady behind us on the train overheard, and offered Janet a spare bottle of Pepsi Diet. She tried to decline payment, but Janet insisted; “50p,” she said, for she said she’d got two for £1. I saw a grebe on Chapman’s Pond, and later another one on a small lake just beyond Barnetby. On the way there were yellow fields of rape and green ones of wheat. One field’s yellow was punctuated, in places heavily, with poppy red. Hawthorn and elder shrubs that we passed looked characteristically English. And steep-roofed houses, rectangular-towered churches (and on the way back, I noticed the copper-green steepled one at Kirmington), and lack of tall, thin cypresses, marked this as rural England not Tuscany, as well — though cows and sheep and horses were indistinguishable from those there. There was a scheduled wait in Lincoln of ¾-hr., but after Janet had gone to a different platform from the waiting room for the loo, ten minutes before departure she came back and reported that our train, headed for Leicester, was already on the platform, so we boarded. This had higher-backed seats, more comfortable but they restricted visibility out of the coach windows. The footbridge from the platform at Nottingham delivered us out onto the street, so Janet went back to find a loo while I waited for her, uncomfortably close to the pushy Big Issue vendor. It wasn’t obvious where the buses were, nor which one to catch, so we got a taxi to the hotel. It was £5; I gave the driver a £10 note and he gave me a £5 note in change. If he’d have given me coins, I’d have returned one as a tip. We checked in at the ground-floor hotel reception. There was free Wi-Fi, and I obtained a slip with a login name and password, before we went up to our sixth-floor room: huge double bed, tea and coffee making facilities, desk with power socket, etc. Not fancy, but more than adequate. (Did the bathroom smell of previous-occupant sweat, though?)… We went down to the first-floor restaurant, which the waitress didn’t open for us for another minute or two. I had a 250ml glass of Merlot and a pepperoni pizza, and Janet had a “vegetarian shepherd’s pie”.… We set out just after 8pm for the venue, which was just round the corner and across the new tramway. When we were admitted to the auditorium, Janet to the right of me found herself behind a tall head, but the seat to my left remained unoccupied so she moved there. In the foyer there’d been signs threatening would-be photographers with confiscation and expulsion, but when we were inside I saw many cameras, camera-phones and flashes, so I got Janet’s camera out and used it from time to time. [Hers is a pocket-size camera, which is why I brought it.] The standing violinist in one of the photos, below, did a prolonged solo at one point; and on another occasion, the stagehands brought on a percussion-kit for Josh Groban to play.


Wednesday 19 June 2013 — 20:33:24
Josh Groban, “All That Echoes” tour, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham


Wednesday 19 June 2013 — 20:44:00
Josh Groban, “All That Echoes” tour, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham:
February Song


Wednesday 19 June 2013 — 20:51:22
Josh Groban, “All That Echoes” tour, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham


Wednesday 19 June 2013 — 20:55:04
Josh Groban, “All That Echoes” tour, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham


Wednesday 19 June 2013 — 21:02:14
Josh Groban, “All That Echoes” tour, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham


Wednesday 19 June 2013 — 22:03:58
Josh Groban, “All That Echoes” tour, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham:
You Raise Me Up


Wednesday 19 June 2013 — 22:04:08
Josh Groban, “All That Echoes” tour, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham:
You Raise Me Up


Wednesday 19 June 2013 — 22:05:58
Josh Groban, “All That Echoes” tour, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham:
You Raise Me Up

Afterwards, there was a queue out of the loo-door for the ladies’, and when I entered, a relatively short queue within the gents’. Back at the hotel, Janet was annoyed because the vending machine swallowed two £1 coins and delivered nothing. It promised 500ml bottles of Pepsi Max for £1. Although she was refunded at reception, she had to make do with the relatively disliked Diet Coke from the bar: 200ml for £1.20. Janet went to bed. Copied the photos from the camera to the “little feller” (23:15–23:16) and edited them (23:35–23:48), deleting a number that were unacceptably blurred. Made a PowerPoint presentation of the remaining ones (23:50–00:07); pasted rubrics and photos into [the Word] document [that I use as my diary] and made links to the PowerPoint presentation (00:20), before going to bed.

[Thursday 20 June 2013]