STING
TOUR
TH URS DAY 23rd MARCH
4 THELIST '~’, 1
BRAND NEW DAY. AFTER THE RAIN HAS FALLEN £3
GLASGOW SECC
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DESERT ROSE
sting.compaq.com
I SAY, I SAY, I SAY, DID YOU FORCE your wife to go to Jamaica? No, she forbade us. Barbados? Yes. Trinidad? No thank you, son. lam in Barbados. I am here to
rehearse and perform Dr Livingstone, I Presume. He walked 30,000 miles around Africa, 'discovering' stuff, eventually dying on his knees of presumption. There is me, four other actors from Britain and eight dance/singer/actors from Malawi. We shall perform outdoors in grass in the grounds of Holders House, among the palms and the fuscia bougainvillaea to an audience of 1000 en picnic; Ground Doves and Hummingbird do the sound, and lighting is courtesy of Firefly, Moon and Stars.
The first evening here we ate flying fish, and the tomatoes were a plate of spare wheels for a red BMX bike. Later at the local booze joint, I played some truly inspired table
nightlife in the bushes. The pools of shadow and highlight shifted like hallucinations in my lagged mind.
With all these senses fired up you get a bit of credit for your sixth sense. Later, on my way to the complimentary S800-a-night room, I felt a sort of unspecific premonition. I was going up some stairs and l was thinking that I would not go up these steps very much, even though I was meant to stay here. That night I slept on the beach and found myself thinking ill of the place. The lights that lit up the designer ‘paths' reminded me of the lights guiding you along the aisle to the exit. I realised I had to get out. I may be the first person to walk out of there, turning down $10,400 of room, and run for a dollar-fifty bus carrying on my own bags and wearing a huge smile.
The buses are great, small, yellow and packed. The conductor speaks and no one really has to answer. The bus is owned by Havaboo Adams. The horn does the General Lee with a Consistency feature: it plays the tune and starts each time from the point where it left off. Diddle la da diddle dara. Da da di- ddle, it goes. From this bus I see men, cool men, weeding into the back of a car. I go to my new house,
a palace you can flick
:enréis to be? Aver: | may be the pineapple juice into Ire UP 3“ P'SSQ . the sea from, with a Virgin Airlines steward f'rSt Person to pa|med beach 50m from 00' fl'9ht 0‘” walk out Of down the coast witha
here. He was warping space and time with his spin, but I just got so into him and his. He
there, turning down $10,400
kids' playground on it. My kid Coco will play among it all in a
. of room and Week' was called Phil too, so ' There is something all the cheers felt mine, run for a so familiar about
and I was fast into the net like Beyond Borg killing a rattlesnake on his kid's birthday cake. I hugged Phil at twenty- two twenty, but his arms were limp. l whispered, ’Tea coffee, coffee tea?’ in his ear to rub it in. That night I walked with my senses flaring. I had not slept since Nottingham 47 hours and as? climate ago. I was walking I up a sandy track, exploring. I was ,, ' sipping on a mini- ."' . ature rum, tasting “If the taste, smelling “g, the flowers and the 1'3 ; manure from the polo ' h.’ 5 ': ponies, with the ‘f’ breeze in my trousers and the
dollar-fifty bus carrying on my own bags and wearing a huge smile.
sunshine, warmth and warm sea and fish and rums, and sunset rehearsals, snork- elling and hammocks. The something is loving it. And loving loving it. The prem- onition I had felt was just turning into intuition while feeling good, a middle-eye bath and in Barbados lots of people feel good. So, pack if you want to pack and run for the . bus, smiling. '\ I say, I say, I say, ; my wife’s just ' .\ gone to Barbados. Oh great, she’ll .\ have a lovely time.