Time to head
for Strommen and the last show of this journey. Morten and Jill picked me up and
we drove through Oslo to get to Strommen which is about halfway between Oslo
city and the airport.
We checked into the hotel (not the one on the
itinerary!) and it turns out that the place began as a hospital for mentally-ill
women and then became a prison before being converted into a hotel. And of
course there were the ghost stories!! I wanted the hotel on the itinerary!!
But, considering that I would probably spend
a grand total of 4-5 hours in the hotel and most of them sleeping, I was
actually too lazy to move!!
Off to the venue for sound check.
This was one of a series of “kick-off”
parties for The Sweden Rock Festival, one of the biggest events in the European
festival season and there were three bands playing so it needed to be a bit
“organised”…. not too much though.
Sound check was quick and painless so we went
next door for some Portuguese/Italian food which resembled neither!! The food
wasn’t that good and all I could think about was my siesta so we hustled back to
the prison where I slept for 1 hour and 45 minutes. That plus a long hot shower
and I was ready to rock and roll!
This would be our last show and we were
closing the night so we actually started quite late. Apart from some minor
technical things the show was great and so was the audience and for the encore
the guys came on stage wearing t-shirts they had made specially for this
evening!
In Karmoy I was referred to as “Ben” Hensley,
we spent a lot of time “waiting” and we had had two consecutive Fridays off so
the shirts were designed to comemorate all of these things, but by now I had
become Ben Kingsley!!
What a great bunch of guys and what a special
night. Our old friend Per Rannug was there with his band “Lady Starstruck”, Gard
came and picked up his guitar and the staff at Barrati were just wonderful.
During the show I recall having little
moments of sadness as I remembered that this was the end of this little tour and
then I’d have flashes of excitement because I knew I would be going home
tomorrow.
Better get
some sleep, I have a reasonably early start tomorrow!!
