Transmitting From London, England...
If you like road stories, this one's a beaut!!
I'm now sitting in my tiny London hotel room typing on what passes for a desk (it's little more than a slab of wood fitted between 2 walls...reminds me of when you visit some historic place like the room where Van Gogh painted Starry Night and you think "Wow, it's so bare bones & so small!"...that's what my room feels like...by the way, I never visited the Starry Night room, I imagined it as a possible example).
Anyway, after our 7 hour flight, we arrive at Immigration in the UK, tell them we're musicians working here with Liza, are asked for our work permits which, of course, we don't have, & are immedtiately detained & not allowed to enter the country! We then find out that work permits were never applied for!! It is illegal to work here without one so, in a nutshell (we were in immigration for almost 7 more hours!), our passports were taken, we were photographed & fingerprinted &, after much haggling between the local promoters & immigration, were granted entry until Wed!! If the promoter doesn't get the permits by then, we are booked on a flight home Wed. morning!
Of course, there are supposed to be 3 shows here starting tomorrow night &, everyone is clamoring around trying to figure out how this will be done when we have legal documents stating that we're not allowed to work here until the permits are secured. (Because of the holiday weekend, the earliest that they thought we'd be able to get them would be Tues!). If we go ahead & work, we stand the chance of being "detained."
As I write, our promoter is frantically trying to contact lawyers & there was also word that they were going to try & reach the U.S. ambassodor, who's supposed to be at the show tomorrow. My life is never dull!
If that weren't enough, after the 7 hour wait at immigration, our bus driver got in a minor accident on the way to the hotel! It looked like a very small fender bender but, from what I could see, the driver of the car he hit was pleading injury. Even though he looked fine he was rubbing his neck a lot but it definitely looked like an act. Still, the cops were called & we were detained even more. Bottom line, door-to-door from my apartment in NYC to the hotel here: 22 hours! What fun!
I can't imagine that this won't be worked out so that all of the shows will go on as planned. Too much time, money & effort have been spent to get to this point. You'll just have to wait until my next entry to hear the conclusion!