The longer this tour lasts, the more I feel like a rock star. I should point out to my family at this early stage of my rambling metaphor that this does not extend to the sex and drugs cliche – although I did have some dessert wine last night in Budapest. I also haven’t thrown any televisions out of the window either -I couldn’t cope with the wrath of Sue Mallet, something Led Zeppelin never had to worry about. Just think how rock history may have changed.

We played in Zagreb a couple of nights ago, a fantastically beautiful town which we sadly didn’t have much time to look around. I only realised as I got my passport out again this morning that we are visiting 7 countries in 10 days, so you can imagine that there isn’t much time for sightseeing. So in Zagreb, there is a beautiful theatre from the nineteenth century. We didn’t play there. There was also a concert hall; we didn’t play in there either. No, we played in the massive sports arena with amplification, which seats 10000 people. Not exactly intimate. We had a seating call, mainly to check microphones in the cavernous hall. Lets just say that Prokofiev 5 had never sounded so loud.

When you regularly get to play in some of the best halls in the world, the thought of playing in a drafty arena isn’t great. My feelings didn’t change when we got there, the stage was tiny in the hall, with a big stack of speakers to pump out the music which we had so delicately honed and sculpted over the last few months. Oh well.

Then something really strange happened. I knew that Valery is quite well known and popular in this part of the world, but I was quite taken aback when I walked into the hall. People had been arriving for quite some time, and of course the concert started late because of the sheer size of the venue. I asked Sue if they had sold many tickets and she informed me tat it was sold out. I assumed she was being sarcastic as the hall does indeed hold 10000, and she is often sarcastic. There was quite a noise coming from in the hall and as I stepped onto the platform with the rest of the band, I was greeted with the sound of 10000 people clapping! I’m sure it must be one of the biggest audiences we’ve had-its like selling out the Barbican more than 4 times. As is often the case at times like this, the orchestra went from being a bit miserable to playing very well indeed, spurred on by the audience. After the encore, I really wanted to shout “Good night Zagreb” extremely loudly down a mike and maybe destroy the drum kit. However I decided against it and stayed on backstage where the organisers of the concert provided us with beer and food-very welcome indeed.

We also have our own personal air crew on this trip,with our own plane. I am perhaps making it sound better than you are imagining, but as we are visiting lots of places, we had to charter a plane for the week. We are very lucky to have I think, the nicest crew on board who have been looking after us. They were able to come to the concert and enjoyed it so much that this morning on the plane they brought round some chocolates for us. How lovely. I hope they come to more concerts, I rather enjoyed being served chocolates!

I couldn’t help notice as well that there were warning signs about what not to bring into the hall in Belgrade. This is quite normal of course, don’t bring drinks, cameras or audio recorders, you know the kind of thing. Except this was a picture notice so that you weren’t in any doubt as to what to bring in. No dogs, shorts, guns or flip flops. How eclectic. How rock and roll – you can record the concert but don’t shoot anyone, especially if they are wearing flip flops.

I must sign off as we are about to start the rehearsal in Vilnius. I am feeling a little nervous, we have a world premiere of a new piece by Shchedrin. To make matters worse, Sharon is wearing flip flops.

I hope they searched her bag on the way in. Rock and Roll

By the way, you may have noticed the pictures of our private jet and lovely crew! Thanks guys, you were great!