Bob

On our recent family holiday to New Zealand, there was one clear standout moment above all others. We were on the shores of Lake Tekapo in central South Island. The weather is typically so clear here, that it is the location of the Mount John Observatory, which sits on the hill just above the town. It was a gorgeous early evening. The lake is a most wonderful and incredible blue, we were booked to go on a sightseeing tour of the southern night sky that evening at the observatory, after a day when we had driven up from Queenstown, past azurine lakes, over incredible moon-like plains, with a stop for lunch at a vineyard, the mountains of the Southern Alps in the near distance, and a stop at Lake Pukaki to take photos of Mount Cook. A breathtaking day, and you're thinking, it can't get any better than this.

And then it happened, the defining moment of the entire trip. We got a text from a friend in Warsaw saying that Bob Dylan was coming to town in June. To be honest, I just got on the plane that night back to Poland and set up camp outside the venue, where I have lived for the past three months.

There was a bit of a stramash over the tickets. My friend ordered them, they got lost in the post, she had to turn up at the ticket office and stand before them armed with several pieces of heavy artillery and a battalion of paratroopers before they would issue replacements. And much to her chagrin, she couldn't go to the concert and instead I took TPCKAM. About which TPCKAM was also fairly chagrined 'n all.

Dylan tours all the time, playing over a hundred gigs every year for the best part of the last twenty years. Always on the move. Saturday in Warsaw, Monday in Prague, Tuesday in Vienna, Wednesday in Salzburg, Friday on to Croatia. The guy was sixty-seven last month, but you can't really say that he's worn it like Mick Jagger. There's no leaping around the stage, no grabbing microphones, nothing athletic. He shuffles on, he stands at his keyboard, he shuffles around in the dark between songs, he shuffled off at the end. You wonder if he'd fall over if he didn't have the keyboard to lean on, but presumably if it was that bad, he'd be sitting at it. His voice is kind of shot, but you know, the guy was never Elvis, so it still works. He does a lot of songs from his most recent studio album - Modern Times - mixed with a random collection from the back catalogue. He tends to reinvent songs, either to suit his mood or the state of his voice.

He played a small venue for an international rock icon. An audience of 1500 or so. The concert was great, but what else am I going to say? Even TPCKAM enjoyed it, and she hates listening to Dylan. A few too many songs which are basically twelve-bar numbers and which blend into one another - The Levee's Gonna Break and Summer Days, that kind of thing - but more than enough other great stuff to compensate.

He has a different set-list every night, someone who would reward following around on tour. I said to TPCKAM that we could up sticks, bung the kids into the back of a winnebago and follow Bob around the world. In the past year we would have been to Uruguay and Canada, America and Russia, Australia and Argentina, Estonia, Iceland... An endless list. He's in Andorra this weekend. TPCKAM is still considering this as a life plan. We probably won't do it. Maybe when the kids have left school. But by then Bob might be in a old people's home in Saratoga Springs, and all we'd be doing was parking the winnebago at the bottom of the driveway.