Ask any truck driver from anywhere in Europe and they’ll tell you they hate Paris. The traffic is horrific, the road layout can be convoluted, and it can be pretty dirty in places.

I have my own love/hate relationship with the city, but I admit I haven’t explored as much of it as I’d like to, but what I have seen is either beautiful and cultured, or horrific, convoluted, and stinks of shit. I do like the French people though, for the most part, and it’s hard not to fall in love with any French girl when she speaks and that accent washes your ears in heaven!

After 2 shows in Paris, and a Mick Jagger special guest appearance, we traveled back to England, and after 5 months of sun and tan lines throughout Europe, it rained the second we got off the boat. We all had to wear mote clothes, and 3 of us are currently sick. Good old England.

Leeds and Reading festivals were our next shows. Both are like kindergartens, or I’m just becoming a crotchety old man, but the one thing I do enjoy about these 2 events is the pure joy the youngsters get from the acts and the emotions all around. Now, I don’t know who Becky Hill is, but she had the whole festival singing and jumping to her songs, which sounded like a lot of fun from my position back stage. And the silent disco that stretched late into the late was a spectacle of joy as I watched them sing and dance in a mob of thousands. And I maintain that the Radio One Dance Tent is always one of the best stages of any festival worldwide.

The Dragons played Reading Sunday night and Dan Reynolds gave it his all as his kids were in the crowd and they were about to fly home. He was more animated and emotional as usual, and the crowd fed from him and the festival lit up in a way I haven’t seen one do so before, and I can say that having been to many festivals all over the world, and many across Europe this year alone.

But my return home was short lived, and again I’m on a boat, and again I’m going back to France, and again Germany.

I wonder what I’ll write about when the tours finish…