Anthony Toner

I'm still scratching my head a bit and wondering why I went along to this show - at £33 a ticket, it's hardly the kind of gig you go to on a whim.

I remember buying a live Yes double album once, from Smith's Records in Coleraine. I think I bought it because they were recommended to me by someone at school who I was trying to impress. I listened to it once and traded it for a second hand copy of 10cc's Deceptive Bends, I think... The end result is that I sat in the Waterfront last night without a CLUE as to whether they were playing any of the material well or not. It brought back the same feeling of confusion I had when I listened to the live album... Er, is it supposed to sound like this? Are they doing it well?

I sat all night waiting for Wondrous Stories, which was the standout track from the old live double. And they didn't play it. I recognised Owner of a Lonely Heart, but then even my mum would probably have recognised Owner of a Lonely Heart.

The sound was very muddy - but that might have been thanks to the occasional vagaries of the Waterfront Hall acoustics. There were times when Alan White rattled off a long fill across his toms and the two in the middle seemed to be inaudible. The bass drum was nowhere to be found. It hadn't shown up by the end of the gig, either.

There were wonderful moments, mainly centred on the startling harmony vocals, with Benoit David sounding UNCANNILY like Jon Anderson. But it ranged from being incredibly tight to alarmingly loose, sometimes within the same song. One for the faithful, I think. Let's just say I haven't gone rushing to Amazon today to pick up the back catalogue.

I met an old friend on the street the other day, and we shook hands and began our conversation with pleasantries – how are you, how have you been etc – and I gave him the five second run-down: still plugging away, nice gigs coming up, no retirement to the beach house yet, etc, and when it came his time to give a rundown, he started saying things like ‘well, we’re just getting on with it, you know... it’s hard on the kids, but we’re just keeping our heads down..’

And the smile slowly melted off my face, as I realised with a chill that something AWFUL had happened to my old friend, and I had NO IDEA what it was.

Our circles - that used to overlap so closely - had floated apart. We had no-one left in common that could have told me what had happened. It had somehow passed me by. And yet we had known each other for so long that I was embarrassed not to know, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask – what happened to you?

And so I breathed in sharply and I nodded with a stern look and murmured some platitudes: it’s hard... god, yeah, I can imagine... And we patted each other on the shoulders and off we went, with me none the wiser.

I climbed back into my car with a mixture of regret, shame and embarrassment and wondered: what else could I have done?

I've just finished reading an amazing book - In Siberia by Colin Thubron. I've never been a man for travel writing, to be honest - i think I always worried that it would either put me off places that I wanted to visit, or intimidate me somehow with all kinds of facts that would spoil the journey. And when travel is such a prsonal experience, how can you trust someone else's opinion?

So it was with some relief that I found I could not put this one down. He's a superb writer - really capturing the atmosphere of this amazing place, its people and customs. And it's peopled with amazing characters - any one of whom could sustain a novel or short story on their own. It's whetted my appetite for Andy White's 21st Century Troubadour, which combines music and travelling! But I have to finish the new Malcolm Gladwell yet. And I also have James Ellroy's American Tabloid waiting (signed by the man himself during his recent reading at the Waterfront - how cool is that?). So, no books for me for Christmas, by the sound of it...

Here's a picture of yours truly and the legendary Linley Hamilton with one of the true champions of the local music scene - Michael Weir. This picture was taken at the Errigle Inn on the night of Errol Walsh's album launch, when the Ronnie Greer Almost Big Band raised the rafters.

Michael turned 18 recently - and he's a regular at songwriter gigs all over the city. He was with us in Nashville and Austin earlier this year, and it's always a pleasure to see him in the audience.

It's even better when he's up on the stage like this, giving us a hug!!

I was cycling on the Comber Greenway earlier today (Sunday) when I came up to one of the little footbridges that cross the streams and burns that run under some of the path. Three little kiddies were on the bridge, two boys and a girl, with their bikes abandoned behind them on the grass. They were staring down through the bars of the bridge at the burn tricking below. The eldest would have been about eight, the youngest a little girl of about five. I thought: oh, isn't that sweet, they're probably floating little sticks down the river.

I slowed down and pedalled past. Just as I did so, the eldest said to the other two: "What kind of software do you prefer, Apple Mac or Windows?"