It’s been a couple of unlucky days. We flew over to Hamburg with the Rat Pack Tour yesterday and, in a bid for a quiet life, I packed my small trumpet case in my suitcase. I find that, since I’m also carrying my laptop bag, I’m often faced with an argument about Carry On Baggage regulations. Whilst most will let me carry on my Trumpet in addition to my other bag when I’ve explained the situation, this isn’t always the case. So, on this occasion, I packed the Trumpet, in it’s hard case, within my suitcase and travelled with only 1 carry on.

This shouldn’t have been a problem but when I arrived in the hotel in Hamburg, I discovered that my Trumpet had sustained a crease in the bell. This ruined the sound and the playability and made for a miserable show last night. I’m pleased to say that my friends at The Brasserie; Hamburg’s premier Brass emporium, have done a great repair job today and that it’s not now looking too bad. Hopefully it’ll last until I get home and I can get it looked at properly.

Pleased with how this had gone, I stopped in at the local supermarket on the way back to hotel for some supplies. It seems that my bad luck had not entirely finished as I managed to drop a large bottle of soft drink at the checkout which exploded and soaked the place, me and the person in front of me. I apologised as best I could in my broken German but the check-out girl was not best pleased. She called the Manager and I’ve been barred from the store!!! How rock and roll is that?

Let’s hope that nothing else goes wrong…