On the road | 11 October 2008

For some reason October this year is yielding the kind of running about the place more normally associated with the summer festivals. From Naples to St Asaph, from Paris to Evora to St Omer and back to Evora in as many days with the added excitement of a broken-down Eurostar and various throat- and ankle-related incapacitations, no one in my troupe is talking about ‘the glamour’ of the touring life just now.

Yet despite, or perhaps because of, the stress of constant travelling, I am still capable of out-of-mind, serendipitous moments of delight when under pressure from schedules. Walking towards our hotel in Prestatyn, near St Asaph in Wales — which I had initially assumed was one of the drugs I was taking for my cholesterol — I suddenly realised that I was completely alone in brilliant sunshine on a beach-side road, speckled with sand, the only building in sight the eventual hotel half a mile in the distance.