We are going to our last gig in Romania now.

It’s in a city called Iasi in the north-east. This city really reminds me of Cuba, with its potholes and dejected dogs. There is a festival in front of the town hall where a puppet show babbles to a crowd. Beer and sugary bread are sold alongside clay pots and leather goods. It’s a typical Romanian city where glitzy, polished malls rub shoulders with grim, communist concrete, and the people, like the architecture, aspire to a more wealthy future.

I’ve been playing with my good friend, Bruce Reid from Calder Jazz, Atholl Ransome from Haggis Horns and Martin Davies from Halifax Drum School and I couldn’t have wanted any better players to do it with. It’s a wicked band.