ENGLAND ONE: LINCOLN. Flew Virgin. The inflight featured Love Actually and A Beautiful Mind, both crap. Liked the red-clad flight attendants; saw them at Newark Airport crossing the waiting area in matching cloaks, looking like female Cardinals. Got to Heathrow early Wednesday morning, met by tour manager Steve, his usual ebullient self. Took the long van ride to Lincoln, Steve's home and, for most of this tour, ours. Giddy to be on the other side of the world, away from my humdrum, again.

Happy also to be in Lincoln, an allegedly dull town in the Midlands. We've been here before, and I still admire the classic brick rowhouses stained with Industrial Revolution soot, and the narrow alleys in which pale kids shriek and play as one imagines such children have for centuries. The town is building up, though, and has added since our last trip a lot of glass fronts and fresh shop signs -- modern, but still English in their modest scale and style. Cobblestone streets now lead to Bauhaus malls. Change is good, but not always. My favored meat pie vendor, Fisher's Family Butcher, across from our lodgings on St. Andrew's, is closed. Sigh. Had tuna sandwiches and crisps for lunch.

After naps, the drummer and I wandered and had pints at Ye Olde Crown, an underpopulated local with the customary plush seats, gaming machines, huge taps, and gap-toothed regulars, and then at some bar/pub, the new thing for new people -- sandwiches and nachos if you like, a "family area," prominently displayed menu and corporate logo cards, the hustled feeling of an after-work drop-in-and-go. Sigh again. We had dinner at a local curry joint, and all the males I observed there had their hair ceremoniously coiffed and gelled. Every city has its style, and this one's seems assiduously copied from that of actors on the BBC.

First tour day, in other words, a blur, as usual. More later.