Oh hear that ol' piano

Not many men could carry off a rumpled white suit (might even have been off-white) and badly balanced red tie but somehow Garrison Keillor seems to find the words and mannerisms to make it work. He roams about the stage set of A Prairie Home Companion talking and singing effortlessly and apparently off-the-cuff (though sections of the script were constantly being carried on and off the stage by a man dressed in black, and sometimes handed to Keillor seconds before he read aloud from them.) It all shambled along like a a Dickensian banking office; people wandering in and out of the room carrying pieces of paper and looking vague, one hand running across the forehead, and Garrison Keillor conducting the whole show with a distracted air, like a man just doing his job. Which I guess he is. Of course under the water the feet are paddling furiously, and that's what I loved about it. It was flawless, sparkling and unpredictable without raising a sweat, indeed nothing more than a bushy eyebrow.
We got a mention, which was nice, sitting in our seats high in the second balcony; the only ones left when I got out of bed at six in the morning several months ago to book them online at the moment they went on sale. It was a special night, the first new show of the season so the live broadcast was followed by the annual street dance and meatloaf supper on Exchange Street in St Paul. I'd managed to keep that part of it secret from Carole and the kids, so it felt like a bonus and, for me, worth the flight to get there.
We stayed in a lovely (budget) hotel which used to be a railway station, and we ate our breakfast yesterday sitting on the old station platform. No such luck this morning as our shuttle driver arrived at 5.55am to take us to the airport. Breakfast in Chicago and lunch at Niagara Falls, but that's another story...