Tour Memories (and occasional musings)

PICTURES DAY Traditionally, the fourth and final day of BTTI is Pictures Day, i.e. when you get the unique opportunity to have a professional picture taken with all three brothers, and if you’re lucky and determined enough, have a 30 seconds chat with them. It’s not really a Meet & Greet but with over 400 fans attending, it’s a good as it gets. Let’s be honest: most of us plan maniacally for Pictures Day. I doubt that the majority of fans are delusional enough to be trying to impress the guys; the reason for all the preparation is that, as we all know, once the photos are up on the HNET gallery, everybody in the fan base will be pouring over them for days and weeks. And you don’t really want to be the Worst Dressed Fan of BTTI 2018, do you? And so, every year, we prepare, carefully choosing The Right Outfit, accessories, shoes, hair and even shapewear (the latter, by the way, is torture in the tropical heat). A constant on Pictures Day is the weather. According to BTTI law, P...

We're All Gonna Dye  I can’t even remember what we did the morning of our officially-third-but-effectively-only-second day: most likely, a combination of eating, drinking, and maybe a brave dip in the pool. The first item on the day’s agenda was the dreaded Tie Dye and as my love for crafts has been well-documented in a previous post , what could possibly go wrong? In my experience of previous BTTIs, the second session of any of the craft-type activities is usually the least disorganised, so this time we had orchestrated to register for the red pass, in the hope of a hiccup-free second session. The schedule change, however, meant that both sessions would to be running back-to-back. When we heard that our session would start thirty minutes later, and saw Hanson going in the opposite direction on board of a golf cart, I had the nagging feeling that double bluffing fate would not work in our favour. 

 This year, at least, was the first time I could actually follow t...

[Apologies for the tiny font - I've tried everything and it keeps reverting to tiny. Hit CTRL and + or CMD and + on your browser to increase the page size] We woke up to, guess what, more rain. The outlook was bleak. Technically, it was Day 2 and BTTI had not even started. Hanson had tweeted a revised schedule which pretty much packed four days’ worth of events in three days, so out went my plans to have more beach time this year. Not that the beach looked like much of an option, anyway. The first event of the day would be Zac’s solo set (the location still to be confirmed at that point) so Howra and I decided to try the yoga class, which another friend had taken the day before. I figured the class would probably be geared towards beginners - enough for me to keep up. What could possibly go wrong?* (*this became the mantra of BTTI 2018 for me) We walked up the stair to the gym only to discover, to our dismay, that there was absolutely no designated floor space for a single...

Day 1: Saturday - The Deluge and a Hanson Zombie Apocalypse We woke up on Saturday morning to more torrential rain. It had been raining on and off (mostly on) since Wednesday night and, as a result, the resort was pretty much flooded everywhere. I sat on the porch of my ocean front bedroom, drinking coffee, looking worriedly at the stage, half-built at the far end of the beach, its metal frame taunting the sky for lightning. Almost opposite my room, what I figured would be the mixing desk tent flapped maniacally, mercilessly battered by the elements*. So far, not so good. By that point, all sorts of rumours were going around the resort about possible contingency plans for that night’s show. Deep down, though, I still hoped that somehow, gods of all denominations would intervene and let us have our concert on the beach. The idea of being bussed to an outside location did not appeal at all: the resort is in the middle of nowhere, with only a smattering of small towns and...