An Itinerant Mind

Parlez vous Tim Hortons?

Prompt 8: The World Tour

The not unexpected success of Hymn 2 caught Leonard Cohen's management team by surprise. Hastily they agree that a tour should be organised to capitalise upon the singles mammoth sales worldwide. Naturally enough they concluded that a world tour was just the ticket to reap the benefits of equally huge ticket sales.

Putting the idea to Andre, they were immediately appraised that there was one tiny snagette to their plan, vis-a-vis Andre's fear of flying, (except through the air as a daring young trapeze monkey, but we've already gone over that). Solutions were sought. and then they realised that neither liquid Dettol nor lukewarm bathwater were actually going to be much help here.

One enterprising executive suggested that Andre could hitch a lift with a passing Greta Thunberg, but this was deemed environmentally likely to result in lawsuits, and so the plan was scotched, and then bourboned for good measure.

Andre made a suggestion, and Leonard gave it his backing, so despite their reservations the tour was held in Andre's garden shed. Various cunning visual trickeries were employed to give the illusion of their moving from country to country. In France for example, a couple of onions, (which later turned out to be Spanish, but it was generally agreed that it's the thought that counts), were laid next to a 3 cm metal model of the Blackpool Tower, (actually the base for a gyroscope). clever camera angles and a picture postcard of Grenoble lent the whole thing a very Gallic atmosphere.

Andre was keen that they should play some African dates, and here a few pot plants and a pack of medjool dates were brought into play. Andre made sure that Willy Nelson was later given appropriate accreditation for the loan of the plants.

Leonard of course wanted to include his homeland, so a brief departure from the shed to the local IHOP was made and large quantities of Maple Syrup consumed. Then they got take out coffees from Tim Hortons and headed back to the shed.

Making full use of what was available, they next went to 'Ireland', where a sack of potting compost and some seed potatoes lent verisimilitude to the occasion. Andre asked his friend Richard ~ Shenanigans INC. to guest, which went down a storm.

Initially Andre's neighbours were rather against the tour, and there were several 'not in his backyard' conversations. Andre however soon talked them around by suggesting that they could charge for parking, renting out rooms for fans to stay in, and by erecting stadium style seating above their homes make a further killing. In fact the whole thing went so swimmingly that the next year Andre's next door neighbour invited Tina Turner to perform in his swimming pool, which he drained especially for the purpose, (though of course he did take the opportunity to give it a bit of a clean and to touch up some of the tiling.

Leonard's management were delighted. A DVD of the tour sold like a DVD of some largely popular musical event, and once they'd taken their modest 'cut', both Andre and Leonard were able to purchase a further couple of coffees, and even some doughnuts at Tim Hortons.

Word Count: 530 words.