It's not clever but it is funny

One of the downsides of touring on a budget is that there is no guarantee of a good night's sleep. The Travelodge at Wall's End, just north of Newcastle, was fine on Thursday and Friday nights but on Saturday night the corridor outside my room erupted at about 2am and kept bursting into sudden life until I got up at 7.30. Having taken a wrong turning on the way back from a gig I found myself driving the Norwich Puppet Theatre van through the city centre just as the pubs were closing and the clubs were opening so I had some idea of the state of mind of the lads in the corridor with their 'wayay man' and 'fookin' this and that'.

It seems the idea is to book a room for the night so when you pull you have somewhere to take your new friend. And if all that booze hasn't worked its charm, what do you do with your room? How do you avoid wasting it by falling into a drunken stupor that you may just as well have enjoyed at home? Well apparently there is a craze for taking ecstasy by injecting it into the mouth. And, I kid you not, it is called E by gum.

(My apologies to non-UK readers for whom this is probably neither clever nor funny.)

On the road again

I did a bit of touring back in the 80s and loved the excitement of setting off for a new destination, the camaraderie, the shared sense of purpose. And of course, having my bad habits reinforced by hanging out with people who had made the same lifestyle choices.

What I didn't like was sitting in the back of a windowless transit, with amps and the PA for seats, playing cards to pass the time. There were nine in the band/crew and only one of them (the sax player) didn't smoke. Guess who played sax.

Touring with Indefinite Articles is a wholly different experience. No one smokes, the gigs end in time for tea (and sometimes in time for lunch). The sax player plays clarinet and flute now and handles all kinds of lighting, video and audio cues. He always sits on a seat and often actually drives the van. Nobody smokes.



Last weekend we went to Havant for a performance of The Chalk Giants. The sun was beginning to set by the time I took the pictures. Parts of the town are very pretty, others a bit run down. If you look closely you'll see those shops aren't shops at all.




See? I told you.