Gross Freiheit, Hamburg
It's my mum's birthday today. Happy birthday Mum.
The venue is in the middle of the Reperbahn, which is excellent should you wish to obtain some cheap poppers and cheaper lovin', but it's not a pretty place by daylight. The bus is parked next to a hyperactive clock tower which seems to want to chime every two minutes. One of the bells has gone off and chimes with an eeire discord. This seems obligatory for bells, whose cheerful ring masks a deeper evil.
It is cold and we have no desire to see any more of the city, and someone says they've found a laundrette, so it seems like the perfect time to get some pants washed. Laundrettes are mysterious places at the best of times (usually presided over by tiny old women who are brown and wispy like fallen leaves) and how to deal with one in a foreign city (did I mention I speak no Deutsch?) had always worried me. The Washe Center had the feel of a place where fugitives from normal society would gather - the kind of place where the immigrant worker would do her family's weekly wash next to the erotic dancer washing out her stage thongs, wreathed in the smoke from the drag queen-fallen-on-hard-times' cigarette as he fills the dryer with outsize lingerie. He is wearing a three-quarter length black pvc coat, pinstriped jogpants and purple shades. He has a small dog. He speaks german rapidly in an unmistakably gay accent. There is a big stooping man in a leather jacket. He seems to work there but is in fact just enjoying a beer and a kinder egg. In the corner is a sallow young man in glasses who is undoubtedly living in a nearby garrett, working on an existential novel. His clothes are all grey.
On the other hand, we do get our clothes washed and dried without incident. It just feels like there's going to be incident at any moment.
There is some kind of sonic vacuum on the stage, which sucks all of the top end and volume from the monitors and makes the soundcheck difficult and the gig impossible. A small fight develops at the front near the end of our set, but doesn't come to anything. Sums it all up, really.
Afterwards we start on the bottle of grappa and Phil the Manager sets us a pop quiz, which is effortlessly won by Dan (he's a pub man, see) and then we try to lure Matt into the world of time-slaying virtual skating. Before long, however, events in the real world begin to put our teenage summer holiday into stark perspective.
