Day 31
Rescue Rooms, Nottingham
We had a day off yesterday. In Nottingham. We stayed in a hotel in a bed that didn't travel round continents with a trailer attached to it. I bought two pairs of shoes, which was pretty cool. I've had a bit of trouble buying shoes lately. They are normally my favourite things, but the last few I've bought haven't really worked out. I mean, they were all right, but they were the type of shoes that look nicer on the shelf in the shoe shop than on your feet the next day. I stopped going to nightclubs for a similar reason. Roberto, Dom and Matt also found shoe-love in Nottingham. It seems like aeons since we had a proper day off, and touring wears heavily on the sole.
The venue features a lovely little bar where you can sit on little cushion-cubes and chat with your friends and some drunk old men while fresh-faced young ladies prepare you vegetarian food and you can leaf through the collection of lps they have on nearby shelves. We all agreed that if we lived in Nottingham this would be the kind of place we'd like to hang out at (apart from then we'd have to hang out with each other). If we lived in Nottingham we would also have different shoes for every day of the year.
The gig reminds me a little of Florence, in that the audience is louder than we are. Steve (who has now taken over selling our mugs and carriage clocks in between journeys) takes the opportunity to flatten some hecklers with his "there are people here who are trying to listen to the band, and if you don't want to, you should FUCK RIGHT OFF" routine. He has honed his scary man image protecting his bus while it sits outside nitespots all over the world. I wasn't aware of this, but apparently there is a great deal of tour bus piracy on the roads, and he constantly has to be wary of Bus Pirates pulling up alongside him bearing the Jolly Rodger bumper sticker, casting over the grappling irons, boarding through the roof hatches and selling the bands into slavery. This is what happened to the original line-up of Bucks Fizz. Steve has a small arsenal of muskets and says he keeps a cannon in his trousers, but as far as I'm aware he hasn't used it yet.
