Saschall, Florence
Hello. I am English. I speak no Italino. I am called Ben and I'm playing the guitar and things with Aqualung, who is also my brother. He is called Matt and he speaks no Italiano. Travelling with us is our old friend Matt Vincent-Brown who is playing drums and speaks no Italiano. Then there is Daniel Tuite (that's pronounced 'tyoot') who is playing keyboards. He speaks un poco Italiano. Happily Tony (Front of House sound) and Roberto (stage sound - sorry 'Production Manager') are Italian and they speak molto Italiano, so perhaps we will be able to survive at least until Switzerland. Completing our party is Paul the tour manager, Fish the backline tech and Steve the driver. They speak no Italiano. They barely speak English.
We are all travelling around Europe in a big silver bus, and opening the show for David Gray, who is in fact touring Europe for the first time himself. So no one knows what's going to happen, apart from evenings filled with thoughtful music made by grateful pop seniors who thought they'd missed their chance...
We left on Saturday afternoon, having chosen our bunks and explored the video selection (Cocktail! The Jackal!! Three Amigos!!! Global Hockets!!!!(?)) and been introduced to the new satellite TV system which is the pride of the coach fleet and the envy of all other buses (but doesn't work).
And so we drive and drive and get on the ferry and drive and drive some more through France and Belgium and Luxembourg and Holland and Germany (at least that was what I was told. My grasp of geography is extremely feeble and someone may have just been taking the piss out of me). But I can definitely be sure that we passed through Switzerland, because that was where I woke up on Sunday morning. Through the little porthole in my bunk I could see blue skies and snowy mountains. So we hadn't just been driving around the M25 for the last twenty hours.
A while later we arrived in Milan, where we would have to stop for nine hours while Steve the driver went to sleep. The bus is his master. When it bids him sleep, sleep he must. It's a bit like Knight Rider, but I would imagine the bus is a bit less camp. So we took the metro to the duomo and laughed at the policemen as if we were school leavers on an inter-railing holiday. And then we went to the San Siro stadium to see AC Milan and Chievo failing to score any goals. And then we went home. And then we went to bed. And then we woke up in Florence. And then we bought some cheese and ham and ate it on the river bank. And then my English teacher gave me a poor mark for Composition.
From the outside the Saschall looks like a cross between a circus tent and a weapons silo, but inside it's very nice, and most importantly there are lots of showers.
The first day of any tour tends to be chaotic as everyone plugs everything in for the first time and wonders why nothing's happening, so we were prepared for the classic support band's five minute soundcheck, which was just as well because that's exactly what we got.
Earlier in the day Matt VB had run into Fred from Boston, who is studying in Florence and is a big fan of David Gray. He seemed sane initially, but, obviously feeling some kinship with the band, he spent most of our set standing in the middle at the front shouting "I love you, truck driver Matt!" (Matt was wearing a t shirt which says Truck Driver on it, see). Which was all very well, but we were trying to be subtle and sophisticated. He was louder than we were. It was not the greatest of performances - Matt's solo redition of Nowhere was the highlight for me. He should get rid of the band and go it alone...
Roberto grew up near Florence, and had invited his sister and some friends to the gig. Afterwards they gave us a lift into the centre so that we could see the sights, including the duomo which looks as if it were fashioned from nougat, and the Ponte Vecchio which you can imagine has been the same for six hundred years. It is indeed a beautiful city to walk around at midnight.
Alcatraz, Milan
Yeah yeah, Milan again. See how easy it is to get complacent? The venue is spectacular in a brushed-steel-and-big-fan-in-the-wall kind of way, banks of TVs all over the place. The kind of place they'd shoot a discotheque scene in a gritty cop thriller, which is great because Roberto is a fugitive from justice. (I probably shouldn't have said that. Now my life is in danger).
We spend most of the day in the venue, fighting with Matt's laptop which is failing to supply the Rhodes sound. In the end we admit defeat and I have to improvise a guitar part for Strange and beautiful. Hopefully we can get it sorted for tomorrow.
I leave the stage last to a great big cheer, which is a bit mystifying. Perhaps my arse was showing.
Oh look - Matt VB has put Pro Skater 4 on the Poostation. Matt VB, me, Tony and Dan all got terribly addicted to it during the last tour and we have resisted the urge to play until now, because Matt has no affinity for computer games and tends to get sulky. But tonight I think we'll just let him.
Volkhaus, Zurich
Hello. I am English. I speak no Deutsch. You'll be pleased to hear it's pissing down in Zurch and it's cold after all the balmy Italian weather. The journey from Milan was pretty rough and I was haunted by half-dreams of the bus plunging from high mountain passes. It doesn't help that the bunks so closely resemble coffins (apart from the windows I mentioned earlier).
Our plans for all-nite sk8ing were foiled by a dodgy controller. Matt tried to seem concerned, and consoled us by putting on the Three Amigos, which is actually not as funny as you remember. I suggest you don't rent it.
Matt has some interviews to do so MVB n Dan n I go for a wander in rainy Zurich. Lots of clocks. We are becoming institutionalised and despite the beautiful sights Zurich has to offer, all we are concerned with is getting onto the internet and buying Crunchy Nut Cornflakes for breakfast (which we achieve, you'll be pleased to hear. We also got some English toast bread and some American toast bread. They have formed an uneasy alliance in the cupboard. There was also a lot of chocolate to choose from. It's a real home from home down there in the kitchen (galley?)).
When we return we find Matt in conversation with various Swiss record company types. They have presented him with a special Warner Bros Swiss Army knife. It includes tools for opening champagne, getting stones out of gold discs, and slicing huge chunks out of touring budgets.
The Rhodes is working today, but there is a bit of a crackle on the bass channel. And my wah wah pedal is a bit dodgy. I can tell you're interested in this kind of stuff. Soundchecks are mostly about isolating which piece of equipment has gone wrong today, fixing it and playing thirty seconds of a song. Dan thinks this is impairing his performance. We tell him not to be so silly, he's doing fine, but we secretly agree.
David Gray's agent was telling us yesterday how we would find that audiences would all adhere to national sterotypes; the crowds for the Italian gigs were always thin for us because Italians are always late. Needless to say, the room was packed tonight, and very lovely they were too, especially when Matt told them how nice it was to be in Italy.
Matt is leaving the bus this evening to go back to London and be photographed for GQ magazine. Apparently he's going to be on a yacht in the Mediterranean in a thong with a python around his neck. While he's away we can skate like bastards because Tony has invested in a new controller. Unfortunately it's not so much fun when it's not annoying Matt.
We have a day off tomorrow, but it is 1000km to Barcelona so we shall mostly be on the bus. By 4am we are deep in France and I am delighted to say that I parle Francais, which allows me to prend une douche at a service station. Then it's time to sleep the kind of sleep that will obliterate most of the following day.
Dan says: this is probably not such a bad thing as much of it promises to be taken over by a monumental Skatefest anyway. I predict Tony will burst through the hundred-thousand-point barrier tomorrow... cheat.
Travelling to Barcelona
Dan was right.
My thumbs have melted off.
Razzmatazz, Barcelona
I wonder if "Razzmatazz" sounds cool and funky to Barceloids. Sounds like one of those sixties tv pop shows to me. I understand the venue was changed from the Hullaballoo at the last minute.
It is sunny. It's weird that that hasn't caught on in Britain. It really works as a weather.
It was Fish's thirtieth birthday yesterday and we "went out for a drink" when we arrived to compensate for him spending his special day trapped on a bus with us. So the sunny morning is a pleasure tinged with regret, like all the best pleasure. Spanish toilet doors open inwards. This is a stupid arrangement as it means you have to stand in the bowl to get out of the cubicle.
This entry is made entirely of non sequiturs. Like being pissed upon. This is what the shower was like. Gaudi makes cathedrals like pubs made of sand.
Tony took some pictures, though
I've never been much of a pub-goer. I can't drink very much without becoming very pissed for a very short time. Dan, on the other hand, is a pub man. He knows you tap the pool table when your opponent has shit a good shot. Dan sits here reading as I type which means I have to write about him. He thinks I slurred his character when I said about his performance being impaired. I said it was all exaggerated to make it more readable. He says in that case I should try exaggerating a bit more. Matt VB would like to apologise once again about talking to Fred from Boston. He had no idea what was going to happen. Steve, Fish and Paul are all quite able users of the English language. Tony is a cheat.
Anyway, we trooped into Barcelona to see the sights. (Modern cracker joke - Q: Why do you go on the internet? A: To see the sites). It is an eccentric place. Perhaps you should get some kind of guide book and look at some pictures of it because I didn't take any. And besides, if you've been to Barcelona, you'll go "Oh yeah, of course, Barcelona" and if you haven't anything I can tell you about it won't leave you any the wiser. But what you don't know about is things like MVB and Dan playing "Name the British dialling code" (0115?......Nottingham!) or seeing who can sing "WHOOOOOOAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! BODYFORM!!!!" the highest and loudest (me).
One thing that you won't find mentioned in any guide book, which is true, is the extraordinary number of men in Barcelona who look like Barry Cryer.
My name is Ben Hales, "The weakest bladder in showbusiness". I speak no Espanole. This is my story.
La Riviera, Madrid
Nothing much is open on Saturday in Madrid, at least within walking distance. The venue is by the river, appropriately enough, and looks like a garden centre (except for the backstage area which looks like a rebel base under attack from the Imperials). There's something peculiar about venues that have windows in them. Music should be made in dark, airless places where the walls sweat and the smell of beer in the carpet can never be expunged, even by ten thousand years of permafrost.
For once everything works and we can have a proper soundcheck. Distractingly beautiful Spanish ladies keep passing through the room. It's awful, this job. The gig was a lot less comedy than yesterday's, which I notice I didn't really go into in yesterday's entry. There were no English people shouting "Never mind the Buzzcocks" or fawning ladies singing every word or mysterious lighting cues which left the stage in darkness at crucial climaxes. (I don't know if you've ever been to www.crucialclimax.com. It's a blast.) But it was fine, you know. Half an hours' work well done.
Travelling to Lyon
Day spent in Services. What do you want me to say?
Le Transbordeur, Lyon
In toilets in two or three of the venues so far I have noticed a fine piece of graffiti which goes "Plop plop ahh". Perhaps it's someone we're travelling with? Perhaps even David himself? Anyway, it always strikes me as surprisingly eloquent.
Life is reduced to an endless quest for fresh milk and internet cafes.
Manager Phil has arrived to see if we are behaving ourselves and experience buslife. The gig is OK. I've begun to grow a little self conscious of my high high voice. I swear I saw some people laughing. It's not my fault, it's the way my throat is made. I have a small, quiet voice which is especially ineffective in party situations, but seems ideally suited for soaring above other people's more sensible voices. This is all very well, but it's not especially masculine. If you want to face down a vicious enemy, you're best off not piping out your tough-guy talk in a piercing treble. Just look at Michael Jackson.
Hmmm. It's being in this confined space surrounded entirely by menfolk. I'm the victim of an anthropological experiment. They're making me question my very nature as a man. And this is on the Aqualung bus. Imagine what it'd be like if I was in Motorhead.
Marvin Gaye had a lovely falsetto. And look what happened to him.
E-Werk, Cologne
The audience is very lively tonight, or at least the English part of it. My favourite comments were
a) Ladies (in the moment of silence between the intro and verse of Falling out of love, v. loud): "Oh, he's married"
b) Matt: "This one's called Strange and beautiful"
Ladies: "Like your guitarist" (although, for the record, ladies, that is only half a compliment. But it helped me feel like a man again)
Today we learned that SnB has been nominated for the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song, which is fantastic. It is amazing how influential one song can be. It does seem to contain a little bit of magic, even playing it every night.
Earlier in the day we went to visit Cologne's cathedral, which is handily located near the pipe shop and the Professional Music Store (which appears to take up an entire district). I find I am suffering from cathedral fatigue, and the requisite feelings of awe and wonder are sadly missing.
We have some pasta in an Italian Restaurant that looks like it was converted from a dry cleaners. When we enter, it's empty apart from all the staff and the owners sitting at one table. They are staring at us as if we have perpetrated some mortal transgression. We stand there for what seems like five full minutes before someone says, like they can't believe it, "You... want.... something to... eat?". Perhaps it was a dry cleaners.
(I did have my doubts about that little anecdote when I began it, and my doubts are now confirmed. I'm sorry baby. I'm tired that's all. It's not you, it's me. We'll try again tomorrow, yeah?)
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.
Travelling to Stockholm
Today we are spending eleven hours in a Swedish service station.
Annexet, Stockholm
Whoa. We're way off my linguistic radar now. I don't even know the Swedish word for Swedish. Fortunately, everyone you approach with a sheepish "do you speak English?" replies, "a little" with a shrug, and then proceeds to conduct the conversation flawlessly in a charming accent. Which is just as well because I don't even know the Swedish word for Swedish. I've never been this far north. It is very very cold. I just want you to bear that in mind.
We wake up in the shade of the giant globe of Globen City, which is as Star Wars as it sounds. Globen City is the unholy union of several venues, a hotel, a mall and an enormous globe. They are playing Rick Astley in the mall. We resolve to leave for the centre of town as soon as possible.
I don't know if you're aware of a thing they have called "the Single European Currency". This is a very convenient system by which men and women can travel around many different countries in a place they have called "Europe", buying goods and services all the while, and when they leave one place they can use the same money in another place, thereby diminishing the need to buy a second suitcase to carry all the useless change you have accumulated between borders. This tour has been an education in the practical benefits of the Euro, which are thrown into sharp relief by leaving the euro zone and finding yourself alone and confused amongst the Krona. How many thousands should one withdraw from the cash machine? How far into town will 136 krona take you in a cab?
Despite this we manage to find our way into Stockholm and enjoy the sights for an extremely short time before the early showtime calls us back to Globen City. It's the biggest venue of the tour but the crowd seem strangely muted. They also seem strangely young and pasty-faced (and I mean 'pasty' as in savoury parcel.)
While we were in Stockholm Dan bought a hat. He's not completely sure about it, so if you see him wearing it, perhaps you can say "nice hat, Dan". It will make all the difference.
Dan is unhappy with this picture
Falconer, Copenhagen
I couldn't sleep very well so I listened to lots of Scott Walker, which is very evocative of young men wandering heartbroken through the cities of Europe; his eyes take in the grandeur of the architecture and the beauty of the vistas but inside he feels nothing. He lives only for the next pack of Gauloises and the dancing eyes of the hat-check girl at the Intercontinental; they promise much ... maybe ... nothing. Perhaps tomorrow he will wake up in her bed, watching the flies circling the ceiling fan in her appartement on the Rue de Valoir as she brews coffee and fixes her make-up, murmuring something about work, asking him to post the key through the letterbox when he leaves. There are lifestyle magazines scattered about the cramped sitting room which he flicks through in a desultory way; gaudy technicolor; lips smeared, teeth bared. Print-thin facsimilie of beauty. The hot water runs out part way through the shower. He sits naked and shivering on the balcony and smokes the last of his cigarettes. There is a woman beating a rug on the fire escape two floors above him. Their eyes meet. The next morning it is her blankets and her ceiling fan and the stench of her desperation he wakes up to.
We're in Copenhagen, but there is no sign of Danny Kaye. We don't manage to find the little mermaid, but we pass the Aladdin take away. We find our way to the river and Christiania, the ex-hippy commune and now slightly dubious bohemian shanty town. It is an intriguing place, but I for one did not feel that I had found the promised land. When I get home I am going to join the Young Conservatives.
The gig was a little odd. Elements of the crowd seemed a little hostile, unless "fuck off" is a compliment in Danish.
It is hard to wash your feet properly if you only have showers.
Columbiahalle, Berlin
Another day, another major city to see a tiny section of. The first challenge is finding the Metro, and once you've found it you have to figure out how to buy a ticket and then where you have to put the ticket, and then which train you're going to get and to where, and then you have to remember where you came from for future reference. None of us really know what you're supposed to see when you are in Berlin, so we head for somewhere in the middle of the tube map and find ourselves in broad strasse, gleaming modernity amid austere civic buildings with eagles rampant on the top of them. There is so much construction here, you sense that Berlin has a lot to forget. The new government buildings are fresh, colourful and accessible, and play down the war chariots and eagles as much as possible. It's amazing to think of what has transpired here even in my lifetime. I wonder what my German peers make of it all. It also serves as a reminder that arbitrary acts of will on the part of world powers can result in these untenable situations, and that there is a kind of cultural gravity that can't be fought indefinitely. Perhaps there is a right place for everything and everyone. Or perhaps people just have an instinct for trouble.
We joined a bus tour of the city. The commentary was delivered in a dust-dry deadpan, especially the bit about Berliners calling the World Culture building "the Peanut Smile of Jimmy Carter".
Matt is trying out starting the gig on his own with Nowhere, which works really well. We consider not joining him after the song and forcing him to do the whole show on his own, but hey, we've come such a long way, we might as well play. We're only a week away from the UK tour where we'll be playing ninety minute sets, and it's a good opportunity to try out a few things before we have to start being entertaining in our own right. I'm looking forward to it.
Travelling to Paris
Today we are spending nine hours in a German service station. Luckily there is a little field nearby in which we can enjoy an incompetent game of football. Matt has unwisely challenged David Gray to a 5-aside match. We're going to be slaughtered. Let's just hope he thought Matt was joking.
Olympia, Paris
Ahh Paris. City of Lice. You gotta hand it to them Frenchies, they know how to build some kickass city. The Olympia seems to be in the Parisien Knightsbridge (did you know that Armani are doing crash helmets?) and features a fine marquee with giant neon letters, and all the guilded beauty of a truly high class strip club.
It's a hazy, warm and sunny day in a beautiful city.
There's fine food and good company.
We have two dressing rooms.
The audience is ridiculously friendly and noisy, even though I played like a moron.
Matt's publisher takes us out for drinks.
Who could ask for more?
Well.
Yesterday when we were playing football, I got this blister on my right big toe. It's pretty deep and subcutaneous, covering about half of toe, full of blood and who knows what else. I could feel it there, blobbing about. Like walking on bubble wrap, but more queasy. It doesn't exactly hurt, but it's there in the back of my mind, on the base of my toe. This is no surface swelling. The action is all going on in the fleshy midst of the toe. The nastiness wasn't just going to weep out unbidden. It was time for intervention. Kerry bought me a Leatherman for my birthday. It's bristling with hardcore gadgetry, but I have so far only used it for cutting bread and cheese by the river in Florence, which is a precise index of how manly I am.
I pulled out its most wicked blade and set about the ghastly bulge.
They say the first cut is the deepest, but in this instance the first cut was fairly ginger, as was the second, third, fourth and fifth. The sixth, however, punctured the empurpled injury with a realistic gout of 'fluid' and not without a little gory satisfaction. A few moments of manipulation and the tumescence was drained, and I was ready to go about my business, safely plastered.
However, as I sit here typing, I sense an increasing pressure from the area, as if my expert incision has sealed, and deep within my toe, drip by oozing drip, the blister has risen again.
Perhaps I should have a look. Where's my bag... it's lancin' time.
Ancienne Belgique, Brussels
Lacklustre.
013, Tilburg
Another town, another unknown language, but by now we are blase about approaching counters with a loud "do you speak EEEENGLEEESH?" (you say it in a stupid accent because you think it's going to help). And they all do. Thank fuck.
Tilburg appears to be one vast pavement cafe, as equally well attended at 10am as at 10pm on a Thursday in March. The venue is excellent and very well organised. You can pick up a fact sheet that tells you where to find all the local amenities the travelling musician might need. Unfortunately it bears very little relation to the town, except in retrospect. The gig is a little hmmmmmmm. A little ffffff. A little ohhhhhhhhhhhhmmm. You know.
It sounds like the football match has been fixed for Munich. Aieeeee.
Travelling to Vienna
Matt VB has just informed me he has cut his nose while shaving. (MVB says:Well it was the only way that I would get mentioned!) I haven't shaved for a long long time. My facial hair has now been upgraded from "rakeish" to "vagrant".
It's funny what you learn when you're living on a bus, like how many minutes it takes to dry a wet tea towel in the microwave, and how to get dressed horizontally, and what kind of tip you have to leave for German toilet attendants.
Matt has just announced that he sort of feels like he wants to maybe play a bit of skating. His journey to the dark side has begun.
We are speeding through Austria on our way to Vienna and the first hotel of the tour. Please let there be a bath.
Gasometer, Vienna
There was a bath. I can't tell you how happy that made me. Last night we went out to a Mexican Restaurant, and for one glorious evening I had a moustache. But it was a poor, invisible moustache that wasn't even that funny, so I shaved it off when I got back.
You can get a horse-drawn carriage round Vienna, which means that all of the beautiful sights are accompanied by the smell of horse piss.
The gig is part of a huge development which has turned four old gasometers (which are like them big tank things but made in attractive redbrick) into a giant mall and office complex, which proves to be extremely difficult to find a way out of. The venue is the base of one of them (when you eventually find it) and is big and round and echo-y, which gives us the opportunity to hear what we sound like reflected off the walls. It is improved by a large and enthusiastic audience who come along later. The gig is great, perhaps the best so far, and made all the better by the certainty that my feet are VERY clean.
After the gig there is an uncommonly large amount of wine knocking around, and it would be rude to resist its velvety charms....
Muffethalle, Munich
Another tremendous audience. Tony reminds me that we have actually been in the Muffethalle before when the 45s visited Munich a few years ago. We had a spare evening and our hosts took us over to see a big hiphop n scratching gig. It was my first introduction to German rapping, which is an extremely harsh form of the art. It's like listening to mashed bricks. I guess it's just something to do with German consonants which are brutal at the best of times, unlike the sybaritic French with their soft tongues. (Sigh).
We don't have a dressing room near the stage so we have to hang about next to it before we go on. Matt amuses himself by scurrying underneath the stage and hiding there. He is only flushed out by Paul and Steve and a small terrier. For once their penchant for badger baiting has come in useful.
No football today. Have we escaped, or will it all happen tomorrow by way of valediction? It's funny to think of the tour being over. There have been times when it seemed like it never would. We've been treated extremely well, seen a lot of cathedrals, Matt's met a lot of journalists, we've played to a lot of people. "Job's a goodun'", as they like to say on the bus, for reasons I cannot fathom.
Capitol, Offenbach
It's the last day of the tour, and to celebrate I've suddenly got an explosive cold. But I won't go into it - I'd hate to bore you with graphic details of my ailments. I'm ashamed to say that I'd never even heard of Offenbach until this tour. Sorry, Offenbach. Don't take it personally. I'd never heard of Godalming before I went there by mistake once.
MVB and I go on a little walk into the town centre to discover the usual array of Hennes and Pimkies and Tchibo stores that we have seen all over Europe (each usually blasting out a healthy dose of British Popstar/Academy music (or Rick Astley) as you walk by.) We return to discover to our horror that the football match is going ahead very shortly in a park up the road.
Over the weeks we've become quite friendly with David and his band. Too bad we now must become locked in fierce gladiatorial combat.
Our squad consists of Matt, MVB, Dan, Tony, Steve and me. It's five aside, with rolling substitutes. David seems to have brought along several teams' worth, although in the end most of them are just there to laugh and laugh and laugh. It's a jumpers-for-goalposts situation. The pitch is fairly short but infinitely wide, which means you have to do quantum throw-ins.
I feel I may die within two minutes of the start. Mr Gray's team can actually play football, something our tactics were not prepared for. However, we manage to withstand the onslaught for both the first and second half, largely thanks to Matt's goalkeeping prowess (it may surprise you to learn that Matt was once a promising young goalkeeper/fullback/wicket keeper. He's a natural sportsman, but doesn't really have the foresight for effective team play, preferring bursts of heroic solo play, most often ending in disaster. That's why he's kept at the back where it's easier to get kicked in the head, which is what he likes most of all). He wins the respect of all. Eventually, after a period of 'extra time' (ie the length of time it takes for someone to score, whether anyone likes it or not) David twats a fine ball past Matt's outstretched fingertips and the game is pronounced won 1-0 even though Dan saw the jumpers move and the way he used to play that's not a goal, so he didn't really win but we'll say he did it's his tour after all. We limp off for our soundcheck feeling extremely unwell.
There's a German journalist in the dressing room who gives Matt some felt-tips and makes him draw a picture. Matt discovers he has injured his thumb and ruined his voice shouting. Dan's spine has been destroyed in an "incident" on the field. MVB cannot move his arms or legs. I can't stop sneezing. The gig is great.
Afterwards we are met by David and the band (shouting "one nil" - Dan's lip curls) and some champagne. And so we leave, wreathed in smiles and best wishes, with fond memories in our hearts and minds, incredibly pissed.
The Aqualung Expeditionary Force (1919)
(standing, l-r) Matt VB, My Good Self, Tony, Dan, Matthew 'Aqualung' Hales
(squatting uncomfortably, l-r) Fish, Roberto, Paul, Steve, Harvey
