Day 1 started in the most rocking of all ways : installing a washing machine at home. The dream is being well and truly lived ladies and gentlemen.
DIY done, gear loaded, obsessively checked and rechecked to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything (and then checked again just to be on the safe side) it's road time.
The next 5 hours pass in a blur of Tesco bbq ribs, traffic jams, fruitless hunts for interesting whisky, and lustful browsing through the biggest music shop ever + then it's finally time - gig #1 of the tour.
To say that Reading was a fun night would be like saying that the weather has been a bit changable recently - both totally accurate, but a bit of an understatement : sing-a-longs, stage invasions, Shine 7 being the prime source of dj material (WELL I CAN'T TAKE IT, TOO MUCH TIME'S BEEN WASTED ahh), and hanging around with the progressively more destroyed Josaka crew.
Bonus points also to sir Winship for being possibly the drunkest person in a room packed with really quite drunk folks.
Heading back to Ben's for post mortem whisky and beer, the last 30 minutes of Dracula 2000 (what...it was Judas all along? Vampire necks are made of grass? WHATTHEHELLISGOINGON?) untill we gradually passed out watching someone excitingly swimming lengths on the Big Brother live feed.
Andthenitwasday2 - in which Jim felt like death warmed up, frozen, partially thawed out, and then kicked down a spiral staircase...we fed ourselves bacon bought from the proceeds of last night's merch sale (thank you Readingites) and lounged around watching Murder She Wrote (the bus driver did it...twice) and Monk (who said OCD couldn't be fun?).
Our daytime whittled away with detective shows and pig flesh (oh and Jim pausing to give God a quick ring from the big white telephone) we drove the winding roads to Devizes well aided by the skills of DJ Ben "random play all" Marwood, played the most tedious, yet profitable, quiz/fruit machine ever, and then ate fish and chips by the lake. Romantic eh?
The show was an open mic affair, with each of us getting 2 x 3 song sets...I have to admit that I was initially a bit dubious about how that would rank on the awesome scale, but it soon proved itself to be a great way to spend an evening - play some tunes, sit and have a drink and a chat, play some more, repeat.
To add to that, the unparalleled generosity of both sir Boom of FT board fame, and sir Stan of Lockey, deserves a spontaneous standing ovation - you guys are great.
Later we drive home to Bristol after, with a bounty of cans of 6X and a bottle of Bushmills sat waiting patiently in the boot for their chance to entertain us, Ben orders pizza, and we channel hop the night away before reluctantly remembering that some pillock* decided that it'd be clever to set tomorrow's gig up as an all dayer, and so we'd have to be up and out of the house in 7 hours. What a dick.
*ok, it was me
