New website: www.oxygenthiefmusic.com

Oxygen Thief has a new home: www.oxygenthiefmusic.com

Ok it's the same url, but it's a new website that works better than Myspace so everyone's a winner right?

OT

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Upcoming gigs:
25th March - The Hobgoblin, Bath
31st March - Slak, Cheltenham

7th April - The Greyhound, Nottingham
8th April - Stereo, York
9th April - The Garrett, Manchester (early gig: 19.30 - 21.00)
10th April - The Cellar Bar, Worcester (TBC)

Now booking;

30th April - available
1st May - available
2nd May - Adam & Eve, Birmingham
3rd May - available
4th May - The Mother's Ruin, Bristol
5th May - The Cobbler's Thumb, Brighton
6th May - available
7th May - Frog & Fiddle, Birmingham

13th May - available
14th May - private party, London
15th May - available

19th May - available (Eire/NI)
20th May - available (Eire/NI)
21st May - available (Eire/NI)
22nd May - available (Eire/NI)

27th May - The Croft, Bristol (w/Chris T-T)
28th May - available
29th May - available

2nd June - The Swan, Kidderminster
3rd June - available
4th June - available
5th June - available

Census thoughts...

Census form has arrived - aside from concerns about Lockheed's involvement there's also The Census Campaign to think carefully about.

Writing "Jedi" in the religion box is fun and all, but http://census-campaign.org.uk/ has good reasons why the non-religious should tick the "no religion" box rather than being flippant, or ticking a box that represents your cultural heritage rather than practicing affiliation.

This isn't an attack on the religious, but an important way for those without a belief to be counted and considered when it comes to the justification of future policy makers*.

That's surprisingly coherent considering the amount of Lemsip I've had today.....



*assuming that government policy has anything in mind at the moment other than "CUT IT - CUT ALL THE MONEY! ALL OF IT!"

Album + Gigs: March, April & May

HELLO THERE! The album is tantilisingly close to being put in the post and made into an actual real life object, rather than just a collection of .wavs, Photoshop files, and good intentions. I can't wait. Pictures of artwork, free mp3s, and other such attention-seeking internetery to follow.






In the meantime, here's some gigs I'm playing over the next couple of months;

16/03 - The Fleece, Bristol with Dave McPherson (from Inme) & Howard James Kenny
25/03 - Bath
31/03 - Slak, Cheltenham

07/04 - The Greyhound, Nottingham
08/04 - Stereo, York
09/04 - The Garrett, Manchester
10/04 - The Cellar Bar, Worcester TBC

I'm also booking album-release-plug-a-thon tour, so if anyone wants me to come make noise in their face/has suggestions for a venue/promoter/band in your neck of the woods  then get in touch via oxygenthiefmusic [at] hotmail [dot] com or twitter.com/oxygenthiefyeah:

30/04 -
01/05 -
02/05 -
03/05 -
05/05 -
06/05 -

That's it for now, laters

OT

Tour diary part 3!

Wow, I’ve been home over 2 weeks now and the tour seems like a distant dream, or that it happened to someone else entirely, with the only evidence being my as-yet-unhealed split fingernail, an increasing number of photos appearing on Facebook, and the fact that The Karate Kid soundtrack is on a permanent loop around my brain – if my future musical output all ends up being synth-led aspirational nonsense about winning “the fight” and being “the best” then you’ll know why. 

So, let’s try to get down as much of this as I can before the dreamory (dream-memory) is still slightly recent and before a person from Perlock comes along to banish it forever.*

Any similarity to Ben Marwood’s blog of the same period is totally coincidental, and nothing at all to do with the fact that a) we were both there at the time and b) I’ve already read his to remind myself what happened. More on my atrocious memory later.

DAY 5 – YORK. In which we get up early, eat a hearty breakfast, I get an accidentally vegetarian beef & ale pie, and we live in the lap of luxury (sort of).

Waking up unfeasibly early to be turfed out into the frosty morning by the cold hearted Jack Alcopop, whose cruel maniacal laughter could be heard echoing down the street long after he disappeared from view**we took refuge at my friend Alice’s place which weirdly happens to be directly opposite chez Jack. Spooky indication that there is a benevolent force guiding all our actions through life, or meaningless yet happy coincidence? you decide.***

Heading back to the car, memories of inserting “i”s onto numerous “To Let” signs with a permanent marker pop into my head, and I feel very proud of myself indeed. Heading out of Oxford I complete my second culinary first of the tour; a Little Chef Olympic Breakfast. Apparently all non-British athletes will be required by law to eat one of these every day before competing, thus boosting our chances of getting a few golds by upwards of 10%. Apparently the sausages were “award winning”, though not unpleasant I’d be surprised if the award was anything other than the annual “Best Sausage Served At Little Chef” award. We were also given a lollipop that tasted exactly how toilet blocks smell. Kev and I amused ourselves trying to throw them into the bin from across the carpark, failing of course but being quite satisfied when they smashed to bits on the cold tarmac below.

The rest of the day went pretty much like this: DRIVING, DRIVING, ROAD, ROAD, MOTORWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY, service station, MOTORWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY, ROAD ROAD, Travelodge. Which as you can tell, was thrilling. I’m pretty sure we would have talked some nonsense at some point, though maybe we had a deep philosophical conversation. We’ll never know for sure.

Heading out onto the streets of York in search of sustenance, we chose Harkers – a food pub that looked like it might meet the balance between dirt cheap and half decent. I opted for the beef and ale pie, which turned out to be one of those fake-pies that are a bowl with a huge piece of puff pastry on top. “No bother”, thinks I, and I begin to tuck in. After a bit of exploration I casually remark that there “isn’t a whole lot of beef in this pie”. I remove said pastry lid and swish my fork around in the sauce “actually, there’s no beef at all” – it’s an ale pie. Normally, being English, complaining about food feels like a strange and alien activity, always tinged with the fear that the staff will scoff and proclaim that “it’s supposed to be like that, you fucking idiot!” or something, but this time I felt safe in my assertion that all was not well. Steeling myself for combat I carried the offending dish back to the bar, took a deep breath and proudly asserted “um…there’s like, uh, no beef in this pie”. The waitress capitulated immediately, brought me a new one, and I ate it. Ironically the second one could have done with a bit more “ale”, but was otherwise beef-tastic.#

Later my arms nearly fell off from carrying the merch/my effects box across town, but they recovered by gig time. Sadly I didn’t get any insane nonsense from the sound engineer (see Ben’s blog) but had an entertaining time nonetheless – highlights including starting a two man wall of death during Mestle & Portar, poet Henry Raby transforming from affable compere to angry politico in the blink of an eye, reciprocating the mosh frenzy during Don’t Let Paris Fool You’s set (nearly being destroyed by Ben Marwood in the process) and witnessing Tom DLPFY’s artistic level of drunkenness – it was like he’d constructed an aqueduct of booze connecting his subconscious directly to his mouth, resulting in the kind of free-association rambling that would make Johnny Vegas give up and go work in a bank. 

Afterwards we went back to the Travelodge for wild rock & roll party times, but as I tweeted at the time we “put all the hooker money in a parking meter thinking it was binoculars” earlier in the day, so made do with tv, rum, and then sleep.

DAY 6 – CHEZ TRIMBLE. In which we buy the world’s smallest bottles of whisky, then get drunk and play in a dining room.

MMmmm sleep, lovely sleep. Managing to tear ourselves away from the Travelodge’s opulent  surroundings, I insist that we have a stroll around York before heading off to Nottingham. It’s fucking freezing cold though, so our stroll essentially is a walk around the block, about 20 minutes in The Whisky Shop (where I could easily have spent a few hundred quid on awesome booze, but decided that being able to afford food and bills was boringly more important) coming away with what are officially the world’s smallest bottles of whisky. Mine came in an “in emergency, break glass” style surround which I resolve to blu-tak in a prominent position when I get home.

Tonight is house-party night – originally mooted as a day off, but PAH: we laugh in the face of exhaustion^ so it’s to the outskirts of Nottingham to Gerry Trimble’s place to play to a handful of people I previously only know via the interwebs. Gerry kindly texted to ask whether there was anything we wanted food-wise as he was preparing a buffet; I checked my mental list of diva-esque demands, and selected for “a bag of salad to accompany the nibbles” and bless him, he obliged. Next time it’ll be a lifesized replica of the Venus de Milo constructed from blue smarties and haribo eggs, with a framed photo of Bob Holness – my rider gland has been stimulated.

The rest of the night is a bit of a blur – singalongs, hand clapping, collaborations, a chap called Rob being determined to bankrupt himself at the foot of our merch alter, and a rather comfy sofa to slip into unconsciousness on.  Thanks Team Trimble!

DAY 7 – FARNSFIELD ACOUSTIC. In which we have the 2^nd shortest drive of the tour, I play the most unusual 20 minute set of my life, and I eat too many sandwiches, and we sip £4 Cava whilst watching/reciting Withnail & I. Warning – may contain traces of artistic self-doubt.

Nipping across town to Laura & Matt’s house, Ben and I have a conversation that vaguely resembles the following;

Me – So who are we staying with today?
Ben – My friend Laura.
Me – Ok, who’s that?
Ben – My friend from college, you met her when we played Nottingham before.
Me – Ohh yeah, I remember, cool.
Ben – We stayed at her house that time as well.
Me – Did we?
Ben – Yes.
Me – I…really?
Ben – Yes, remember?
Me – No. Was I drunk?
Ben – No, you drove.
Me – Um…really?
*Racks brain. Remembers gig. Remembers Laura & Matt. Draws blank on house*
Me – Nope, nothing.
Ben – You slept in the lounge, we watched TV.
*lists of a Father Ted-esque list of things that happened that I have zero recollection of, not quite culminating in “you were wearing your red jumper”, and not resulting in my memory doing anything remotely like flooding back.

Arriving at the house I expect things to fall into place, but they stubbornly refuse. I begin to worry about what might have happened that evening to cause such a huge repression of memory and begin to treat Ben with suspicion.

A trip to the pub for lunch plus a light stroll later and it’s off to Farnsfield – a small village outside Nottingham that has regular folk nights in its village hall. 

I think it’s fair to say I was looking forward to this night with a sense of bemusement, wondering what its attendants would make of my shouty nonsense. Thankfully we arrive to friendly faces, warm welcomes, and a fridge full of beer and sandwiches. I soundcheck looking out at the rows of tables with a feeling that although this isn’t going to be within my comfort zone, but that comfort zones are for losers and I’m hardcore enough to take this unusual situation on and win. All feels brilliant until the houselights go off and I’m presented with a faceless black wall, pinpricked by some scattered tea lights, then I start to feel a wee bit uncomfortable, but make a go of it anyway with a comment of “Goodevening Farnsfield Acoustic – I’m led to believe that I’m pretty typical of the acts you have at these events” being met with knowing laughter. I play a setlist devoid of gratuitous metal screaming, and modify the word “shit” to a Hot Fuzz dvd extra-esque “silt” as I don’t want to pointlessly upset people for the sake of it. There’s applause between songs, and some amusing heckling from a voice that I’m guessing isn’t a regular to these events~  but I can’t help but feel that I’ve cheated myself out of a good time by not giving 100%. I mope about for a bit until Inlay, a trad-folk outfit, get to a song that has some weird timing and sounds remarkably metal at which point I perk up and realise that I’m being stupid – what was I expecting, people to throw over their tables and start moshing viciously?  

Then Ben does his thing, we all jam on a couple of songs at the organiser Mike’s request, and I have a nice chat with some lovely people, then it’s back to Laura & Matt’s to drink a couple of surprisingly awesome £4 bottles of Cava, watch Withnail & I (which I had to force myself to stop talking along to after about 45 minutes) and then Marwood & I did our first double-bed share of the tour.

DAY 8 – SWINDON. In which I almost spoon Ben in the early hours of the morning, drive the scenic route, and nearly fall asleep onstage.

For once on this tour my body clock allows me a bit of a lie-in, though it finally giving in just when I’ll need it for the day at work tomorrow is typical of its selfishness. I wake up not fully remembering where I am as I see a person-shaped mass in the bed next to me and my left arm states its intention of initiating an embrace before my mind takes over and informs lefty that it’s Ben sleeping there, not Kat. Lefty felt a bit sheepish for a while, but seemed happy with me typing that so he must be over it by now.

We do the morning thing; Kev accepting the offer of tea at every opportunity like the fiend he is, then drive down the road for a bewildering choice of delicious looking sandwiches, and it’s fist figuratively meets tarmac again to head southwest to Swindon. I decide that I’ve had enough of motorways, so conspire against the satnav to find a route that will not leave me paralysed with grey boredom. This tactic doesn’t really work – I’ve pretty much had enough of driving by now, and as we approach Swindon I manage to ignore all manner of “YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TURN RIGHT INTO THE PETROL STATION” signs and cause a bit of a backlog by sitting with my indicator on, patiently waiting for a gap in the traffic so I can turn right into the petrol station. Therein Ben buys about 20 chocolate bars, and eats most of them in the 6 miles we have left to Swindon proper – I fear for his mental state at the point the sugar kicks in, and the subsequent sugar crash – then go to meet my mum for some dinner, I go for a Calzone as they are the most win type of pizza in the world ever. FACT.

Getting back to the venue I start to feel the fatigue of the last week stacking up on my shoulders, but am convinced that everything will be fine until our illustrious promoter and sound engineer Alex tells me that I’m being “a bit quiet for such a loud guy” and I worry that I may have fallen asleep with my eyes open or something. My set passes as I try to perk myself, and the lethargic Sunday night crowd, up a bit…failing slightly on both counts as I step off stage and realise that I definitely need to go to sleep straight away…………but can’t as I have Ben’s set to watch (not that it’s a chore of course, but at this moment in time I’d turn down a half hour consequence-free punch-David-Cameron’s-smug-face session for the opportunity to curl up and have at least 4 day’s sleep) and then have to drive home. Seriously, why did I ever learn to drive? To steal some wise words from Left Side Brain’s drummer Ryan “I think I might get myself banned”. Though sadly while he’d have 3 band members to take up the driving slack, I’d just have to start getting trains. Yuck. I managed to enjoy Ben’s set, have a chat to a couple of lovely people who’d enjoyed the gig, hug my Mum goodbye, and then slouch off to the car to attempt the drive home.

Sorry to end on another, almost identical, cliffhanger – and a slight downer as well, I’ve been hanging round with Ben for too long – but you’re really going to have to wait until next time to find out whether I made it home alive………………. 

[imagine that Eastenders drum noise kicks in here]

*Coleridge reference ftw. Though I had to Wikipedia it to be sure, and I was going to write “postman” instead of “person from Porlock”. 

**this is of course, utter lies – Jack couldn’t have been more apologetic and gifted me an Alcopop t-shirt at some point in the evening as well, I just like the idea of imagining such a lovely chap being pantomime evil.

***Though the answer is clearly b). 

# Quite an outrageous tale eh? If anyone’s interested in the film rights then I’ll accept nothing less than a 6 figure sum; The Beef Pie That Had No Beef – surely a cinematic licence to print money?

^or at least snigger behind its back when it’s not looking.

~Me “Ben Marwood’s coming up later. Man “YAYYY MY NAME’S BEN!”.  Me “I’m from Bristol”. Man “YAYYYYY SOUTH WEST YAAEHH CORNWALL!”. It was bring-your-own-booze though, so who can blame him? Plus we did talking afterwards and it turned out fine.

Right then, a hell of a lot to catch up on (not least the sleep which even after an early night at home is still deeper in the red than Nick Clegg is telling us our country is) so let’s see how I get on.

If you read Tour Diary pt 1 then you’ll no doubt have been  waiting with anticipation to see whether I made it home safely…………..well……………….drumroll: I DID! Go me. I did have to stop and sleep in the very last services before home, which is only about 20 minutes away – better lame than never I suppose.

After that drive of insanity I got up and went to work, and spent the day staring into space, borderline hallucinatory with fatigue, and even had to resort to spending my lunchbreak asleep on the floor of an unoccupied office – rock and roll, my friends, is the most glamourous thing in the entire world. Anyway, enough moaning; the tour continues;

DAY 3: BRISTOL. In which we go back to work during the day, have lots of people turn up to our gig, instigate mass singalongs, and then go home sweaty and boozy.

There’s a bit of pressure involved in playing a home-town gig on tour – the “will anyone turn up” factor is heightened, the desire to play well increases, the fear that simply everything will go wrong/turn out shit becomes all pervasive………… thankfully it was all unfounded as everything fell in to place to make it a great evening; Big Jeff rocked up at the start, openers Andy “100% Nan-Safe*” Price and Gaz Brookfield worked their magic, my set was 30 minutes of noisy fun (including a nicely ramshackle first outing of my album-closer All Done Bye Bye with Ben on 2^nd guitar/backing vocals, a rare** outing for Gold, and plenty of banterous nonsense ). I then grabbed some drink to enjoy Ben’s set, chatted a bit, and then went back to Castle Thief with Mrs Thief and Kev @editradio to put a few more beers into my face, make him about a million cups of tea, and watch The Smell of Reeves & Mortimer, which I promptly series linked before zonking out.

DAY 4: OXFORD. In which we pick up a new hire car, murder some people,  eat ice cream, drink beer, and play darts (badly).

My hopes for a decent lie-in were dashed by my bodyclock’s insistence that I wake up alert at 8.30am sharp. Stupid bodyclock – didn’t you get the memo that I’m on tour now and must therefore revert to student levels of lie ins…no? Oh, ok then – you’re let off. Don’t let it happen again though you hear? However unfair my sleepytime woes were, they weren’t a patch on Kev being woken up at 5.30am by Monty (our cat) punching him in the face and meowing loudly. Poor Kev – if you see him, be sure to give him a hug.

Whilst waiting for the car hire company to pick me up (yep, we decided to save £25 by not keeping the car for the whole week – that’s how we roll) I watched an old sitcom on G.O.L.D (G.O.L.D!) called “Dear John” about a recently divorced man that was a strange mix of utterly awful and yet quite charming. I series linked that too, intrigued as to how it would develop.

A ring of the phone and it’s off to get car #2 – sadly not an estate this time (must’ve been a fluke upgrade) that doesn’t have an obvious nickname from its numberplate. We thought of one later on but then forgot it. We notice that it’s not a diesel, so have to work out a song to remind us not to put diesel in this time – how confusing.

Arriving in Oxford we stash our gear at G&D’s and head into town to wait for Ben to arrive, look at old buildings, and play “Lewis”…a game that chiefly consists of filming each other pretending to be dead for later splicing with clips from the actual TV series – it’s going to be the best thing ever/totally rubbish. I think my death was the most convincing…up until the point where I started laughing. Later a local friend turned up and took us to a pub where they used to shoot Morse – I’m impressed but have never seen Morse, we’re a strictly Lewis household***.

Ben turns up (hello Ben!) and we go to Nandos for dinner – I have never been to Nandos before. Ben & Kev warn me off the hot sauce, but I sample some on a chip; it tastes pretty good. I proceed to pour loads of the stuff on my plate and mop it up with my medium-strength chicken quarter. They are impressed – I think I have established myself as the alpha male of this tour. GET IN.

Then it’s off to G&D’s for an unusual, but lovely gig in an ice cream café during which I cause a couple of older patrons to leave, am studiously ignored by some Japanese students, and nearly bring the entire building down on my head with an ill advised double foot stomp. Then we got free ice cream; yeah, you should be jealous. After Ben’s set Jack Alcopop and I take the gear back to his & head to the nearest pub – which closes about 10 minutes later. A quick game of darts later (I lose the game spectacularly using my nice darts, then have a quick throw with the shitty pub darts and score a cool 100 - wtf?) we decamp to the Oxford institution that is The Jamaican/Hi-Lows. 

Therin Ben is harassed by a strange man, we discuss street carnivals with the landlady, and the landlord shouts at people who fail to enter the bar using the correct airlock-like door procedure. Thankfully the atmosphere stays constant throughout , and I make a mental note to come back here as soon as possible before we stroll back out into the night at around 2am…with Jack needing to be up for work at 7am. Ouch.

THANKS JACK!

More tomorrow, I'm off for a nap..............

Tour diary - part 1, take 2

I say “take 2” because I already wrote about 80% of a tour diary for the first two dates of my tour with Ben Marwood but then managed to press some previously unknown keyboard shortcut which not only deleted everything I’d written whilst simultaneously disabling the blessed Ctrl+Z combo, but also autosaved the emptiness ensuring that there was absolutely no way back. That’s why I’m now typing this in Word 2007 (yeah, Windows XP – take that Apple fanzoids) and planning on copy and pasting back in.

In the meantime Ben has written his own account of the last two days which his being a failed music journalist ™ means that it’s already far more entertaining than anything I could write*, but hey ho: here goes.

DAY 1: in which I drive from Bristol to Leeds via Reading, make noise, listen to words, and drink tea until almost breakfast time.

The drive to Leeds began with the picking up of our first hire car – a bright spangly new silver Astra that we later nicknamed “Juicy Lucy” due to it (her?) having a number plate that ended in “JCY”…that’s the level of intellect we’re dealing with here people. Being somewhat surprised by the epic bootspace, and terrified by the newness of it all, I departed onto the M4 and studiously began staring at the fuel consumption display…herein to be referred to as the OCDometer; 40mpg…60mpg…999.99mpg…this thing was clearly not to be trusted, let alone stared at in lieu of looking at the actual road, but some quick mathematics suggested that if I drove at the optimum speed then we might actually have a chance of not going bankrupt through diesel costs on this tour. HOORAY!

After picking up Ben and our tour pet Kevin (who is making video and audio documents of the week and presumably putting them on www.editradio.co.uk at some point) we made our way to Leeds, with a quick stop at our first services of the tour**, and prepared to “do our thing”.

The gig was a delight from opener, err, Open Invitation, through to my first Ben Marwood set of 2011, via clever/funny/thought provoking wordage from the newly christened Fear of Cardigans  and Suzannah Evans (@nightowlpoet).  Plans were mooted, suggestions made, but in the end a combination of migraine and proximity meant that we ended up drinking tea at Peter and Nicola’s house until the early hours of the morning, at which point I transformed from rock beast to taxi driver and took everyone home. Because I’m nice. To be honest, it was the perfect end to the evening – much as I love watching Ben Marwood screaming System of a Down lyrics into the face of strangers at The Cockpit, I was dreading the thought of Day #2’s million mile/hour drive so the prospect of doing it with an epic hangover was worrying to say the least. We still stayed up till 3.30am though, so that technically means we’re still hardcore right?

DAY 2 MOTHERLOVERS: in which I drive from Cheltenham to Leeds, listen to some BRILLIANT music in the car, make noise, fail to sell any merch (but we still love you Cheltenham) and then I go home….via Reading.

My body clock gently brings me back to life at 9am, having had 5.5 hours sleep, and refuses to let me go back to sleep despite not needing to be up for another 3 hours. The bastard. I do read some blogs and then doze for a little while, so not all is lost. Then we have an epic breakfast of tea, orange juice, lovely jam, more tea, grilled pig products, and gather our thoughts and possessions ready to leave. Oh and we also spend some time reading from The Mystery Method, a “how to have sex with ladies” manual that only stops slightly short of suggesting you batter them unconscious with the hardback edition and have your way with them before they wake up***. We also check out the related internet forum which makes manages to make me both giggle like an idiot, yet feel compellingly embarrassed on behalf of the entire heterosexual contingent of my gender. A bit like Men Behaving Badly.

After stupidly putting our/my trust in the OCDometer when the amount of miles it said we should be able to do nicely coincided with the number of miles to Cheltenham, and therefore very nearly running out of diesel# about half a mile away from the venue. Thank the sweet baby Jesus~ for the Tesco Pay at Pump system.

Our eventual arrival at Slak was heralded by the rolling down of our windows and the pumping out of the Karate Kid soundtrack like 80s obsessed rude bois. It was fun. Then we went for food and due to the cruel hand of fate wishing to poke me in the eye, I ended up with some rubbish boil-in-the-bag filth sneezed onto my plate while everyone else had a huge chunk of roast chicken. Taking pity on my sulking face, Ben came to the rescue and gave me a load of chicken : WOO HOO!

Anyway, gig itself was super – Ben on devastating banterous form, we both got a bit of a singalong going, and I made an off the cuff crack about Intelligent Design that made some people laugh, making me the Robin Ince to Ben's Stewart Lee. Oh yeah I managed to sweat out pretty much all of the moisture from my body as well…the benchmark has been well and truly set for self-disgust my friends.

Jim Lockey brought us a set of almost exclusively new songs, all of which sounded great and have been in my head ever since, and we sat around putting our best puppy dog faces on in the hope that people would buy our merch – they didn’t, Joe Summers’ poster purchase aside.

Still, Cheltenham is so officially awesome that we don’t even care - we’ll be back for more of their enthusiasm and charm.

Then we set off for the ultimate drive of doom: CheltenhamàReadingàBristol. Did I make it back in one piece? Did I have to have a half hour nap at a service station just 20 minutes from home? You’ll have to wait until the next instalment to find out.............................

OT

*I’m presuming he failed by virtue of being able to write prose that both informed and entertained the reader in equal measure, as opposed to being a self-aggrandising pseudo-omniscient tosshole that touts whatever crap 80’s aping claptrap he’s been paid the most to espouse as the future of music ™.

**Donnington Park – which was impressively the first service station I ever saw an M&S in back in the day, but now looks quaint compared to all the Waitrose and Harrods ones these days.

***Case in point “if the woman says ‘we should stop’ you should reply ‘yeah we should stop’…but don’t actually stop”. Maybe it’s the Julian Assange guide to sweet lovin’…………

#we wrote a little ditty in the car to remind us that it was a diesel engine…which we then promptly forgot. It featured the words “it’s a diesel, diesel, DIESEL” over and over again though, so while the tune is gone forever, the message isn’t.

~who resides somewhere in Mexico I’m told.