Start spreading the news…ok, just kidding, Frank. Wow, yesterday was quite an out of body experience. I pretty much decided to get “out of my idiot” and went to one of York’s oldest pubs (circa 11th century?), Lendal Cellars. I even wrote a song about this place (which will be on my Winter EP, TRAVELSONGS…shameless plug, that one…). Well, I went there and just sort of kept going with the drink. So by the time I met up Ringo, around 5:30 at the train station, I was quite sorted, if you know what I mean… The train ride to Leeds was only 25 min but Ringo and I decided to have 2 pints each on the train (you can get really wasted on these trains). When we arrived, we met up with Ringo’s Fiancee’, Toni (who works in Leeds) and his old mate (and my friend of 6 years), Bobby. We proceeded to negotiate more pints down our throats and then decided to move on to another pub. Of course, it was there that received the shock of my life; this pub not only had no BUSHMILLS, but the bloody bartender had never heard of it!!! Now, this would never happen in Liverpool, manchester or Glasgow, or any of England’s west coast cities. But in Leeds, we sorta had to let it pass.

So we drank Jamison’s instead and got a few more pints (Toni only drank soda because she was driving…or so we thought…more on that later…). Then we headed off to an EXCELLENT curry house (that’s all British people do is eat Curries..) and I decided to go with a glass of merlot but they didn’t know what that was so I asked for a glass of red wine and the guy said sure and brought out some merlot..ok, go figure, right! So we finnish that up and then we walk to the car but it turns out they’ve locked the garage up…we misread the sign so we gotta walk to the train station and take a train back to York! Which means Toni had to train it to work this morning and then pay to get her car. So when we all got back to their house, we watched the making of Lou reed’s “Transformer “(one of my all time faves!!!!) on DVD and drank some more beer and Ringo poured me a really big shot of whiskey, and at that point, I was friggin drunk, ok?

So we all said goodnight and I had some rough sleep, with nightmares and stuff, which I completely blame on the Jamison’s and which is why my whiskey is BUSHMILLS and now you can understand my hesitance at drinking something other than my #1 whiskey. So I tried to go to sleep but around 3am I got the mad-mad-mad munchies and went to the fridge to eat some leftovers from the night before when Toni and mike made a stir fry and it was spot on. I was in Business, ok? Then I could sleep…and only one more day in York before I hop a train to London tomorrow to meet up with Rusty and Richard “Rocky” Meehan and Stuart Harris. Well, I am meeting Ringo in a few hours at a record store here in York. Cheers from England!

Mike Randle