The bus pulled into bath around 2 pm and we were chilling. Some of us were still asleep in our bunks, some of us were watching TV and having tea, while others (like myself) were in Ross’s office chewing the fat, while Chapple was playing Nintendo. See, he knew how to fire the gun but his bloke couldn’t leave this one room and so Chapple shot up the room like 200 times. He shot this one rat at least 50 times. I went up to chill with Derek as he was driving and he was listing to some rap music or something and I told him I liked pretty much all music styles, which he found tough to swallow, but it was true.

After Troels and Kose had the venue sussed and sorted, we soundchecked and it was sounding pretty good. Our Welsh promoters (whom we all personally like very much), Alan and Julian, were there to greet us and, as a rule, we always give Julian shit cause he’s always eating a sandwich. He has a great sense of humor and is a very likable guy so we are lucky to have such sweet folks wroking on our behalf these last few years.

A bit later I saw the Ochre gang and then it was show time and we played, what I thought , was a damn good performance. Afterwards, Frazer complained that a certain somebody (who shall remain nameless) was teasing him, saying he’d taken a shit on the bus. I apologized, as i felt responsible (not for the shit), since i wrote it up in the diary. But wait; the Diary hadn’t hit the street at that point! Hmm… SO, we signed some autographs and then, the lazy bastards at the Gloucester venue wouldn’t help Frazer with his merchandise boxes so Derek and myself each grabbed a box. On our way out we saw (promoter) Alan draining a beer. Derek said, “watch this”, and, looking away, he sort of loudly proclaimed that the promoter must be pathetic to let the driver and lead guitarist carry boxes out. Alan caught on to the joke and had a good laugh!

As we made our way to the bus we caught a glimpse of Julian eating, that’s right, another sandwich, to which Derek loudly proclaims, “…and there’s the other Welsh cunt!”, which sent me into convulsions of laughter, followed by serious pains in my sides and stomach. We all went to the bus and chilled and watched tv and drank beers and wine and stuff. Frazer went on a kebab run and soon we were living in style. The bus stayed there behind the venue all night, as we were sleeping at that spot and so I hit the hay, after a phone call with Hannah. She was coming up to St. Albans the day after tomorrow on our day off! That was good news, as I was keen to see her. Read another chapter of ‘Dorian Gray’ and dozed off about 2am.

Mike Randle