My Exciting Life in ROCK (part 2): 20/9/2004 - Tchai Ovna Teahouse, Glasgow

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I do like a good veggie cafe, and Tchai Ovna IS a good veggie cafe, the sort of place with a Community Corkboard and where "V" on the menu doesn't mean vegetarian, it means VEGAN. I always get a bit confused in places like this - one handy thing about vegetarianism is that it makes it a LOT easier to decide what to have for tea when you're out (i.e. The Vegetarian Option) so my occasional forays into Proper Vegetarian Restaurants tend to start with me PANICKING at the sudden CHOICE EXPLOSION.

Tchai Ovna made this even more difficult by offering a HUGE range of TEAS. I mean, come on, TEA! The only choice I usually have to make with TEA is whether there's time for another one (LIFE COACHING: there's always time for another cup of tea), so to find REAMS of them left me so perplexed I ended up drinking something with RICE in it, unsure of whether to eat the BITS or not. So I did.

The gig was lovely - I'd agreed to go on last and had PANICKED about whether I'd be too drunk to play, before EVENTUALLY realising that, no, in a venue that only served TEA, I'd probably be OK. A sensible group of TOUR BUDDIES would have thought "It's the start of the tour, we've had a jolly nice evening, let's all go home and get a good night's sleep so we don't have to do the long journey to HULL in the morning with a hangover.

We, however, did NOT think that, and set out on an EPIC pub crawl, including one place that was decorated with Horror Memorabilia and where the toilets GROWLED at you. We finally ended up in a Working Men's Club which Adam described as his SANCTUM SANCTORUM. I couldn't find The Eye Of Agamotto anyway, but DID meet The Landlord at the bar, who advised me NOT to drink his bitter, as it was "BAD".

You can probably guess how I took this advice. Three or four times.

THUS I got back to my hotel, The Holiday Inn Express, exceedingly happy and MONUMENTALLY drunk. I threw off all my clothes, scattering them around the room, and COLLAPSED onto the bed, passing into unconsciousness almost immediately

I woke up three hours later DESPERATE for the toilet. I've always had a bit of trouble with sleeping alone in unfamiliar dark rooms when DRUNK - my parents now leave the door WIDE OPEN in their spare room when I stay after The Peterborough Beer Festival to make sure I do not WRECK the place as, confused and glasses-free, I PANIC about where the door is - and so it took me a while to make it over to the other side of the room and to step through the door into the bathroom.

As soon as I was through the door I knew something was wrong. This was an awfully BIG bathroom, with an awful lot of doors. Had it been like this when I checked in?

Eventually I realised that I'd gone through the wrong door, and was standing in the corridor. HOW HILARIOUS! I smiled to myself, thinking how like a Situation Comedy this was - except, of course, in a situation comedy the hapless hero who'd ended up stark naked in a hotel corridor would turn round to find he'd locked himself out of his hotel room.

I turned round to find I'd locked myself out of my hotel room. SHIT.

DESPERATE for a wee and absolutely stark naked - without even my glasses on, which is as naked as you can GET - I ran up and down the corridor searching for a toilet. Eventually I found a conference room with a Kitchen Area and... well, suffice to say, if you've ever had to piss in a stainless steel sink at 4am when you REALLY shouldn't be doing so, you too will know it is the loudest noise on GOD'S EARTH.

Back to the corridor and I decided I needed to find the lift to the reception, so crept along PEERING at door handles to see if any led to said lift. Without my glasses I was handing to bend to look VERY closely at each door, so if anybody had emerged from a room OPPOSITE me they would have got a SEXY SURPRISE they would NEVER forget.

Eventually I found the lift and, discovering it was one of those lifts that have huge mirrors on three walls, DID A LITTLE DANCE. I then discovered it was also one of those lifts with a CCTV camera in the corner, so stopped.

I ERUPTED into reception at high speed where I was dealt with swiftly and professionally by a receptionist who only shouted "FUCKING HELL!" the once before hastily making me a new key card, so that I could FLY back to the lift and back to the safety of my room, GIGGLING myself to sleep as DRUNKENNESS once more asserted itself over PANIC.

Next morning I awoke thinking "My, what a vivid and KRAZY dream that was!" before looking over to the bedside table where, like Mr Benn, I saw a memento of my midnight adventures: two identical keycards for the one room.

I checked out as quickly as I possibly could next morning and RAN to the railway station. I've been to Glasgow MANY times since then, but NEVER back to the Holiday Inn Express.

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