My Exciting Life in ROCK (part 2): 23/9/2004 - The 12 Bar Club, London

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The final day of the TOUR took some time to get started, partly because we'd all been on the BOOZE until late the night before, and partly because we were LOCKED IN at Mrs Machine's house. Once we'd woken her up and been let out Adam and I made our way to the train station and thence to LONDON where I gave him my traditional GUIDED TOUR. "That's Dickens' house" I said, pointing vaguely in the direction of some old looking buildings. I like to think of my tours as more PERSONAL than conventional ones, so we stopped off at such fascinating spots as my work, the shop where I buy my lunch, and the nearest tube station before we went our separate ways. Adam headed to the British Museum and I headed HOME.

HOME! I know I'd only been On The Road a few days but by heck it felt more than long enough. I'd missed my housemates, I'd missed the cats and I'd ESPECIALLY missed proper cups of tea and a BATH, both of which I had almost IMMEDIATELY. It was only when I sat down at the kitchen table that I realised quite how KNACKERED I was - it might have been only three nights away from home but they'd all been LATE nights and after a bath all I really wanted to do was go to bed.

But The Call Of THE ROAD still needed answering and so I dragged myself back to the 12 Bar Club where Team Frankie were listening to Adam explain The Rosetta Stone to them through the medium of the TEA TOWEL he had bought in The British Museum. I say this a lot but that is because it is TRUE: people who get bored doing gigs are IDIOTS, especially in this country where pretty much every town or city has at least ONE fascinating place to go and visit. If there's time it's ALWAYS brilliant to go to a museum, especially if you do it properly and identify ONE thing to see, SEE it, and then FLEE before you have to start pacing around looking intelligent.

The gig itself was GRATE, with loads of people turning up, some of whom we didn't even know. That hardly ever happens so when it DOES I have to stop myself from BADGERING them. If you've turned up at a gig out of curiosity I don't suppose that some drunk bloke going "What on EARTH are YOU doing here?" is going to persuade you to come again.

Once again the joy of "headlining"/going on last was made clear to me, as by the time I got on stage the whole building was full of DRUNK people who wanted to sing along. This was especially clear what I introduced "Hey Hey 16K" as "my hit". Someone politely semi-heckled by saying "Well, sort of" which the REST of the audience appeared to take as an INSULT and reacted by VERY LOUDLY singing along with the whole thing. Better yet was "Payday Is The Best Day", when I got to do that GRATE ROCK THING of stepping back from the microphone at the chorus so that the whole audience could sing it for me.

It was MENTAL! I even nearly got a SECOND encore when I came back onstage a bit too quickly after the first one to pack my gear up. There were still a couple of errant CLAPS going on and when everybody else saw me come back onstage they thought they ought to be polite, but I was too HONEST to go along with it. Also, I wanted to go to bed.

And that was that - Adam slept all the way back to my house on the tube, and next morning was on the HORRIFICALLY EARLY train back to Scotland. I waved him off full of admiration - it turned out he'd hardly been out of Scotland before, and so was being MASSIVELY BRAVE to come and do this tour with a bunch of people he'd only met, at best, once or twice before.

I then went to meet Frankie, who was staying in a hotel in town, to get one last hug... and also to pick up the bag which we'd left in the venue and which Mrs Machine had picked up for us. I went home and sat around feeling a bit disorientated, constantly getting up thinking "Surely I have to BE somewhere now?" and it was several days before I stopped waking up thinking "Where am I today?"

Being on tour is FANTASTIC fun, as hopefully you've noticed from these reports of it, but blimey, it is a YOUNG MAN'S GAME. Never mind disorientation, it took me a WEEK to stop feeling hungover, and it was a FORTNIGHT before I could stay awake past 10pm!

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