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No more. NO MORE VAN. posted Mar 17, 09:18 pm

That’s it. There’s no more to it. If we spend one more millisecond in our van I think we are all going to suffer from a spot of spontaneous human combustion.

Well.

Thats what we thought.

But we’re still here…

So we’re back from Spain once again to scrape the funbus’s towbar once again on British speed bumps and to try and endure paying more than 50p for a bottle of red wine. I suppose you want to know how it went? Pretty sweet I’d say, but only because it’s of late become an involuntary catchphrase of all of us. Other new little catchphrases and things came out during our little trip (I’m going to refer to it as a trip from now on, 4 gigs doesn’t nearly count as a tour no matter what some bands think) including the following:

Quotes:
‘smooth as a cucumber’ – Ruggers
‘kez – ya bastard!’ – all
‘tap tap, tap tap tap, tap tap tap tap, tap tap’ – all
‘grow a pair’ – all

Cocktail drinks from our new portable minibar:
The Sexy Boat (all round favorite)
The guar
It’s not that bad
Grow a pair

Driving down into Spain we drove through a snow storm, hail, pissing rain and really bright sunshine, perhaps the Big Man was trying to deter us. We were just pretty narked we didn’t get to see France Pants at our now customary stay at the same 2-star hotel on the journey down. We hoped so hard, but he just wasn’t there. We did make some great cocktails though.
Our first night in Spain after much ferry, motorway, toll booth and (new) ‘log book’ in our travels from the UK was spent in Spaindover, a little village outside Madrid which we rent for the duration of our gigs there. After quick nip down to the shop for some inebriating consumables, we watched Die Hard 4 and managed to find out that we were all characters in the plot. Bowman was (!) Bowman, Birdy was the bearded Warlock, Hunt was the computer geek and I was the greasy hacker.
The following day we met up with our Spanish manager Victor from Anima Pop and he took us to their rehearsal room so we could practice and get tight again after the perils of France had shook us of all tessellation with each other. If only there was a big bridge over France… We can only hope. The Spanish Carrefour’s are cheaper than the French ones too. Anyway the first night in Spain we played my favorite venue there, the Costello club. It’s really nice there, quite small but a really good atmosphere, it’s like a tunnel to the stage. We were drinking discovers and singing along to Buzzer’s set like ‘twas once again 1899. The next two nights we played again in Madrid before setting off for a long drive down to Gandia which is in the south near to Valencia. Our first night in Gandia we had a night off as a show was canceled so we took advantage of the cheap alcohol there. After drinking possibly too much red wine at the huge beautiful posh expensive chalet (not) that we were staying at, we decided to go out and hit some clubs, of which we did not get into. Probably a fault on my part.. We did manage to get into a house party by Birdy continuously repeating a recently learnt Spanish phrase, ‘él está loco’, which means he is crazy. He being me, hanging from Hunt and Birdy’s shoulders in the middle of the road after failing the seemingly impossible task of walking in a straight line. The way home saw many (very humorous from an onlookers point of view) involuntary bundles with Birdy being on the bottom. He has the scars to prove it.
Following a very hard gig due to our sheer exhaustion and the poor turnout due to elections in the area, we realized that we wouldn’t travel fast enough to catch our ferry home so we decided to travel through the night to make it home in time. We were already pretty sick of the sight of the van due to the traveling we had already done. Previously to pass the time activities included reading, attempting to snooze, playing Supermario and receiving much frustration, listening to music, eating ZERO F-CKING TOLERANCE food (this means any food you buy is food for you or else it is gone by greedy hands before you know it. I didn’t bring any with me so I just settled for Miaow, which ISN’t catfood, contrary to prior belief), taking some great snaps and doing a certain stadium sports chant that shall remain nameless. This trip however was the first one we’d done overnight with us driving so the only prioritys were to drive and to sleep, only one of which happened. I’ll let you guess. Birdy did get the biggest zing driving through deserted northern Madrid searching for a petrol station: after looking for one for absolutely ages we finally found one on the other side of the road, but in a town with red lights at every junction and no-left-turn markings everywhere. He decides after much deliberation to turn left anyway at which point a Copper pulls up next to us and follows us for the next 15 minutes. Zing. Every junction we pulled up to had red lights, I’ve never seen so many traffic lights condensed into a straight road. Ironically this town was completely deserted and they were all red. Damn and Zing and such. We pulled up to a petrol station to get some juice for the funbus and get a drink to quench our parched throats. Bowman then goes to the window to buy a bottle of water and some Orbit, at which point we all pissed ourselves at him asking for some ‘aquas e orbit’ and ripped it out of him for the rest of the trip. Orite geeza, oil av sum worter and sum fackin orbit, orite guv?! i laarv my fackin orbit, dun i!! So anyway we drove solidly from 10pm until 4:30pm the next day, 18 and a half hours to be precise with probably about one wink, 40 wasn’t even close. We were shattered and sick of sitting in the funbus. The rest of the trip was just traveling home, being knackered and having fun on the deck of the ferry in gale force winds, there that’s it.
The day after arriving home I had to work early morning, which was great fun as you can imagine after arriving home at half 12 frickin shattered already.
Last Saturday we played a show in Andover at Harrow Way school. This show was seated, which was quite weird for us but it was fun to play, I think there are various youtube videos you can check out of it. Thanks all who put the effort into organizing it and obviously everyone who came out to the show. We actually sold out of every single t-shirt we have, so some new designs will be on the way very very soon, watch this space.
We’re playing a local(ish) show this Good Friday at the Barn in Salisbury, so if you’re about come on down and if you’re not about come on down. See you soon.
AK xxx

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