Back from Tour and off to Seattle on Sunday

The last three days have been hectic for JFATSW. We've been supporting Jack Penate in Wrexham, Portsmouth and Birmingham, had a video shoot for The Box single and been interviewed for channel four, all while trying to get our shit together for Seattle and recording. Nothing has been straightforward. The lovely people at Vertigo Records had booked me a ticket to Seattle for 'Andrew Edmonds', for instance. 'Andrew Edmonds' is not my name. It is the name of my favourite restaurant, but I don't think that would give me any leeway at the Passport check. I made Vertigo change the ticket...

Touring is a funny old business, its basically loads of driving for a 40 minute buzz. Again, because I have to pack now and have no time to spare, I'm going to be lazy and bullet point some of the more interesting events that occurred on tour.

* We were so late for the Wrexham gig that we had to rush on stage straight out of the van and therefore without a soundcheck. There was a TK Max opposite the venue itself. The Gig went well, the TK Max had no bearing on this.

* The Metros, who we also toured with, were consistently described by their tourmanager as "talentless little shits". The main reason for this was that the tourmanager himself was two days away from receiving The Golden Ticket for the Holiday Inn - a free pass to any Holiday Inn in the world given to someone who has stayed in the hotels over 1000 times - when, on the very first day of this tour, he was banned from the chain for life. His "little shits" had played laser quest with some fire extinguishers in the halls of a Holiday Inn in Norwich .

* Our Tour Manager's driving was so dodgy that a tally of how many times we got shouted at by other drivers totaled about 15. At one point a hacked off driver deliberately overtook us and then put the breaks on so fast that I thought his intention was for us to crash right into him. Pretty hairy. Kevin was not shy about letting other road users know his irritation either. At one point he instructed Adam (sitting in the front passenger seat) to roll down his window and call the van driver in the left lane 'a cunt'. Adam, put in an awkward situation, did rather well. He rolled down the window and said, rather apologetically, "apparently you're a cunt". Kevin loved it.

* In Birmingham we had to walk through a wake to get to the gig. Unexpected.

* We went through Kintbury. It was amazing. So peaceful. I want to go back there. Portsmouth has a nice beach too with an amazing lighthouse near the pyramid centre where we played. I would go back there too if it wern't for the official crime statistics.

Right, back to packing...