OUR NEXT SHOW

We hate having to pull out of gigs. Full stop. And we've only ever had to drop about 5 shows out of over 500.

Unfortunately we had to drop out of Saturdays charity bash in Farnham as Phil was stricken with pain in his tooth (his one real one thats left and anyone who's had a hurt nerve can testify its hard to think of anything other than pain let alone blow down a trumpet at 500 miles an hour for an hour!

But it makes you think. About your fragility in this world as a musician or part of a band. What happens if you lose your capacity to do what you love doing? The one thing in your life that gives you a thrilling rush and unreachable highs and then its gone. Never mind the loss of experience what about the loss of a livelihood? Fucking daunting it is when you think about it. An accident, sheer blind stupidity or coming into contact with someone that has something nasty could impair you and end your life's game. Its all fragile and all in the balance this world around us.

But, thankfully, there is hope where there is adversity. Your drummer from Def Leppard managed to lose an arm, arguably became a better drummer for it and kept on going with the thing he loved. Love has the power to turn all the nasty things on their heads and make them positive in some way.

And there are other good things out there such as toothpaste, toothbrushes and regular dental checkups. So now Phil will show the love that his shredded nerve reminded him of. Love your teeth dude - brush 'em and check 'em!!

By Tim on Thursday 9th July

Spent yesterday looking out at incessant rain, drying my shoes from apocalyptic lightning storms as no doubt wreaked by Thor himself (in case you were wondering, yes, our manager does identify with him), wondering if perhaps we have indeed 'had' summer, and now autumn is kicking in. Was consoling myself with the thought that at least the sun shone on Glastonbury, to my amazement. I had bought wellies from a rustic hay-chewing stall holder as we entered the site on Thursday, which, despite thinking we'd done ourselves proud to arrive early, we were just about the last ones on site, and we had to haul our bags, which may as well have been filled with boulders for the amount they weighed, for about 2 hours, through walls of people moving as slow as treacle, constantly overhearing 'at least we're not arriving now!'. Stupid people. Still, the wellies were not needed, and we managed to survive without getting trenchfoot or dysentry (although I did go swimming in Hyde park last week and am fairly certain I caught a mild dose of the old swine flu, and spent the next two days sneezing every 30 seconds, even keeping myself awake).

Anyway, just as I was prerparing to wear these wellies on a permanent basis, plodding the streets during our standard British summertime, today the sun is back! All very confusing, but in a nice way. I had been thinking that, despite hating jingoistic patriotism, and the stupid weird 'sport' that is cricket, I might just try and be a fairweather enthusiast and get all excited about the ashes for a week or two (I could have written almost that very same sentence last week for the tennis, if I wasn't still bitter about the time a worked literally 16 hour shifts as a bin man at wimbledon, being bossed around by red faced rugby types, and lasted exactly a day and a half before I actually had to down my tools in weary anger and walk out, but thats another story). Then again, I might just try my luck with Hyde park again. Anyway, off to Somerset again...