OUR NEXT SHOW

Our weekend got off to an awesome start playing for Philip and Tara as they tied the knot in sunny Oxford and we caught up with good friends in the big smoke for a few cheeky halves.

However, as we entered the final leg of our weekend, we were painfully reminded that there are many times in life when happy memories aren’t quite as accurately wonderous as we care to think, but often than not misplaced and far removed from the doomful despair of the reality at the time

Take, for example, ye beast from the east – The 2nd Big Hand van of doom – A woefully poor Peugeot Boxer van with a Ford transit engine, which is now the size of a small hairdryer in a pound somewhere in West London. We always care to look back with a smile about the time we were stranded in the pissing rain in the middle of the M6 waiting for some poor breakdown sod to load us onto the back of his van and tow us 350 miles I the opposite direction at 45 miles an hour. Or when we needed to stop every 20 miles to stop it overheating, or cleaning the debris from the carnage caused from the nights before

Sunday night was a knitting needle through the leg reminder that these memories should be banished to the bowels of hell and only ever brought back up to inflict pain and misery on our enemies, or evil ex-girlfriends.

Some bright spark (that would be me then) had the inspired idea of driving 400 miles overnight to Scotland straight from our gig at the majestic ‘Boathouse’ in Putney in the PY Jeep of destiny. The brief story unfolds…

11pm – Following the 90 minute set, The Slinky Scotsmen (AKA Phil and myself) head north spending the first 90 minutes realizing we could work the i-pod radio tuner and not have to listen to Sunday night commercial radio. Ecstatic and smug in our feat a 6 year old would be proud of, we paid less attention to all the lights in the jeep gradually fading and losing power.

1am - Stop in a services in an emergency-type fashion being bent over a pole and reemed by the AA charging us £200 for a call out

2am - Demonic AA man arrives and in his tightly fitting high-viz jacket states that “we were fecked”. We now know we’re in for a long night… Long story short, our alternator was buggered. The £600 quote to be towed to Edinburgh wasn’t appealing, so got el capitan to charge the battery enough to get us another 150 miles closer to home. Start the engine…

4am 150 miles later, it’s still raining. We breakdown in the Lakes. AA call out 2.

5am – Next dude arrives. Same result. We get started again knowing if we turn the engine off, we’re fecked…

7:30am - 120 miles later, diesel a little low. Abington. We need to turn the engine off to put more in. AA call out 3. Bacon rolls & coffee.

8:30am – Nice AA man arrives and gets us on our way blinding us with technical jargon Stephen Hawkins would have trouble following.

9:30am - Finally arrive in Edinburgh. Drop Phil off in Leith. 10:30am – Drop van into East Lothian garage. 11:45am, Arrive home. Cold shower. Now we’re ready to start the day 12hours 45 minutes after leaving London.

At least we didn’t have office jobs to go straight to, explaining why we were 4 hours late, or looking after 4 year old effervescent kids….

I think we’ve all had better nights.

I’m now happy with a hot curry and more Red Stripe than you can shake a stick at. Time to crack open the Glenmorangie soon… Back in a happy place