Saturday 13th November 1999

Harlow - The Square

After last night's gig we awoke with tender heads. Luckily, the local caf had all of the stodge, grease and tea that was required to bring us back to the land of the living. I had my usual hangover food of scrambled eggs on toast with mushrooms on the side. Very nice it was too.

Despite all good intentions, Der, Steve and myself were late arriving in New Cross, but it didn't matter too much as we were going to have to wait for the England / Scotland match to finish before we got any sense out of anyone ;-)

Once one of the teams had won we loaded up the van and headed for Harlow!

As I have played at The Square at least 7 times, I had no difficulty at all finding the venue and it did indeed seem like only weeks since the last time I was there, which was on the final UK Carter tour.

I was very happy to see that Trudi (an old friend from Carter tours) was doing the lights tonight, it was great to see her. It wasn't long before our sound check was done and dusted thanks to resident sound engineer Nick. As always at The Square everyone was very helpful and friendly, we had some lovely pasta for dinner and the rider was indeed wondrous and generous.

The first band on tonight were Model Ford, who were really good. They used a mixture of traditional guitar based pop and some samples, drum loops, keyboardy stuff. The singers voice is excellent and the songs were strong, gentle and lyrically inventive. I didn't get to talk to them but I got hold of one of their leaflets, which tells me that they are from Bishop's Stortford, where I have actually been and is rather nice. If you get the chance you should go and see them.

Not such a huge crowd tonight, only about 60 people, but I was happy enough when we staggered on-stage. I had asked for the gig to be taped tonight and it was also being videod. If I get my act together, I may be able to get some of the stuff online in quicktime format so that people outside the UK and Australia can get a chance to see the band.

The gig was really good, I had a lovely time told some very bad jokes and made a general arse of myself. No change there then ;-)

We did pretty corking versions of 'Loser's Walk' and 'Murder On Dalberg Rd'. In fact we played very well, I think. Even though it was a small crowd they made up for it with the cheering and general encouraging noises. We even got to play a couple of songs for an encore.

The lights were bloody marvellous too, Trudi is a true pro. If anyone out there needs a great lighting geezer, she is the one!

After the gig I had some lovely chats with some lovely people and felt pretty much loved up all together. The trip home was longer than it should have been as Alain decided it was time for some food and he knew and all-night cafe in Stepney. Several wrong turns ensued before Alain got his bacon sandwich, but it was worth it to see the smile on his face when he sunk his teeth into his bacon baguette.

Well, I had a lovely weekend, how about you?

Love fruity xxx