Thursday 16th December 1999

Stevenage - Bowes Lyon

We were woken by the sound of what must have been something quite sexy, I can't imagine who it could have been, but none of the band's members were involved, I can assure you ;-) Anyway, after a while there was a lot of hurried whispering and the sound of the front door closing, so I guess that the entertainment was to continue elsewhere.

We eventually got ourselves dressed, tea'd and coffee'd, loaded the van a bid a fond farewell to Nina and Tom.

Then we hit the road in search of somewhere to eat on the way to Stevenage. We didn't find anywhere until we got to Biggleswade, which was to be our home for the night as we were staying at Kev's parent's new home.

I phoned Salv (ex-Carter and tonight's promoter) and arranged to drive straight down to Stevenage.

The soundcheck was little difficult as the sound engineer seemed to be almost asleep and the P.A. didn't seem to be set up very well. Still, we got through it and settled down to the fantastic Veggie Spag Bollegnese that Salv had cooked for us.

Then it was time to watch Great Indian ??? who were really struggling with the sound. The sound was in fact, pretty appalling, I couldn't hear the vocals at all. This lead to a rather flat sounding performance, which was a shame as I'm sure that with a good sound, I would have appreciated them more.

Next on was Allergy, who I have been looking forward to seeing ever since singer Richard gave me a CD a few months ago. Richard's folks were all there to see them and it was good to see some family support. Allergy were great, the CD is good but live, as always, it is better still. To top it off, they played a great version of The Only Living Boy In New cross. It was good to be in the audience and hear someone else play one of my songs, Salv also said that the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

Just before it was our turn to perform, I felt a little queesy and had to hide behind the bass stack for a bit. But being the true trouper that I am, I gathered all of my strength and got up there and did the gig ;-)

The sound on stage was very bad and it was real struggle to play, but having said that, we have had worse, and we did our very best to overcome the difficulties. About half way through the set, everything seemed to gel and we played a bit of a rocker. Marc and Kenny certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves.

After a pretty diabolic encore of Queen Bitch, we stepped off the stage and I collapsed into a big heap. I regained enough conscienceness to sell a few CDs and have a chat with Richard, Angie and their mum and dad. We had a bit of a mutual respect bonding session, got into the van and back to Biggleswade for a well earned kip.

I hope that I feel better tomorrow.

Love fruity xxx