Friday 29th October 1999

Weymouth - Verdis

After a wonderfully peaceful and sound sleep I woke up with a slightly buzzy head, but otherwise everything else seemed to be intact. One by one various member of the band and crew emerged from the various corners of Der's lovely house. We made tea, we made toast, we played more records, read the local papers.

We left Cheltenham about 3pm and headed for Weymouth via the twisty turny roads of Gloucester and Dorset.

We arrived at the gig in good time and had a fun soundcheck. In the back of my mind throughout tonight I kept on thinking that this was Ben's last soundcheck and gig with Abdou. He is having to concentrate with his work with Jim's Super Stereoworld and as both bands are on tour at the same time (Stupid?). We are very sad to lose him and will miss his cheery demeanour. Jim has got himself a diamond.

After the soundcheck we had a few beers and Ben and I went for a walk around town and along the seafront. I'd never been to Weymouth before and was surprised at just how big a town it is. The streets were very lively with the to-ing and fro-ing of drunken teenagers intent of dancing, singing, shouting, snogging, shagging and everything else that young people do nowadays.

It made me feel a little old, but also a little relieved.

When we got back to the venue we were met by Mike and Clare, old friends from reading who had travelled down for the gig. It was lovely to see some friendly faces and they brought some friends along too. At one point the venue was looking decidedly empty and I thought that we were going to get a repeat of Oxford's tiny crowd. But I needn't have worried as the place was pretty full when we got on stage.

We were the only band for the night, a kind of intermission for the indie / alternative disco. I did feel a bit like I was spoiling some of the kid's fun when we come started to play and it obviously wasn't what they had come to the club to listen to.

Having said that, most of them stayed around for the set and some even danced...which was nice.

I don't think that we played our best, it seemed a bit disjointed on stage. having said that, I was told afterwards that we sounded incredibly tight, so it might have been better from the crowd's point of view. I told some bad jokes about Ben's departure and generally played the old codger, it was fun.

After we came off stage, we indulged in more beer and had a bit of a dance. Oh, I didn't mention that whole venue was full of gorgeous teenagers and it was worth doing the gig just to watch them in action on the dance-floor. I was particularly taken by a young girl who looked a bit like Brian Molko, I hope that doesn't mean that I fancy him, he always reminds me of a plumber in make-up.

Is Les coming out of the closet?

Nope!

Love fruity xx