Got those sell out moves like ABBA.

People of the internet. I feel like we’re all the best of friends now and I would love to have you all round for a Craig Ernest Kneale specialty meal of pre-made tortellini in a pre-made jar of Tomato & Basil sauce (maybe some herbs on top for garnish) but I don’t know if I have enough seats at my house and i’d hate for some of you to have to stand. But I feel like we know each other well enough now that I can confess something... we’ve been on a tour bus since we got back to the UK. Yep, that’s right - we sold out even more than ABBA did. It’s a little known fact that ABBA started out as a shoe-gaze indie guitar band from Manchester (The name stands for Awaiting Bright Beautiful Anarchy) before they started wearing matching white jumpsuits and masqueraded as Swedish pop tarts. Honestly, look it up on Google! Oh, there’s nothing about it on Google!? That’s because ABBA are more powerful than the government - they control the internet. They’re probably manipulating what i’m writing right now without me realising - making me write things like us taking a tour bus or something silly like that. Oh wait...

So yep, old faithful Orange Van is resting in Glasgow as I type this from my bunk. It feels wrong not sitting in my seat in that seasoned road beast, the seat that faces the opposite way to the direction the vehicle was going. I shed a tear as I think of the chronic motion sickness that accompanied any journey over 2 hours. To be fair, we’ve spent four and a half years in a van - which is obviously not a literal amount of time but we’ve spent an infinitely longer amount of time in a van than we have onstage. That’s quite a scary thought. Imagine someone told you that you have to spend on average of 5 hours in a van a day, traveling backwards? Ok, it sounds fun in theory, but in practice it makes you hate that orange van more than the guy that kidnapped you when you were a child and made you dress up as goldilocks and do the Macarena for him. But somehow, there’s a massive guilt that’s spread over me since we got in this bus at the start of the tour - it feels like we’re cheating on Orange Van and I miss her. It must be Stockholm Syndrome, the circumstance when you start to feel empathy for you captor. Very much like when I started to enjoy donning that Goldilocks costume and getting warmed up to perform everyone’s favourite Spanish dance song. Anyway, let’s move on from this confession. The Orange Van isn’t dead yet, she’s just taking a winter break.

The next show was in Birmingham, where we had a day off beforehand. Myself and Spider got up earlier than necessary on that day and went to the cinema very early to see 50/50, a comedy about cancer. That’s right, a comedy about cancer. For the record, the cinema in Birmingham is approximately £1.50 cheaper than Glasgow. I’m moving to Birmingham. The accent is funnier and and the cinema cheaper. We also perused it’s German Christmas market and came to the conclusion that all German Christmas markets consist of an endless line of three different types of stalls: German sausage stalls, scented candle stalls and always one Haribo stall. Just this repeated over the course of 100 stalls. Germany has got the UK city centre markets sown up with their repetitive goods. That said though, whenever you see a Christmas market you are, by law and instinct, required to look around it. Try and just walk past one without looking it - it’s impossible. I saw a wee guy in Birmingham get shot by the police because he refused to look into one of the many candle stalls. Honestly.

The following day came eventually as this is how the concept of time works. At first it got closer in seconds, then minutes, then hours from the point I began counting until it was Friday and it was show day in Birmingham. Time is really weird when you start to really think about it. I won’t discuss it any further here as i’m worried that it may cause my brain to implode and this exquisite piece of writing will never see the light of day. Well, whoever eventually finds me lying here in front of my laptop with an imploded head will see what’s written on the screen and it will probably eventually get used as my emotional epitaph. Unless my laptop battery has ran out by then, in which case this will have been typed out in vain. So we will discuss the intricacies of time no longer. You may know that we have self prescribed our band as having a curse in Birmingham, due in part to the fact that we never seem to have good shows here. I think this may be mainly due to the fact that we always play badly here, which isn’t really a curse as much as us being sloppy. This looked like it might change though as the show was another sell out. That’s right, we’re selling out all over the place this tour. It’s like when P. Diddy comes to town except we’ve got much less money and bitches.

I got to watch all of Dinosaur Pile-Up’s set before we played, they absolutely ripped it and the crowd seemed really up for it. The curse looked to be broken, so much so that some people were break dancing in the dressing room just before we went out - It was... regrettable. We got on the stage... and it happened again. This time something happened with Barry’s guitar that meant he had to stop playing during the first song in a part where it really is integral that his guitar is there. The resulting sound can only be described as a Shredz moment. If you don’t know what Shredz is then look it up on YouTube, pick any video and it’ll sound kind of like what our opening number sounded like in Birmingham. Only worse as it isn’t a video made my an American with a talent for manipulating live music videos to make bands look bad. We did that without his help. I think somehow we got away with it though, and the rest of the set was then spent trying to claw back to try and convince people that we aren’t actually imposter’s who were trying to sabotage the gig. I think we just about managed it. The crowd were amazing though, one of the best reactions we’ve ever had - I think that’s what kept us going. The curse of Birmingham had struck again however and we left with our tails between our legs. By tails I don’t mean penises. They’re always between our legs, but aren’t really long enough to be considered as a tail. We retreated onto the tour bus to cry into our gold pillows....

It seems that my camera will remain in it's pouch this run, here's a picture of the first result in Google when you type in 'Birmingham Magician'. Loot at him entertaining that crowd...