Berlin Bad Bed Day.

Do you know what the worst thing in the world is? Nope, not being made to do a sexy dance for Michael Douglas whilst he prods you with intricately carved wooden canes he’s collected from exotic countries over the years. And no, the worst thing in the world is not to be mauled by a lion and then left in the middle of the desert to be finished off by vultures and snakes. Nope, the worst thing in the world is much more terrifying.... WAKING UP FACING THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION YOU THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE FACING. We’ve all been there, and this phenomenon can seriously fuck up your day. For example, say you went to sleep facing your favourite soft toy Mr. Snuggles. You wake up after a nice dream expecting your plush pal to be looking at you as your eyes start to open... but he’s not. In his place is a completely different side of the room and some weird man called Francois staring back at you. How did your whole world flip round whilst you were asleep!? Who is Francois and how did he get into your house!? And why is he tying you up with strawberry laces!? SEE!? Terrifying.

This very thing happened to me when I woke up in Berlin. I went to sleep facing my phone (as I always do incase the secret service sends me a covert message during the night) and had a nice dream about myself and Tom Cruise meeting at a party in Glasgow and then him showing me his motorbike collection and convincing me that Scientology is really quite logical when you think about it. So I woke up hoping to either have a message giving me details of how to break into the Russian embassy armed with only a trench coat and a top hat, or a message to come round to Tom’s for a delicious meal (Katie’s making placenta for dinner). But my eyes opened and my phone wasn’t there! And neither was the exciting article about Michael Jackson’s Thriller that I was reading in PRS magazine before I dove into some slumber! In their place was a strange red curtain that I knew I recognized... that’s right, it was the curtain i’d closed over before I turned around to be educated that ‘Thriller’ was originally called ‘Midnight Man’, a much more sinister title. Going on Michaels troubles later in life, things could have turned out much worse for him if he’d stuck to that title. So I must have turned around in my sleep... BUT HOW!? It was too late, my day was fucked. The whole equilibrium of my being was now the opposite way it should have been.

I tried to regain some sort of stability in my life by going a walk around Berlin with Barry and Sam ‘Pam Johnson’ Thompson but the elements were conspiring to mess up my mojo even more. The minute we left the bus we were hit by a sort of horizontal rain/snow. It came at you like snow but exploded into it’s more basic form of water when it belted off your face. Real nice. After decoding Berlin’s S-Bahn train system we managed to get to Alexander-Platz, which we’ve been to many times before but somehow felt compelled to go again and look at the big TV tower which we stared up at for a while before deciding yet again not to pay the money to actually go up it. “10 Euros for a view!? You mad?” Nope, we’ll just stare up at it for a while in the cold whilst getting blasted by snow/rain instead. Smart. After this enthralling experience we made our way back to the bus just before hypothermia hit us in mid stride. Just in time for load in. Hoooooo-ray. I promise you I was still having a good time, i’m just fighting the demons that appear when you wake up the wrong way. A losing battle as you can see.

We were playing the Comet Club, which we’d played before the first time we headlined in Berlin. The only time we’ve headlined in Berlin. There was roughly 30 people there that night, 10% of which was made up by the craziest three dancing girls you ever did see. It was like nobody had told them that grunge was over, they were lost in the music. They did essentially save what was a very awkward show to be fair. Or did they make it more awkward? It’s hard to say. All I remember was that there were dancing girls and not many other people. Would tonight be any better!? My usual effervescent self would like to say yes, but this new wrong side of the bed guy had a more negative approach. He thought there would only be one person there, and that person would have a gun and would systematically pick us off at certain points during the gig. I’m sure there are worse ways to die, but being shot at in an empty room in Berlin has got to be up there in the most traumatic category.

But this didn’t happen! The gig was amazing, the room was nearly full and the people there seemed really passionate about our band. If there was a guy with a gun there his shots must have been blocked by the good vibe. There were a couple of moments where Barry’s guitar sounded like there was a small mouse trapped inside it because he put on the wrong effect, and Sam had to start Time For You To Stand Up no less than three times, but it was all in good fun. I also rattled my finger off the snare at one point and it is now the size of a large cactus, but it’s fine - i’ll either get it cut off it continues to swell, or use it to point at people from many miles away. It’s just a finger, i’ve got loads of them anyway. We didn’t hang around long after the show, we had a big drive to Cologne and I had to devise some straps to keep my facing the way I want to when I goto to sleep.

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