The Rain Police.

I’ve always wondered why the world doesn’t all sink underwater when it rains for more than 2 days in a row. Where does all that water go? It feels like it hasn’t stopped raining since we got to Europe yet the water level hasn’t reached above toe height. I think i’ve figured out what’s going on though, listen up.... What is obviously happening is that during the night an elite government ‘aqua taskforce’ are deployed to any city where it’s raining, or has been raining, and collects the rainfall in special bottomless cups. They have that kind of technology you know, they just choose to keep it from the public because if it become available then people would take these cups to Subway, fill them up at the drink fountain and have free Coca Cola FOREVER. If this happened the whole economic infrastructure would collapse. Coca Cola equates to 100% of the worlds income after all. But where does the water go once these secret aqua agents have collected it all? They go up in tiny aeroplanes and redeploy them into the dry clouds that are out of rain. Obviously. And that is what happens to rain, that ‘evaporation’ story they like to spin to school children is about as believable as the Smurfs. Although they are real, bad example.

So we had arrived in Cologne and it was very wet. So wet in fact, that I stayed on the bus til load in and just stared out the window like a child that had been grounded. It wasn’t a particularly inspiring view, all I could see was a grey building. And rain. And at brief points, old people walking by. If i’m honest, it was maybe the most un-productive start to any day i’ve ever had. And I once stayed in all day and ate white chocolate in my room when I was younger. That sounds sexual, but it wasn’t. Quite the opposite. So I don’t have much to report until we loaded into Blue Shell, where we’d played last May and struggled to fit on its tiny stage. It’s a cool venue though, it looks like a mixture between a diner and an American ‘gas’ station. How could those places ever co-inhabit you ask? Come to Blue Shell and see for yourself, they’ve managed it - I don’t want to spoil the surprise. It also kind of looks like a venue, but only slightly. We had to ditch Ross’ bass cab to fit everything on the stage, so he became a sort of ‘bass sorcerer’ for the night. Summoning bass sounds without the need for speakers. I thought about calling him Gandolf the Bass, but was worried he might hit me with that mystical bass. Perhaps it would have turned me into a Treble Clef, and I would be purely theoretical and invisible.

Before we played we were taken to a nice Indian restaurant for dinner. Nothing happened, it was just nice. Oh, I did cover my whole body in Naan bread and dive into a big bowl of Jalfrezi, but this is what I like to do after every Indian meal to relax. After eating all the bread off my own body (about the same carbohydrates as if you were to eat all the potatoes in a farmer’s pocket at once) and then showering I was ready to play. I watched the band that had supported us for the German shows, Zen Zebra, really great band and a lovely bunch of guys. One of them looks identical to Ross, which was weird and confusing. It was also his birthday the day of the Berlin show, and Ross has a birthday in March and he likes Berlin. Co-incidence!? Well, no - those things aren’t related.... yet somehow they are. Or are they? I’m not sure, and now i’ve made myself feel a little ill. Perhaps it was all that Naan bread. There was a lot of it. The show went well, I believe it was sold out and everyone was making loud noises after every song. And it didn’t seem like the noises someone would make when they’re in pain. It was a happy sound, ‘cheering’ I believe they call it. And they were also hitting the palms together aswell, and as far as I could see it wasn’t because they were trying to crush a fly who had entered the room. A reliable source informs we this is called ‘clapping’ and is a polite way of showing your appreciation towards something or someone. By combining the factors of ‘cheering’ and ‘clapping’ over a prolonged duration (the length of the set), I have come to the conclusion that the gig was good.

Afterwards it was all hands on deck as we were heading back to the UK to fly to America the following afternoon. There was no deck to place our hands on so we instead packed up the gear and loaded it into the trailer instead. We said our farewells to the Zen Zebra chaps and headed back to Calais to catch the ferry. I decided it would be best to try and sleep now and then stay up on the flight the next day. Unfortunately this was foiled by port customs who wanted to search the bus for Naan bread after huge amounts had gone missing from a restaurant in Cologne. After managing to disguise the last of my Naan stash as my duvet they let us through but my sleep had been foiled, from this point forth I would be a zombie until we reached the land of doughnuts and racial profiling. A negative end to the story, but all the best stories are. Think of 1984 by George Orwell or The Snowman by Ramond Briggs. And that was the end of our European tour, very short - but then so is my attention span.

Auf weidersein Pet. I used to think that was about a famous German animal.

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