November time

Hello, been a while since I’ve done any personal writing on here. I’ve been writing privately and for university and didn’t feel it was necessary or that it would help anyone (which is won’t) to spew some emotions on here. Regardless, I will give a brief update.

I called the UK and the EU tour the ‘No Problem’ tour. Despite loads of problems, I stick to this name for the EU run. The problems we encountered on the UK tour were (I’m listing them because problems are more interesting to read than someone saying ‘oh thanks so much, we had such an amazing time blab la blah’ when thats not actually what happened). I’ll list both the good and the bad, thats better. We start with the bad.

• Our support / Tour Manager / sound guy- Bingo Fury- got really sick and couldn’t do the tour. This sucked mostly for him, and it sucked for us too. He’s better now and can come on the EU tour! Let’s all say aloud wherever we are, ‘glad you’re better Jack’.

• The van went weird, it didn’t fully break down but it kept threatening to break down with these flashing lights on the dashboard and the parking beepys stopped working. This made me anxious, of course.

• The van was scratched, bad, because of the beepys not working.

• It was an autumn UK tour so it was drizzle and cold, I’m not allowed to include that in the problems but I will.

Most of the time there weren’t that many problems, I just like the idea of the boldly and delusionally named ‘No Problem’ tour having a bunch of problems. I’ve said that word too many times now, here’s the good stuff.

• We got to stay in the best places, namely; Ross’ parents place in Newcastle, Bernies in Manchester where we got to meet Chris Cohen and his gang and have breakfast with them, Ben and flatmates place in Cambridge who were dead sweet and welcoming to us, Henrys in Frome whose house is as inspiring as he is. Jack, Henry and Lois’ place in Bristol, Holly, Al and Anna’s place in Leeds was so cosy and we got fidget things to play with. Also the Cornish Bank accommodation and some very good air B&B’s I booked last minute when we really needed it.

• We got to play in the best places, thanks to superhero live agent Liam Knightley organising the best venues around the country. It’s definitely been my favourite tour in that regard. Plus a bunch of people showed up each night so that was fun. Top three venue competition, solo contestant Naima declares that the winners are: The Jam Jar in Bristol, The Cornish Bank in Falmouth and The Cavern in Exeter (they gave us coffee, tea and biscuits on arrival and then we got pizza after soundcheck, I couldn’t believe it, none of us could believe the kindness). These were ace but all the venues were also ace.

One word of advice to any venue owner or whoever gets there first, put the heating on, please.

• It was the best touring with the band again after playing solo and duo for ages, Oscar Guardans, Cassidy Hansen, Clem Appleby and Meitar Wegman are all very handsome and very much the clem de la clem of people that I know. Also Clem Appleby drew a lot and he’s really good at drawing, you can see some of them on instagram I think. It was a nice way to catalogue the tour.

• We went on some walks in the country, that was good, cold air on my face.

• We always chat loads in the van which I love, we got some interesting debates and discussions going.

• I listened to the whole of John Luries ‘History of Bones’, that was a real life saver on long journeys and plus a lot of it was him moaning about live sound and monitors which I can get behind because everyone everywhere needs to up their game on that front. It’s a bit silly at this point. When he wasn’t moaning about that he was talking about drugs, which I also enjoyed maybe a bit smugly because that isn’t currently my life.

Anyway, lots of stuff, mostly good, which is good- now, here I can see this on reflection.

The main point of this newsletter is to tell people to come to the shows in the Europe. Come to them, if you have friends, tell them to come. Entice them and say there’ll be a mosh pit or lie and say they’ll get to sit down, lie to your friends.

Dates upcoming

03/12 - Lille, FR - L’Aéronef
04/12 - Brugge, BE - Cactus Café
06/12 - Haldern, DE - Pop Bar
07/12 - Hamburg, DE - Nachtasyl
08/12 - Berlin, DE - Neue Zukunft
10/12 - Cologne, DE - Subway
11/12 - Amsterdam, NL - Paradiso
12/12 - Brussels, BE - Botanique
13/12 - Paris, FR - La Boule Noire

And we've added some dates for next year in Denmark but please, you won't be seeing any more of me between January and June (other than the Danish).

6/2 - Aarhus, DK - Voxhall
7/2 - Aalborg, DK - Northern Winter Beat
9/2 - Copenhagen, DK - Rust

10/7 - London, UK - Omeara

Au-revoir, wish us luck. Now we drive off into the sunset with nothing but our bright red VW van with all our stuff in it and a song in our hearts.

Reading ‘Man’s Search for Meaning: The Classic Tribute to Hope from the Holocaust’ by Viktor E. Frankl

Watching Not watching anything right now, if anyones got good movie suggestions I’ll take them.

Eating Normal stuff but a LIDL has opened two minutes from mine, which is exciting.

Listening Lomelda, Joanna Sternberg, Florist, Steve Piccolo, Lounge Lizards.

P.S. I’m not operating the instagram account because Josh, the best manager in the world has agreed to do it instead. I choose the photos and the text sometimes but I’m not on there (its great, not being on there) so if you want to contact about anything or I haven’t responded to something don’t take it personally and email me on here.

P.S.S. I think ages ago I said something about a book club, I still want to do that but I don’t have time to organise it. If anyones part of one or wants to make one and invite me then I definitely will join.