Yesterday was a fucking day.

Neil Sutherland and Imadethismistake borrowed Joshs van for the UK leg of their tour and it broke down yesterday in Cardiff, wales. Kyle talks about what happened here: http://stopdropandbreathe.blogspot.com/

For me and Josh, still in London and at work, it was the exact type of headache that we didn't want, and basically a worst case scenario we wanted so depserately to avoid. No one wants to drop shows. No one wants to pay to fix a van. No one wants half your band and all your gear in another country with a show that night.

At the gig we were supposed to play with Neil/Imadethismistake, me Josh and Joe slowly realised that with Joe needing to leave by 10pm and us having all our gear and bassist in a van thats was limping it's way into Brixton, that the show just wasn't going to happen this time despite the fact that 2 people had travelled from Brighton to see us though and I felt horrible. We decided to play a short acoustic set, borrowing guitars from Torn Out and Limited Means, but as soon as Joe said he was happy to drum using the house kit, we decided to do a short electric-set using house amplifiers, without PJ who was still on route, it felt like the least we could do. I plugged into the miniscule 5watt practice amp and turned it up full volume - you could talk over it, it was so unbeleivebaly quiet. They mic'd it, we played and it actually sounded fine, obviously drastically missing bass and PJs dancing feet.

Halfway through "Joiners and Windmills" Pj starts loading his bass stuff on the stage and joined in mid-song and we finished the set as a four piece and despite only playing 4 songs it was fun and far better than not playing at all. I'm glad we finished as a 4, it feels weird without everyone there. Thank you to the soundguy, everyone who lent us leads and everyone who seemed to enjoy the set regardless of the bullshit that surrounded it.

Public transport home was the typical ballache, compounded by carrying gear home and then emptying the van that had been dropped off on the street by our house at something like 1am.

A long day of stress and stressing.

Tomorrow brings its own challenges now, fixing the van for us, and getting a new van and getting to Scotland for everyone else. Good luck guys.

Dan