George-the-drums-girl and Stuart are already waiting for us, having made better time with the car and trailer despited suffering a blow out on the trailer. They only noticed the blow out when another driver pulled alongside them on the motorway and frantically waved them in. Thay had to change the wheel on the hard shoulder. George commented how Stuart had been totally calm throughout the whole hasslesome episode even though he had to kick the tyre iron to get the rusty nuts turning. George said how glad she was that she was going out with someone calm when this happened, 'cos if she'd still been going out with me there would have been cursing and shouting and swearing and gnashing of teeth. And probably a fair bit of jumping up and down and kicking things too, this being my usual response to the breakdown of vital machinery when under pressure of time by a busy motorway. I'm uptight. Fair comment really.

The Night and Day is up near the Arndale Centre, and they've not got around to rebuilding the area since the IRA let off that fuckin' huge bomb, (remember the one that killed the little 7 year old kid? Yeah, that one) so walking to the nearest garage for oil (about 1 and a half miles) is not far off a trip through a Mad Max movie - and one of the nasty ones early in the series too, not the nice fluffy ones with all the kids and Tina Turner in them. Later on tour some of the guys in another band, Ztrange, from Manchester tell me that if I'd walked the other way I'd've run into a park full of druggies and knife boys. Nice. Once I've topped up the van with oil I set off to look for a chippie, and as I head back with food I pass a bloke who is kicking the living shit out of some homeless guy (well, I guess he's homeless - he's got no friggin' shoes), who's lying curled up on the pavement. A bunch of people are stood cheering the bastard on. Great. Fuckin' lovely. So I get the phone in the Night and Day and call 999, they want my name and address, I tell 'em they don't need my name and address, what they need to do is get some police and an ambulance down there and help this poor bastard out and maybe catch hold of the bastard kickin' him, and Christ if there was any justice arrest all the bastards stood laughing for being evil sub-human scum. About 5 minutes later I am gratified by the sight of flashing lights and uniforms of all types and the poor gadge gets took off to hospital. None of the evil shits get arrested, but at least no-ones kickin' him anymore.

We sit and wait through the first band's soundcheck, they're local(ish), very nice, probably from of Cheshire, very young - this might be their first gig, and I have a sneaking suspicion that they're actually Christian Happy-Clappers. They are annoying Wol. Wol is the soundman the venue's hired in for the night and is an all round top bloke. He seems pretty clued up re the old Reading free party scene and was well in with one particular punk band (DF118) as well as knowing some of the guys out of Revolutionary Dub Warriors. The first band are bugging Wol 'cos they don't know their own songs and so they're approaching soundcheck as a rehearsal, also they keep blaming Wol when they sound shit. Wol says to me "That girl keeps complainin' about her monitor sound - learn to bloody sing love! I swear if they keep pissing me about I'll turn all their monitors off when they get up to play".

We get up to soundcheck with our usual approach: bash out a song, turn this up, turn that down, bash out another song - SORTED. 'Cos the Rat has complained about my using 'Under the Boardwalk' and 'Everybody Needs Somebody' as my vocal soundcheck every night I have a crack with 'Gordon is a Moron'. The Rat says this is worse. Well, fuck it. And fuck him, too.
The place packs out with fresh faced lookin' people, who've all turned up to see the first band, who happy-clappy their way through their set. Their audience looks suitably ecstatic, indeed touched with that dodgy ol' time religious fervour. We take to the stage and frighten half of 'em off just by lookin' like we do. Spawn of Satan obviously. Mind you, one of us is a Taoist/Sufi philospher, one is a Pagan, one believes that God is asleep and one is an atheist. So maybe they were right to run away.
We're playing well and the Rat (who's been boozin' n' smokin' all day) is down there, "breaking the envelope of audience performer relations". As we finish a song the Rat takes a big swig of milky coffee and SPITS it out (TWAT), just missing the legs of the girlfriend of one of the members of the first band. She has actually bothered to stay and watch us along with another 15 or 20 people. She is wearing skin tight white leggings. This is a moment of exquisite cringing. So I shout "And the next song is.. " Bosh, we're playing again. We're really belting the set out and it's going great. We actually have a pissed up old gadge dancing to us! Amazing! The first dancer since the gig in Oxford. This squat white haired old
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