When we finally arrive at a services past Birmingham I am a total zombie and it takes about five minutes for me to conk out. The Rat at last stops talking. Thank fuck.

Tour Day 16 8/10/97 - HOMICIDAL VANMANIA

Awake to dismal pissing rain and wind. By the motorway. In a grey car park. Shite. I clear all the crap out of the van that the Rat has dropped everywhere. I could wait for the Rat to do it, or hassle him not to be such a fucking pig, but either option is unlikely to obtain a result. Less energy is expended binning the shite myself. Later the Rat complains that he had planned to eat this detritus.

The day picks up a little with breakfast, a cup of tea and shock! a shower and shave in the services! Great! Even the Rat gets up and washes. Me and George bloke rip the piss out of him for being such a drunken *@!! last night. George bloke tells him:

"When you're drunk, mate you're Hell on legs."

The Rat is actually embarrassed,

"Oh my God, I'm such an obnoxious wanker!"

We're not arguing with this, indeed we rip the piss out of him some more, and we actually crack a few laughs for the first time in 24hours, until the Rat says "Oh God, stop. Stop!"

We go over and have a chat to George girl and Stuart before setting off. They had another blow out on the trailer last night. They've no more spare wheels so we're fucked for transporting the drums. It's STILL raining.
Stuart's called the AA and they've got to wait. So we come up with a hedged bet. If we load the drum hardware, snare and cymbals into the van, even if the trailer is totally shafted then it can be dumped in Reading which is en route to tonight's gig in Southampton, and if we can cadge kit off other bands we can complete the tour with just the car and the van. So I say:

"OK let's load into the van"

and the Rat says "I've got to roll a number"

as he sits in the dry rolling up, I lift the first case into the van and I say to him:

"Phil, we've all noticed you haven't done any loading or unloading for the last three days"

and he says to me "You've got to stop trying to boss me about or you'll get nothing out of me."

"I'm not tryin' to tell you to do anything, all I'm tellin' you is that everyone's getting pretty fucked off."

He does a bit of loading. It's still raining.

The drive to Southampton is long even after the miles we put in last night. We actually have a bit of a laugh, despite having to stop 'cos the engine oil seems to be burning up. We find a spot-on greasy roadside fried-egg-'n'-butty stand which is the bizness. Hot fried egg rolls with mustard and tomato sauce, stood under the shelter out of the pissing rain. The Rat rips the piss out of me for rambling on about how there's a load of "posh" cows in the field next to the butty stand - they turn out to be your bog standard Fresians. The Rat tells George bloke how attractive he finds him. George handles this with style "No, no, no, no, nooooo" he says.

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