I had started writing this post whilst at the airport on my way to Dublin for two weeks but then neglected it as Dublin was fairly busy! When I came back to it today the session had timed out and I’d lost what had originally written! I’ll try and remember what I wrote! (P.S. I neglected it again, now i’m on a train to Liverpool!)(I neglected it again as I was waiting to finish the new website)

I started by saying that whilst in Dublin we would reach the halfway point of the current leg of the tour! That moment has now come and past. It seems a bit mad to think that about 3 months ago I was planning on spending another year in Liverpool, and the next minute I was off on a whole new adventure! I remember writing that it has been absolutely brilliant but that it’s taken a lot of getting used to! For example: You’re moving to a different city every week, taking you’re life with you in a suitcase, often travelling very long distances. You’re also spending all the time with the same people, not that that’s a bad thing, just another thing to get used to!

The other thing I have found to be a bit irritating is that it’s very difficult to keep in touch with friends and family who have normal 9-5 days. My work day starts in the afternoon in preparation for the evenings show. We then run through till 10/11pm. Friends and family are at work when I’m free, and by the time they’re ready to talk, I’m working. Then they’ve usually gone to bed by the time I’m done! Ah well! Enough moaning!

The two weeks that we spent in Dublin were brilliant! I started drinking Guinness (sort of regretting it after a few heavy nights!), met some great people and stayed in some lush apartments that we’d had booked for us! As well as the show, we were also given the opportunity to perform live on Irish television at primetime on a Friday night! It was a bit of a mad day and involved taking all instruments and guitar pedals from the theatre in the afternoon for soundcheck/rehearsal, taking it all back to the theatre for that evenings show, and then piling it all (along with the cast in costume) onto a coach afterwards to get back to the studios. In all, we were on air for less than 5 minutes, and spent less than an hour on-site before heading back to the theatre but it was a fantastic experience, the cast really enjoyed themselves, and it was a great plug for the show! I took a couple of pictures whilst we were there, see below!

Since Dublin, we’ve spent a week in Glasgow and a week in Tunbridge Wells! Both really nice, fun venues. As we’d left it quite late to find digs in Tunbridge Wells (there are barely any anyway), myself, Marcus (Sound No.1) and Andy (Chief LX) spent the week camping a few miles out of the town! The campsite was literally just a field on a farm with a few porta-loos, and little else, however, we were the only ones there and it was slap bang in the middle of nowhere. It was pitch black apart from the orange glow coming from Gatwick Airport! We had a couple of BBQ’s and on Friday night Andy built us a rather epic campfire. All in all a pretty fun week, and something different! Would definitely do it again, maybe not on this tour though as it’s getting quite cold!

This week we’re at the Empire in Liverpool – a week which I’ve been looking forward to since I left the city to start the tour! It’s a big week for us and we’re almost doubling our PA to cope with the size of the venue. Monday is going to be pretty hectic but with a couple more people on board it should be manageable! The reason i’m really looking forward to it though is to see some old friends again. Unfortunately a lot of people from my year have now moved on to different pastures but many from the other year groups will still be around. And it just so happens that we’re there during freshers fortnight – could get a bit messy!

Also, in other news, this week i’ve spent a bit of time working on my website. A slight re-design alongside porting everything over to WordPress (it took a while to work out how to fully utilise the CMS and make it look like a website rather than a blog – i’m very impressed with how powerful it is though!), it’ll now be easier for me to update and will also allow blog comments etc etc. It isn’t ready to go live just yet but when it does, let me know what you think!

That’ll do for now, here are some pictures from the last few weeks!