How I looked before I went out.



How I look now.



Moral: Drink water before bed.

Seb and I woke up in bed together, and so I went to sleep again until we weren't, and when I woke up I'd dreamt an entire movie and he was cooking an omelette. So so fly.
I won't go into the dream.

Okay so I dreamt I was an unbreakable robot man, designed to be the death-partner of a talented scientist lady, and all I did was drink midori and start bar fights. I was supposed to walk into the sea when she died. I'm not 100% sure what that all means but now I'm drinking.



We went over to the swimming pool so we could shower, with exercising forming a by-product of washing our nasty selves, and I had the culture shock of finding that it is against the rules not to be naked in the communal showers there. I was planning on washing period blood and jizz out of my swim briefs (long story) while I showered, so their law - which is, I imagine, aimed at being hygienic - ended up being counter-productive for them. That's what they get for me seeing so many penises outside of a streaming porn window. You look over and think, gosh, what a hirsute fellow, and then he bends over and you can see that the abyss stares back, and it is lined with crinkled black hairs.
An old man, who we named Old Man Balls, started stretching beside us. We saw the dimensions. We didn't want to.

BUT a couple of dozen lengths later and I have that ruddy blush in my cheeks that says Hello I Am Not A Stoner All Of The Time and the day was able to start without too much protestation.

I got an email from my artist that may as well have been titled Hey I Took The Look Of This Entire Character Sheet In A Different Direction All Week I Hope You Like It, which is exactly the kind of initiative I want from him and it turned out awful, so I emailed back politely declining and tried to ignore the fact that I'd just paced around the flat spitting venom and yelling at nobody in particular.
God it feels good to blog again.
Anydo, he understood and now we're best friends again.

The casting call I put out in LA returned nearly a hundred applicants, half of whom hadn't read the ad.








*

"Actress required to voice character in independent animated pilot. Character is young, bright, Californian and intelligent."

I decided to flit back to my inbox to pick out these pictures, and discovered I'd emailed 13 people who absolutely under no circumstances were to be considered for the role. Shitting beef.
I can't very well email them back and be like FALSE ALARM LOL YOU ARE AWFUL AT BEING THIS CHARACTER AND I HAVE NEVER EVEN HEARD YOU SPEAK so I guess I am wasting their time, my time, and (hopefully not) the time of someone they know/have hired with a microphone or recording studio.
Dicks. Dicks! Why did I do that? I marked them 'unimportant', I spent time marking every unimportant email as unimportant. I'll spend the week receiving voice samples that I'll be really tempted to laugh at with my friends but that is Not The Right Thing To Do so great, now I have that.

Neuroticism aside, I'm settling into Danish life nicely, and have been working allll day. Sitting here, in this chair, not eating. Usually I eat so much I forget to work, so this is a breezy change for me.

Finally, here is some fucking cute.



-and here is the prettiest picture I've ever seen on SG, by Plymne. Click it, it needs to be large for effect.



Thanks for reading. Sorry to ramble.

x

*He was male and, apparently, a dragon.

So I discovered twitter. Looky.



http://twitter.com/#!/usernametoobig

And tumblr, too.



http://theworldisfine.tumblr.com/

I am in DENMARK
home of DENMARK
and it is so denmark it's unreal. Today I arrived with 3 litre-bottles of anejo especial and a big grin on my face. I found my good friend,gave him half a month's rent, and settled in at his flat. We had coffee, listened to music, and once we'd caught up we home-made a pizza, drank rum, and watched Drive with Ryan Gosling, making stupid comments all the way through like little teenage girls ("Drive, no! What did you DO, Drive?" - "LOOK WHAT THEY DROVE ME TO!")



The last tour was pretty great, even if it was only for 8 days, and I made a lot of friends, including an unsigned band who sound like the Jonas Brothers who want me to tour with them forever.
Here are some bricks I found.


And a happy drum.


I gained like 4kg/9lb in a week of fast food and missing meals, but I've already lost a lot of it just by not being on tour. Tomorrow I start being healthy, because if I want a shower I have to go to the local swimming pool. I'm going to end up fit and healthy purely by circumstance. Exercise helps me think clearly, and I've been procrastinating a lot due to being all cloudy in the head. I can get back to work now, I think. Procrastination is like a heavy overcoat. Hope I'm wearing something decent underneath

Here is a video I love because my sense of humour is full of fuck.



x

So I haven't updated this in forever. So let's have a recap!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8PSYorL1cE
(to be played whilst reading)

Work on the cartoon has been going great, with lots of recording done, and it's now written up to the fifth episode. The whole thing's synopsised, and I'm casting for voice actresses (online) in LA right now. I've snagged Kevin McNally from the Pirates films-

- Colin McFarlane from the newest Batman films -

- and there's some animators doing line tests to synch some voice recording to lines by this happy little character here -


I'm currently homeless, but touring constantly, so it's all good.Since my last blog I've been on the road with Adele twice, as well as 3 Doors Down, John Cougar Mellencamp, Interpol, some other bands, and I'm on the road again tomorrow. Currently living at my friend JW's stately London home, as his dad is a well-respected Lord and he has a nice spare room to graciously offer me. I just took pictures of myself in his room while he was at work, touching his stuff.




(Chipped some tooth trying to fix a corkscrew with my mouth. Luckily it's a false cap, and can be replaced, so in the mean time I can make this face at people.)

After this next tour I'm living in Denmark for 3 weeks, with my friend Seb at his Copenhagen flat, and after that it's another Adele tour, seeing my friend Lison in December, and - if the world lasts that long - Christmas.

But enough about me. Tell me about you. How've you been?

x

I finished writing ep.2 of the cartoon!
(Hooray!)
And it is TITS. If I do say so. (There are bits of dust and dirt on my screen. I keep thinking I'm punctuating by accident. Ffff.)

So I'm happy.
I may be being set up with some pretty thing at a party on Tuesday, though I'm wary of arranged pairings, but she's insanely cute, exotic and quite smart to boot so who knows. What else, what else...
EGYPT!
I'm off to Egypt in a week or two. Which will be TITS also. Further tits. Additional titillation.

Um. Here are some photos of the past year.


Sleeping on my 20 minute break. Reading festival. 3 16-hour shifts in 3 days. Death.


With Elly Jackson, on tour with La Roux


On my birthday, at end of the road festival. September.


With my dad and brother, on a Tiger tank, in Normandy this summer.
Very fond of this photo.


With the boys from Sworn Amongst, last month. Very metal.


Taken just now. Freezing my bloody tits off in my living room.


Sean Connery, in the future. In the 80s.
In the future.

Does anyone have a better accompaniment to eggs than toast? I need something tasty, big enough to soak the yolk from my poached eggs, and filling.
I tried muffins (English) but they're always white. And white bread is the devil. I hear.

The rest of the tour went unblogged. I'll summarise -

PORTSMOUTH

Back of the bus was smashed in by a hit and run driver

MANCHESTER

Had a drink with the Klaxons and my good friend Ed

NEWCASTLE

Drank 3 bottles of wine, got marooned in the city, and called/woke Jeff Waters at 2am demanding a hotel room. Banned from drinking for rest of tour.

GLASGOW

A lot of energy drinks. Ha.

SHEFFIELD

Drinking ban revoked. Partied. Went to my hometown of Lincoln for a day and had a big homecooked meal (with its own menu and everything!)

NOTTINGHAM

Met cute girl, venue caught fire after gig, evacuated, met up with girl, and ran from one side of town to the other to catch the tourbus the next morning.

BRISTOL

Driver smashes bus's side on a pole and wedges us against the road at an angle.
My biological father got in touch with my mother. Found my own face, 18 years older, staring back at me from Facebook. Unnerving.

LONDON

Invited the support to my house and we partied til 6am.

And that's it!
I'm genuinely sorry there are no photos. I'm lazy and hungover and I'm watching Short Circuit 2 under a duvet. I didn't take many photos in the UK at all anyways, honestly.

What next? I think some fun, seeing friends, a quick trip to Paris, to Hull, writing a lot, a 3 week Christmas trip to Egypt, filming a couple of scenes from my film in the spring, and then I'll finish writing my cartoon and start selling it to production companies.

BUT enough about me! How are you?

ANNIHILATOR VII



TALLINN



My experience of Tallinn, Estonia comprised of watching a few tattered streets go by through the window, pulling into a huge grey car park in a rough part of town, and sleeping until six thirty in the evening. Not quite the ideal way to see a country I’ve not visited in five years. Seeing as my last experience was of a very (very very) grim strip club (think Caesarian scars and thumb-headed gangsters), landmarks littered with used syringes, and a hotel massage where the masseuse got rather more hands-on than I’m used to, I was eager to dispel my impression of the place with a good time. Unfortunately time and exhaustion didn’t allow it. My memory of Estonia will always be of having my oily buttocks squeezed firmly by a hairy man. The gig went well, though we didn’t sell much at all, and we zipped straight off to



VILNIUS



While thrash metal sounds like a drawer full of cutlery being slammed over and over, and the genre’s imagery suggests that the audience is made up of men who were never forced to grow up, there’s something satisfying about fast, loud music to club people or bomb cities to. Consider: every instrument sounds like a simulated war drum, a battle cry or swords clattering together. There are very few women. The reek of sweat saturates the steamy air. People are mashing the shit out of each other in a big circle. The average IQ is verrry low. I’m not saying that being at a metal gig is to take part in a medieval war, of course. That’s absurd.

It’s just a bit like it.

I say that because the band’s playing right now in Vilnius, Lithuania and I’ve never seen a crowd of people so riled up. The circle pit I’m watching right now is as large as the audience itself.

We were meant to spend our day off here tomorrow, but due to difficulties with parking we’re driving straight to Warsaw after the show. Anyone familiar with metal gigs will know the amount of ‘metal’ women there is negligible. Lithuania never got the memo on that one. So many women. So many beautiful women. The one time we get to a country that’s cheap, full of beautiful women who are into metal, and lands on a day off, we have to drive to fucking Warsaw.

I think we’re going to sit and glare at Polish people all day tomorrow for not being Lithuanian.

Frank, the singer of Sworn Amongst, got a little action while we were in Lithuania. Now, Frank looks like a potato with a beard; if I had to sleep with him to save my life, and I was a woman, I would cut off his cock and use it as far away from his body as possible. YET Frank pulls fucking rainbows of girls. Whole spectrum, end to end. Beautiful South American women take him home, fuck him and cook him breakfast. Nordic blondes go for romantic days out with him despite not speaking any English. Dusky Spanish girls giggle, reach under his shirt and tweak him affectionately. And here Frank is, in Lithuania, with a seventeen-year-old virgin in his bunk tugging a condom away from him because she ‘wants to feel it.’ Every time we arrive in a new country some poor stupid thing falls in love with him. And I’ll tell you why. Because girls are stupid. Teenage girls are stupid. I’m not jealous, I’m not bitter. But it is with bitter, snarling jealousy I say I can’t believe Frank gets more girls than I do.

But anyway! Enough bile. Back to the bunk situation. Stefan the driver was getting very impatient. Every time we call through to Frank that the bus is leaving any moment, we see a little white bum wiggle faster through the gap above his bunk-curtain. Later he tells us that saying the bus is leaving just made her suck faster. Eventually this lithe young thing pulls her bra back on and hops off the bus and we drive rather a long way to Poland.



WARSAW



Another day, another car park. This time it’s set beside the Progresja Klub – inside a dilapidated suburban area where men in army fatigues march in groups. If that wasn’t enough to make a foreigner feel uncomfortable, we were 11km from anywhere and the buses and trams sport a small ticket-punching machine with no obvious coin slots. Not that we had any zloty to put into them. As we approached the point of selling ourselves for zloty to allow ourselves a fun day off (slutty for zloty) we decided to just pick a direction and stick with it. And off we walked!







Luckily this wasn’t as haphazard as it could’ve been. We picked ‘the city’ as a direction and found cash machines. Upon reaching Warsaw-proper we ate, drank, wandered and eventually came upon the Hard Rock Café, where we found the Norse gods of Svölk and bought drinks that no sane person should fork out for. Fearing for my wallet, I asked the bar man if there was a place that Poles drink late at night, where we might at least have some fun, and he drew me some directions on a scrap of paper. Jonny B, Rob and I pared off from the others and took this little treasure map to a cab driver, who’d never heard of the street but promised to do his best, and sure enough we came upon a little backroad with its own shadows, high walls and loiterers. A row of dark rectangular windows lined one wall. Coloured paint obscured some of the glass, but by leaning around a bit you could see inside – individual bars, each decorated in a particular style, with their own scattering of twenty-something locals. So in we went and found a particularly charming little bar done out in a tropical-Cuban style. We ordered Mai Tais from the beautiful blonde barmaid, Helena, and her genuinely likeable boyfriend Rafel, and got down to drinking the place dry.

I’m going to mention something I don’t usually mention. I won’t drone on about this particular point, but sometimes when I drink I get this extraordinary personality shift. It’s like ten of me club together and decide what the best things to say and do might be, and then I say and do them. Very very rare. Very rare. But it happens. So…

We argued with some men who attempted condescension for a while. Ordered a slew of Mai Tais. I talked to the barmaid, Helena, and said I liked her name. She said she wasn’t fond of it. I said it’s an excellent name, and a very old one, bringing up Helen of Troy. ‘The kind of woman that men would go to war for.’

Later in the taxi Rob told me that it looked like she was going to faint. If I used emoticons, the one with sunglasses would be right about
here

So. A bit later I saw a girl walk by me, a short, cute, black-haired thing who seemed to have the attention of every man at the bar, and I introduced myself as she passed. We ordered our drinks and sat nearby her, where four twenty-something guys were chatting up her and her friend. She leaned through this wall of meat to call us over, and I came over, sat her on my lap, shook all their hands and introduced myself and then got down to necking with her for what seemed like the rest of the evening, and Rob made himself acquainted with her friend. The meat wall was not best pleased, and after enough of their terse remarks were met with cheerful indifference they left.
Jonny played ‘minesweeper’ and picked up any half-full glasses left alone for too long, but got a mote more than he bargained for – a dose of what we think may have been Rohypnol. I guess those four guys were a bit unsavoury. I’m glad they left unhappy. We even got one of them to take a picture of the five of us. And in it I’m kissing that girl.

Once Jonny got over stumbling about and looking sick as a dog we had a whale of a time. The bar staff would come over when they had a spare minute and drink with us. We were where the party was at.

Enough-mai-tais-to-clear-out-my-wallet later and we left to a lot of waving, carrying with us the bartenders’ names for the guest list of the gig the next day. We hopped in a cab and set off for the tourbus. On the way Jonny, still drunk on roofies, stuck his finger up rather emphatically at a young fella passing us in a beat-up car. I held his hand down a bit and threw up devil-horns at the guy, smiling good-naturedly, hoping to wash the whole thing down. But Jonny persisted. Eventually the guy drifted off behind us. After a moment we parked up in traffic. Suddenly the door tears open and a six-foot, longhaired Polish guy has me by the shoulder, yelling in what I remember to be a rather hurt and slighted tone. With a hand on the CS gas spray in my pocket I explain that we were ‘Just throwing up the horns, dude’ in a voice that’s probably whinier than I remember. I suppose the language barrier made the whole thing quite confusing for him, as he let us be and was kind enough to close our door behind him.

We got home, fell asleep and woke up in



SEARING HANGOVER PAIN



Which is a place.





(Spooky corridors beneath the Polish venue)



Our bartender friends showed up for the gig and we danced and drank and talked bollocks until they had to leave. Helena told me I’m the most charming man she’s ever met, and Rafel said I’m the best Englishman he’s ever come across. I don’t believe a word of it but I still had trouble fitting my head back into the bus after that.



KRAKOW



What a long, empty gig. We were in a part of town where it meant that you either stayed in the venue or went to a mall, and as I’ve been spending the better part of a quarter of my wage on alcohol I opted to save my money.

A real shame. Krakow might’ve been fun.



PRAGUE



Now this is a city to describe. Prague. Fuck. Our first day there was spent inside the venue, seeing nothing, no entertainment but for a stage invader who got battered after he threw one too many elbows around. Then he came to my shop and complained about how he was treated. As he waited for his coat at the cloakroom he got whacked with a riot baton a few times. This from security who let him wander backstage after the show trying to get free beers. But anyway! The first day was pretty empty. The second day, however, was excellent.



































I got to wander about the city, taking photos of all the beautiful architecture and pretty scenes. I bought some ridiculous glasses, and a present for my friend Ryan, then met with the boys from Sworn Amongst and went on the rampage.

We ended up in a rock bar from the day before, found nothing worth staying for, and were led by Jonny Harper’s new Czech lovetoy to a nicer place with more girls and lower prices. I wandered off from our table and came back with three girls – one from Italy, one from Hungary and the other frommmm… Poland? Poland. I pretended to be the singer of the band, what with Frank’s absence, and – though she was informed of my lies by Jonny H’s lady friend – I was attached to the Italian for the rest of the night. Which was nice, really. We talked about literature, slow danced, played table football. There was none of this sloppy-dicked marauding we’d been having in other cities. Sitting with her made me feel placid and just-about okay. I was sad to leave. But leave her I did, and we hopped on the bus around 2am and fucked off to Austria.



WOERGL



Woke up groggy again, stepped off the bus, and found we were surrounded by mountains.











Austria. Jesus wept. What a beautiful country.















Wandered around, awed, then went to an Italian restaurant with the Jonnies and Corey, leaving Frank and Rob to be philistines in McDonalds. Jeff and Verena were just leaving, and they paid for our food as they left. Which was nice, though it made me wish I’d had more than tiramisu and a shot of amaretto for lunch.

Nighttime was another animal altogether. We met some people at a pub who told us about a Hallowe’en party, got us a cheap cab to said party, and we arrived at a huge bar filled with drunk people in costumes. Which was great, seeing as I was the only one of us in costume.





(Wankerish pose intended)

Corey, Sworn Amongst’s very poorly-paid merch person, is Irish and tense. That’s his nature. Frank winds him up a great deal simply by being himself. This manifested itself when we hopped out of the cab, and Frank made some reference to his own greatness Corey snapped, yelled rather loudly and strangled Frank until he turned purple. Frank may be a twenty-something metal singer in the body of Boris Yeltsin, but he’s tall, and Corey is not. It was very strange to watch. A sight to see. Heartbreaking, really, if I’m going to be honest about it. Frank didn’t even fight back. We pulled them apart and they spent the next hour off in the trees, crying and arguing like a gay couple, while we forgot about them and partied.





(The Jonny zombies)

I couldn’t decide if I was dressed as Zakk Wylde’s guitar or a blackjack, but luckily nobody asked. Everyone was happy to just be drunk and Austrian and a zombie. Lots of zombies. I got talking to a very cute actress for a while, but then she wouldn’t kiss me on account of having a boyfriend, and I got drunkenly frustrated and walked away. Standing at one side of the room, Dutch courage in hand, I scanned every face and selected the girl I decided was the prettiest, walked over, and ordered shots for us both. And luckily it was simple as that, really. Drinking and kissing and, after a few hours, a very large cab home to cart ourselves, Svolk, and some of the crew back to the tourbus so we could get to Switzerland in time for load-in.



PRATTELN



Switzerland, unfortunately, was spent indoors, as we had no time off. I did briefly get out to take some pictures of the surroundings, though. Pratteln is an industrial town so there wasn’t a great deal of pretty man-made things, just ugly chimneys and prefab warehouses.

Having said that, I found a little beauty.



















NUREMBURG



Again, no off day, spent the day inside the gig. Corey left us, and Dan arrived – Sworn Amongst’s new merch guy. Lovely chap.







(Woke up from a dream about alien invasion to see this through my bunk window, parked up after the Nuremburg gig.)







(Myself looking unphotogenic beside said bunk window)



MILAN



Sadly, though locals were selling for me this day and I had time free, we were so far from the city that going out was impossible. I wandered about the gig with my backstage pass on, trying to look conspicuous, but then realized that’s what I was doing and retreated to spend the evening sipping beer and reading.





Annihilator in Milan.



MONTPELLIER





(The drive to Montpellier)











(The bus/Stefan)



Woke up roasting in the tourbus, to the sound of Stefan swearing in the driver’s seat. Stefan swearing in German is a surefire way of knowing we’re close to where we’re going, as the roads become narrower and we’re a huge bus with a trailer.

After waiting three hours for five people to shower (twitch) we got a cab into town to spend the rest of our day off drunk and stupid. In the first pub I pretended to be a rhythm guitarist. Had a nice but bemusing chat with a French metal-head on the merits of Epiphone versus Gibson. After that, though, I gave up the act and we found ourselves first in an Irish pub, reaping the harvest of a drunk who’d wandered in, ordered a load of stuff and then wandered off again. Then we were checked out by some gay men a rock bar. We found a sort of rock and roll pub, met up with Svolk, drank more, and I hooked up with a very cute, petite French-Spanish girl who led me back to her university dorm annnnnnd an hour’s sleep later I caught a cab back to the bus and pissed off to



BARCELONA











(The drive to Barcelona)



Where, sadly, little happened. Another day in the venue with no free time to wander. A city of amazing beaches, museums, and Gaudi’s unfinished cathedral, and we didn’t see any of it.







(Bus outside the venue, holding up traffic)







(A very handsome arch/venue-exit)



The bar opposite the venue was nice enough to give us all free beer after the show, which went some way towards making us feel better about not seeing Barcelona, but those feelings were promptly cancelled out by the actions of a bright young thing from the gig, all pretty and sweet-looking, who sucked on Frank’s face like the antidote was inside. Buh.
It's okay. I'm happy for him. Good for Frank.
Good for Frank.

I reprised my role as a thrash metal keyboard player and signed someone’s drum skin, watched someone play tetris for a bit, and then the bus pulled up and held up traffic while we gathered bottles of free Estralla and hopped aboard.



MADRID



Sunny Madrid. Where, today, we finally got to look around – even if just for an hour or so. Very cosmopolitan. Crumbly bleached Mediterranean-style architecture beside tall metal-and-glass fanciness. It’s so bloody warm. The sun favours the Spanish. They are its chosen people. In England we have pissed off the sun somehow and it has let us grow pale and ugly under the shadows of rain clouds.















The gig so far is more complicated than I’d have liked. I thought I had local slaves to sell for me but actually there are none. The floor manager promised me lights, but there are no lights (‘Is okay, perfecto, is enough’). Doors opened ten minutes early and I was flooded. Nobody speaks English, and my Spanish is terrible. Hola. Venti-cinque por favor. Grathias. That’s it.

Once again, zipped away before we had chance to look around. Queues of beautiful women and excitable drunken men. Opportunities missed. I had a nice new shirt from Desigual I could’ve worn. Plenty of money. Free entry to the club we’d worked at. Heartbreaking. Mi corazon…



BILBAO



Arrived in the pouring rain. Rain in Spain. Mainly on my face. Gig highlight: a fat man burst through my table, grabbed four shirts and legged it, and was hunted down by crew members and arrested by police.



Now we have two days off before returning to the UK, to fanfare and disappointment. More on this later. xx

Annihilator VII


HAMBURG

The hamburger is an American dish. Rock and roll is an American style of music. It shouldn’t follow that the Hamburgers (capitalised) are the most rock and roll people in the world, but then a lot of things about Hamburg don’t make sense. The Reeperbahn for example. We saw, in order of weirdness (ascending):
- St Pauli, the anti-Nazi football club founded by gangsters.
- A red light district penned entirely in two narrow streets, lined with windows where prostitutes sit on plush stools and show themselves off.
- A dozen prostitutes eating lunch and reading magazines.
- A pug selling its body.
- An aged transvestite walking down the street in heels and blue tights, shrieking.




We walked around a huge music shop, the biggest I’ve ever seen, inside a huge missile-proof bunker built by the Nazis. Visiting a music shop with musicians is a bad idea. It took an hour to leave. Jonny Barker had a thousand yard stare as he left.
‘Can we go back? I need to go back. It was beautiful.’



Ironically, the only bunker of its class not destroyed by missiles.



Axe-uitar



Coffinitar

We got out, though, and once back to the venue I started work in a St Pauli t-shirt and had a really decent time of it. The wall beside my shop had the gig projected onto it. Here’s Adimiron and Sworn Amongst:






That night the Italians taught me more Italian. ‘Sticazzi’, which is a South Italian way of saying ‘I don’t care’, and ‘Li Mortacci Tua’, which is sort of like ‘God Damn’ but not really. We got on the bus, watched Reeves and Mortimer, ate cheese and yelled phrases at each other until we reached the ferry to Denmark.

Actually I tell a lie. We stopped briefly for chocolate milk and CS gas.



Displayed right above the breathmints in a petrol station. May the two never be confused.

COPENHAGEN

I hopped off the bus early to sort out my stuff ready for the gig, to give me more time with my beloved friend Seb, who is a real live Danish person and will speak Danish to you for a kroner. Not having a kroner, we spoke in English by a large lake filled with swans and seagulls near the Latin quarter. Copenhagen is an amazing place. You can’t walk ten metres down the street without falling in love. Sure, the girls have enormous foreheads, but you don’t notice when they’re so amazing in the face. And because of reflected sun-glare, possibly. I hate that the Vikings stole all of them from us. I’d be totally within my rights to bonk a few on the head and fireman’s carry them back to England.
Seb and I drank a little too much rum for two in the afternoon and went back to his for music and smoothies.

The night at the venue was more stressful than all of this.

- The doors opened an hour early and there was a mad scramble to set up.
- The metal fans were mainly rude and socially retarded.
- The lift broke during load-out.
- We had to lift equipment up flights of stairs, with me on an ankle I’d sprained a bit earlier in the day.
- Long, long hunt for the bus bay key.
- Transferred 20 boxes between the buses.
- Seb had to lug shit and wait in the cold for hours until everything was sorted.

Here're some Copenhagen pictures.






(Someone put bubble bath in a fountain)


Seb looking radiant, after I fetched him orange tea, in a glass, with a fork

Having been subjected to thrash metal, heavy lifting and bone-splintering cold all night, Seb limped off home to sleep. The Adimiron guys left us and I didn’t get to say a proper goodbye to them, as I was so busy. I got on the Annihilator tourbus pretty glumly and we set off for a day off in the sleepy coastal town of…

HELSINGBORG

I woke up at 2pm in the unfamiliar bus. I needed the rest, I think. I got dressed and went downstairs to find Jeff, his girlfriend-cum-tour-manager Verena, and the lighting tech, Fluffery, who had all set out a spread of fresh buns, assorted meats and cheeses and homemade jam.
‘Which will all be deducted from your wage, of course,’ Jeff informed me.
There is very little to do in the town of Helsingborg on a Sunday. The low-rising sun makes for this charming all-day sunset that, while being very pretty, doesn’t keep you very occupied. And Van Helsing killed all the vampires (I presume, seeing as there were none) so the day resigned itself to being unfulfilling and cheap. I had a shower and a beard-trim (who was I doing that for? Really) at HOTEL VIKING and ate some very salty Italian food in a very unintentionally kitsch restaurant with the band and crew, making friends with Pete, the Canadian guitar tech, who lives in an artists’ squat in Brixton. We went off with Andy the drum tech and had drinks in the only bar in Helsingborg open on Sunday night – a dive attached to the ferry port, filled with seafaring transients– grizzled, grubby-collared men, hunched over pints of Eagle and not talking to anybody.

Highlight of the day: Fluffery consummating his visit to Sweden with a Subway Swedish meatball sandwich.
‘I usually get the cheese steak!’

Pictures of Helsingborg:





Hotel Viking.



Where every floor has rum. Total grog party.



Last moments of the tour beard. Realised that looking 'metal' is not worth looking too scraggly to approach.



Heehee.

I got to bed at 3am, woke up at 6 for no good reason, left the bus at 7am when we arrived at the house of the singer from Hammerfall – to lug all the merch boxes into his living room and avoid paying duty on it all at the Norwegian border, and then was woken loudly at midday to load into the venue at…

OSLO

Not a great day. I like Norway, but I’ve been kind of depressed all day. I want to blame the lack of sleep, but I don’t know. There’s a really heavy blanket of it on me.
Anyway, if you didn’t know, Norway is a cold, lumber-producing country, where there are more zeroes on the price tags than anywhere in Europe. Fuckspensive. The day has so far consisted of spending the equivalent of forty quid on a shirt and some socks, fourteen quid on the worst Chinese meal I’ve ever had (meaty bones in a bowl of soggy lettuce leaves is not roast duck noodle soup, Oslo), and somebody asking if the actual shirts pinned to my display boards were the only items on sale. What? Annihilator are just finishing their set and I think we get to stay here until 7am tonight, so there may be exploits. But while the pints are a minimum of six quid each, I doubt it.

Edit: There were no exploits. Oslo hasn’t got much in the way of nightlife in the week. I did get to have a good long talk with the guitarist from Svölk, and we spent a long time making fun of the Norwegian accent. And his Norwegian accent. He’s a good bloke.



A nice angle I found in Oslo.

On to Gotham City. Or

GOTHENBURG

Or something. Let’s not talk about Gothenburg. I’m still carrying yesterday’s downer and it feels like nothing’s happened today. I had a delivery of hats! Fancy that. I also watched Jeff shred absent-mindedly while watching Dallas on his laptop, which was funny.
After the show we’re driving straight to Stockholm, so I can safely seal the envelope on this entry.



A mess of junk on the rooves of Gothenburg.

STOCKHOLM

After the gig, Pete, Andy and I were led to a metal bar by Linda, who knows the bus driver, and we did jager shots and I don’t remember a great deal after that, except for trying (failing) to smuggle booze out into a taxi and finding what is now my Outdoor Drinking Mitten discarded on the pavement. When we got back I got on our bus, humped everyone (I’m told) and then went out to playfight with Andy – waking Annihilator in the process. Not clever.
Up the next morning at 6 for a ferry to Finland. Felt very unwell. Slept 11 hours in my cabin, only emerging to watch Swedish teenagers do karaoke and see the sun set. Scandinavian ferries are just as unsettling as metal gigs for seeing what looks like a hot girl from behind, only for them to turn around and not be. Only instead of them being long-haired men in tight jeans, like at metal gigs, on the ferries they are actually thirteen year old girls. Who are STACKED, by the way. And the legal age is 12 in Finland. I think the ferry crossing may have been some kind of divine exam.
We navigated little rocky archipelagos the whole way. Little sheds and lighthouses dotted them, and sometimes you’d see the odd island with a warm light flickering through the trees, where people had carved out a little secluded home for themselves.









(and yet this was the view from every cabin.)

We got on the bus and drove off from the little port, cases of duty-free booze in hand.



(The Finns. Manliest race alive. Who else finishes a hard day's work, lights the fireplace, sits down and cracks open a bear?)

At some point it became a good idea to cut our sleeves off and draw tattoos on ourselves in Sharpie. And that’s how we looked when we went out in

HELSINKI

Where we found another metal bar and drank the night itself.



(The KY building. A beacon in the dark. Come unto me, ye chafed, ye frea-kay)

At the gig the next day, over 600 people turned up. There’ve only been maybe two or three hundred people at each gig so far, sometimes as low a number as a hundred. I was very, very busy. So far I’ve been selling as much as any other band I’ve worked for, who all pull crowds of at least 800, if not 3000. Metal’s a really merchandise-orientated genre.
Now I’m on a ferry crossing over to Estonia. The sea’s drifting by outside, in a strong marine blue that brings to mind thick white rope and life preservers, and I imagine we’ll be getting off soon. 4 hours sleep. Oh dear.



Wat.



The Sworn Amongst boys, strewn across the Finnish ferry lobby at 10am



Jonny Barker, still strewn, long after it's ceased to be socially acceptable



Goodbye Finland



Hello Estonia!

More updates later.

Annihilator VI

14th October 2010

KÖLN CONTD.

Here’s some pictures I forgot to attach before.



Those Cologners love their gothrock.



Tourbus inside view - front.



Tourbus inside view - back.

After the show I picked up big armfuls of leftovers from the Annihilator dressing room and carried them onto the bus to console Rob and Jonny, for having met three hot bartenders who wanted to take them out partying only minutes before our bus had to leave. As they proceeded to sink booze like their stomachs were on fire, the rest of us sat at the back of the bus and talked a lot bollocks. Frank did, especially. Or Fronk, as we’ve taken to calling him when he drinks – as he is not at all the same person. He speaks to the Italians in what he considers to be a slow and European voice, when in actuality he sounds disabled. It’s funny to watch. We set up the mystery box (vaporiser pipe) and it was passed around. If you’re into smoking weed, a hit on the mystery box is akin to doing a bucket. For about ten seconds you think it’s had no effect at all, and then the whole world turns to warm cream and you giggle like there’s something genuinely wrong with you. It was fun to push it on the Italians, who were getting gradually more incoherent. Danilo told me, ‘Jason, you are a son of a bitch. I mean that in the best way possible’, as he slumped against the window and sank into his seat.
The Italians taught me a phrase in Italian to say when drinking in a group. ‘A ci bocca, pizza ambocca.’ You fall asleep, my cock in your mouth. I taught them the colourful Irish insult, ‘suck my shite into a point’, which they were glad of knowing.
The rest of the night is blurry. I was dared 5 euros to smell someone’s laundry bag, and then I spent it on chocolate milk at a petrol station.
True story.

BERLIN

This part should really be

BY THE SIDE OF A MOTORWAY 300 MILES FROM BERLIN

Because that’s how we spent most of our big Berlin day off.



It was 4pm before I even wanted to get out of my bunk and take a good look at what had happened. A burst trailer tyre. Eventually we were on our way again, only to be pulled over by the police for leaving the handbrake on the trailer. In a stroke of luck, the hideous reek of burning rubber masked the smell of weed on the bus and no further ill came about for the rest of the drive.
Some pictures of our bus day -



Alessandro noodling.



My face when the bus started moving again.

Upon arriving very late, we had dinner at Burger King and I went to bed. A genuinely terrible day.

THE NEXT DAY IN BERLIN

The next day nothing happened. I am in this day right now, typing this. Nothing happened. Nothing is happening. I had soup for lunch. Nothing fucking happened. Annihilator are playing, someone just looking intensely at everything I’m selling and then asked me if I sell mugs, and nothing is happening.

Roll on Hamburg.

Annihilator V

October 12th 2010

FRANKFURT

Another day of not leaving the venue at all. Salty soup for breakfast, beef and sloppy carrots for lunch, and six hours work for dinner. The days are really starting to gel together now. One good thing about tonight was that I got to see the gig clearly for the first time, which was pretty great. The support act’s guitarist, the aforementioned fingertipless Jonny, is phenomenal on the guitar, and Annihilator has this song ‘21’ that has this great, solid riff I really like. Admiron, the openers, sound a little like Slipknot, so appeal to the angry child in me that wants to headbang in his room and tear at his posters. It’s a pretty great tour, all things considered. Lyrically the whole tour is a mess; I’ve never liked metal lyrics at all. But I’ve been on much worse tours musically.
I may have been on worse tours in terms of music, but in terms of faux pas this one's taking the lead based on something that happened tonight. A blind girl led herself along the merch table by touch, looked past me with pure white eyes and asked for a large tour shirt. Naturally I picked out the bestseller and sold it to her, and she left.
Afterwards I realise I gave her this.

Shirt Design #3

I had been unsure about my place in the line for Hell, but now I realise I was holding one of those queue-jumper passes this whole time.

KÖLN

Or Cologne, if you’re not from here. The last time I was here I smelt pretty terrible, but this time I don’t smell so bad, so there’s less irony in being here. We walked around for half an hour, to give ourselves the impression we'd seen the city (quote of the day from the support act's merch guy, Corey - 'This place reminds me of Vienna for some reason. Not sure why though. Maybe because they're similar) and returned to the venue for the night.
Which is where I am now.

Here's some photos!



Stoner's petrol station banquet.



Some very handsome architecture in Eindhoven.



Monty Python's.



Really?



Sunset in Cologne.