'Something in the way she moves, affects me like no other mower.' - Something (it is a lawnmower) by The Beatle.

It's been about four weeks.

'My God...has it been that long? Martin! We've got to fly you into some of the past!'

That's how long it takes us to start living and lose all sense of 'band-time', only to regain the pace and begin again to watch the life drain out of us like dirty water in Norman Bates' bathtub.

There's a good excuse for our prolonged absence. The Northern hemisphere calls it 'Summer', and I hear that's exactly what it was. I wouldn't really know, as I've spent much of it inside, debating with my brain about whether it should debate with itself [we won!], and whistling along to The Bill theme tune. I've also eaten lots of vegetables because I hear they're food, now, and developed a cure for beard dandruff which involves covering your neck in anti-gravity hunting paint, submerging your head in a bucket of dead wasps, and blinking faster than a 1970s entertainer driving to buy a new computer. In my estimate the cure takes seven to ten years to take effect so here's hoping it works otherwise I'll have wasted the time I have spent on doing that to have the cure for it and stop it from being there when it is !have!

So, yes. You can see I've been busy and keeping on an even keel.

Trewin's been living on a farm, so it seems. He's had us over, once or twice, to ride the lawnmower [not rude] and paddle a little paddle boat around a great big god-damn lake. I tell you one thing, though: he never offered us a cup of tea. Not once. I'll never go there again; a situation in which I am doubtless the victor.

Jeb's been in his room, again, editing. Still.

I keep a little doll house of where everyone in the band is, so I can keep track and play with them and make them do things [not rude things!] when no-one else is around and when I'm just about to have a shower so I can properly picture what they're doing at all hours of the day without resorting to booting up the laptop and logging in to the 'safety-cam' network. The Jeb doll hasn't moved except for me to clean it up and wipe the tears of loneliness and fear from its face.

I threw the Trewin bit in the garden and I think a bird got it.

I take the Seryn bit in and out. Sometimes it's submerged in a glass of wine, surrounded by women's underwear and stuff, and sometimes it's in its room staring vacantly at the wall wondering why toenails, given sniff, do smell.

I sent the Ed bit around Europe and the UK in a sterilised envelope to simulate all of Ed's holidays that he's been on. I took the time to fumigate his part of the dolls house and plug in a Glade plug-in so that hopefully he'd forget about while he was out but ooh! a fresh surprise on his return.

There's some new music in the works, too, and we've had a couple of meetings and plans for going forward with a track or fifty and what we want to do and when we want to do it and, more importantly, why?

Why?

Well, for you, of course.

 

For you.

So that's our summer, post-tour.

We're off to Berlin on Thursday, which should be...you know. Nice.

We're looking forward to it a little bit.

Here's the gig.

If you're around (which let's face it, you probably are I mean it's only Berlin) then you should come.

Fun fun fun and back to work.

The evenings are getting dark again, too, which means I'm getting happier.

Enjoy the fruits of your labours, and the delights of your friends and family.

Unless you hate your job and other people, in which case just get by as best you can.

Watch a film, or something.

Bye.

Tim