An actual natural scenario.

I have a confession to make. I live a double-life. I am a double agent, trading secrets between the worlds of poverty and riches.

        My little dwarf of a bed-mate and I (and, I know, certain other members of the band) have regular dealings with her majesty’s Government concerning aspects of our personal welfare and our potential success. This is to the norm, and the presence of such a safety net and support network is not only welcomed and appreciated by us, but should be by all, for its myriad of societal benefits and the sense of solidarity for which it stands.

        Despite the undoubted best intentions (undoubted) of all involved, however, sometimes these systems will have cream-buns stuck in them somewhere – moistening the cogs and creaming up once creamless intricacies of previously perfect governmental processes. This particular cream, then, has been the subject of my morning so far, and has been for the memorable past. I am not, however, the party that dropped the bun.

        So, there is a stress. A direct, unnecessary and unexplained stress upon my very status as ‘person in a house’. Others have similar, politely unutterable problems.

       

        And so I take a step of desperation. A step that only the bravest yet most compromised agent would take. I maintain the cognitive dissonance of an imagined Reverend Charles Sheen, and draw from the completely imagined twin conflicting bank accounts of Jeremy Hunt, simultaneously. I make turncoat, if only in my head.

        Today, then, the other shoe in the bush on the other hand of Phoria is in central London, where we know several meetings of great importance to our future will take place. These are meetings that not only most bands, but most anyone-ers, would earnestly desire to be a part of not so much for any positive outcomes, but only to hear a yes or a no. Just to take part, as is the British way.

        Today, I and the rest of the band straddle both camps. Our bodies are weary, in all accounts empty, but our minds are flush with new ideas and avenues – new inlets of potential futures flowing all the time. Positive, moving forward – as much as we can, for now. We occupy both the bottom and the top; a coarse and inappropriate reflection of my favoured media.

        New material still coming. Promised soon.

        Little tastelessness.

        Tim

P.S.: Our next show.

(Stud)Hi-ho, (stud)hi-ho, it's off to work we go.

        So we’re building a new studio. ‘That’s good,’ you say ‘you need a new studio.’ Yes, we do. Thanks for understanding.

       

        Here’s a bad photo of it in progress:

There's no such thing as bad photos; just bad people.

        It doesn’t tell much, though I know Jeb was making a Changing Rooms style time-lapse film of the transformation of the once inhabited bedroom from a dirty, scuffed white to an all over shimmering, spectacular, incandescent…grey, which should soon surface. I, apparently, was the worst at painting the walls. No-one specified to me that ‘walls’ did not mean skirting board, carpet, and face. My artistic training consists mainly of drawing imaginary pictures of me going through an intense eight-week drawing class - none of which can be deciphered by the average huumun.

Trewin was very excited about the purple sofa-bed he managed to pick up for £30. ‘It’s a £1000 sofa-bed that I picked up for £30! Try it! Try it out! Mmmm. It’s awesome, right?’ It was awesome. I got paint on it.

So that’s where we’re going to continue work on the new EP - our new little studio set within the picturesque grounds of the Phoria househole. It’s brewing. It’s brewing nicely. There are songs on it.

And so far – no distractions whatsoever.

So that’s that. Life, it seems, is a river of pain with a jagged bed.

Shop here, then.

Tim.

       

Play along.

So I was asked this morning to organise a meeting between four of the five members of the band.

        Play this music while you read the rest:

        (Read it as me with a kind of gruff voice, waking up in my Spiderman bedsheets wearing a coat and hat and smoking a cigarillo. Just a normal day, in OTHER WORDS.)

        The phone called out like a lost child…lost on the streets of loser-ville. I’d lost her/it. I was lost. The sense of loss weighed on me like one of those fruit hats. Lost. Unfindable. This was a game of cat and sheriff, and I’d already lost. My favourite television show was Lost, but that’s over now. Misplaced.

        ‘Hello?’

        ‘Hello.’

        I was at a loss to place the voice. (I was blind.)

        ‘Who’s this?’

        The caller was Nancy Smithington – someone broad I once met down on the four corners of 4^th and 4^th. I was a perfect square, and she offered to look at me, dead, in the eye for a couple-a bucks. I didn’t take the deal. I saved her life that night. Since then she’d always called me, looking for a date. I sent fruit baskets.

        ‘Johnny, honey, you never cawwl me anymawer.’

        That bit is to give you a clue as to how stereotypical her accent is/was/she dies at the end of this story. Oh shit now I’ve given it away. Well, as they say, people always die.

        She read me a list of names. She told me what it was fawer.

        ‘Jawnny, baby, we need these guys. We got shit to do, honey. Get in touch wit ‘em. Call me back. I have diarrhea so I can’t dial the telephone.’

        Damn. Three names and a whole lot o’ nuthin.

        ‘Oh, and baby…’ she said, ‘come round soon. I miss ya.’

        I threw the phone out of the window. I wouldn’t be needing that again, unless someone needed to get hold of me, or I them.

        I swam down the rotten stairs of the building to retrieve the telephone. ‘If I’m going to call these people to get them together for a meeting,’ I said to myself, which brings into question the ontology of the ‘words’ I was using, ‘I’m going to need the telephone so that I can talk to them on that.’

        I called the telephone company to check that the phone was still working. They said they couldn’t tell, but that they’d send a guy round. I told them not to bother – Johnny Macintosh will figure these things out if it takes him all month.

        I called the first guy on the list. No reply. Typical. I called the second. I think he answered, but it sounded like he was just pumping air rhythmically through his lips. A secret code, eh? Nobody gets Johnny Macintosh like that. I slammed the handset against the table as hard as I could, and put it to my ear. He was talking, now. A little rough stuff from me never hurt anybody.

        ‘Little man in the phone?’ I said.

        ‘Hey Tim.’ It was Ed. I should have known.

        ‘Johnny Macintosh.’ I said.

        ‘…sigh. What do you want, Tim?’ Still talking in code. It was difficult to crack his nuts.

        ‘A meeting, little man. A meeting. Today. Skype.’

        ‘I’ll be there.’

        Dominoes. Life is dominoes. You knock one over, but if you set the dominoes up properly i.e. glue each one to the table so that it can’t go anywhere, then you’ve got to remove each one by hand, individually. It’s the only way to keep things tidy in this work-one-day world, and I was a tidy little man.

        ‘Seryn.’ I gargled.

        ‘Hey Tim.’

        I spat, and rinsed.

        ‘Seryn, we got a meeting. Nancy wants us.’

        I heard the sound of gunfire.

        ‘I’m a little tied up here, dude. What time?’

        ‘One-ish? Two?’

        ‘That gives me something to live for.’

       

        The sound of death filled my ear. The screams, the gunshots, the burst of explosions. ‘Secure the bunker!’ ‘Get the bastard!’ ‘You’ll never get your secrets back, Dr. Inchera!’ ‘Burden?! I thought you were…’ ‘…dead? Heh…dream on, Doctor…IN HELL! DREAM ON IN HELL YOU BASTARD!’ Bang bang bang boom. 'Oh Seryn, my hero!' 'That's right, Dad.'

        I sent Jeb a telegram. He replied and said it was fine he was just making some beans alongside toast.

        So, my job done, I had breakfast. Eggs over-easy, and a difficult cup of coffee. I squeezed myself in between the two panes of glass in my double glazed window, and wondered how I got into this shape. One woman, a list of names...

One name was missing, I knew that. He’s on the upper-South side, trying to conceive of opposites to left. Maybe he’s got the right idea.

        After all, as Nancy said: We got shit to do, honey.

Bloodworks US iTunes

Bloodworks UK iTunes

Phoria Store

Sept 5th: SoundScreen event at Brighton Dome Corn Exchange, full audio-visual show w/orchestral ensemble.

P.S. Nancy dies of skydiving poisoning.

       

       

       

Three little gigs.

What a couple of days/weeks this has been.

I’m typing this on a half melted, half absent set of keys on my hardy little laptop. My lady and I (absent) had a relatively minor fire in our flat two days ago. Two days ago while the band were stranded just off the A2 in London, our van Binky having broken down about 20 mins from the The Old Blue Last where we were scheduled to play for some very interesting people. Half of the keys on my keyboard are gone, so in an act of poverty driven defiance I’m typing directly onto the little rubber buttons that usually rest unseen behind the wall of helpful Roman characters. I don’t recommend this technique. I will now call it ‘Xtreme touch typing’.

As the fire spread, licking the Terminator and Metal Gear Solid posters and other ephemera that line the wall of ‘Tim’s corner’, my heroic little bundle of sense exhibited the attitude that got everyone through the last few days – sort the guitars first, and everything else can be sorted later. I smiled with relief (after asking after her wellbeing, of course. Of course. Ahem.) as she recounted her tale of leaping over the bed like a kangaroo to save my precious Rihanna and Betty (a relic-ed US Stratocaster and baby blue telecaster, respectively) from Satan’s faulty-hairdryer-fuelled clutches. They are safe and warm [sic], and thanks to my constant drilling of my girlfriend [sic] in the most dangerous and irresponsible ways of tackling large fires on your own, my precious collections of dangerously graphic ‘art’ films and hate letters to Michael Gove remain unscathed. Please show your love to her under the codename ‘Fire-officer Grimsby’, should you so wish.

Meanwhile, as she was pansying around with that shit, Phoria had three gigs in three days, four days after our return from eleven days on the road through Europe. That’s a total of three hundred million days.

Thanks to all who came to all. Your support is so incredible and we really appreciate it. It’s so nice to do what you do through all the stresses and worries and waiting three hours for the recovery services and flagging down amazing strangers in vans who take you to the venue in exchange for a modest fee and people you met in Croatia who come to the gig and take you in and buy you beers because you have nowhere else to stay, and at the end of it all see a new bunch of smiling strangers who so kindly express their enjoyment of what you’ve just smashed out through a suffocating sweat onstage. The promoters, also, showed a great deal of patience in dealing with us and our Laurel and Hardy ways.

So it has to be said that the day is done for me. All the band have earned a day of rest. Ed’s going on holiday, so the focus for now is on the new EP, which is taking shape for release this year. That’s right. Bloodworks was our nemesis for a while. A slow, cold war. This one’s going to be slick and easy. The songs have been brewing for a long time anyway – now all we have to do is pour the tea (tea being a metaphor for the songs) and wait for you to spill it all over yourselves in bed because your partner didn’t realise you had a hot drink in your hand and moved around really violently to improve their view of Ainsley Harriot’s Go-kart Meringue Vol. VII.

So yes, a new EP. Gigs. More stories from Croatia, once I’ve sorted a new keyboard.

I’m going to watch Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and eat chicken nuggets.

For now, have fun, and remember: sort the guitars first, and all else shall follow.

Tim

P.S. Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.

Diary here.

On encouragement from others, I kept a diary of our journey through Europe. 

There’s an awful lot in there, as the trip took us up and down, through highs and lows, through frowns that broke our teeth and cheers that changed the direction of oncoming ships.

For now, I have here decided only to hint at portions of it. Still, that gives you all another reason to look forward to my eventual demise. The fully published diary will no doubt be offered as a free gift on the front of the Sunday Sport (by that time a well respected literary journal) on the day of my death, or at least mentioned in my obituary as some kind of lost treasure - the whereabouts of which will then be left to rumour and perhaps the subject of a new Indiana Jones adventure. (Hint: I’m going to protect the diary with a five headed AI double-cyborg Wolf-man, which can only be defeated by being buggered. That ought to teach Harrison Ford a lesson.)

It’s difficult to even try and fit those ten days (is that all they were?) into any self-contained…thing. There’s just so much there: not being listed here. I won’t do that. Instead I’ll take them as they come. Like a sexual health nurse.

Before that: the news. Three gigs this week: Tuesday, St. Wednesday, Thursday. Prince Albert, Old Blue Last, The Hope. Brighton, London, Brighton. Fun, Fun, Fun. We’re well up for it.

All relevant info, and the new shop, is all on www.phoriamusic.com, in case you weren’t aware. You are now, so there’s no excuse not to bookmark it and visit it every day, like a postman.

Day 2

Tuesday 6/7/13

Location: A small rest area beside the German Autobahn.

8:07 am

We have woken up to the sound of grasshoppers trying to drown out the rumble of the road. We stopped last night somewhere South of Frankfurt, the night-time’s driving becoming nothing more than a rolling screen, like a repetitious background from an old Scooby-Doo cartoon. I drove for about four hours – successfully resisting the right-hand urge to pull off into oncoming traffic…

Jeb and Rory have set-up camp outside. Jeb approached the van last night with a look of distilled fear in his eyes. A strange man sat watching he and Rory pitch their tents; one hand holding a cigarette, and Jeb insisting: ‘I know what his other hand was doing.’

8:36 am

It cannot be uncommon for people to wonder if certain public conveniences are more or less sanitary than having a member of the public defecate directly onto your face.

22:16 pm

Achingly tired. This may not make much sense. We’re in the van, in a campsite beside Lake Bled in Slovenia, drinking beer bought from the most perfectly situated branch of LIDL in the world. [photos will surface].

Slovenia so far has been…[the word ‘beautiful’ has been removed here] Mountains border your view at every turn. They vary from lush and green to sheer rock cliff faces, cold and cracked and aged. We drove through Austria to get here. This is so difficult to describe – partly because of fatigue.

I watched the landscape fold itself up like paper. The mountains, near and far, traverse each other as you pass them. The awe at each turn is the sense of creation on an industrial scale. The bridges rest on the legs of giants. Earth, above and below, shows off like an attention seeking child: petulant and resourceful. Grand, but nothing more than crude, quarried bumps. I felt as though I had been thrown into nature’s bosom.

We held our breath for 2km through a tunnel that burrowed underneath one of the mountains, gasping only briefly in a five second flash of light - as we returned to the vacuous caverns, lit through slits in the omnipresent green of the fir trees - to scream ‘WOAH!’ and then plunge back into a tube of sensory deprivation.

It was grand, and so inhuman. I do not know how to take it all in.

I feel like a bag with a hole in the bottom.

And that’s your lot for now.

Have a great day, whichever mountains you travel through in a van.

Tim

Just a quick meaningless gag.

You are driving a respectable, worn around the edge little minivan across the German Autobahn, 9pm. Daylight begins to fade, but is not yet relieved of its post. A friend arrives in front of you; not swerving, not lurching, but gliding perfectly along, buzzing about you like a house-fly.

It tells you to follow it, winking blue lights in your eyes. It arcs off the road like a pure white skimmed pebble.

You stop beside the relentless flow of sparkling little cars, calming the growl of the fat old engine you’ve been pumping all this time.

‘Hallo.’

‘Hallo.’

‘Passports?’

A smile, a check, and a passport, and you are asked to step out of the vehicle. These are two young, plastic men dressed in blue. Their tool belts are spiked and encircle them like little helpers holding hands. One of the helpers you nickname ‘Mr. Gun.’

You stand between the two plastic men, feet together, arms out to your side, face to the sky with eyes closed, as requested.

‘Left!’

You tentatively touch your left index finger to your nose.

‘Right!’

Your right index.

‘Left!’

Here we are again.

‘Left!’

You’re not getting caught out by that.

An uncomfortable assault and a torch is probed into your eyes. Other empty pools of black approach you with the inspection of a judge, not doctor.

They insist on water.

‘But I am dry.’ You say. ‘I cannot make it rain, no matter how I dance.’

‘That is OK’ says one of the plastic men, ‘we will wait.’

You try once. They say they need only a drop or two. In the desert, despite the heat, despite the dry, you force, prying from the scale of an imagined large mirage, a single, fearful teardrop.

You offer it to them like a wretch, caught up in the afterglow fervour after a witnessed sacrifice. The rich men have slaughtered their goats, the blood has been spilled and the temple is empty. Now here you are, a syphilitic rat in your hands, bargaining with the Gods.

‘No. We need more.’

In your transport are your friends. They laugh. They give you spirit; instruction. ‘Just relax.’ They say. You can relax, but one cannot go swimming if one cannot find the sea. I take a glug from awkward crumpling bottles. The plastic men, despite their frowns at your failure to provide, are impressed by your ability to drink very large quantities of water in a very short period of time in order to provide a urine sample in a roadside test for two fully armed German police officers, who have already asked you ‘When is the last time you took x. Have you had any y.’, truthfully answered by you, you little stereotype, you. But you are no killer. You may be another foolish statistic, but not of that type.

Now, the jig. Minutes squeeze themselves in between one another. Another seat can be made in the theatre for those little things to catch a glimpse. ‘Excuse me,’ they say ‘We know the more of us we are, the more we have to wait, but still: this, we all must see.’ You feel their stacked gaze. Their glittering eyes still sparkle in the furthest distance: twinkling headlights.

Jig, jig, jig.

A raindance.

You drink more water.

There is more silence.

More time.

‘OK’, you say.

Again the bush, beside a truck, watched over by an overly airbrushed photograph, plucked from a magazine. You will it, hard. You will for rain so hard you almost cause thunder, and dark clouds. Eventually, it spits. It falters. Clouds appear, and you pack the glass with a thick punch. You are happy to meet your accusers eyes, to place into their hands a warm and aromatic little statement of your innocence.

‘Don’t drink it all at once.’ You say. They smile, and run back to their little bug, scrambling in the back seat.

Your friends blow air with the other judge. Talking about Reggae? They think they know us. They think they have our number. They think they have your number, and know that it is up. They can already see your luscious locks [sic] streaming behind them through a rear window. Perhaps they will eat you for lunch, or wax their tacky badges with your fat.

You watch, now. Your overseer sprinkles the ashes of your anxiety over a pretty bingo board.

‘This line is for alcohol,’ he informs you. ‘this one for THC Marijuana, this one for amphetamines, this one for opiates…this one is the clear line. If you get this, you are OK.’

The strip is aligned vertically, the C line, your target, at the top. You feel weak as he tests your strength.

You wait.

Everybody waits.

You know what will happen, but still there is a part of you that wonders from the facts – the part that continues to look down known empty roads. This is the part that checks the tickets twice, then three times, in case those first two touches were mere perceptive assaults of the imagination; water displaced by an invisible finger.

This part thinks that you will fail. This is it, now. You are banged up like a chicken. Big Mary, grasshopper to your wallflower, watches you sleep. An unknown judgement from an unknown tongue. They have the proof that you’ve been spiking poppies, sinking ships, burning down greenhouses and drowning your inner-child, all before tackling the rapids. ‘It’s a full house,’ you imagine them saying, ‘you are the most fucked up person we’ve ever had, and we’re going to have to glue all of your skin together to restrain you, then peel it off with a machine when we drag you to the…’

Oh no, hang on. No - it’s negative. You’re clear. Again, you knew you were.

Plastic taps and shuffles, quickly. Brows furrow and faces fall. The feet do not encroach now, and the bobbling heads do not tower above yours. The legs lean at an angle, and a casually outstretched hand offers you a package.

‘Your passports and license.’

‘Thanks.’ You say. They do not return it, but instead about face and slide, simultaneously, back into their floating little nipper.

--

Somewhere, deep in the Austrian mountains through which you have just driven, you imagine there is a laboratory, thick and gleaming with steel and chrome. The vaults in which the white-coats work stretch up for hundreds of metres, closed off from heaven.

‘Sir!’

The assistant runs across the sterile floor to the bald, bespectacled man. Footsteps echo above and around like displaced dust, his jacket flows out behind him; cold, resistant air.

‘Sir!’

A red biro teeters from end to tip and rattles as it hits the floor. The assistant, breathing deeply, stops still. The bald man turns, his wet, beady eyes fixed on the boy.

‘What is it, Alexander? Why must you consistently distract me from my work?’

‘Sir,’ the assistant splutters through rushing gusts of breath ‘they’ve found a match. The General says the project is to continue immediately.’

The bald man’s shoulders relax, a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. His eyes turn wetter still. A single tear. He tries to hold it in, but cannot.

‘…after all these years.’

The bald man turns from his assistant, and opens a small control panel. There’s a boop beep beep, and soon a loud hiss of steam. Upon one wall, the clouds from giant pneumatic pistons condensate in mid air, some rising up to coat the inside of the mountain, the strength of steel still giving way to rock and tightly packed earth as it nears the top. A little water drips down the unfathomable distance, and the bald man raises his face to it, refreshed and cleansed by the cool drops.

A brushed, silver panel struggles to shift its weight. The laboratory shudders. Some of the little bodies run and hide, but the bald man stays, the thunder under his feet rising up through his body to stimulate his powerful brain. Perhaps twenty seconds, and the sound of riot stops. The echoes can be heard from here, spreading out like ripples on water. Above and outside of the mountain, birds burst into flight.

A squeak of shoes of wet floor, and a tap and a splash of well cobbled soles. A hard faced woman in a black suit steps across the laboratory to the bald man, not a glance for his assistant.

‘Here it is, Professor.’ She says.

A dirty liquid in a little plastic cup.

‘Is this all they could manage?’ the bald man says.

The steam clears, and the three little people stand before a wall, not of bricks, but of bodies. Perfectly suspended - each in his own amber - the long haired, preciously pale little urchins line up in rows and columns. A scanner hovers, flown on little blades, and begins to check the status of the artefacts. The information flows downstream. The lights rush to attention. The numbers on the screen rise and rise. The signal is green. The woman in black leaves the room without looking back. The bald man and his assistant must crane their necks to take in the wealth of flesh they now have to play with. The picture stretches out to infinity.

‘I have never…’ gasps Alexander.

‘I have.’ Says the bald man with a smile.

Behind the two agog, resting against against one wall of the laboratory, there lies a rusty bass guitar.

‘Go and get an amplifier, Alexander,’ the bald man says, ‘The mountains shall shake tonight.’

Soundwave festival is taking place on the Southern coast of...

...Croatia.

This has been the theme for the past...eight or nine days. It's all any of us can think about, it's all any of us are acting upon, and, at the expense of our bellies, it's the only thing that's making those small numbers shrink even further into oblivion. I see the descent and subsequent rise of those pretty little figures marked 'overdraft' as the final death throes of reason and accountability. 'F*ck it', we say. We're still young, and we're going to drive across Europe to play music at a massive party festival.

Lake Bled in Slovenia; one of our scheduled stops. Not pictured: The relentless march 

of industrial and economic progress.

The road holds its own promise. Ed, myself, and Trewin will be sharing the driving equally between us. Trewin insisted yesterday - 'For the duration of the trip, we become 'Yes Men'. We take everyone up on any offer of accommodation, parties, whatever.'
I'm certainly up for an adventure (see: not being held for ransom).

So, there it is. All is booked, and the only thing that's been packed so far is my Speedo.

Oh yes, music: the art of the musician. Well, we got together for the first time in a long time yesterday, Trewin's voice having finally healed. That's right, you heard it here first (unless you're in the band, a circumstance of which there is a 5/7,079,000,000 chance). We weren't great to start off with - rusty hinges and all. Towards the end we got it, and tonight we'll be down there again, smashing away and big lumps of songs until we remember how to play them, and how to break them into a million pieces in front of thousands of people.

Talking of breaking things; millions of people, the CDs arrived, finally:

Not pictured: Mountains of cash; Alf Ramsey chainsaw juggling.

We've also got t-shirts. That's right, pledgers - after promises and promises and apologies and 'a couple of days' turning into a couple of weeks, we feel we managed to break your spirits just enough to eventually send some stuff out to you. You'll see them in a couple of days, weeks, months, etc. (Seriously: they're going out as I type.) (Sorry again for all the delays.)

Both products will soon be available for purchase.

So, that's it. What with hay-fever taking my spirit from me and Croatia occupying my mind, that's all I can be bothered to write. I feel it adequately informs you how we are, what we're doing, etc. While also adding another aspect of personality to the public perception of Phoria. Likeable? Perhaps not, but (supposedly) consumable content with which the audience is able to engage, which must, like our home-spun cheese, be regularly churned.

It's another hot, sunny day, and it's FRIDAY! 

Have an ice cream and stare at the sun.

Tim.

PS. We have a spare ticket for accommodation and festival entry which we're looking to sell. If you're interested, email us at phoriamusic(at)hotmail.com

PPS. That (at) is so that spambots that scour these blogs can't steal our address and send us loads of penis enhancement pills. We've got plenty of those already. So put an @ there, not (at). You probably knew this already, but I'd hate for you not to come to Croatia with us just because of one little mistake. You in particular. Yes, you. I am actually referring to you as an individual. This is not a trick. CROOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAATTTTIIIIAAA

 

If music be the food of staring pointlessly out of the window, then who will tip the waiter? (You.)

There's not much to tell, all told. This has become a bit of a recurring theme.

Trewin, I assume, is working on new material. He's all holed-up, as it were, in a little flat overlooking Brighton beach with just a computer and two huge monitors to keep him in healthy company.

Ed, I assume, is out and about; teaching, going for bracing walks, singing and/or whistling as he trundles down the road to the bakery for a fresh loaf and perhaps a glazed doughnut - half for now, half for later. Skip-a-dee-doo.

Jeb, I know, is at Glastonbury. The line-up looks rubbish. I hope he's having an awful time. He's definitely having an awful time.

Seryn, I assume, has been queuing for the merry-go-round for about six hours now, not realising that he is in fact stood behind a plastic man meant to entice holidaymakers into Brighton Fishing Museum and so never getting the rush of wind in his hair that he so dearly craves. The attraction attendee also, going out of business, wishes only for a friend, and kills himself on a polymer unicorn's spike as the Wurlitzer plays on, and on.

Me, I assume, is/am staring our of our first floor window at a brick wall belonging half to next door, coffee in hand, listening to

 

for the first time.

This is time that is down, or 'down-space', as I believe it's referred to in popular culture. (I don't look at any popular culture except the interactive show 'Unrestrained Reverend Warfare', which is on a channel only I can access, though is made by a group of people popular within their own peer group (battery licking nuns), which I assume qualifies it as 'popular culture'.)

So now it is Saturday, and the sun is struggling to come through the dusty clouds.

I hope you have a lovely day, however isolated, however slow.

Tim.

Like Hesse without the beads.

The five young men were hurled from the city gates, their flimsy shoes skipping against hard dust..

'We'll resist you!' said the gatekeeper, as he threw the smallest one to the ground.
'We'll resist you!' said the tallest one, lamely.
'That doesn't make any sense.'
'You don't make any sense.'
'Hem. Hem Hem.'

And with that, the large wooden gate of the walled city was closed; the twin living thickets booming against one another like a warning shot.

The five looked at one another.
'What are we doing here?' asked Jeb
'Tim's being clever.' said Ed, 'he can't find it in himself to outright describe how the band is going at the moment, so he's writing a kind of story to explain what's going on. He's being silly and slowly disappearing, rather than just doing something that he won't enjoy and just boring everyone.'
'Yeah.' said Seryn.

The five stumbled to their feet.
'Thanks for noticing.' said Tim, 'I hate when I have to explain everything.'
'I hate you.' said Jeb.

Ed approached the walls of the city, probing the crooked stone with his fingers.
'What does this represent, then?' he asked.

'That's me!' beamed Seryn, 'Tim's saying that I'm a massive wall. Right, Tim?'
'I'm afraid not,' Tim replied, 'the wall is a barrier. Inside that wall is worldwide success, stardom, and all the Shreddies you can eat.'
'Coco Shreddies?'
'All the Shreddies of the rainbow.'
Trewin choked on the dusty atmosphere.
'But we're out here?'
'Yes, I know - that's the point. We're out here. It's tricky right now, trying to sort Europe dates and stuff, trying to get UK dates - not being able to actually gig at the moment doesn't help when you're trying to book shows. We're trying to get new stuff recorded, we're trying to sort out our merch, and we keep coming up against obstacles! It's not anyone's fault, but we can't pretend we enjoy being thrown out of metaphorical doors by big burly geezers, can we?'
The five nodded, solemnly.
'He looked like Justin Beiber.' said Jeb.

The five took time to look about them - to see that without the walls of success surrounding them they were still free to venture wherever they wished. They stayed put, mainly. Sat around, jamming. There was no life outside the city walls. It was filled with office jobs and standing on street corners holding signs advertising hot dogs this way.

'I need a glass of water.' said Trewin.

'Seek Merlot.' said a great thundering voice from above. The five retook their balance, staring at the sky; shocked.
'Pardon?' screamed Ed.
'I have booked you an appointment with the great Merlot this Wednesday. You should go - he'll sort it right out. Then you can get on with your lives and hopefully get in the walled city of success through the gates you were just kicked out of, which is what put you into the situation you're now in, if you weren't aware.'

'Yeah.' said Seryn, 'Basic causality!' before becoming the same character he was at the start of the story.

And so, under keen instruction, our intrepid idiots set off in search of the great Merlot.

...and who knows where the road will take them? 

To the Doctor's. It'll take them to some specialist Doctor or other. And to a band meeting today, where we're gonna get everything planned and sorted and get this show back on the hot-damn road for real. One subject to be discussed: timetabling of new EP.



Next week: A biography of Prince written by describing a BBC period drama reflected off a midwife's eyeball.

I'm getting marred in the morning.

I'm not quite sure where I can start, what I can and cannot say, who I can and cannot implicate, and how on earth I'm going to make this record of a simple chain of events at all readable given my current state of mind.

On Friday evening we left Brighton for Salisbury. Salisbury being nothing more than a stopping off point for the next day's event: a very secret w*dding at a very s*cret location. Jeb had to be there first thing in the morning, acting as resident film-maker. I'm looking forward to the 360 degree epic that comes out of that computer in six months - get to work, Jeb. Again.

Friday, then, was filled with generous parental supervision, casual chats, a grandmother (not Ed) and not enough sleep.

Saturday morning; we hear that Jeb (having been on a different schedule to the rest of us) successfully screwed up his mission of 'waking up on time' and/or 'picking a tie'. We hear this from Ed as he bounds into the back of the van (shortly before finding the door and getting in), looking annoyingly fresh-faced and 'awake'. I am slumped in the corner at this point, instant coffee scouring the inside of my arteries, and a townified dread of spending the next 24-hours in a shit capped field forcing my features down towards the glorious, life affirming tarmac that streams past beneath us.

'Where are we going?'
'...erm.'

Somehow Ed had memorised a set of directions through unknown territory, in a part of the world, beautiful as it may be, where green fields are all. Turn left at the green field, and there should be a green field on your right. Go past the green field until you get to a green field... Where are my industrial estates and gastrocombustible drive-thrus? Where are my screeching Vauxhall Corsas and blackened brick walls that haven't been touched since 1994? No, this is not home. Here there is sunshine, clear blue skies, and grass everywhere. Don't even get me started on the weird patchy brown things in the fields. They look like they have eyes. And legs. Get me a billboard, some over-priced coffee and some gobby knob to bump into, for I cannot cope out here in the wilderness...

Eventually, with Trewin expertly working the steering wheel of the van I had adorned with a rip-roaringly clever and hilarious swear-word (those masking-tape calligraphy classes clearly weren't a complete waste of money) we pulled in to some indistinguishable field or other and strolled, in jeans, t-shirts, and whatever, into the middle of a w*dding that had to be kept secret. Imagine what that w*dding is like. Yeah. We turned up. Strutting in like a more cocksure tribute to Quinlanck Tarentino.

We were all set-up by 3pm. We were scheduled to play at 8. As we weren't guests, we spent our time in the van. We went to Winchester, and had a picnic in the Tesco's car park. We went into the nearby village, and bought some beers once we realised we were bored of sitting in the van without beers. We sat, we laughed at Ed cleaning an innocent but unfortunately located stain off his trousers, and we realised that if you were going to put an 'Elmon' away, you'd put it in an 'Elmon Cupboard'. We hadn't really started drinking at this point, but fatigue can lead to the worst creative and spiritual decisions of all time.

It is partly to blame for the aimless nature of this account.

So: we played. We played well. The kids liked us. We're not your typical wedding band, but then this wasn't quite a typical wedding. Someone flew their chopper in, so to speak, and I was told there were papa-papa-paparazzi knocking about at the ceremony. Jeb apparently had to muscle in to get the essential shots. You go, Jeb. Later, when people started to leave, we felt safe to enter the wedding area itself and start a party. I don't really recall an awful lot of what happened next, as I accidentally...well, you can guess. I recall winding someone in a suit up to the point of red-facedness, I recall trying to play the blues at 2am with frankly uncontrollable fingers, I remember Seryn and I hijacking the disco, lying in the middle of the dancefloor with Radiohead blasting out and over us. That may have been the highlight, for me.

Morning, then, and it seems to me that Trewin has decided to drive the van around in circles and start altering reality so each individual object has a distinct and moving double of itself around three centimetres to its left. Two days of 'sleeping' on floors or chairs, and I am battered, bruised, and, frankly, still battered. Oh no, not the rumbling diesel engine. Oh no, not harsh sunlight through the new windows, straight into my eyes, hot dusty air prickling my airways...

A stop off at some motorway 'nutri-hut express' or whatever they want to call themselves, and I order some of the worst food I've ever had in my life. It was just a bread starter - the Warm Bread Trio (which sounds like a South-West jazz band made up of men with white beards and wet breath) - so I didn't expect much, but it was still massively disappointing. The 'Olive oil with balsamic vinegar' looked like something that had oozed from a wound, and the bread was simultaneously soggy yet stale. Boo. Still, my bandmates took pity on me, rather than see fit to wind me up, which was nice.

So, back in the van. I slept. Good lord did I sleep. Then I came home, and slept some more.

So now here I am, writing this almost out of a sense of obligation given an eventful weekend. I'm free from all substances but the essential caffeine, which means the animated thing I live with is going to have to put up with a puffy faced, grumpy old man for however long it takes my brain to get its act into gear and realise that nicotine, alcohol, and whatever else are not native members of its community.

Never mind marriage; that's love.

Tim

Perhaps I shouldn't sneak into bars to swill the remnants of unattended glasses.

How did I pick this up?

Trewin succumbs to el voco destructo for several weeks. Result: cancelled gigs aplenty, absence from practices, a physically more calming and sedate existence - despite the new intellectual and logistical challenges faced by a band without a singer.

Then we start gigging again, albeit with a precautionary reduced set and only songs that are gentle on Trewin's pipes.

So, as soon as we start having to spend hours on end in the back of the van, waiting around, and then (urgh, the absolute worst bit) getting onstage to play our music to hordes of screaming, adoring fans and obsessives - at this point I myself get struck down, yet again, with the dreaded lurgy. I'm old enough to know that complaining over and over about 'habing a kowd' is bad and perhaps betrays something of a lack of character, but I'm also old enough to know that I'm just about young enough to get away with it for another six months. Perhaps. I don't know. The main thing is that the more I complain, the more my girlfriend brings me big steaming glasses of green tea with a sympathetic smile on her face. More of that, please. And more bowls of Cookelyko Poppins with milk MAKE THE MILK ALL CHOCOLATEY

So, what I'm most looking forward to today is heading up to old Lonny-loo-loo (in the back of the van. It'll be too hot, I know it) to play Crack in the Road #002. Here's an interview that came out today. Should be a good concertium, provided I don't leak snot all over the audience while playing the end of Posture. Maybe I can pass it off as one of those Ibiza-style foam parties. Yeah.

See you there?

Tim