taking fire

I’m going to to give an update on what I’ve been up to over the past month. I’ve been pretty quiet on this page and know it.

Sun 1st August – Sun 8th August:

Natalie and I flew out of Edinburgh early in the morning and arrived in Barcelona just in time for the midday heat.

Turns out it wasn’t as intense as I thought it might be (still 30 degrees plus) so I was a happy boy. We met her friends Marion and Fabrice and we drank a nice cool cerveza in the shade before they took us back to the sweaty little flat we’d be sharing with them for a couple of nights.

Our first day was a pretty intense tourist experience, the four of us managing to take in the majority of the highlights of the city. The Sagrada Familia completely blew me away, it’s unlike anything I have ever seen before. My jaw literally dropped at first sight of the still-unfinished temple as I walked out of the pressure cooker, i.e. Barcelona’s underground. The statue of the Roman Soldier mercilessly killing babies (representing Herod’s killing of the first born) was a particular highlight. Gaudi’s design is pretty mind-blowing although he should have looked out for that train, silly old fool.

From there we continued with our adventure ending up at Park Guell (another Gaudi attraction), fucking miles up in the hills. Strenuous exercise combined with blistering heat is not a good combination. By this point Fabrice’s handkerchief for dabbing sweat was a drenched rag. The park was beautiful and contains a fantastic panoramic view of the city which made Natalie and I very dizzy. A similar feeling to looking up at that god-awful TV tower in Berlin…

Our second day there was a more relaxed affair with touristy excursions dropped in favour of more cerveza and even more Tapas. I realised that an acoustic guitar might be a handy addition on the trip so found a nice little guitar shop complete with a nice Fender which I purchased for a about 150 quid. Nice.

Sadly we left Barcelona on the Tuesday to make our way to Banyuls-Sur-Mer, the French town where we’d spend the rest of the week. Upon arrival we headed straight for the pub by the beach where we dumped our bags and had a beer. Natalie was meeting all her friends from back home here and we were to be staying in a house owned by her friend Marine’s grandmother. They all made their way up from the beach and greeted us. There must have been about 10 of them there, Natalie’s friends and their boyfriends and a couple of others. Being the only non-French speaker in the group didn’t really bother me at that point because I had a nice seat and a beer. It was when we returned to the house that it really sank in and I felt complete and utter terror…

After struggling through lunch with the group Natalie and I walked to the beach. I was completely shell-shocked and all I could think about was, “It’s only Tuesday, I’m here till Saturday, everyone can speak English but I can’t expect the group to speak English just for me, etc. etc…” I was pretty amazed at how vacant I felt during this time and had absolutely nothing to say on the subject. I was literally sitting in a stunned silence.

And in my head on repeat I had How To Disappear Completely by Radiohead… you can imagine how I felt.

Anyway, after that initial struggle things got better. Everyone was very nice and good times were had by all even though a lot of the time I was on ‘off’ mode while we sat in the pub/restaurant/house. It did provide me with a lot of thinking time as it’s very easy to drift off when you don’t understand the language people are talking in.

I ended up adopting the ‘one on one’ approach when talking to people. This worked very well and I actually managed to earn the seal of approval from everyone. Not bad for a pasty faced skinny junkie freak who drank more than his fair share of wine and beer and did his country proud.

By Saturday I had managed to turn slightly pink and it was time to head back to Barcelona. We all said our goodbyes and Natalie and I boarded the train alone and found ourselves in that fantastic city once again. I insisted we stay in a hotel as I wanted to sleep somewhere that actually had air conditioning, an essential requirement in such heat. We found a nice hotel on La Rambla where we spent the last night of our trip. Being by ourselves in Barcelona was fantastic as it had been a weird/stressful week for the Stu. The sheer energy of the city had me spellbound and I could have stayed a lot longer.

Alas, we rose early on the Sunday and flew home to Edinburgh. I ended up going out to see The Datsuns at night with the rest of my band and a good night was had by all. Seeing it was my birthday the next day I convinced myself to stay out till after midnight so we could all celebrate. This was achieved easily and I stumbled home sometime after 2am after spending far too long in Teviot.

Monday 9th August:

My birthday. I spent the day at home nursing a hangover while watching it piss down with rain outside.

Tuesday 10th August:

Back to work.

Tuesday 17th August – Thursday 19th August:

Finish work at 4pm, head to Waverley and jump on the 5pm train to London armed with the latest copy of Empire and a few beers. Overhear some truly awful American tourist chat before donning the headphones and listening to some loud music to drown out the pish patter. Four and a half hours later I arrive in London and excitedly jump in a taxi to meet Keiron, Kerry and some others somewhere in Angel.

I arrive at the pub and realise that I have just narrowly missed having a couple of pints with The Kills. Quite annoying as I was looking forward to meeting them. I manage to sink one beer before it’s last orders (fucking London) and we valiantly try to find somewhere with a late licence. All attempts fail so we end up going to a kebab shop called Marathon which, conveniently enough, sells lots of beer which you can drink through the back. I manage to have some interesting conversations with the drunken locals and we decide to call it a day sometime around 1am. We all head back to Helen’s house and I crash on the couch and actually manage to have a pretty decent sleep.

We all get up around 11-ish the next day and have a lovely cooked breakfast while watching MTV2 and slagging off almost every band on it – apart from Goldie Lookin Chain who have us in stitches. Keiron, Kerry and I make our way into London and found a decent pub near Covent Garden with nice tables outside. The next few hours were spent sipping beer in the sun whilst being annoyed by wasps. I end up losing the plot and killing one of the little fuckers with the only weapon I had to hand, my Sony Ericcson T68i. It’s a good phone but it’s an even better Wasp Destroyer. The locals are impressed by my casual brutality and I accepted their thanks while scraping the remains of the wasp from the handset.

At about 5pm we head over to the Scala so we can see The Twilight Singers soundcheck. We didn’t have any passes at this point so we walked in and said to the girl that we’re here to see the band. “Which band is that then?” she asks to which I reply, “The Twilight Singers”. She checks the book and says, “Go on up then”, and we walk in without displaying any credentials whatsoever, scary. Soundcheck is good and after it Greg Dulli comes up and says hello much to my relief – I was feeling somewhat awkward hanging around. We get sorted out with passes and leave to get a bite to eat.

We head back to a now-rammed Scala to meet Keiron’s sisters and check out the support slot, Cathy Davy. Originally Pilotcan were supposed to be the support band (with me installed on bass) but with no drummer and inflexible band members it never happened. So we can’t help but feel annoyed watching her even though she isn’t too bad. After that Dulli and co take to the stage to rapturous applause. The gig was never going to live up to the anticipation – we’d seen them in Tut’s in Glasgow in January and it was one of the best nights ever. They still played an absolutely storming set but the crowd were (in Keiron’s words) a “Bunch of chin stroking Nick Hornby clones who sort of shuffled around for the whole gig”.

After the show we went into the dressing room for some post-gig chat only to find the place crowded with absolute wankers, people who looked like Reality TV rejects. Welcome to gigs in London. Backstage at Tut’s in Glasgow was such a relaxed affair with a healthy supply of beer and seats for everyone. London by comparison was an absolute nightmare. I’m not saying we’re in any way different from any other punter who has managed to get backstage but these people were awful. The band made a hasty exit and some wanker actually decided to pick up a tray holding fruit and veg and throw it against the roof. How rock and roll. And to top it all off there was some guy (complete with standard-issue tight leather jacket and blonde streaks in his hair) speaking about how great Brian Wilson was even though he had very little knowledge of the subject. You can imagine how incensed this made me.

Needless to say we didn’t hang around long and made a quick exit to the nearest pub. We ended up in some club near Kings Cross which was quite good but rather sweaty. K, K and myself headed back to Helen’s at about 3am, got up the next day around 8am and endured a fucking awful four and a half hour journey on the train back to Edinburgh.

Friday 20th August:

Rise at 5am feeling very, very scared. Today marks the beginning of my good friend Olsen’s stag weekend in Dublin. In Aaron’s words Mr Olsen is “a thug”…

To be continued…