We spent the day wandering around LA, although we only managed to cover about 0.05% of it before giving up in frustration at its sheer size. You might think that Grimsby is big – well, let me tell you, it’s absolutely nothing compared to LA. You even need a CAR to get from one bit to the other, and not just a normal car, a huge car which itself straddles several blocks and has windscreen wipers the size of horse chestnut trees. One highlight was seeing the huge variety of produce on sale at the Farmers Market on 3rd & Fairfax; another was taking a picture of Ralph, Dave and Alyssa trespassing in order to secure a photo of Ralph in front of a lorry saying “Ralphs Always Fresh”. How true, and at the same time false, that statement is.

Down to The Roxy on Sunset Strip, where Dicky bravely continued to fight off a cold while posing in front of our top billing outside:

Our 7,000 metric tonnes of gear was delivered by a hire company precisely four hours before the doors to the venue opened for business; this might seem like ages, but we ended up incredibly pressed for time, and poor Jeffrey Lewis had about 18 seconds to soundcheck. “Sorry about this,” I said to him. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m used to having no souncheck, it’s normal. What isn’t normal is someone apologising to me for it. Thank you.” He’s a nice chap, Jeff. And his set was great, too, but as he’s supporting us for the whole tour I’ll leave a description of that until I’ve run out of other things to say, so tomorrow, then, probably.

I popped out for a pizza, my body aching and throat incredibly dry. This cold has already scythed our all-knowing engineer Andy down to a husk of his former self, reduced as he is to using sign language while leaning against a wall, sweating. I ordered a “small” pizza, hoping that I wasn’t next in the line for disease, and that Green would escape the bug entirely. The pizza arrived, and it was about 4 metres in diameter. There is no wood-fired oven yet built in the UK which could bake this monster, and the British could easily mistake one of their “large” calzone pizzas for a Center Parcs Village.

Back to the venue, where former Scritti Politti members David Gamson and Fred Maher were standing backstage, exchanging cheery banter with Green. The clock ticked down to showtime, and the curtain eventually rose to reveal a cheery, rotund DJ called Eric who announced our imminent arrival to hearty cheers and cries of devotion, although it wasn’t clear how many of those devoted cries were directed at me in particular. None, I suspect. We made as good a stab as we could at our set, considering at least two of us really could have done with sitting down quietly with a hot water bottle. Mrs Hughes made a welcome re-appearance, as did three oldies: The Word Girl, Die Alone and Brushed With Oil, Dusted WIth Powder. Wood Beez was spoiled by a sudden realisation that we hadn’t done all the prep that we needed to, so Green gamely busked it on guitar alone, the rest of us joining in on whatever instruments we had to hand – swanee whistle, djembe, lute. The audience seemed to enjoy it very much. Afterwards lay the mammoth task of packing everything away into a small trailer, in preparation for getting it all out again tonight, in Anaheim, which is apparently in the middle of Disneyland. I’m hoping the lighting engineer will be dressed as Goofy.

This morning I’ve woken up with barely any voice. I’m hoping this particular strand of the tale doesn’t have an unpleasant outcome…