What do you do in Amsterdam on a day off? First up, you take full advantage of a hotel breakfast buffet. My stuttering weight-loss programme meant that I didn’t load up quite as gluttonously as I could, but certain band members piled several plates high with grub before working their way through bread, cheese, sausages, fruit, fibre, forgetting that there are more ways of getting food out of a room than carrying it in your stomach.

Jenny and I ventured out into town, and ended up wandering south, behind the Heineken brewery and into that bit of town that’s behind the Heineken brewery. We stopped after literally 15 minutes of ceaseless tourism for refreshment in a garish cafe / cake shop, whose name I can’t quite remember or indeed spell, but translated as “My Aunt’s Tart”. It did not, I repeat not, translate as “My Aunt’s A Tart”. If there’s one way to sort out family grievances, it’s not to open a patisserie which levels accusations of prostitution at your mum’s sister.

Emboldened, enrichened and encakened, we took a tram up to the Central Station and, uh, wandered around there. We happened upon the Vrankryk, a squat on Spuistraat in which I played my first gig in Amsterdam in 1991 with The Keatons. I couldn’t believe the place was still going; hurrah for rent-free accomodation. Then to the Jordaan, and several drinks in a fantastic little bar called t’Smalle. I’m losing you, I can feel it. Hang on. Puzzle time:

White Mates in 3. Lilienthal vs Abram Khavin, Moscow, 1944.
5rk1/5b1p/6pP/3p4/Bp3Q2/1P3R2/1qr2PP1/4R1K1

Indonesian grub seemed to be the order of the evening, so we went to a recommended place on Utrechtsestraat, where we’d booked a table at 9.30. It was packed solid, and at 10.20 we were still sitting at the bar. Bastards. So much for my self-imposed rule of not eating after 9pm, and the only way I could justify it was by telling myself that it was still only 9.20 in the UK, my “gut-time”. At the end of the night when the bill arrived, Jenny asked for the cost of a beer and a couple of still waters to be deducted from the bill, as we’d had them while we were waiting 50 minutes to be seated. The waitress went off to ask her boss; the message came back that they’d take off the cost of one of the drinks, but how about we pay for the other. Split the difference, in essence. Jenny, quite rightly, wasn’t having that, and explained, calmly, that this wasn’t very fair. The waitress looked and me and made an eye-rolling face. Oh god, I thought. Don’t make the face. Please don’t make the face. Jenny saw the face. Oh god, I thought. Jenny’s seen the face. “There’s absolutely no need to make a face,” said Jenny. “I didn’t make a face,” said the waitress, who left the table, but not before making another eye-rolling face in my direction. Oh god, I thought, don’t make another face. Please don’t make another face. Please don’t let Jenny see another face. Oh, thank god, Jenny didn’t see another face. “Did you see that, Jen, she made another face,” I said, stupidly. Jenny got very cross. We left no tip left in the restaurant that night. Brr.

On arriving home I received a text to advise that our drummer had just walked out onstage in the Paradiso in front of 3,000 people. I’ve no idea what he was doing there. Good old Ralph.