“It’s terrible, sharing a room when you’ve got jetlag,” said Dickie, the subtext being “why the f*ck have you got the light on at 9am you complete bastard.” Our room at this hotel in West Hollywood has become suffused with illness, and we’re both sitting here now, tapping away at our laptops, surrounded by cold remedies and – in a Christmas-like touch – a bag of oranges at the end of each of our beds. It would be predictable and banal to suggest that Santa Claus had come in the middle of the night and placed them there. Santa Claus came in the middle of the night and placed them there.

Yesterday morning was about me meeting a deadline for The Independent – work still goes on, gawddammit; yesterday afternoon was about driving to Downtown Disney. We were met at the gates of Anaheim House Of Blues by a stern looking woman in a security officer’s uniform, but the gravitas of her demeanour was utterly compromised by her badge which had the smiling face of Mickey Mouse on it. She told us we had to turn around and go and fetch the necessary paperwork before passing through, we could do little but giggle. And then go and fetch the paperwork. This took quite some time; we ended up stopping off at Ralphs (and for apostrophe pedants, one isn’t necessary, I don’t think, as it was founded by a Mr Ralphs, or maybe a load of blokes called Ralph, I don’t know, I’m not a supermarket historian, although I’d quite like to be, I mean, imagine the perks.) We finally got the Magic Pass, and proceeding back along Magic Way to what is known in the guidebook as the Happiest Place On Earth, although I think they’re forgetting Rhyl.

It’s a lovely venue, actually. We went up to the balcony on the top floor and looked out over Downtown Disney, watching the spectacle of an exploding fountain drenching a bunch of squealing children, again, again, and again. They kept squealing, we kept watching, we kept laughing, they’ve probably got hypothermia by now. Back inside for the soundcheck; a monitor engineer called Spencer catered for our every audio need, and we had dinner in reasonably high spirits, considering at least two of us were dosed up on Theraflu, which seems to be the US equivalent of Day Nurse. We sat backstage with the new Scritti Politti printer ($50, bargain) and printed out the set list, Times New Roman, 24pt, black ink. I know you like the details.

Jeffrey Lewis added a projection show to his already varied set, and went down a storm with the small-ish crowd. We went on, and played a great show, no technical hitches to speak of. Oh, during “Petrococadollar”, we mislaid the second half of the lyric sheet (Green has them all on a music stand) but we decided to press ahead anyway. Half way through the song, Andy appeared from the side of the stage with the missing sheet at the exact point it was needed, to cheers, whistles and applause, which turned a slow-burning, blissed-out, druggy show-closer into something of a comedy number, but hey.

My cold is getting worse. This is unusual; I normally shake colds off in about 24 hours or so. I lay the blame squarely at the door of America’s crusade of moral imperialism, because it’s unlikely that it’ll notice, what with all the various other blames being laid at its door, eh.