dear Jenny,

I’m sitting in a Travel Inn near the Birmingham Ring Road. In truth, I don’t know whether Birmingham has a ring road, but I suppose I’m trying to convey the bleakness of my surroundings, and right now using the words Birmingham, ring and road is the only way I know how. In about three hours we’re off to Edinburgh, hoots, er, mon. But hang on, what happened yesterday? Well.

After I left your flat, a minicabbie drove me through North London at approximately 20mph. There’s something incredibly regal about being driven in a polished Mercedes at very slow speed, but also something very annoying. Regal, but annoying. Like the Duke of Edinburgh. I’m trying to say the journey was like the Duke of Edinburgh. The driver also had an odd habit of picking up a medium-sliced loaf of Kingsmill bread from the passenger seat, and wiping the steering wheel with it. Not just a slice, the whole loaf, in the white plastic bag, using it to gently remove dust. If you’re having trouble with dust on your mantelpiece while I’m away, I think Kingsmill’s the way to go. Cumbersome, but effective. Like the Duke of Edinburgh.

We’re crammed into a splitter bus; 9 people, 9 seats, tons of freshly flightcased equipment, and enormous quantities of personal belongings. Paul Hill, our tour manager, sucked through his teeth when he saw the size of my (your) suitcase. He has since nicknamed it “Dan Dare”. Ralph’s bag is “Swiss Roll”, and the flightcases have monikers ranging from “Suzy” (young mother in her early 20s struggling on benefits) to “Brendan” (gay, frustrated in his relationship with fellow flightcase, “Chris”.) Believe it or not, this assigning of names helps with loading and unloading. Well, it relieves the boredom, anyway. (It’s not a new concept for me; back in the Keatons heydey, or at least the Keatons day, the wooden box which contained all the drum hardware was referred to as “the antimatter”. It started as a joke, but quickly became part of serious, everyday conversation e.g. “Has anyone seen the antimatter? Look, where’s the f*cking antimatter?”

We drove out of London in a vaguely north-westerly direction. I’ve got no hand in navigating as I tend to sit facing backwards, so I couldn’t really tell you where the Big Chill festival is, but it’s somewhere in the, er, country. The journey was characterised, as usual, by long silences, hysterical mirth and objects darting about the table as we turned each corner. We arrived on the festival site at about 2.30pm and eventually found the stage we were due to play on; in the end we were escorted by a jeep, like you might be in times of war.

We went on at about 5.10pm, and gently eased our way into “Snow In Sun”; everything sounded fine, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief (you don’t get to do soundchecks at festivals, y’see.) The high point of the set was when a procession of about 60 children walked across the front of the stage dressed as a giant spaceship; we then began “Put your motherf*ckin’ hands up” as they trotted off into the distance. Surreal.

It all went splendidly, anyway. We tried to find the artists catering tent after the show; again we were given several conflicting opinions as to where it was. We ended up in the crew’s catering tent, which we were assured was also the artists catering tent, but Paul was unsure of this, faced as he was with an unappetising plate of pork stroganoff. He poked at it with a fork. “I tell you what, Brian f*cking Eno wouldn’t eat this, there must be another tent somewhere.” We never found it. We got back in the splitter bus, and made our way to this salubrious hotel. I was awoken at 6am by the sound of a man dancing in the room above. Heavy, rhythmic footsteps. I know that Mark Twain advised mankind to dance like nobody’s watching, but he should have included some kind of addendum, pointing out that his advice doesn’t apply at 6am in a Travel Inn on the Birmingham Ring Road. If indeed it has a ring road.