Week 8 News!

Week 8's entry is now up and the boys sound like they're finding things a little easier in England, in terms of language that is...

Wow!!! Everyone speaks English! In theory, I could quite easily approach anyone in the street and say something, with a high chance of them understanding me! That is, of course, unless my accent proves far too thick for them to be able to cut through in one swipe, which is enough swiping for anybody. I found that out when we got our first cab after landing in Edinburgh....

Read the whole diary here

Week Eight

Wow!!! Everyone speaks English! In theory, I could quite easily approach anyone in the street and say something, with a high chance of them understanding me! That is, of course, unless my accent proves far too thick for them to be able to cut through in one swipe, which is enough swiping for anybody. I found that out when we got our first cab after landing in Edinburgh.

While loading my bass case into the car, the cabbie spat out some bizarre string of vowels, vaguely joined together with L's and R's and G's. I can imagine I'd sound like that if my lips were stuck 5 mm apart, and for some reason avoided touching my teeth with my tongue. I managed to recognise the words "roof" and "car". I kept the conversation going, noticing that my own accent sat at the opposite end of the spectrum.
"Aww nahh mate, yer roof'll be foine, she'll be roight."
"Ogay bu' watch th roof o' m' ca'."
"Ah. Right."
Either the cab drivers here have thicker accents, or they are the only locals I have spoken to in town. Considering how many Edinburnians rent their flat out at astronomical rates and go on holiday during every festival, the latter is probably the case.

What we did on our first day in London is TOP SECRET, so I'll talk about food instead. Zahtar and hommous. We stayed in Marble Arch, in a street frequently clogged with locals pimping around in their Hummers and Bentleys. Some of the guys saw the shit get absolutely beaten out of a parking inspector outside our window. We stayed, conveniently, across the road from Green Valley. It's not actually a valley, it's more of a Lebanese supermarket - one which we all routinely visited at least three times a day. Hopefully this will clear up some of the confusion surrounding my abrupt "zahtar and hommous" outburst earlier in this paragraph.

Our two shows in London were at the Carling Islington Academy. Carling appears to have a stranglehold of Tooheys proportions on pubs and live music venues in the UK. Billboards aside, the two gigs were absolute killers. The crowds were either from, or have been to and thus are huge fans of, Melbourne, judging from the riotous applause whenever we mentioned our home town. One thing's for sure: they got the hell on down. Our good friend Andy Baldwin was in town, and he took to the stage during "Wine Song" in a way that is hard to explain with words alone. Anyone who has witnessed this before will know exactly what I mean. Over the weekend we also celebrated Andy's birthday, in a backyard-full-of-Aussies-with-a-BBQ-and-Vic-Bitter setting that took us back home for a night.

We flew on to Edinburgh, which is not only the last destination of this tour, but also a kind of home-away-from-home for us. This is the third Edinburgh Festival in a row that we have played at, and we're well and truly back into the nocturnal, drunken swing of things. We have played shows in The Famous Spiegeltent in Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Edinburgh. Spiegeltent and Edinburgh is possibly the best combination of venue and city we could ask for in the last week of our tour. For those who don't know, The Famous Spiegeltent is an old Belgian mirror tent that is fairly easy to transport around the world - given that you have access to two shipping containers and a team of large Belgians. It is one of our favourite venues, and has contributed a hell of a lot to the spirit of the band. We're itching to hit that stage again.

We'll let you know how it goes next week.

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