I was informed via email this morning that it was my duty to fulfil the Paderborn leg of the now frankly belated Tour Blog. I'll level with you, I'm at work, so the chance to ignore the sickly of Leicestershire (those who are too poor to go Bupa) for a while was taken with two hands.
Right then. Things we learned upon travelling to Paderborn. Paderborn is a LONG WAY from Lyon. Some would say too far. The fraction of our party that travelled in the (now sadly deceased, but more on that in a later blog...probably) Van, would DEFINITELY say it was too far. More care will be taken when booking the next tour. 14 hours it takes the van. Go Shute. Rob, Paul, Hucky and myself have the infinitely more pleasurable Peugeot 206 (Aubergine / Wine red in colour, for those who are compiling notes) to travel in. This shaves an impressive 2 hours off the journey. We even have time to stop for a very pleasant"assembled on the bonnet" lunch of Salami, Ham and Brie Baguettes. I am keen to paint a mental picture for the tens of you who may be reading this. Hi Mum. Want to know how to cut Brie with no knife? Forget Bear Grylls, Rob "Monster Monster" Crich is your man. Turns out that a health care insurance card not only cuts but spreads the French soft cheese very well indeed. Maybe try it at home if you like. This meal would become a recurring theme over the tour. Those Europeans bloody love their cheese and meat.
 
The drive takes us through Luxembourg. Avid blog followers will note that we have played there before. We do not play there this time. Upon entering Rural Germany, everything starts to look distinctly Saving Private Ryan. (This, in actuality, means Fields. The more imaginative among us visualise many dead. This is all I will say on the contentious issue of the War. Wars.) We arrive at the venue woefully late, to be greeted by what can only be described as an avid Venice Ahoy fan. He is visually distraught at our failure to be them.
The van turns up a full 2 hours later, or 37 seconds prior to Gallops being due onstage to put it another way. Now, I wont go into details, but there is a falling out. Gallops dont play. I think it was Pizza related, but I cant be sure. We however, do play. Gig goes well, despite our well hidden lethargy. Superfan forgives us for not playing Battleships or Fireworks. We then appear to have a free bar. We take full advantage of the Free bar. All of us drink far too much. I can personally say that the resulting hangover was number 1 in my all-time top ten hangovers. Some of us then depart for questionable takeaway, only to meet a group of Geordie Squaddies. Now, if we were in Blighty, these might be the type to stave our effeminate little faces in, but we receive a heroes welcome as they are glad to see some of "Our boys". They are fans of Russell Shute in particular. To be fair, he is rather bawdy.

This is quite a long Blog. We then stay in the apartment of someone affiliated with the Promoter. Its not quite built yet. You know those adverts for Premier Travel Inns with Lenny Henry in? Yeah, it looks nothing like that. It does however look like a room with assorted Mattresses scattered on the floor. They are of varying shapes and sizes, and there are less than half the number of them that would be ideally suited to sleeping 11. A cosy night follows. I cant say for certain that Paul and Dan dont gay it up a little bit. Morning comes, and we find a little kiosk that sells thimbles of good coffee for 1 Euro. We gorge ourselves. Well, we spend the cumulative 7 Euros that we collectively have to our name. Did you know you had to pay extortionate amounts of toll fare to drive through France? No, neither did we. You probably want some visual stimulus now? Yeah, me too. I can't upload from my phone. Myspace iPhone (cr)app. Love you. In a way. Gav x Oh no, turns out I can add pics.