Below is the first installment in a series of extracts from the personal diaries of a few brave souls who recently crossed the water to play some giggles for an unsuspecting and now highly damaged Welsh public.

Beginning the series is a heart warming tale by one Jimmy Lyons (of Jezery fame) entitled 'Buachaill beag and the land of Dragons'. Many thanks to Mr Lyons for sharing his experiences with us and for allowing us to publish them here.

Enjoy!

The tour began for me at about four o clock in the morning on the Thursday when Matt roused me from my slumber, all three hours of it. I had slept on his couch, a couch that was surely forged in some kind of sticky nylon fake leather hell factory. I peeled my back off this horrible comfort illusion, dressed, and drank a swift coffee while Matt said words to me and I tried to regain language skills for the day ahead.

By the time the caffeine had found its way to my brain and tongue, we were driving and attempting to explain to ourselves the mystical medical grey scape of allergies, and illnesses of that ilk, through calm conversation, nuggets of hard fact and reasoning. This mental workout had us fit to welcome Ger and Rory into the van when we arrived at Rory's shortly after. Greetings and bag organisation ensued while Ger took photographs of what was simply a few bleary eyed young men sitting on seats.

Soon we were near Waterford, and that lovely bit of road coming into Dungarvan was illuminated with the sunrise and fractured clouds spilling shards of orange amber glowy red daytime into our eager eye holes. We stopped at a generic shop/garage just outside our point of departure, Rosslare, for some well needed sustenance and leg liberty. Rory bought a loaf of bread, mayonnaise and a packet of cheese believing that this stockpiling of rations would yield convenient and economic hunger defeat for a large portion of the trip ahead. His folly would soon be exposed. Matt, Ger and I opted for instant gratification at the ample deli counter, leaving Rory to hassle alone the dour foodwomen for sachets of condiments.

We enjoyed the lax security getting on the ferry, pulled the board games notebooks and music players from our bags, and laughed our way to the almost plush cafe deck where we commandeered an alcove with a view of the flimsy lifeboats and tranquil water. Mirth was again forthcoming when the security announcement before departure seemed to mainly focus on ensuring that all passengers would gather to look at a blue and yellow square with a picture of a dying family on it in the event of an emergency.

We marked our territory with jackets, books and Scrabble paraphernalia before heading outside to the top deck for a look around and a windy cigarette. The bracing air and the sheer size of the ferry impressed. I noticed that my person was shorn of its 'personal music device', and in the grip of consumerist angst and a primal mistrust of sailors I went back below decks to our cranny to ensure I had not been robberied. Fear assuaged, the other adventurers soon returned from drizzle deck and a lumbering Scrabble match took place - highlights included 'zap' and 'snog'.

The crossing was uneventful, yet sleep did not place its murky paws around my shoulders. The others did grab some sea-borne winks, either that or they pretended to quite impressively. Ger woke intermittently to attend to his hideous nicotine dependency outside, which I admit to sharing to the same deplorable extent. We were assaulted by the wind each time, but it was worth it so that we could give out about work and college on a boat which was sailing quite quickly away from daily niggles.

Upon arrival in Wales, some fluorescent people looked in Matt's petrol tank to make sure that the diesel was the right colour, and sent us on our merry tired way. As the initial brain twist of smelling a foreign country and looking at road signs that use a different font wore off, we adjusted to our new surroundings admirably. All we had to do really was sit in the van and look out windows.

We reached a pretty little town called Carmarthen and found Rory's sister's house. Deirdre provided good food and a small quantity of cannabis, while the showering facilities on offer were used for their normal purpose. She joined us when we soon after set off for Swansea and Matt revealed a disturbingly good road memory by coming within inches of our destination without the aid of satellite trickery or local human direction help, having seen the town once a few years ago. We arrived at the house of Pete with little effort, and his lovely parents made tea and coffee and millions of biscuits. He told us all the information regarding the evening, and gave Rory some sweet Zappa bootlegs. Ger definitely farted right near the biscuits so I only ate one to be polite.

We got to the venue in Swansea, the garage. It wasn't a garage, it was a pub. The name of it was the garage. The floor had carpet on it and the tables were like the ones all community centres or function rooms use - a little too wide, high and long for easy social interaction. We secured booze, flavoured tobacco, and myself and Matt bought UK SIM cards for 99p - I think the main reason we bought them was because they were 99p. We met the absolutely sound Afterglow band, Ben James and Joel, part of the Welsh glue in the Cork-Swansea music connection. Lawrence put on the gig and was nice enough to let me howl a few songs as the opening act. Then some young local guys played and got the girls' attention with low slung guitars and hair they had borrowed from a nearby exhibition of contemporary architecture. The Afterglow played and I remembered the lovely night they played in Cork, and what a tasty sound they make. Then tenpastseven played, with Ger placing the kit out in the crowd while Matt and Rory danced around out in front of the stage also. A frenetic set later and the huddled crowd were recovering from the shock of what they had witnessed. The musicians in the audience could at least drown their sorrows with two bottles of Carling for £3. A Tesco worker passed the front of the bar and handed Ger all the stale cakes from that day's baking. He looked like a little Christmas child as he spread the word and confections. Our joy hardly knew any bounds as we ate cheese twirls, almond stringcracks and chocolate ruffians. Gravity and the chewing of drunks combined to render the carpet in our vicinity a crumby mess.

James from the Afterglow and his wife Maria kindly put us up in their lovely house, where a brilliant jam was had. Ger played a toy baby drum kit which sounded and looked at the time like quite possibly the funniest yet greatest thing I had ever seen. Soon the hi-jinx wore down however, Joel from the Afterglow taking it upon himself to drive six miles home drunk in the rain on a bicycle - work in the morning. Myself and Matt cleverly got a couch each while Ger and Rory slept on the floor where more likely than not, the admirable cat Hendrix urinated on their sleeping faces.

The next morning we trekked out with James to get the gear, taking a sexy detour up near the college where we enjoyed the view of Swansea and the bay and were told the great story of the guy who got caught by the wind while hand-gliding and ended up over in England. We met Ben at the venue and packed up all our stuff. Then we went and had a perfectly timed fry-up in the town and after that James bought laver bread for us - basically raw seaweed picked off the rocks. Rory pretended he'd eat it later on, and I think it's still in Matt's van, it probably has its own blog somewhere on the internet by now if you're interested.

After copious thanks and well wishes we set off for Cardiff airport to pick up Matt's girlfriend Síle, and Ted the drummer boy, both of whom had taken a luxurious flight from Ireland in a paper airplane held together by hope and Galway twine. We happily made contact with the extremely nice Ed and Sarah back in Swansea, and secured accomodation in their lovely cottage for the evening. We almost cried tears of mingling joy and jealousy at the sight of Ed's studio and collection of bass guitars, then headed out to enjoy the fine food and surly service of 'The Viceroy of India' in their friendly company, before returning to their abode to listen to music and become mildly drunk again. Without going into too much detail, a heated discussion ensued which intertwined opinions on social networking site 'Twitter' and the niceties of offering your baby-sitting services to acquaintances. Suffice to say, the evening was finely rounded off when Ger 'tweeted' the following - I'M TWITTERING THE FUCK OUT OF IT.

The next day we loaded up for the road to Nottingham, which was, and may indeed still be, ludicrously far away from Swansea. Solid Matt does not accept human frailties like tiredness or confusion, and so we arrived in good time in the right city. We met the man Nick at The Chameleon who is a charming character and a fucking brilliant singer. We made plans and then scooted over to The Loggerheads, the second venue we would be playing that same evening where Will was the perfect host. Once the story of the evening was known, intense lifting and gigging and beer took place.

Myself and Ted opened at The Chameleon (our first gig as a duo), then went over to The Loggerheads where tenpastseven absolutely owned every person's ears in the place, one of the best shows I've seen them do, followed by myself and Ted (our second gig as a duo). Then we made a mad dash back to The Chameleon where tenpastseven headlined the gig Ted and myself had opened an hour and a half earlier. My legs were made of jelly at this stage from all the lifting gear and running about. A lock-in took place in the best of friendly traditions and singing and smoking and drinking continued until late late. The amazing Marty who had made the whole Nottingham extravaganza possible then managed to get us all on the bus to his and Dan's house in nearby Derby to sleep. We woke up and grabbed lovely showers and a nice breakfast with Marty before striking on back to Wales via Nottingham.

Have you ever changed a tyre on a Transit van? Probably not, you don't want to ever have to either. It's rubbish. The jack can't get the van high enough to slip on the fresh fully pumped tyre, so you have to leave all the air out of the new tyre, put it on, then pump it......ah fuck it. We were at a petrol station anyway for ages on the way back trying to do that stuff, me and Ger even tried to ask in the police shop if they had a good jack that might have been better than ours but they were closed - if you want to do crime to people in the English midlands do it on a Sunday afternoon because the cops are at home watching soccer matches. So seven or eight hours later we were back in Cymru.

Our last gig was in Sandy Lane, a kind of eco-community/commune outside Swansea by a place called the Gower where it's just cool. Lawrence who had put on the first Swansea show was turning 21 so there was a big marquee and a stage and general frivolity and good times. We arrived around nine or ten and the lovely Lawrence was onstage with his band giving it welly (literally, he was wearing wellies) and the craic was at about nine hundred and seventy eight - free beers and liberal supplies of the green stuff. After another few bands myself and Ted staggered on and bewildered the friendly people with our strange Irish ways. Tenpastseven rounded off the gig in true rowdy fashion with me screaming along to Purple Dot followed by the encore which involved the entire audience onstage behind the drums with only Matt and Rory out on the ground. What a howl. A jam then spontaneously erupted out of the final song, and continued when a local guitar maker brought out some of his guitar collection and we all played acoustic songs. Pete and Brian totally nailed a Bowie one at some stage there alright..

Ger had fallen asleep on the stage, but we roused him as we had been informed that we had a house on the commune to sleep in - some of the guys at the gig had told us earlier on in the night apparently. A Welsh girl and boy led us to the house and we went in. Everything was fine until we looked around and noticed that something wasn't quite right. Rory collapsed to sleep in a room, but the rest of us slowly became aware of the fact that most people in the house were blonde young men, not drinking, just sitting there listening to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers while topless and messing with a real dead chicken that looked freshly mortified that evening. With growing unease we decamped outside and furiously tried to shout about the situation in broken Irish so as not to arouse suspicion. We decided that it would be best to leave with no further enquiries into the obviously mad ritual about to take place, and woke Rory. A big fat slice of irony happened as he awoke and overheard the girl who had brought us there say ' I don't know if I can deal with these crazy Irish guys any more' - well I found it quite hard to deal with a dead chicken and a room full of topless men and my imagination.


We went back to the marquee and slept on the stage - perhaps the most rock and roll thing Ted will ever do, as he said himself. We caught some shuteye as Ger complained about why we had woken him up in the first place. After passing a night covered in damp flags, Ted proclaimed himself to be 'delirious with discomfort' and we were all happy to meet Matt and Síle who had cleverly spent the night at Ed and Sarah's place - indoors. Our foolhardy snooze at an end, we piled into the van again. The van at this point felt like home, and was starting to smell like home, the toilet in a home. We babbled and smoked cigarettes until close to the port - everyone avoiding the urge to check exactly what time it was. Rory wanted to make a sandwich with Thursday's cheese. It didn't get made. We missed the ferry by 20 minutes. A friendly motorcycle man told us to come back in twelve hours for the next massive boat to Ireland.

We didn't miss that one. The next day Ted just about made his interview and was accepted for his course, Síle got back to work in Limerick not too horrendously late, Ger got back to Dublin in plenty of time to keep his job, I got to Limerick eventually and passed my degree, Matt was reunited with Mylo and his greenhouse, and Rory was able to get back to staining his carpet with his own tears of inadequacy.