adrienne's Tour Diary

Dan set the alarm clock for 7 and when it went off it didn't seem that early. We had some tea and walked around Ealing, down Uxbridge Road and past the shops and the shoppers, the kids going by in little strollers covered with see-through plastic rainguards.

At one point, outside a kebab shop, a van drove so closely to another van that it caught the parked van's door and bent it out backwards. There was a loud snapping sound. No one seemed alarmed, and after the van passed, the parked van's driver just snapped the door back into place. I saw the look in Dan's eye: luckily, the back door of our van doesn't open out but slides. Plus, our rearview mirror, we learned firsthand, snaps back into place after being run into things.

We returned to Sarah's and loaded up the van and said farewell to our hosts (who we'll see again later this week). The van went into a car park, the back door parked only inches from a brick wall to secure all our gear (behind the asbestos warning tape Gijs put up). To access the internet, we went into Starbucks. I spent more time on my phone than on the computer, though. Then Chris G and I scouted out our food options: doner kebabs, packaged sandwiches, or fast food? The egg mayo sandwich was an obvious no. We opted for a kebab shop that had a lunch special: doner kebab for only a pound eighteen (I can't find the pound sign on this computer). But that special was only for lamb, and as I'd eaten two lambs at the Uni. of Surrey unintentionally in another doner kebab, I chose the chicken kebab instead. Chris G simply ate a bbq chicken leg. I got kebabs for Chris W and Dan, but they were on the computers so G and I ate in the park in the sun, after seeing our London shows listed in Time Out.

Driving to Saxmundham was, as Ted had told us, beautiful, after we made our way through the heavy traffic in London. Everything's green in East Anglia it seems, except these fields (of mustard?) that are bright yellow. The diesel van is pretty loud, and the stereo face never made it to us, so we buzzed through the greenery on the hunt for Saxmundham.

It was just like I imagined it to be, about 5 or 6 shops on the main road, and the White Hart in the middle of everything. The sun was still out. The White Hart appeared to have been built hundreds of years ago, but only about 50 feet from the back door was a modern grocery store, Somerfields. All the other shops were closed.

We weren't listed on any of the flyers for the night's show, which was a little alarming. I spoke with Andrea and then with Ray Dean, and there had been a mix-up with the date, but they were very accommodating and put us on the bill and also fed us a fish fingers & chips dinner with quite a few cans of Kursquell beer, with beds in the cozy attic for us to sleep on. The CDs and T-Shirts we'd shipped had arrived--the T-Shirts just that afternoon. Andrea showed us to our sleeping quarters upstairs which were very impressive, up some steep winding stairs. The other 3 bands were all "in school," meaning high school. The first band covered some choice tunes, including Guns and Roses 'sweet child of mine' (#1 guitar riff according to VH1 UK) and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, one from the latest album. The second band's singer, who did our sound, has a remarkable voice, kind of like Tom Waits, which was unexpected. The third band's singer delivered great intros to their songs and they really rocked. Then we went on and Chris G said on the mic that we have free stickers and "buttons," a term which the audience strongly recommended we change to "badges." The two bands before us hung out for awhile afterwards, which was very cool of them. They warned us that all the swans in the area belong to the queen, and we were not to harm them, not that we would ever harm swans, or geese, or birds of any sort. We were asked, "Do you have streams in America?" "Yes," we said. "But we call them creeks sometimes."