Porthcawl Grand Pavilion Wednesday April 11th

I’m actually starting to hate the van. I mean REALLY hate it. Not in any kind of driver-ey, performance-y, miles – per – gallon-ey way, but in the way you hate someone you spend way too much time with, especially when you’re in discomfort. After the show last night, Nick Rodders and myself took off in the vans heading for Wales, anticipating that the bus would be relatively close behind us. As it’s literally downhill all the way from the West Midlands to Wales we managed to keep up a decent speed, and as tiredness started to really kick in we decided to take a break at Strensham services on the M5. After a fairly leisurely snack and a coffee we climbed back in the vans and headed onto the M50. I texted back to Junior on the bus to try and find out how far behind us they were, only to learn that they were literally just reversing out of the car park at Leamington !! We decided that it’d be pointless waiting where we were as fatigue was starting to be a real issue, so we pressed on. It was at this point that the heater quit on us again. And yes, we WERE wearing shorts. At least it wasn’t snowing, but it was still BLOODY cold. After an enforced coffee stop to try and thaw out we managed to get the heater working again, which was just as well. We arrived at the venue at 3.30am, did a quick status check with the bus and realised that it was still a couple of hours away. There’s nothing to do but sit and wait, and this is when the hatred of this little metal box really starts to take hold. We’re parked outside a residential area, so we can’t really keep the engine running, and that means the temperature drops. And drops. And drops. We try to doze but it’s too cold and cramped, and I have to say that, apart from the Misery On The Mountain a couple of days back, this is just the worst. To add insult to injury the venue haven’t left out the power cable for the bus when it DOES arrive, but right now I’d settle for sleeping in the luggage bay . John finally pulls up at about 5.20am, and as we haven’t got the power cable, tells us we’ve got about two minutes to get to bed before everything has to switched off, so we jump aboard and wrap ourselves in our duvets…..for about an hour, after which the sleeping compartment, bereft of the air conditioning and super-heated by the effluvia of several flatulent members of the touring party, has turned into something resembling the Black Hole Of Calcutta. Gasping for breath I wrench open the bunk curtains to try and get some fresh air, only to be met by the sight of a semi-naked Pug, sweating like Gary Glitter in Toys R Us and hoofing his duvet onto the floor. It’s not pleasant. Although it’s still way to early to be getting up, this just isn’t bearable, so I drag my sorry carcass out of the bunk and trudge over to the venue for a shower. At least the sun’s shining again, just as it did when we were here last year, and there’s no doubt about it, it DOES lift the spirits. It’s way too chilly to have a yomp up and down the beach, but it’s still very pleasant , and the brisk wind blows the cobwebs away a bit. The Grand Pavilion is a strange old gaff….. it was only converted into a theatre relatively late in it’s life, and has a very strong kind of “ music hall” vibe about it. It’s got an octagonal dome which the venue blurb describes as “ interesting “, but this is, of course, using the much lesser known meaning of the word , which is “ acoustically, as much use as tits on a
bull “. The sound goes up. It goes down. It goes around. It goes up, down and THEN around. It echoes here. It’s dead there.. It booms here. It’s dry there. In short, it’s a swimming – pool of crippling natural echoes, reverbs and laws-of-physics-defying acoustical fart-arsing around. It’s pants. Nice house crew, though….When we were here last year it was Junior’s birthday, and we were a mere day or two away from the end of that tour. This year we’re just over the halfway mark, so there isn’t quite the same “ de-mob happy” air around the place, but everyone’s still pretty chilled. We’re cracking through the build and soundchecks at record pace now, and that means more time to do the important stuff, like source out the best local fish and chip shops. Unfortunately it turns out that our navigation skills aren’t up to our information gathering skills, and we can’t actually find Finnigan’s, acknowledged as the best chippy in the country, apparently. We make do with Beale’s, Purveyor By Appointment To The Chavvy Holiday Hordes Of South Wales, and the hunger gap is duly filled. The show itself is an odd one…..in addition to the mental sound characteristics of the venue, the stage is also inordinately high for a theatre of this size, and the combination of the audience being so far below, with their applause going straight upwards, swirling about the dome for a bit then doing a left towards Swansea or somewhere, all makes for a weird sense of dislocation from the crowd. I see that Den’s struggling a bit to make the connection tonight, but as ever with these boys, it’s really only us that are aware of the problems; to the audience it’s just a great show, and this is borne out by the attitude of the folks who come back after the show to get autographs and meet the band. The amount of times we hear “ This is the best show we’ve seen for ages “ or “ We’re going to tell all our friends to come next time “. If success were measured by audience response alone, we’d all be sitting in our Beverley Hills mansions ordering a flunkey to bring us a cup of fresh unicorn tears or something equally exotic. Instead, we’re getting aboard the Bogey and heading for a day off in the fleshpots of Bedford, where, to slightly paraphrase a Disneyworld sales tagline, the magic never begins. The band will be dropped off en route and we’ll rendezvous with them on the showday at the Corn Exchange in Bedford. One of our party is on a mission, though….Steve’s getting in one of the vans to head back straight home by himself. It was his wedding anniversary today and he’s off to see the lovely Jill directly…..none of this wasting time doing detours and drop-offs for him…like a little homing missile he roars off into the Welsh night, and hits the M4 as if he were Sebastian Vettel on amphetamines. For Rodders and I it’s back in the Van Of Hatred , and we head for Bedford at a more leisurely pace. A MUCH more leisurely pace. Now, if only we can get there at about the same time as the bus…….THOUGHT FOR THE DAY…..If the worst comes to the worst, you can always be a bad example.