Part 8 of Spires' tour blog, today featuring breakdowns (the vehicular kind, not the Hatebreed kind) and a tapestry of crudely drawn cock and balls.

GIGS PLAYED: 7
DISTANCE TRAVELLED: 900 MILES
AGRICULTURAL WITTICISMS: 0 CABBAGES

Paul Sadler here again, thanks to Al (bassist) for filling in when my hangover is too life draining to even consider looking at a screen. Here it is, the penultimate installment of our ever more ridiculous daily blog, and I'm now writing from the comfort of my own home, prior to our final homecoming show in Manchester tomorrow. Just when we were running out of humorous ways of saying "we played a gig then got dead pissed on Polish booze", disaster strikes! Which is great for this blog, but not so great for our blood pressure. But I'll come to that later, first off, the gig.

Derby. Despite being told by various people that Derby is "a bit of a shit hole", upon arrival I must admit we were pleasantly surprised. The city centre at least is full of historic buildings, and has an almost York / Chester kind of feel to it. Admittedly, this doesn't always bode well for the live music scene (I should know, I lived in Chester for a year, step up to the light the aforementioned Tumbleweed'), but from my brief experience the music scene in Derby seems alive and well. I guess the moral of the story is that when it comes to metal, you can always rely on the Midlands. I even heard there's been one or two bands of note to come from that general area, but the names escape me now.

The gig itself was fantastic, once again a decent turnout, receptive crowd and great venue (The Old Bell). Worth noting in particular is the veritable tapestry of crudely drawn cock and balls (and other less tasteful depictions) in the backstage area. A real shame to think of the serious artistic talent hidden away there, never to be discovered by Bohemian critics, collectors and 'experts'. We played fairly well, no massive cock ups, apart from...well...see two sentences previous, and my vocal chords have just about managed to hold up despite my constant abuse.

However, the real fun began on the journey home. We set off at about midnight, and about half an hour in the van broke down. 40 minutes later the AA came and fixed it. Ten minutes later the van broke down. Again. Paul (Cuthbert, guitarist) 'kind of' managed to fix it. People swapped between cars and vans so the people living in the Bolton area could get home earlier. Then the required motorway was closed. Commence operation Bolton via Warrington. The van finally got to the lock up at about 4am after a crawl up the M6. We didn't have the keys. Roo from Incassum had the keys. Roo arrived at about 4:45am, and couldn't find the keys. 15 minutes later keys were found, gear was unloaded, van was returned, and I crawled home at about 5:30am.

Needless to say, we all handled this calmly and professionally, and at no point were there any tantrums, hitting of inanimate objects, or even any hint of minor discontent. In fact I'd go as far as to say it was the most enjoyable aspect of the tour so far, far outweighing great gigs or fun times at Travelodges. A real crowning achievement to top off the away gigs of the tour. Absolutely textbook!

Today I'm going to try and get away with doing as little as possible (curse you blog), and eat things like vegetables, if I can remember what they look like (except cabbages, I always remember cabbages). Tomorrow Manchester, and the final installment. Thank you all!

Bye for now,

Paul & Spires