Jamie Dobson

4th of November, 2010, 15:22 (there is no sun at my window).

This day started last night, at three o’clock in the morning. It seems, even at this early stage in the tour, that touring is about recovering and catching naps and calories at every free moment. I can’t say I like it too much. My muscles ache, I have that tiredness that comes from adrenaline. I’d give anything for a bed now, as would Peter and Signe and Steph. Instead, we’ve got six pillows on the floor (Peter and Signe), an armchair (me) and a couch (Steph). All of this, of course, is offset by the excitement and fun and things people say (‘that’s Newcastle that, Steph. What do you mean, “how do I know?”, because I can smell the soap-dodging Geordie cunts, that’s how I know’.)

We woke at three and left at four to get Mark to the airport. (He has to attend a funeral today.) We got across to Leeds and – I can’t believe she’s going to get more smoke up her arse – Signe managed the car, Dutch-hand drive, really well. We found a petrol station, a local cafe and a MacDonald’s. We went local, agreeing that, despite the Egg McMuffin being the best thing those cunts offer, it was better to support a smaller business. We were served by an overweight man who looked like a sack of potatoes in a scraggy white school shirt and black pants – it was good to see the cafe’s staff dress policy working. His head looked like it was stuck on with blu-tack and he moped about charging us for four famous fives when we actually ordered: ‘two famous fives, a bacon sandwich and a magnificent seven for me, mate, two teas and two coffees’ and make it fucking snappy, Igor, before I jump over that counter and put your fucking head in the deep-fat-fryer. Around the cafe – it was large, as if three high-street cafes had been stuck together – were signs for wi-fi. Steph asked, ‘is your wi-fi on?’
    ‘Don’t you just turn your computer on and it sorts itself out?’
    ‘There’s no signal.’
    ‘Oh, well, I don’t know, I am computer illiterate.’ People like this man speak how I imagine Down’s Syndrome Italians would speak. They reek of self-pity and powerlessness. I think of Scott’s Weapons of the Weak with his foot dragging (and I know he means it as a metaphor but around here it’s real). As I type this I am asking the guys questions, as they nod in and out of sleep, and Peter has to run to the toilet to vomit for the second time in a few minutes. ‘Stop talking about that fucking breakfast.’

The rest of the journey was mainly uneventful. I told Peter that ginger people have sided with the Jews in a bid to take over the world and that, in Scotland, the gingers are allowed to roam free and may attack at any moment. Up near Coldstream, a temporary traffic light was set up and I said, ‘the check point! Peter, sit up, it’s the border. If they look you in the eye, just look forward’. I could see fear in his eyes, he looked over Steph’s head to the lights. The gingers, I said, would not take mercy and, if they had their William Wallace makeup on, we’d be fucked. Stone cold dead. I also warned him that some Scots would appear to be normal but, like Roald Dahl’s witches, would be wearing wigs and heavy foundation. ‘There’s freckles under there,’ I warned him, ‘if you scrub hard enough’.

Once we got to the house we were staying at, we dropped the bags, popped across the Meadows – Sick Boy and Renton shot the dog there, in the movie – and went into a Mash Cafe (Monster Mash) for my third or fourth kilo of potatoes in as many days. After the drive, and that garbage we got served for breakfast, a pyramid of potatoes, neeps and haggis has never looked so appealing. It lasted five minutes.

On the way home, Signe and Steph ran off into a charity shop and shouted, ‘we’ll catch you up’. Of course, they didn’t, and of course, they have the key. Peter was only mildly annoyed and cursed the air, ‘what an arsehole thing to do’. That got shortened to, ‘what an arsehole’. The poor lad is sick and tired, I can’t say I blame him. And, in fairness, he got under the blanket and never said a word to the girls. I told him to get his feet in. I feel for him, and in the bitter, and utterly sunless, back drop of this stone-cold, dark-stoned, fried Mars bar eating dollop of heather – Peter: ‘why the fuck would anyone build a fucking city here? What the fuck?’ Renton: ‘Scotland’s shite, we’re the fucking lowest of the low, the scum of the fucking Earth. I don’t hate the English, they’re just wankers’ – all one ever really wants to do is get under the blanket.

Our plan now is simple. 1) sleep. They all already are asleep. 2) go to the gig. 3) drink, sleep, stop mindlessly hating on Scotland because our blood sugars are low. (It seems, by the way, that Peter is doing most of the hating, the girls want to shop, and I am happy to keep doing Renton, ‘Moan the fuck, Peter’). 4) go to the art gallery. 5) watch ‘Jackass 3-D’ at the Dominion (the UK’s only privately owned cinema). And 6) eat a fried Mars bar with a can of Irn-Bru.

I pray that the gig has more than ten people, the turnout in Hull was woeful, otherwise this journey up was for nought save my racist and gingerphobic jokes. At 80 pound for petrol, and 50 odd for food, that’s about 40 quid a joke.