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  • Writer's pictureLesley McLaren

Day 18 North America Tour- Saturday 28th July 2007


08:35

I am utterly distraught. I’ve had 5 hours sleep and we’re on our way to play at a festival in Chicago and we will be on stage at 11:30am. It feels like doing a gig late at night except I have cornflakes and tea swimming about my belly and not 5 beers and a nice dinner.


No-one is speaking in the bus. We are all a bit crabbit so the unwritten code is not to communicate until we’ve been up for at least an hour to save heads being chewed off. I’m in the front seat and just tilted the rear view mirror so I could check my makeup as my eyes are running out my face with tiredness and I look like Alice Cooper. The mirror just caught sight of the three of them in the back. It was frightening. I had to avert the angle immediately.

The weather right now is really depressing. The sky is so grey and misty that the tops of buildings are lost in it. We’re hoping it clears up so we can try and get a wee tan before we go home next week. Everywhere we go, the rain follows us. Maybe it’s a sign.


09:07

Betty the sat nav is going crazy as we drive into Chicago. She doesn’t know where we are going and is telling us we are at the gig when clearly, we’re not. Frank is away to ask for directions while we sit in the bus, faces fizzing. Rosie is humming away to herself which is quite unnerving. It’s like the calm before the storm.


09:35

Ok, we’ve been sitting in the bus right in front of the stage we’re playing for about 20 minutes now. THE STAGE ISN’T EVEN SET UP! One of us is going to crack. We could’ve been in bed getting much needed sleep. Oh well, the bright side is that crabbit Hedrons = a really good show. The punters think it’s punk rock they’re witnessing but it’s pure tension release on our part. We just happen to be playing songs whilst venting and it seems to equate to a good performance!


15:13

I’m not sure how I’m keeping my eyes open at the moment but thought I’d make the effort to update the blog or I’ll just regret it. I’ve done well keeping it going this long so I’m not going to get lazy now!

We were on stage at about 11:45 am this morning. It was absolutely roasting but there was good breeze that stopped us melting! We are in the Windy City after all! The festival was really good. It was a free event so there were plenty people there checking out the bands and the stalls. There are various types of bands playing at the festival so there is something for everyone. We were full of beans (coffee beans) by the time we went on stage but now we are all wiped out!

We’re on our way back to the hotel now. I could really be doing with a sleep before we head back into town later on to take part in the festivities. The sun has appeared though so if there’s a pool at the hotel we’re going to crash out there!


We woke up at about 5:30pm after getting a couple of hours sleep. It was better to get up or we would never sleep tonight. We all headed out for something to eat and a have a couple of drinks in the bar next door to the hotel. I thought that once we’d eaten that I was going to fall asleep at the table but after an American sized measure of Gin and tonic I was on a second wind. As usual, the madness started to set in and we forgot about being knackered.

We made friends with the barman, a tactic we employ often to get free shots and got more raucous as the night wore on. We left the bar at about 10:30pm (so I’m told) and moved on to Frank’s room. We always talk Frank into having the party cos we don’t want to mess our rooms up and he hasn’t caught onto this slyness yet. Well, he’ll know now.


There was a lot of carry-on as you’d expect. As usual we couldn’t contain the party in the room and started causing a racket outside by the van. Gill, Tippi and myself ended up posing for pictures on top of the van. Very dangerous but we didn’t think so at the time. There were a couple of breakages in the room but I can’t go into detail cos I managed not to get caught so I’d like to leave it that way. Thanks for the white tape, Frank, it worked a treat!


So that was Saturday and another eventful day over.


Soup x







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