Never Get Off The Bus

Discovering Hamburg

On another beautiful day I cycled The Airnimal from our opulent lodgings in the city centre from the Binnenalster, down to the Elbe east along the river and then north to today's Arena. Through the throng of tourists in St Pauli and on to the Altonaer Fischmarkt; past

Copenhagen, Royal Arena

The Royal Arena lives up to its name—a posh, Danish version of Manchester Arena that operates in a very different way from a Ziggo Dome filled with Amsterdammers on a Saturday night. On stage on a Monday night in a vast all seated venue takes a bit more concentration

Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam

From the outside Ziggo Dome looks like a big box. From the inside Ziggo Dome looks like a big box. After the show, sitting in the yard in the unseasonably warm evening as the trucks were loaded I mentioned the entirely un-dome like nature of the Ziggo Dome to one

Johan Cruijff

Ziggo Dome is in the shadow of the Johan Cruijff Arena, home of Ajax football club. In my youth I was (and I remain) a terrible football player. The relative success of the Scottish national team and Scottish clubs in the sixties and seventies was a defining element of cultural

Neiuwegein Oudegein, Netherlands 3.30am

There is an element of superiority in weirdness and otherness, even when that weirdness is an affect of being marooned somewhere as banal as the service station at Neiuwegein Oudegeinoon the A2 autosnelweg, killing time at 3.30 am—the security staff won't arrive at the Ziggo Dome

Zénith de Strasbourg

After a rainy Wednesday afternoon in a hotel room and a glorious evening cycling around the city when the clouds cleared I decided to make the 7 km journey on the show day from the centre of town to Zénith de Strasbourg on the Airnimal. I took a leisurely, circuitous

Rockhal

Rockhal lived up to its name. Standing only in the stalls—which immediately upped the room's rock-and-roll credentials; a luxurious backstage: timber floors, fitted kitchen units, an expensive looking corner sofa that comfortably seated six—no TÅGARP uplighters here. Andy comments that he could live in a place

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

With a non-debilitating but noticeable hang-over from yesterdays surrender to freedom I rose early and ventured up to the skybar where petit déjeuner was now served. Maybe the view was worth the thirty bucks: a city with cliffs, castles, and streets on five strata with trains and trams threading through

(Untitled)

Ascending from Heathrow the executive lounge whiskey was having the desired effect and inducing a (relatively) more transcendental mood state. I could see the Millennium Dome to the north from my window seat—it seems like a long time since we were on the stage there. Flight BA 0418 continued

Glasgow to Luxembourg

A day spent on planes and in airport lounges, in the archetypal non-spaces of the world. It takes a conscious application of character and spirit not to be diminished by the horrifying excesses of travelling by air. The disastrous per capita carbon emissions of short haul flights is obvious and

Glasgow

The death of Jaine Henderson, glorious, glamorous and generous friend, muse and femme fatale to a generation of Glasgow artists and musicians on the eve of the Glasgow shows added poignancy and sadness to two memorable nights at the Hydro. I fell under Jaine's spell more than forty

The Glamorgan Suite

We had the Glamorgan Suite at our disposal in Cardiff, which is not quite as glamorous as it sounds. The rooms contents were carefully itemised on a laminated printed list attached to the door. This was not to guide to the building's staff as to how to furnish

Cardiff, 8am

The weather was foul in Cardiff on Wednesday morning. The rain lashing the windows of our Phoenix was enough to give pause for though before crossing the street to the venue in search of the fresh coffee and bacon sandwich that beckoned from within. The procession of forty five foot

Scent Branding

The Hilton Hotel in Bournemouth, like every Hilton Hotel in the world it seems, is scent branded. Heavily scent branded. In spite of, or maybe because of the good few fingers of Caol Ila I had enjoyed on the road from Nottingham the scent brand that permeated the lobby did

Beauty sleep in Nottingham

Cloudless skies over Nottingham when we arrive—a beautiful crisp, spring morning. Chilly as it was the temperature dropped noticeably entering the arena: another ice-rink, even colder than Belfast. It should have been a perfect day to get out of the city along the River Trent on the Airnimal but

Birmingham Arena

Birmingham Arena feels even bigger than the O2. The 02 holds more people (not the biggest so far on the tour—at 21 000 capacity the Manchester Arena tops it by a thousand). Birmingham Arena holds a mere 15 800 but it is expansive. The acoustics are remarkably good for

The Smile

Driving overnight Birmingham (somehow arriving late enough to miss breakfast at the hotel) we passed The Academy and I saw that The Smile were playing there. That night. A night off. A short walk from our billets. On paper The Smile are not playing the kind of music that ordinarily

Belfast to Greenwich Peninsula

On the 3.00 am ferry from Larne to Cairnryan after the show and then 438 miles to the Greenwich Peninsula: a long haul that requires two drivers doing shifts at the wheel. The three buses arrive in convoy at the Intercontinental hotel at 4.30 pm. I had managed

The Millennium Dome Arena

A rather better appointed locker room for us today. And a positive return from the sleep cure of the previous days: most of my voice was back, albeit scratchy around the edges (Derek did admit to keeping his finger on the volume fader for my vocal out front during the

At Home With The Giants

After a short drive and a correspondingly short sleep my condition was not in an ideal condition when I sortied from the bus in search of breakfast. Apart from my loss of voice I'd had no other symptoms over the previous few days but overnight I had developed

The Point, Dublin

After breakfast a constant stream of technicians and musicians with their standard issue wheeled bags straggle across the Point Plaza from our hotel into the Arena. Only a couple of intrepid souls from our party had ventured into Dublin Town the previous night to witness the shenanigans in the streets.

Howth Castle and Environs

There is an off-road cycle path that runs along the coast from Dublin Harbour to the north so I dusted the residual mud from the Irwell towpath from the Airnimal and set off to Howth in the sunshine with our bus driver Simon. This being a beautiful spring Sunday afternoon

Holyhead to Dublin

We set sail from that grim non-space, which I suppose now should be referred to as Holyhead International into a thick haar with the ship's fog horn blaring. As we crossed the Irish Sea the gloom lifted. A ham Hollywood screen-writer couldn't have scripted a better

Manchester Arena

This place makes the venue in Leeds seem almost intimate. Some of the people working on the show are clocking 15 000 steps just getting around the building. The eight trucks worth of stuff that seem to be required to make music happen in a place like this were once

Leaving Fortress Britian

The last time we traveled to Dublin we the people of this little minded land had yet to make the disastrous decision to harden our borders. A pathetic collective hissy fit that means that making a simple trip through Holyhead to Dublin now requires passing through an internal border. What