It's My Birthday...

...today, so Happy Birthday to me !

I've been back at "work" for 3.5 days now. My god it feels like longer. Yesterday I had to slope off early before I put a foot through my monitor.

Monday I sat down to a mountain of e-mail accrued since I went off on tour (300 messages. That may not be a lot to some people but it's a mountain to me).

Tuesday I had to attend a company Strategy and Marketing meeting in a faceless conference room in a faceless hotel next to Manchester Airport. Rarely has so much management speak and corporate horseshit been contained by 4 very flimsy walls. Prior to the meeting starting one of our number was talking about the computer game Civilisation. He informed us all that "that version of Civilisation is now obsolete and you can get it for 6 quid from Woolworth's"...by the time the meeting had finished I was starting to believe him ! A whole civilisation for 6 quid !! Bargain !!!

You'll be pleased to hear that I was today sent a "Summary of Actions" from said meeting. 6 hours of waffle, maple syrup and bullshit has produced an actions list that doesn't even fill a half a side of A4 paper. Glad that was such a productive day. And the purpose of said meeting ? To decide how we should write reports to each other about what we have been doing...I give up, I really do.

Tour now over and completed reasonably successfully. Scotland was a little rocky (for those not familiar with the details I refer you to http://www.room512.com/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=2 and choose any of the threads that look depressing) but once we left that fair country, demeanour's improved and we finished up with 2 storming shows in London and particularly Birmingham.

Those two show's were helped beyond measure by the presence of the awesome genius that is Damien Dempsey as special guest. I think anyone that was there who has or hasn't seen Damo before would have been completely slayed by his opening song (and if you weren't then you have no soul), a new song, called "Masaai" (sp?), from his forthcoming album. A quite frankly unbelievable vocal performance on that song from the great man on both nights.

Big shout out's to Oscar, for keeping it all together; Ian, Jules, Mark & Sam, for accompanying me to various far flung hostelries; Mr Dave M from Inverness, apologies for Scotland but I think London was an improvement; Colin the bus driver for the cow hat; The Wonder Stuff for, on their day (and there are more of those than not), being an awesome live experience; Deb, for always looking out for me; James, for making me wanna laugh even when I don't feel like it.

Think of me later, sitting in the Crown, smile on my face, pint in my hand...I'll stop now...

Go Easy, Step Light-ly, Stay Free...