Specialist Subject Mega Tour, Day 6: Edinburgh – Leeds

To my joy, everyone starts gradually waking up and I get to talk to people. I did enjoy the snore tennis between Kate and El though. Jay is teaching himself German. None of the phrases are particularly useful. Some examples: “Dean is wearing a hat in the sun”, “That’s my daughter, not my grandmother” and “Jake, sit down, you’re making the place look untidy.” After getting our shit together and leaving Raph’s we headed to Tesco. Amongst other things, I got a bottle of port – we’re staying at Kathleen’s tonight and it’s become a bit of a tradition. After some incessant pestering, Huss finally gave in and took us to Toby Carvery. We had a sweet waitress who asked to be educated on veganism. I ate too much.

Back on the road to Leeds. Dean does a van fart that smells of burgers, shortly followed by one from Nicola that smells like ready salted crisps. El, Jay, Dean and Nicola play the ‘draw a bit of a person then fold it over and pass it on’ game. Every drawing ends up with at least seven penises and a few of them feature Huss’ face as different body parts. We send off our album mixes for mastering which is a really wonderful feeling; all three of us are pretty particular/anal/obsessive so to have finally reached this stage is a bit of a weight off our shoulders (and off of Matt Johnson’s who made the thing and graciously but firmly dealt with all our pernickity notes like a champ).

We get to the Brudenell, El gets a beer in and is excited about the Sierra Nevada on draught, as am I. The sound guy reacts like a knob to the fact we don’t have a bass. Get over it pal (the sound was good though so thanks too). In the backstage bit I watched Nic and Ben play table tennis and ate a samosa. Some mates start arriving including the aforementioned Kathleen and Matt. Nicola, Kate, Ben and Lou do an interview with Jamie and Harriet from Start A Riot. PB aren’t on for 20 mins but that doesn’t stop Huss yanking Kate out of the interview to get ready – if you know Huss then you know what a stickler he is for time. Kate tells a story onstage about sending their Tiger Trap cover to Rose Melberg via WeTransfer, getting the notification that she’d downloaded but never getting a reply. We played next and had a fucking blast – this is now my second fave show. Did the cover again and I feel like we’re nailing it now. It’s funny watching the expressions on people’s faces as they gradually realise what it is and there’s been some pretty great singalong action happening.

Went and did some merch and hung out with Matt. It’s the first time we’ve seen him since our intensive 5 day album recording and whilst that was super fun, it’s also good to hang with him in a different environment now the record is done. He’s a very sweet and funny human and it’s a pleasure to be in his company. There, I said it. Ashley from Lady Fuzz is there too flogging zines (it’s a great read FYI so buy one yeah?) SP play, Ben looks sweaty (you would too if you thumped the tubs as hard as he does.)

After the show all fifteen of us pile back to Kathleen’s place and proceed to get drunk on various beer, port, wine and whiskey. Kathleen is an excellent human and knows just how to host bands. She’s truly multi-talented and does a million things, one of them is driving tours – she drove our last one in October and we can highly recommend her so hit her up (no bros pls). We’re joined in the living room by Stanley, a rad dog who hasn’t learned quite how to be a dog yet. I drank some of Kate’s whiskey and I’m not sure how much of a good idea that was. I confess to Nicola that this tour is the closest I’ve come to smoking in the 2.5 years since I quit. I won’t though, I hope? People start turning in, I stay up with peeps for a bit until the drunkness hits me proper. I clamber into the middle of a bed already occupied by Nicola and Dean, not knowing which one of them to spoon first.

Exmouth today. We’re playing on a boat a FUCKING BOAT I TELL YOU. 

BOAT.