Today was probably the shortest hop between two gigs on this tour: Oldham to Bolton. It's no Hull to Paris is it? What were the tour bookers thinking?
Despite being in bed early last night after just one glass of wine, and the easiest of drives I was tired today and I felt the first twenty minutes of the gig were a little raggedy as a result. Things warmed up and the second half went particularly well, but by the end of it all I was knackered.
I had to make my way back to the hotel with my charity bucket and half a box of programmes. It was a mile of so away and the items I had were awkward and heavy and the difficulty of getting back was compounded by me taking a wrong turn. I waited to cross the road at some traffic lights and a car suddenly screeched to a halt unnecessarily noisily as I was about to step into the road. I jumped a little and looked confused and some drunk, boisterous Boltonians laughed and shouted at me out of the window, amused by their prank. "You nearly shat yourself," yelled one of them. I didn't bother telling him that I didn't. I decided not to make a fuss in case he and his pals got out and decided to beat the shit out of me manually.
Finally I found my way back to the hotel, though my arms were aching and I was fit to drop. I stopped off at the bar for a couple of drinks to wind me down and relax me after a tense walk through Friday night Bolton. A few of the lads in the audience had invited me a long to some pub they were going to and I would quite liked to have gone, but tiredness meant it was another lonesome tour night.
The bar at the Holiday Inn was quite full, with lots of youngish businessmen in their suits (but ties casually taken off) and businesswomen getting pissed. It was, as is so often the case with hotel bars, a joyless, soulless place and I sat on my own watching everyone, feeling that if there is a Hell, it could scarcely be worse than a perpetual Friday night in the bar at the Holiday Inn in Bolton. But perhaps it is not such a bad place if you are not alone and tired and in a heightened state of emotion due to just having come off stage.
Although my abiding memory of touring is sitting around in hotel bars feeling a bit deflated, I had forgotten quite how dispiriting it can be. For a while at least. Then I started to enjoy my solitude and observing the drunken conversations of the people around me. I wondered what had brought this group of 20 colleagues together in Bolton. They obviously knew each other, but their bonhomie was slightly forced. Bit being relatively sober and detached I was able to spot a man and a woman make a signal to each other which heavily suggested they were going to have a secret liaison that night. It's good to know someone was!
The woman at the next table to me was quite brassy and fun and outgoing. She had clearly had a few drinks and was doing funny voices and laughing raucously. One of her friends made a jokey comment about how classy she was. She seemed hurt by the sarcasm. "I'm classy!" she insisted, not realising that if you are classy, you don't say you're classy. "I'm classy, aren't I?" she asked the bloke next to her. It would have had to be a blatant lie to agree with her and though politeness might have otherwise allowed him to be mendacious, the evidence was too overwhelming. He laughed and said "No!"
She seemed astonished in the way that a drunk person can take themselves a bit too seriously. So she asked a woman sitting opposite her, "Am I classy?"
The friend looked at her and said, "No, you're not!"
The unclassy woman who wished to be seen as classy allowed the truth to skate over her and moved on to another subject.
The second woman turned to the bloke next to her and said, "She asked, what could I say?"
I decided to leave them to it and went to my room to play poker on the internet.
This is what it's like on tour.
