I'm writing this the morning after the night before.... I'm currently speeding my way back up to the Midlands on one of Mr Branson's super high-speed trains, ready for my day job which has seen me up in Solihull for the last couple of weeks. Last night things were decidedly less zoomy on this same route. I was sat at Birmingham International station with the departure board showing delayed and cancelled, and the tannoy ringing out the news that a vehicle had hit a bridge and trains in to London were suspended. Great.

With the show due to kick off a few hours later ('Snuffed It Sets Sail' @ The Gaff), it was a bit of a twitchy moment, not helped by the one member of staff I could find saying it could be sorted in 5 minutes, could be 5 hours! I had visions of landing at Euston as the gig was kicking off, grabbing a cab to the venue and joining the band midway through an instrumental set. As luck would have it, it didn't come to that. I missed sound check, but had time to try out my pirate look, which consisted of peacoat, head scarf and eye patch, aided by the untamed follicles on my head and face, which all said was apparently pretty convincing. Maybe I'll keep my eyes peeled for a part in 'Pirates of the Caribbean - the rock opera'.

In case you were wondering, I hadn't suddenly had the urge to mimic Captain Jack Sparrow; the night had a pirate theme, and we thought it'd be fun to join in. Rob had a Jolly Roger draped across the keyboard stand, whilst Sonny was wearing a blue and white striped t-shirt and his ever present hat which conveniently fitted in quite nicely. The promoter had made a decent effort to make the night a bit special, which saw the place decked out with skeletons, candles and various other garb to set the scene, whilst some of the punters had dressed up for the occasion, in pirate-esque garb or as glamorous wenches. Or at least I assume they had.

As you may know if you've been following us over recent months, I'd been out for a while after my op.  The lads had been rehearsing without me whilst I got myself fit, so last night was a bit of a cobweb-blower-offer for me. We'd been a late addition to the bill, having snapped up the show at short notice, safe in the knowledge I was finally fit to throw myself around a stage again. I felt a bit rusty, especially having missed soundcheck, and landing at the venue last minute, but it didn't take too long to get in to the swing of things, and I'm pretty sure we all had fun.

We met some cool new people that had enjoyed the show, and snapped up some pre-release copies of the debut album. We hung around after our set to watch the other bands, and took part in a bit of tom foolery whilst stood at the bar, mostly at Sonny's expense. I somehow ended up kissing Sonny's hat, which was somewhat disturbing for both of us (me and the hat), with Rob and Marc later conspiring to prove the hat wasn't surgically attached to its somewhat bemused owner.  Our train journey home seemed to be the source of some amusement to our fellow passengers who seemed up for a laugh.  The hat was safe this time, but Marc learnt the hard way not to trust your band mates where toilet doors are concerned.

We're due back to Holloway Road on the 20th of May, this time to play the Rocket Complex at London Met Uni -- details under the shows section.  We're waiting on confirmation of the details, but we're hoping to also announce a London show for late April at Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes.  We'll add the details once we have them.

p.s. there were a few pics taken at the show, so we'll hopefully get some of them up on the facebook/myspace soonish