Bangor(s) and Mash(ed up due to lack of sleep)

See what I've done there with the title. Its just for me. I chuckled slightly as I wrote it and then felt guilty afterwards at how bad it is. I feel a bit deliriously tired today after last night's journey. Its not really fair complaining as I only drove to the tiny historical village of Beaconsfield where I was then picked up by Barry Castanogla who drove us like a driving legend all the way to Bangor in his very nice car. I was worried about leaving my car for 8 hours somewhere that I had no familiarity with until I got to Beaconsfield. The area was so nice that my grubby little car was frowned upon amongst the beemas, mercs and 4x4 monstrosities that were in abundance. I was almost hoping that instead of a break in they might just take my car and replace it with something better out of pity. No such luck. 

The gig in Bangor was brilliant. A lovely packed savvy crowd that were very up for the show. However even the great atmosphere as we arrived didn't stop me and Barry feeling very sluggish and knackered from car cabin fever (or car-bin fever as I like to call it). Dan Nightingale helped not only with his good hat and great MCing but also by finding the base of a flight case on wheels in the dressing room. This was then used for much skateboarding antics and several moments of nearly dying by smashing our faces into tables, all of which strangely provided the antidote for sleepiness. There is nothing like nearly smashing your face into a table to make you wake the hell up. Dan then had a great night even though he insisted he didn't because he's an arsehead and then both Barry and me had really great sets too. I've only ever gigged with Barry once and havent gigged with Dan in about a year so it was nice to watch material I wasn't familiar with for once. All in all it seemed brilliant. Until we started to drive back. 

There is nothing to ruin your evening quite like a 5 hour drive home in the rain. If you don't believe me, you should try it. Next time you have a really great night out recommend to everyone afterwards that you drive straight to Bangor and see how much you hate life. We managed to keep our sanity by listening to Russell Kane on Five Live. He started on the show by saying that at this time of night he would usually be driving home from a gig with a ginsters on his lap. We were in such a situation and in desperation for some entertainment we texted in a hello saying where we were hoping for a sympathy mention. It didn't happen as instead they talked about clever stuff and Russ texted me saying it was too serious a show for him to do that. It was fair enough although part of me would have loved it if in the middle of talking to loads of workers in the car industry about how their lives were going completely wrong to suddenly say ' Sorry we have interrupt your crying there David at Nissan, but sod your unemployment and hello to Barry and Tiernan who on their way back from Bangor and about to get their Ginsters!' I don't think that would have belittled the issue at all. Well not loads anyway. 

On the mega journey home we saw in a service station all the new flavours of Walkers crisps they are trialing. As a sucker for these things I went for the 'Builders Breakfast' flavour and Barry went for 'Fish and Chips'. We considered 'Chilli and Chocolate' and even the 'Cajun Chicken' but it was 2am and it felt like we were taking a risk already. I can safely say that 'Builders Breakfast' does indeed taste exactly like it says, only if a builder had sicked out a breakfast all over someone's crisps. As I kept burping up the taste of wrongness all the way home I could just see Gary Linekar's smiling big eared face cackling as he knew people everywhere were chewing his foulness.