Routining the set

Today we're rehearsing in Andy's studio for our weekend shows at The Great Escape, Brighton on Saturday & All Tomorrow's Parties in Minehead on Sunday. We haven't played for quite a while as Gill & me have been writing new material for some time. It's great to see Mark and Thomas again. There's a very impressive and classic 72 input analogue mixing desk in here , a Neve 51 series ; which is about 3 metres long and slightly overspecified for a rehearsal monitor desk. We have a very talented engineer in the room , Struyaa, who's Croatian but has a perfect American accent, like everybody does in Europe now that British English dialects aren't popular in language schools. In some burger joint in bumfuck USA I was once asked where I was from, on account of my unusual accent. I said 'London, England' to which Cathy-Anne with the 3 server stars and backcombed hair said 'you speak English very well'. Thanks.

We have just played Damaged Goods . I , as usual, forgot the words that signal the stop where Gill first sings. It's comforting that nothing changes. The opening line was lifted from a lame ad slogan for Morrisons Supermarket in Leeds which we used to go to to admire the brilliantly lit products when we had hangovers. Somehow the vicious Tungsten light and packaged food made me feel a little better. We made our own entertainment in those days.