U is for Up Her What?!

Champagne at Big Uncle Franks

So it turns out ‘Upper Norwood’ only exists in the minds of Ash and their booking agents, because we certainly can’t find anyone in London who has heard of it! Ees no beeg deal cos ‘Gypsy Hill’ or whatever this place is meant to be is an Irish bar, and that means open bar, busty barmaids and lots of ‘craic’. It’s possibly the smallest stage of the tour so far, and not only that but it’s a funny ‘L’ shape and unless you’re standing on top of the bar you can’t really see what’s going on. Smartly they’ve done some sort of live video link kind of thing to the smoking area and set up an outside bar, and if it wasn’t so flipping freezing this would be the perfect setting to watch the show. I have to admit that none of us really prepared the best for the show tonight since we all demolished the biggest veggie burger + chip setup ever seen, and the auld hearts were having a tricky enough time getting oxygen around our wretched bodies already. The barstaff and Big Frank the landlord were a great bunch of lads, not only giving us free run of the bar, but letting us tear into the backroom stock (including champagne!) all night. If only we didn’t have to get up early to travel to the Isle Of White there would have been quite a few contenders for the Chardonnay Award! The gig actually went really well, mostly because I had never seen so many lovely girls in the crowd, and if you’re not already aware, that’s our target audience. Afterwards we had the pleasure of meeting Damien from the Undertones, one of the nicest men in rock and a hero of ours, and everyone got involved in some serious jollies. We were staying in the posh part of London tonight, and since Stevie is barred from anywhere that isn’t a bath or skip, we left him and the rest of or Irish buds and headed into the night. Let’s ‘av you Isle of White!
Luke