Lachlan, Simon and Shane sitting by a canal in Paris.
Day 16
I woke up at about 9am and rolled around in bed for a few hours trying to get some more rest.
I sent Lachlan a message to see if he was up. He was, and I convinced him to come to the supermarket with Tom and I, a decision we would all learn was a poor one.
We drove to the supermarket and I recognised it from the last time I left Paris with Dune Rats.
I put the car we had through a car wash there, it was very strange to have been there twice.
We went towards the carpark and there was a boom gate. We couldn’t get in because we didn’t have the right card to access the carpark however a large lineup of traffic had now arrived behind us. I had to get out and try to get everyone to reverse and allow me to do a 3 point turn to get out.
Eventually we found a nice safe car park next to a burnt out car on bricks with all its tyres removed and walked in through the rubbish filled street to the supermarket.
The supermarket was quite nice and had lovely food. We got all we wanted and headed to the checkout. There was about 50 checkouts and only 1 person serving people -t he result being a line about fifty thousand kilometres long.
A nice lady pointed us to the self serve line, which we just got cut in front of by everyone and when we eventually got in the machine wouldn’t scan most of our items. We very hurriedly left the cursed supermarket and came back to our hotel to make a baguette with cheese and salami for breakfast.
After breakfast I went to the van to check the gaffers tape and Pringle can lid. It seems to be holding up ok.
I cleaned the rubbish out of the van and went and got ready to go in to the venue.
We arrived at Point Éphémère a little early and loaded in. The venue was really hot already before people had even arrived.
We set everything up and then sat by the canal surrounded by rubbish and chatted for a while.
We had a beautiful dinner that the venue prepared which I really enjoyed and then got ready for the show.
I sold merchandise for the first half of the show and then set up for the sweatiest and best show of the tour to date.
These New South Whales did really well, it was their first time playing in Paris. Their show was great as always and had a really good crowd response.
The crowd support for DZ was really wonderful to see and there ended up being around 280 people at the show having an absolute blast which was great, especially considering it was a Monday night.
Will and I packed up, loaded out and got everything in the van. After that Jamie and I waited around looking at all the rats coming out of the canal while Tom offered to buy Lachlan a beer and accidentally shouted about €40 worth of beers for everyone.
Simon trying to cool down after the show.
We drove back to the hotel watching Monty Python in the van and it was very funny.
We stopped at some traffic lights and Tom sang Ba Ba Black Sheep to some people on the side of the road in a beautiful French singing voice.
I was worried about the radiator for the next drive, but decided to check up on it in the morning and re tape it if necessary.
Day 17
I woke up this morning and went down to the reception for breakfast.
The waiter was especially rude however we ignored his arrogance and enjoyed a nice breakfast together.
I checked the tape and Pringle can lid and all seemed to be in order before setting off on our journey to London.
We stopped about halfway at a fuel station and I filled up as well as checking on the radiator’s temporary fix. It seemed to be holding up well.
We continued driving to the tunnel and arrived and checked in after our 3 hour journey from Paris to Calais.
Lachlan, Tom, Ben and I all went through very quickly because we have European and UK passports while the others got put through with the trainee border force gentleman which took quite a while. We boarded the train and settled in for the trip under the sea.
Tom and I switched driving when we arrived back in the UK and started driving to London. We got in to London and the traffic was horrible, as always.
I needed to pee incredibly badly so Shane and I got out of the van in the stand still traffic while we were in Peckham and ended up walking faster than the van. We went to a pub and I went to the toilet while Shane had a Guinness and shouted me a sparkling water with lemon.
We met up with everyone at the arcade games venue DZ were doing their label party at and had a very expensive, very low quality vegan burger.
Tom, Jamie, Lachlan and I left to drive north of London to our hotel, stopping in at a TESCO to get some berries and noodles. We arrived at our hotel between the highway and the train line and checked in. I shared a room with Lachlan and we put the air conditioning on and watched some TV before going to sleep.
Day 18
I woke up this morning and liaised with Jack from the van hire company to get someone out to fix our radiator issue. He said it was easier for me to called Mercedes Benz. After about an hour and a half of waiting in the hotel parking lot a bloke called Neil turned up to fix the van.
He gave us a new cap and replaced the coolant. He ran a diagnostic test on the van and cleared a few errors.
He determined that everything was ok with the van and it must have been the radiator cap that was the problem.
After that I took Shane and Simon to the train station.
Neil checking our van.
When they came down to the van they let me know that the merchandise couldn’t be delivered to the hotel because the courier couldn’t work out how to do his job and deliver a box of t-shirts.
After dropping them off at the train station I rang the courier and just got him to park where he was and to tell me where that was so I could go to him, as he was incapable of doing the simple task. I got the shirts, went back to the hotel and drove to the venue with Lachlan and Todd.
We arrived at the venue, called Borderline, in Soho and the load in was absolutely horrible.
We had to double park on a very busy Charing Cross Road in the middle of Soho and load through the traffic and a worksite. After that I had to move the van to a car park a few blocks away from the venue and call up Ringo Toll Company to try to pay for the carpark. It took about 25 minutes before it finally worked.
I went back to the venue and almost everything was already set up so I finished setting up what wasn’t.
After I had done that I walked to a cash exchange shop with all of the merchandise money which was in Euros to exchange it in to British Pounds.
I went back to the venue and and did soundcheck. Ecca Vandal was there and she checked with the guys as well.
They did Sabotage and it was very good.
After soundcheck we went to get Vietnamese for dinner.
On the way back to the venue I saw a barber and stopped in, to get my hair cut. I just told him to turn the chair around so I couldn’t see what he was doing and that he should express himself. I think he did a great job.
He was a funny fellow from Romania and had been working at the barbers shop, called Rogers, for 6 years.
I got back to the venue and had a bit of a rush to set up the merchandise.
I also had to rush to write out the set lists and managed to stuff up both Lachlan and Shane’s setlist.
Shane broke a string in the first song and Lachlan broke a string in Shred For Summer, the only song in a different tuning and I gave him the guitar in the wrong tuning. He dealt with it really well but I felt absolutely terrible about the show and I was very disappointed with myself.
After the show Ben and I packed everything up on the floor and I went to pick up the van. The road was closed and I had to go a different direction which turned a 6 minute drive in to a 36 minute drive.
I got to the venue and parked on the footpath and everyone brought gear up.
We loaded it on the footpath through the middle of a nightclub line up.
Lachlan bought me a felafel kebab which was lovely and we drove back to the hotel.
We watched a bizarre rip off of Kitchen Nightmares and then went to sleep.
Ecca Vandal on stage with DZ Deathrays in London.