Woke up at Phil's place on a sofa still wearing the black suit I usually wear for the shows. In the left pocket I found a turquoise sock. A sign? What the hell have I done yesterday night? Obviously I didn't go for the Schnaps as my hangover is more of a "light"-version. I remember talking a lot, drinking even more and that it has been a marvellous show of the Anglo German Low Stars. Wonderful. England is a nice place for the likes of Astro Maekkelae... Jasper of Citizen Fish did some video filming before he just collapsed and fell asleep. Hello Paul and Keith - guess you were the ones standing right in the line of Maekkelae's verbal crossfire.
After this gorgeous time in Lord Bath's town-house with Phil, Claire and all the others we set out for Reading in the late afternoon. The "Rising Sun Arts Center" turned out to be a very nice venue that met all my stereotypes of England. There were two cats living in the place, it had this very 60s atmosphere (can't explain why) and the mixing desk probably was from that time. By the way I had my first encounter with British "Fish & Chips". Not as bad as I expected. This evening Clive joined the Anglo German Low Stars again after leaving us in France for a couple of days. He also brought his mother, a really nice person who is now probably an Anglo German Low Stars fan as we played a lovely show at the Rising Sun. So far our best merchandise result - 8 of 12 people in the audience bought a cd and Clive's mom took also 2 shirts.
After the show Phil went back to Warminster and we witnessed some extraordinary experience with an English taxi driver. This guy was probably completely mad. Going an average of 80 mph all the time and pretending he knew where to go we found ourselves lost in the suburbs of a place called Bracknell. After being pulled over by the police twice they decided to escort us to the place where we were supposed to stay the night. Never had this before. Not even in East Berlin or Czech Republik...
At Brians home we had a couple of after-show drinks (including original Cuban rum) and he had an amazing record-collection. This made me stay up almost all night listening to Can and The Jesus & Mary Chain which I haven't done for quite a long time. Thanks Brian and hope we'll meet next time around. On the way to St. Albans the next day I saw a highly interesting takeaway with the wonderful name "Julia's Snack Attack".

Astro Maekkelae