The following night (May 26), Bjork is playing a rare live show at the same venue. A couple of our group have already got tickets and between us we score some more off people who are selling spares. (I rendezvous with a girl at Waterloo Station and buy her spare, she’d also been at Radiohead last night).
I am so exhausted that even though at any other time I would be quite enthusiastic at the prospect of the pride of Iceland in action, I find myself a spot to sit down towards the back of the Empire and don’t have the energy to stand up for most of the show. Consequently I have very little memory of it. Sometimes there really is one gig too many.
Back to real life. Having decided that we are definitely going to Italy, I only have just over a month to plan the trip. Over the summer I start attending a night-class, provoked by what was basically a dare from a friend, I become part of a stand up comedy workshop. I write a short set for my debut performance in a room above a pub. By the end of June I have done a few very short gigs. On the night of Radiohead’s Glastonbury headliner in June, I was on stage myself, delivering a tense 5 minutes of observations and fumbling my punch lines due to nerves.
The Hail to The Thief reviews, interviews and general press overkill continues (considering the band’s resolutions not to get caught up in the promo melee again, there is a surprisingly large amount of it.)