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Twin Atlantic Tour Diary: Cardiff

Craig Kneale's last blog as the Twin Atlantic UK tour draws to a close. Hold the tears back please, in fact don't, let them flow. Craig would like that.

Have you ever woke up and thought you were a panther? And started roaming the streets looking for pray? No? Me neither, it would be absolutely nuts if you did. I did however wake up on our final day of this short UK tour and think I was some sort of old man tourist, and went for a final walk along the beach in Bournemouth. I’m going to miss that beach, it treated me well over the last day. I saw some youths with dogs on my walk down there and assumed they may shout things at me - but they didn’t. Yet another reason why Bournemouth is good. I got back to the hotel with a minute to go before van call, I probably looked really smooth to the other guys because of my pin-point time keeping. They didn’t say, but I could tell.



It was onwards to Cardiff, one of my favourite cities. Because Welsh people are nice. It was a textbook drive into the city, we even got to go across that futuristic looking bridge. I think you get charged for the pleasure of entering Wales (Easy now - I said Wales not whales - for your information I wouldn’t pay for the latter), but it’s worth it. We were playing at Clwb Ifor Bach, or Welsh Club to non-Welsh people like me and my pal David Beckham. He tried to say Clwb and it just sounded wrong. Barry managed to park the van so close to the wall that we all had to spider ourselves out of it and crawl over the bonnet. All the smoothness i’d obtained with my perfect time management earlier was ruined as I awkwardly clambered over the van and half fell to the ground. Un-smooth.



There was all sorts of technical problems during soundcheck leading to a comical 25 minutes checking the same floor tom, I can still hear the dull thuds when I try to sleep at night. I must add that they are really nice in-tune thuds, I knows my way round tuning a drum. Sometimes. Eventually everything was working though, at the expense of sound checks for the other bands. Sorry other bands. Those other bands were of course the lovely Canterbury, and also I Am Hope who we played with last time he headlined in Cardiff and who we’re all big fans of. I went on Merch duties until we played again, and sold loads of stuff and kept all the profits for myself. Don’t tell the rest of the band please. They wouldn’t be pleased. With the money I bought myself a really nice pair of gloves and matching hat - i’ve sneakily called them my ‘winter merch ware’.



Both I Am Hope and Canterbury were amazing, although apparently there was a guy in the front row being what we call in this business ‘a wee prick’ during Canterbury’s set. Name calling and such, what is the point? Never really understood that, why pay money to stand and say childish things when you can do it at home for free? And sit down at the same time? Anyhoo, we were running slightly late and there was a strict 10pm curfew for a club night and we went onstage at 9.20pm. And our set is 70 minutes long, something just didn’t add up about those figures. Our lack of maths expertise lead us to just run over curfew with the goading of the crowd, the ‘strict’ curfew turning out to be ‘not so
strict’ as we weren’t stopped. I’m glad we did run over, it was a very fun way to end the tour. Great show.



It did lead to a rather frustrating staggered disco load out though, first taking the gear down one level and then having to wait half an hour until the club had opened. It was our last night and we were looking forward to relaxing a little, but this is the consequences when you disobey the curfews of rock. Eventually everything was packed away for the last time (for a week at least) and we said farewell to Canterbury, who we’d all grown very close to in a very short space of time - like the way a man might feel when he falls in love with a woman. Except this was purely masculine, no girly feelings as we’re all 100% men. To an uncomfortable degree. I can’t even brush my teeth without snapping the toothbrush - that’s how manly I am.



We were going to stick about for a while but Scotland-Wales Rugby match was on the next day and when some very bold individual started playing the bagpipes in the middle of a crowded street the 7 of us instinctively decided that it was a very good time for us to vamoose to the hotel before we were crushed by around 1000 Welsh people. And with that the tour was over.



Well, we had to get home too. But I won’t bore you with the details - it was eventless. I did buy some soup that was quite hot near the end of the journey, but eventually it cooled down and everything was fine again. The end.