I basically finished organising the car around 1 hour too late to make our first show, luckily I could arrange to borrow some backline, so the guys just had to cruise their guitars through the tube. For our first show in London we were playing the “City Showcase”, a yearly SXSW type event put on in London. We were playing a NZ showcase with Batrider, The O’loverlys and Raggamuffin Children. This show freaked me out, it was so funny, you hear over and over again about all the kiwis relocating to London, but until you see it…geez. We only saw maybe half a dozen ex-pats total! over 6 weeks in the US, one night in London and it felt like I was at a show in Wellington 3 years ago, all the old school Wellington kids coming out of the woodwork. It wasn’t a big show by any stretch of the imagination, but a nice little party and opportunity to catch up with some old friends and make a couple of new ones.

Best thing about getting to the UK is finally healthy food was reasonable again! We have been living off sandwiches since we got here. You can grab a nice little egg and cress sandwich from any service station for less then a pound, and you can usually grab a decent amount of fruit (plums, mandarins, bananas etc..) for a pound. Compared to the US where a bag of half a dozen mandarins costs $6US (around $9NZ), it’s more like 1 pound UK ($3NZ) here. We are truly stoked as we were getting ridiculously fed up with fast food. We have discovered our new home - ASDA! Our almost daily routine was to stop at an ASDA in the morning and load up on groceries (Mums…we’re finally looking after ourselves). If you come to the UK and need to eat good and for cheap, go to an ASDA, or an Iceland, if you can’t find either…settle for a Tesco.

Each time we stop somewhere we usually all run into the shop and race to grab the cheapest sandwiches. Ash always wins, could be to do with that he is the youngest, but probably, cause he is the cheapest.

Our second show in London was the next night at a sweet party ran by a sweet night called “Club Popaganda”, it was an end of university party and we were expecting a drunken brawl as you would expect from a typical NZ end of term party, but instead it was a sit down, refined affair with spoken word between acts and people being glared at for talking. Still a fun show, though the first time OTA have played to a sit down audience on the tour. Caught up with some more friends from Wellington again tonight, even Claire ex-Radioactive had just arrived that afternoon. Unfotunately the So So Modern boys were not arriving until the following day, which would start our criss-crossing and near meetings with them all over Europe.

Played with a band called Jonquil. Really nice. Fans of The Phoenix Foundation, Ghostplane etc should check them out.