Travelling with Robyn, Michèle and de Witt today .... de Witt does guitars and stage as I think I've already mentioned .... "Cones, polaroids ..... ready" Michèle goes through the check-list and we're off, crossing back into the US at Windsor to reach Detroit in about 5 hours, de Witt reckons ..... Robyn takes pictures of trams on the way out of the city centre ..... We've got gigs 4 days in a row starting yesterday, so this is going to be tough but it's good, Morris said yesterday this might be his favourite ever tour, so far anyway ..... he also mentioned he got shivers down the spine during Sudden Town, which I presume he meant as a good thing ....... right now, Robyn is proofreading the TD for Toronto because I'm making a lot of mistakes and spellos and it's slowing things down a bit, the webmistress having to check everything, in amongst the daily events of her life like her high-paying job and getting her car stolen this morning (which is going to make it a bit tricky her coming to see us in Chicago, which is the plan, so as yet this web team is still...) Robyn interrupts this dreary flow. "Are you dreaming of buttered cactus, de Witt?" he asks as we reach the border ....

... we get through a little trouble checking in at the hotel but eventually they find the ghost of a reservation and we get rooms ....... I notice, whilst we're scouring the rooming list for our names, that there's a guy checking in today called Steven Otis ... that's weird, my cats are called Steve & Otis. Every time something odd happens I remember that guy Kenny ("Don't forget me") from Washington ....... there's an hour off before soundcheck so I borrow a VCR to look at the video elevator girl put on stage ...... there is a fabulous curtain of liquid grunge pouring out of the TV and washing me nearly into Lake Erie and she's the bass player and this what they look like ....... well, sort of .......

Outside St Andrews Hall is a funny little sliver of a building that looks like it refused to sell up when the bulldozers turned up ..... well done, parking lots are so much less lucrative than tower blocks but it serves them right for not paying the man what he wants ......

After soundcheck, there's a face I recognise from Toronto (and there were faces I recognised in Toronto like Eddie Tews, and some others, from Washington and New York and Boston) so I wonder if we're becoming a kind of caravan heading across the US ...... swimming with the dolphins ...... this time it is Mike, Paul, Pat and Chris and Chris is the one who was definitely in Toronto (he's on the right, maybe the others were too?). They want to hear Reptile tonight .....

Get this. The dressing room is at the front of the hall, by the main door. No-one knows the way to the stage (except directly through the audience). De Witt and I go up some stairs but it is so obviously the attic, with beams, no lights and all covered in junk. So about 30 feet in there and De Witt gives up and turns back, and we do too. Then we try the basement and it is large and empty but it gets us under the audience and up to the stage. We go up some steps and reach ground level and we nearly file straight onto the unlit stage in a confused conga before de Witt stops us; all very spinal tap. The gig, not that great for us, although I think the audience liked it - we do an amazing version of Underwater Moonlight with me and Robyn making weird noises detuning our strings and it's so hilariously out of control that I just start laughing .......oh yes then I nearly fell over a bit later, just through forgetting to keep my balance ...... Finally, Morris went shopping in Toronto and bought an amazing black shirt with ornate squiggly trimming that I predict he will wear a lot in his life ... he got it out tonight just before we went on along with the soul shirt he wore for the gig which was apparently from the same spree

— Matthew