Monday, 2nd October 2000

09.15
Up at 04.30.

Today is our club play-in date at, so we are informed, a small "world music" venue.

11.27
Bummer. An hour spent with Laurie trying to get online. Even with AOL, even using his modem, nothing but frustration. So not much e-mailing will happen before returning to the US, although Laurie can get this Diary off to DGM.

22.54
An honourable debut performance in this small club: 176 paying audients plus guests. It's as if during the interim our European work has settled into its place, and the band matured while apart from each other.

The dressing room bathroom featured a luxury toilet.

The Toto Washlet is a water closet which nowadays is standard fitting in many good quality hotels. It combines the functions of toilet and bidet. As one sits upon the seat, there is a flashing light & a rush of water. This is to discharge cold water from the system, so the seated party has no unpleasant surprises ( as I discovered at the Imperial Hotel when the new standard was introduced). A stream of water, the pressure of which may be intensified, is directed towards a part of the nether regions, front or centre. Helpful diagrams make this choice apparent to the non-character literate Gigster. These are not the only two choices: to have a clean butt or clean genitals. A third option is to have clean both. And a fourth option: neither might be cleansed by the hot water jet.

Trey and I have wondered, since visiting Japan with David Sylvian in 1992, what might be implied by the sign on our hotel hair dryers: "do not use for the other reason". To what other use might a hair dryer be put? Well, we discovered this at The Love Generation (the name of the club).

The Happy Gigster's Super Luxury Toto Washlet Combined Chamber of Easement, Bidet & Butt Cleansing Station featured an additional service: a hot air blower, available to blow-dry parts recently subject to the variable-pressure hot water jet. Conceivably, for those overly travelled gigsters whose sense of propriety has slipped, new possible deviant sensory applications await. I have no doubt that the late Beaton Bunnerius Bun would have been delighted by a Toto Playlet Rabbits' Butt Blower.

In the van returning, with the most friendly & laid back aprËs-gig Crimson I have ever known, Adrian was telling us stories of his life as a vacuum cleaner salesman. He was not good, apparently, and abandoned his gig having sold two: one to his mother & one to his aunt. His demonstration featured dropping sand on the carpet of a potential customer & then failing to suck it up again.

Hooray! A message from Toyah on the hotel voice mail. Father-in-law Beric's birthday is today, so I called to congratulate him, but I was only able to leave a message for Toyah. It is difficult to convey how much I ache when away from this wonderful little woman.

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