Chris Mannequin Hands

Gutentag,

Bradley and James here.

We write to you from a dingy internet cafe situated in the centre of Frankfurt (allegedly the birthplace of 'frankfurters').

For the purpose of this blog, anything written by myself (James) will be in red and anything written by myself (Bradley) will be in blue. Black is both of us.

In case you're wondering...and you're probably not wondering, but we'll tell you anyway...James chooses red as its the colour of his beloved Arsenal and Bradley chooses blue because...well, he just quite likes blue.

The tour is drawing to its close, however, we still have a few more shows to play. I'm sure I've mentioned this in a previous blog, however, my continuing guilt of not knowing much German has grown ever stronger as these last few weeks have gone on. We English tend to be lazy. Citizens of foreign turf seem to all master our language, yet we can barely say a word of anything other than our native tongue.

When I say I don't know 'much' German, there is one word that has stuck with me from the days of 'learning' German in secondary school and that's 'winkelmesser'. It has a nice ring to it I think. And yes, it is a useful word...it means 'Protractor'.

This is the fourth time we've toured Germany. It's good fun, although the van journeys are pretty long winded. We do manage to kill time in the van pretty well though...like today, we discussed the names of our first ever bands...which is a bit of a faux pas - it's like talking to your current girlfriend about your ex....but either way, it was amusing to hear some of the names being thrown about -

Names our of first bands *snigger* -

James's: 'Ecostar', 'Labelled', 'Silent Day' and '10,000 Ways'

Chris's: 'Insomnia'

Tom's: 'Electric Cattle Prod'

Hannah's: 'WinterKids' (her first and only band)

Mine: 'Signed'...Terrible, I know. It just meant I could go around telling people 'we are signed'!

Here are a few photos from the tour -

This is me with some random metal structure we found backstage in Heidelberg -

Me -Me -
...and all of us in Leipzig -

Us with a big frog talking pond politics -

And finally here's 'Chris Mannequin Hands' in American Apparel.

Chris stole the hands from one of the mannequins...it was pretty amusing -

Right, that's all...I'm off to get a falafel wrap.

x