Woke up happy with the thought that in an hour we would be out of that hotel. Usual breakfast of cold boiled eggs, or cheese omelet or muffin or bagel, orange juice and coffee. Then out and away to Northampton which took about 3 hours. Northampton is a cool place and the Iron Horse is a cool venue – grand piano, nice layout etc. The only bad thing is the dressing room which is more like a dungeon under the floor which creaks as people walk over it. Quatermass would be happy here. Pipes, graffiti-covered walls, a damp sort of smell and a strange lump in the floor – bodies? This place could rob you of any fighting spirit, or maybe it works the other way in that you bounce energetically onto the stage just to get out of the pit. Feels ratty, cockroachy down here. Depresses us but then we aren’t 17 and hungry any more. We have the feeling that this will be the last of these tours and so we will make the best of it. The gig is half full but again there is great enthusiasm and we all enjoy ourselves. I find it annoying that because the venue wants to take 20% of the merchandise, they put one of their employees right next to me to make sure that I don’t cheat them. She just sits right next to me the whole evening. Reminds me of the only other venue we have come across like that, in Greeley Colorado. They actually counted all the merchandise and locked the extra tee shirts in a cupboard so I couldn’t sell them without them knowing. So I stopped selling them – they made nothing and neither did we. Why am I thinking of all these bad things – something to do with the dressing room maybe…….