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It’s the little things that make me laugh in life. Yesterday I witnessed a spherical chap order a Diet Coke with a large bag of chips. Well, it made me smile. And so did a telephone call from my pal, Eunuch. I’ll let you in to my private life  – well, his – and introduce him, shall I?

Eunuch once grappled with asexuality. But he is now showing worryingly libidinous traits. He has struck up a relationship with a Russian lady on the internet, and things are rather hotting up. Her daily epistle – by email with tasteful photographs – continues from behind the Iron Curtain, with ever-increasing signs of seriousness.

He telephones me via loudspeaker today – he happens to be soaping himself in the shower, at the time – to ask for my home address. ‘The Russian embassy need it for her visa,’ he explains casually. Heavens, I don’t mind my place being used for a spot of romance while I’m away but this is starting to smack of KGB. Or identity theft, at the very least.

‘I’ve told her not to come until July, but she’s trying to bring the date forward to next week,’ he adds, lathering his undercarriage. Dubbed the “Kazan kiss of death” (by me), her pictures are rather titillating; I can see what’s got him so worked up.

Well, who am I to stand in the way of young love, eh? And what can go wrong? Eunuch plans to impress her with a cup of tea, out of a roadside van, on the way back from Gatwick Airport. Good luck mate – we all have our fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, the AC/DC tour potters along – today we are in Leipzig, achieving rather less than I would have liked. I borrowed a broom, you see, from Number One – our lead driver. Now take into account that he’s had this broom for nigh on a decade; perhaps you can picture him understandably peeved when, within four eminently gentle sweeps, it snaps. Whoops!

So, instead of investigating the old town – the world’s first newspaper was published here in 1650 – I’m fooling about in hardware stores, desperate for a replacement brush. And I’ve had to appease Namibian today too, because, like nearly all of us, including me, he hit the roof of the stadium this morning.

He is ruffled, knee bouncing up and down nineteen to the dozen with nerves. To look at him, anybody would think that the world had collapsed. My placatory, ‘What’s the matter, fatty? There’s no damage done,’ does little to soothe him. Honestly, why these buildings’ entrances are made so low that trucks can’t get in without a scrape, I shall never know..

‘Why don’t you do one thing at a time?’ asked my dear friend, Fat Paul, recently. You know, he’s got a point. Mind perpetually whirring, juggling multiple concepts, I’ve got myself in a muddle lately. So here’s what I shall do:

The blogs from last year – they need to be imported at some point – will go on the front page over the next couple of weeks. Then, when this bally U2 Tour finally finishes and I get some time off from sightseeing and socialising, I’ll write up this year’s touring notes. How does that sound? That way I can post a weekly snippet over the winter when not much travelling will be taking place. People like Superman (featured in Finnish Girls Part 2), continually hounding me for the next installment, can get stuffed until I’m good and ready.

May 10th, ’09:

A little project? Gordon Bennett! While Bettina sleeps off her drug-induced coma, I look through her pages of notes that she wants reading into a microphone – to be learnt with an impeccable English accent for an imminent exam. The topics are transport and religion. Simple enough, yet I’m supposed to make coherent sentences from endless bullet points spanning twenty pages per topic.

For example, under the subheading “Charitable work” in the religion paper, I’m faced with this: Quaker: social concern, peacemaking
Cadbury Trust
Rowntree Trust }(Quaker history) funding for housing
Not restricted on basis of religos beliefs

Lordy, this is hopeless. Stoically plodding on and on, sentences are soon abandoned. Even then, the recording lengths are still 27 minutes for religion and 25 for transport. More than once I pause to sip tea, or sneeze, and say, ‘erm, sorry, that doesn’t make any sense.’ The pronunciation, at least, is flawless, if I do say so myself.

A little later, Bettina, Eddy and I take a drive out to Fischbrunn – for an eight-kilometre walking loop in the ‘Franconian Dolomites’. We’re still in Bavaria here but window shutters are now red and white, instead of blue and white. Stout footwear is recommended for this forest hike because there are awkward climbing passages where a chap could fall fifteen metres or so, and perish.

So, shod in flip-flops – safety flops, I like to call them – I embark on the soft, mossy, forest trail. Eddy is behaving like a girl’s blouse, walking around most of the difficult sections in his hiking boots, while I have a stab at the worst of them. Actually, one bit is so bad that flip-flops are in fact unsuitable…and I’m forced to go barefoot for safety.

After nearly four hours of flirting with death, we come to a lovely pub in Hirschbach, glinting in the evening sun. An elderly man, sitting on a haemorrhoid cushion – he turns out to be the owner – talks to me in German. I nod a bit, interjecting with the odd ‘ach so’ while Bettina translates. Apparently the mayor of Scotland was here not so long ago, and he shuffles off to find the visitor book.

Some minutes later, he returns, and painstakingly flips gilt-edged pages, licking his forefinger between each agonising turn. As our eyes glaze, the entry is found and we are jolted into feigned interest. 1974 was the visit, possibly the last day in thirty-five years that anything happened here.

He adjusts his croupier’s armbands, while we demolish the last of the cheesecake. And then he waves us off. His parting shot to me, in German of course, is, ‘greetings to the mayor.’

You wouldn’t believe how long it’s taking me to import blogs to this site from last year. And every now and again, I find a spot of text that deserves to blight the front page once more. This is from Christmas ’09 and celebrates the presence in my life of a certain South African:

Who better to conjure up a jolly yo ho ho, eh? Just the name “Namibian” connotes a jocular, doughy form brimming with platitudes, doesn’t it? A veritable, clownish Goliath of a man? A corpulent chap with a club foot?

Dear old Namibian may be all of these things and more, but he never fails to bring a smile to one’s face. He lights up another’s countenance like no other, and asks nothing in return.

Though lamentably incompetent, and as far from apple-cheeked as a human can be, he nevertheless possesses beguiling characteristics. Hang on, I’ll try and think of one…

Seriously, his cheerful spirit and ineffably entertaining quotes have becalmed many a fraught moment this year; in the face of adversity, he has diffused situations simply by saying something utterly absurd.

Yes, I’ve led him around Europe, and bought him the occasional collectible thimble while he lies supine in his truck, but his generosity has remained boundless. Let’s doff our trilbys, and say Happy Christmas, to the man whose antics have provided us with so many guffaws this year.

Let’s also celebrate Namibian’s birthday, by rewinding to July on the U2 tour 2009. And how convenient that he looks – with his gargantuan frame and preternaturally sunny disposition – like the quintessential Santa Claus. Yo ho ho. I, for one, love him to bits.

Be honest, you thought Namibian was in his sixties, didn’t you? No, no, no. You’re a rotten lot. Had you looked closely over the last couple of months, you would have noticed a dashing exuberance and purple fetlocks, surely indicators of ebullient youth. In fact he has only just turned fifty.

Yes, Big Boy has reached the half-century and, by my calculations, has a good six years left before succumbing to the inevitable. As you know, there are only two certainties in life – and he’s already paying taxes.

‘You’ll be dead at forty,’ he snaps back, as though I’ve hit a nerve. Honestly, where this unwarranted vitriol comes from, I just can’t imagine.

We are celebrating his big day in a car park in Milan, sprawled in deckchairs beside fifty-four articulated trucks. ‘I’m Peter Pan,’ he gasps youthfully, through a fug of cigarette smoke.

Really? I don’t remember “the boy that never grew up” having quite such an insatiable appetite for whisky – or even whiskey, come to think of it – and Cola. And I could have sworn Peter was slimmer, with hair less like a toilet brush.

I’ll tell you what, though: Namibian really is losing weight now we’re into hot weather. As his shorts slide ever southwards, the rest of the U2 crew are submitted to a grotesque daily spectacle as he cycles past. On this score alone, he’s overqualified for a position in the construction industry.

Though he intends to be forty-nine for ever, and swears blind that he’s Peter Pan, any lingering misapprehensions as to his identity quickly evaporate: he pours another whisky – polluting it with a tin of pop – and swears colourfully.

And if language and alcohol were not evidence enough, Namibian cannot fly – it’s simple physics. Even with the secret ingredient of a McDonald’s pizza (with chips on top) inside him, he remains on terra firma. Rather more firma than he’d intended, actually.

Namibian is drunk; the bicycle is a stupid idea in his condition; a fellow trucker’s deckchair is crushed to a pulp.

Many Happy Returns,  Old Pest..

‘Is this true?’ asks Little Dick. He retrieves a soggy roll-up from between his tonsils, regains his composure, and gazes levelly at Namibian. ‘Do you really sit down to piss?’

Namibian rears up, an indignant human beach ball. Yet his tone is more astonishment than defensiveness at this imprecation. ‘What if I do?’ he retorts, as though this is perfectly normal behaviour for an adult male. ‘It’s the way I was brought up – so you don’t make a mess.’ Good heavens, I need some feedback from other men here, I think.

Is this just a South African foible? Or the whole Southern hemisphere? (It wouldn’t surprise me if Australian men sit down to piss.) Or is this a more widespread dichotomy – between generations, irrespective of geographical boundaries? Dad? Gentleman Steve? Please don’t tell me you both prefer a nice sit down, eschewing the urinal as a confounded contraption.

I’m hoping however, that this is an isolated incidence. Perhaps Namibian was issued with a biscuit whilst potty training – as commensurate reward for a wee-wee – and simply never got out of the habit. Having just returned from the toilet, he treats himself to a little snack, smiling now with depthless geniality.

He’s got me curious though. Is he tempted to take a cup of tea with him into the bathroom, do you think? And surely, like any normal guy, he likes to browse through this month’s boat, car or motorcycle magazines while idling on the throne? Nope, I’m afraid not. Namibian is on and off the lav as though he were a girl.

Talking of girls, Vanessa is sitting here in her deckchair. She’s demurely crossing her legs, and probably thinking how nice it will be to have somebody to go to the toilet with, now that the secret is out. Oh yes, Namibian has certainly been caught with his trousers down this time. Ooh, I wonder if he’s happy to drip-dry if caught short in the countryside.

Well, as it happens, we are more or less in the countryside. The U2 tour has now reached an uncharted backwater in Denmark, a one-horse town called Horsens. And we’re having a little barbecue in one of its less salubrious quarters – behind the production trailers at the Casa Horsens Stadium.

‘My wife wanted another bottle of wine in the truck one night,’ begins Gentleman Steve, ever the raconteur. ‘So I let my air out of the driver’s seat and told her that I’m just popping down to the cellar.’ He smiles one of his ludicrously syrupy grins – that of an upper class buffoon – and locks eyes from across the barbecue. ‘I can see why Anna fell for you,’ I say, honestly. ‘She didn’t,’ he replies, ‘I tripped her up.’

Namibian, bustling industriously with tongs and Baby Wipes, could also do with replenishing his drink. He wobbles off to his lorry and – inexplicably – starts his engine. We frown at the shattered tranquillity, and ask why he needs to have the motor running to pour a drink. ‘To build the air up in my driver’s seat,’ he says, as though this is shriekingly obvious.

So not only does he sit down to pee, but he also sits up high – think of a highchair for toddlers – in order to pour a drink. How absurd. Surely even the most elliptical thinker would be poleaxed by Namibian’s logic this evening; I think I might need a drink in order to cope.

‘Is that rose wine?’ asks Gentleman Steve, after I’ve poured a cheeky preprandial. He’s elegantly holding a breadstick as though fondling a cigar, and sipping gut-rot from an inexpensive-looking carton. ‘That’s poofters’ wine, that is. You’ll be drinking Earl Grey next.’

Oh dear, this is rum news indeed. You see, I rather like a nice cup of Earl Grey – in the evenings, after my pudding. You know what the next step is, don’t you? Yep, I’ll be sitting down to piss. And quite possibly in the neighbouring cubicle to Namibian..

This was written last year. I’m in the process of transferring old blogs over to this site…so do scroll back through the archives occasionally:

I don’t know what happens in the other trucks – well, Namibian, of course, will be uttering banalities nineteen to the dozen to his double-driver – but, on our drive up to Sweden from Calais on the U2 tour, Wrecker Jon suggests I have a “duvet day”. Hopelessly out of touch, I don’t realise that one can do this in bed alone – ‘what, without a pretty girl?’ – thus negating the point a bit, no? Well, I’ll try anything once – except incest and morris dancing, obviously.

‘Right, I’m going to be idle, Jon,’ I purr, and I do my utmost to remain immobile, staring dispassionately at the bunk bed above. Jeepers, this is dull. ‘What are  you supposed to do on these duvet days?’ I ask.

As we discuss the finer points of inactivity, and how best to achieve them, Jon pulls in to a Shell Garage. Anticipating the need for a wee-wee later on, I seize the opportunity. But that means getting dressed, ruining the relaxation somewhat. One can’t saunter round German garages in dressing gowns and lounge slippers, clutching 50-cent coins; no, trousers must be fastened, flip-flops hastily donned. Oh, and what about my “bed hair” in case I bump into a sultry Teutonic maiden?

Well, Jon noticed one. ‘There was an Aryan delight in the petrol station,’ he avers, hopping lazily back into the lorry. Blast, I missed her. Now, as I say, we’re heading up to Scandinavia again, fretting in advance at the expense. There will be no pulling birds in bars for us, we declare decisively. ‘Library?’ suggests a parsimonious Jon, glumly noting the heavy rain and wrestling with the kettle. ‘Might be a bit mousey in there though, Jon,’ I retort, casting my memory back to bookish custodians. Jon opens a tin of Cola and says: ‘Ooh, I’d go mousey. I’ve had a mousey fetish for years.’

Sliding between the sheets once more, deciding I’ll go beserk and watch a film in bed, the phone beeps. My pal, Sex Pest, is on the verge of being arrested in a jazz bar in Oslo on the Madonna tour. Fine in itself, but I’ve had to sit up to grab the phone from the dashboard. Horizontal once more, breathing a sigh of relief, Wrecker decides he’d like a cuppa. Oh marvellous, I’ll do it shall I? Aside from singeing my leg hair on the stove while trying to cover a rogue testicle with the duvet, all is hunky-dory. But the selfish git, gripping the wheel and maintaing a whopping 84km/h, wants a biscuit, too.

Agh! Would you believe the milk is off, again? There is some Long Life under the bunk  – for emergencies – but this is becoming a charade. Jon appraises the situation, realising that my knickers are quite literally becoming twisted, and offers: ‘I could have my biscuits neat.’ No, we can’t have that. Laptop perched precariously, my toes splayed between cups and a too-slowly cooling stove, the bottom bunk is lifted and the milk sachets are retrieved. Bear in mind that roads, even motorways, tend to be riddled with bumps. These duvet days seem to be more trouble than they’re worth.

A little later, engrossed in a film and oblivious to all the driving that’s going on on the other side of the interior curtain, I feel the truck lurch. Jon peels off at a Kreuz junction. In Germany, this is a junction off a motorway that leads onto another motorway, often with a jolly sharp slip-road. And it’s being tackled at a higher velocity than an ordinary coffee cup can cope with. Right, well I might as well get dressed; this duvet day idea has been exhausting.

Jon hands me his cold tea – it needs slinging out the window, streaking the trailer with an impressionistic brown whoosh – and a bio-degradable apple core. And he has the gall to ask if I’d mind driving for a bit..

Spielberg is playing Dad today. He’s trotted round to the local Europcar to hire a Lancia something or other, returning to take three of us on a little jaunt to the Alps. Little Dick eagerly hops in the back seat, and sits down next to a girl. A girl? Ah, I never got round to introducing Vanessa in the blog. She drives lorries, you know. In fact, we’ve got two lady drivers on the U2 tour, one of whom – a Dutch Rastafarian  – frightens me.

Nessie is a garrulous, giggly sort of girl, saddled with a Birmingham accent. Now I use the word ‘saddled’ for a reason – she is fond of, or rather obsessed with, horses. Oh, that familiar litany on horsebox transport that us rock and roll drivers hold so dear to our hearts. We have a standing joke at Transam Trucking: if a double driver is flying out to drive with Nessie, we advise them to bring along a sugar cube.

Actually, she’s lovely. But strewth, can she talk. From experience, I can tell you that it’s foolhardy to start a conversation if you haven’t got an imminent spare weekend. The trick, should you ever meet her, is to hold up a hand mid-sentence and say, ‘I’ll have to stop you there Ness, I’m bored.’ She never seems to be offended.

Our adventure begins from the truck parking area opposite Turin’s Olympic Stadium, Spielberg reversing perilously close to Namibian’s gazebo…and stalling. There is a short delay while he affixes a surveillance camera to the windscreen, wires trailing past the dashboard and around the gear stick. ‘If we have an accident, this records everything to prove whose fault it was,’ he explains. The delicious irony here is that he’s positioned it so that his vision is obscured, vastly increasing the chances of an accident.

As it happens, the cigarette lighter is kaput and so the whole charade proves fruitless. Just as well. He pulls out of the gate and drives on the left hand side of the road. Oops! Do concentrate, would you Spielberg, old fruit.

Ah, now when it comes to concentrating, I have a confession. Laughing heartily at the redundant satnav – sitting there lifeless and silent – I glance at the trusty Italian map. ‘No, of course we’re not coming off here, Spielberg,’ I bellow in a stentorian voice. ‘See, there’s no signpost. Tut and tsk. Honestly, some people.’  It slowly dawns  – as though awaking next to a startlingly unattractive member of the opposite sex after a crate of wine – that I’ve made a mistake. In fact, in the history of navigation, there can scarcely be a more egregious example of how to fuck up reading a map.

Wringing my hands, and feeling monumentally cretinous after pooh-poohing satnavs so mercilessly, I shift to Plan B. ‘No big deal,’ I venture blithely,  ‘we’ll toddle over Mount Frejus instead. Full speed ahead, Spielberg – a latte macchiato in Bardonecchia will be just the ticket.’ At this, Little Dick becomes a little perkier, an animated figure somewhere beneath the head rests. ‘Ooh, cheese toastie, too?’ he asks.

The closer we come to elevenses, the more serious my misgivings about this mountain pass. In Namibian’s vernacular, I may quite possibly have “dropped a bollock” here. Yep, that little yellow line that squiggles so appealingly in the Italian map book doesn’t actually go over the top of Mount Frejus so much as through it – on the motorway that we’ve all driven trucks through about a million times. Blast! My companions, bloated on toasties and milky coffees, are awfully good about the whole thing, instantly forgiving my singular lack of orientation skills. We retrace our steps back to Susa.

‘Ah, this is more like it,’ chimes Spielberg as we finally join the SS25 towards the crest of Mt. Cenis. ‘I miss driving,’ he adds, also missing third gear. The windows are opened and we begin to feel nauseous.

But not nauseous enough to ignore the precarious, looming uncertainty that has arisen, a matter of utmost importance. Pasta on the Italian side of the border? Or Steak Frites on the French? This, of course, elicits subsidiary questions: a bottle of Chianti, or a more palatable Chateau Neuf du Pape? We remind ourselves that we’re still being paid today, and so we plump for a pricier eatery on the French side – a glass-fronted restaurant overlooking the turquoise Lake Cenis.

As we drink in the sumptuous view – frowning at the lonely lettuce leaf that the French regard as a side salad – a donkey brays. Or it might be an ass. Or are they the same thing, like an aubergine and an eggplant? Either way, Nessie’s ears prick up, her equine intuition piqued. ‘Donkeys can live till 65, you know,’ she tells us. We didn’t know, and we wonder if those are horse years or human years. Or whether it is only dogs that have different length years.

Hang on, how can they? After all, dogs live on the same planet and their sunlight lasts exactly as long as ours does. OK, so they seem to spend an awful lot of time curled up with their eyes shut, but then so does Little Dick  – he won’t get up till 11 o’clock if left to his own devices. ‘Some twat made that up,’ he announces authoritatively, neatly concluding the debate. Well, there you are then – according to Little Dick, there is no such thing as a dog year.

Oh, by the way, after all that deliberation, the restaurant is fresh out of Chateau Neuf. We settle for a jolly smooth La Parrachee instead, and watch Spielberg polish off a tiramisu as though his life depended on it. ‘Eat it quick, get it done,’ he says, leading us all on a train of thought regarding his bedroom prowess..

There is no excuse in 2010. The playful issue of whether or not to wear a moustache is not even a contentious one; the answer is a definitive no. Well, not unless you’re well into your fifties or a Sicilian woman.

Michelin Mat however, fails to realise this, strutting around an Italian pizzeria this evening with an ostentatious demeanour, as though on trial as a circus strongman. Sexy? Quasi-seductive? Nope. But I’m intrigued. He wears it so brazenly, you see, belying a formidable, towering personality hitherto unknown to the human race. Or he may just be as thick as two planks. Either way, one’s eye is involuntarily drawn to the offending growth; it piques the ocular sense, eyeballs bulging at the man’s temerity.

What is acceptable these days is any other type of facial furniture: interminable sideburns; jolly sailors’ beards clogged with fishing detritus and bilge pumps; and, of course, goatees. Take mine, for example, a distinguished affair strengthening the jawline immeasurably and halting barmaids in their tracks. No, I don’t mean swooning; I mean their internal debate about asking me for ID. Yes, without a beard, and in a pitch-black sort of light, I could easily pass for thirty. Oh OK, maybe thirty-two.

Now I mentioned Italy. To be specific, we’re in Turin, employed once again as truckers on the U2 European Tour. Blogging, as was the case last year, is frowned upon for some reason. So I shall relate only the occasional anecdote, and without photographs of the stage or the bewildering number of trucks involved.

On the drive down here, I asked Namibian what he had in the back of his trailer this year. ‘Dunno,’ he replied candidly, in the manner of a man that couldn’t care a fig. We’d pulled over to check straps were still taut, bicycles securely stowed, and to take a wee look at a map. Don’t you know where you’re going by now, you cry? Ah, but after we’d cross-loaded from Belgian containers, rumours suddenly abounded that Luxembourg ought to be skirted on Saturdays in July. Coo, these European restrictions are a nuisance.

‘Hey, you’ve got those umbrellas for the drum kit that they use if it rains,’ whooped Namibian, startling me. Ah, rumbled – I, too, had no idea what was in the back. Loading had caught me a little off guard, if I’m honest. There I was, shod in flip flops and happily devouring a nectarine – never one of those nasty, furry peaches that send shivers down your spine as though handling cotton wool – when equipment began wheeling out of the warehouse at full pelt. By the time I’d found a T-shirt and work boots, the trailer was almost full. C’est la vie. I shall have to say ‘stuff’ to the French police if stopped and asked what I’m carrying.

Well, whatever the stuff is in the back – “set”, they’re calling it – it’s appreciably lighter than the rigging on AC/DC. Hooray, I can ascend moderate inclines in thirteenth gear now, instead of ninth. Whoopee!

On one particular hill, Namibian contacted me on the CB. ‘Do you know what I’ve been doing while I’ve been driving?’ he asked. I shuddered, fearing the worst. ‘I’ve been noting how long the tunnels are, so we know how many kilometres of them we’ve done.’ We mustn’t yawn, but that was actually worse than I’d feared. For some reason, he keeps records of these things.

Incidentally, have you been wondering how many kilometres the production trucks travelled on the AC/DC Tour this spring? No, nor have I, but Namibian forced the statistic upon me. Apparently we drove 23, 136 kms. Even when converted to miles, that sounds an abominable amount. Keep on trucking..

I’ll be resuming AC/DC blogs shortly. Various reasons for the month long hiatus. Blah blah..