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Breaking news: Disaster!

Namibian, increasingly the protagonist in this blog, has burnt out the socket that powers our kettle. We’re keeping our spirits up while trying to keep it from Tina; she’d only worry if she knew the tour was potentially jeopardised by such a pressing matter.

Fortunately, as an old campaigner, and in the event of Namibian’s ebbing health ebbing further, I have a gas stove and spare kettle in the side locker. So, with staunch resolve, the essential items are brought out.

Hot drink accessories are transferred between trucks – you didn’t think that I was going to adopt the role of tea-maker, did you? – and everybody can breathe a sigh of relief. The next concert is still on. Though, if I had to go to Vienna, I wouldn’t start from Hannover.

Hannover doesn’t have the same appeal as Venice or Berlin or Barcelona, does it? The city has its sights, I’m sure, but today we have time constraints for sightseeing. Often with rock n roll tours, there is just one day in each city.

Mornings spell unloading and leisurely breakfasts reading newspapers; afternoons often involve little naps. Remember, trucks in this industry generally travel at night. I’m sure you’ve all seen eighteen-wheelers drifting between lanes at night, drivers’ heads lolling? Sleeping whilst driving is a little risky.

After a little nap – heavens, these hours are hideously unsociable – Namibian brings me the perfect flask of tea, with removed teabag, and a selection of biscuits in a napkin. Things are looking up.

As I stretch, fighting off lethargy and hypothermia, he pads about with kitchen roll, cleaning my mirrors. Ever seen The Odd Couple? Look at the kettle photo – pure Walter Matthau. He’s just hidden his unfashionable underpants, drying by the night heater, from the camera.

What’s a night heater, you ask? Well, although trucking is a little like camping, we have the added advantage of keeping comfortably snug at night without eiderdown sleeping bags. A small diesel pump ticks away throughout the night, draining the batteries but keeping the driver warm.

The temperature is controllable on a thermostat but, if set too high, it can still get a little steamy inside the cab. So, with windows lowered four inches, and curtains drawn, the intrepid trucker can snooze naked throughout a snowstorm. Hooray!

I suppose I should at least mention road tax throughout Europe. Oh god, do you have to? Well, I’ll skate swiftly over the issue because it is an incontrovertibly dull subject to readers other than truck enthusiasts. To cut a long story short, then, almost every country in Europe – off the top of my head, this excludes the UK, Finland and Latvia – charges trucks to use its roads.

Some countries use tolls, some a daily vignette system. Austria, which we are now entering, has a “Go-Box” which affixes rather ferociously to the windscreen. It beeps once each time the truck passes under a toll gantry.

Two beeps or more means there is a problem with the payment. ‘Halt immediately’, in other words, or you will be fined a fortune. Will we be OK? Come back tomorrow..

Tina was building up the blues last night…

‘He was blinded by the blackness of my long silk stockings…’ Phwoar! Dancers pout suggestively, undressing me with their eyes. Of course, they can’t actually see a thing, dazzled by bright spotlights, but it seems like they are seducing me, and me alone.

Great video feed follows them, from a filthy angle, up the stairs, in their school blouses and fishnets. Overdressed, I agree.

We’re heading for a climax – not necessarily musical – when the lighting director cuts in over the headphones: ‘How far’s the drive to Hannover tonight?’ I try to ignore her, immersed in a wonderful world of my own, but then: ‘And where do we go after Vienna?’ Aagh, look in the tour itinerary, Kathy, like everybody else?

The mesmerising moment passes but there is more to come – namely the massive build-up to “Goldeneye”, in which we’re treated to a display by a young lady in a deliciously tight leotard.

It is The Girl with The Golden Bum, arching provocatively in her figure-hugging outfit. But the lighting director’s voice cuts in once again, humming the famous Bond theme tunelessly. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow night.

Now, more importantly, Namibian has made a faux pas. As you may have surmised, I am partial to the odd cup of tea; for staying awake at night, however, tea is pretty hopeless. Coffee is the thing.

So guess what Namibian has gone and done now? Yes, he’s made a flask of tea for my overnight drive – and he has the temerity to complain that I haven’t washed out the thermos flask from two days ago. I think he’s slipping, you know. It hasn’t come to me buying my own kettle yet but..

Captain Birds Eye is cryptic again this morning – we’ve now arrived safely in Hannover – while eyeing a young lady with a face like a smacked bottom. She is a local girl, assisting with the unfurling of tablecloths, washing-up, peeling potatoes etc., in the catering room. The girl is quite simply fed up, probably with ageing, perverted truck drivers.

But Birds Eye is undeterred. ‘What she needs is some giggling pin,’ he says, his meaning as clear as mud. We look nonplussed. ‘Cockney rhyming slang,’ he explains, ‘like septic tank – yank; apples and pears – stairs; giggling pin – cock.’ Oh, honestly. How many more months of this tour must I endure?

You know how films sometimes announce that the views and comments within the motion picture are not necessarily those expressed or endorsed by the film-makers? Right, well you can apply that to this blog..

Nineteen truckers wonder why we are awake at two o’clock in the morning.

Remember Tina Turner has twenty trucks on this European tour? Right, well all tours have a driver that oversees truck movements – known as a “lead driver”.

His job is to liaise with the production team and supervise truck unloading in the order that “production” require. He/she will hereon be referred to as “Number One”.

Our instructions from Number One were to drive the whopping whole kilometre from the truck parking area back to the Color Line Arena, yet not “load-in” any equipment until after 7am. We moaned and groaned: it is the prerogative of the lowly truck driver to whinge about conditions, even though this tour has so far been money for old rope.

The thing about entertainment touring, though, is that the trucks simply must be ready when needed. Consequently, five hours early is not that unreasonable. After all, trucks can be whimsical beasts, choosing not to start at the most crucial of times.

If, however, the vehicle is more or less in position the night before, what can go wrong? No engine firing up? No problem. We can push the equipment the last hundred yards. And after such a hectic week’s sightseeing, 2am does seem a trifle early.

Breakfast in “Catering”, which Namibian insists on calling “the canteen”, yields a wealth of blog material. ‘I had a pet whale once,’ says one driver. Hmm. I frown in disbelief. ‘Well OK, it was a guinea pig, but it looked like a whale,’ he clarifies.

We move onto the topic of the hopeless situation back in the UK, where a sprinkling of snow is plunging the country into chaos, grinding the entire transport network to a halt.

‘You could sprinkle immigrants on the road instead of grit,’ suggests our Captain Birds Eye look-a-like. As I prepare a withering stare, my friend “Mystic” enters, looking delicate about the gills.

He is carrying a filthy, tea-stained mug that draws winces and cries of anguish from the catering girls (or ‘dinner ladies’ as Namibian calls them, oblivious to the derogatory slant). Mystic’s mug has already been banned once from Catering on this tour.

‘It’s no good sprinkling Poles on the road. They’d be too slippery,’ Captain Birds Eye continues. Oh, ha ha, very droll. Another driver, between mouthfuls of fried egg, says: ‘Romanians would be better, because they’d romain here.’

I’m unsure where this rapier wit is heading but I detect a whiff of xenophobia, and glance at Mystic. He adjusts his earplugs, and eyes the slowly warming tea urn in anticipation. We agree that listening to only half of the conversation in catering would be more than enough.

The Russian internet hottie, mentioned in the last blog, has now copied and pasted yet another pearl of epic literature to my hotmail in-box. Yet I smell a rat. Her writing is the sort of stilted English that makes no sense. And she ignores my replies, ploughing straight into undying love instead. Yes, she’ll have to go.
And so will I. The trucks have to rumble south to Hannover tonight – it’s a full two-hour drive, so I’m off for a nap..

There are those that do the bare minimum, becoming bored easily; and there are others who live life to the full, looking on any situation as an opportunity.

Namibian, therefore, dozes off to a DVD whilst I make a Grand Tour of Sulfeld.

This sleepy hamlet is not a village, our host Frank assures me, but a bustling metropolis. Well, I’ll be the judge of that.

Aha! There are two bakeries: a sure sign of a town worth visiting as far as I’m concerned. And one can even have a haircut here. A walk round the communal pond seems a little safer than trekking alongside the golf course where stray balls have been known to maim the odd pedestrian.

On my return, Namibian is wheezing in his sleep. A pal through thick and thin, I take a photograph and wake him. And do you know what he says? He makes the daft suggestion that I start making my own tea.

We gloss over this height of audacity, get the kettle boiling, and then it’s time for some music. A few trombone scales, admittedly a little shaky and tuneless, cement my banishment to the garage – which is cold.

Frankly, I’m always amazed that people – and plump people, at that – can go the whole day without anything to eat. Frank, at 11am, without so much as a croissant to commence the day, is quite content to wait until dinner when I ask what he would like from the bakery.

I query how he can be so much fatter than me; we put it down to booze and lack of exercise.

The rest of the day is spent deciding how to word an email to a Russian girl – a stunner from behind the Iron Curtain. She has latched onto my internet dating profile like a Cape Fur Seal eyeing up a plump young gannet.

Presumably she would like a passport through marriage, but one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. There is a chance – OK, perhaps just a mere scintilla of a possibility – that this could be true lust, I mean love.

As I’m pontificating on how best to find out her intentions without appearing too callous, Namibian quite literally explodes at the dining table.

‘Oh, I can sit and burp for hours,’ he says, sipping a cappuccino and lighting up yet another West cigarette. How nice it is, we think sitting here in comfort, to be paid every day, and have friends all over Europe..

Ingo and Meryam, a couple I’d met in Sri Lanka, happen to live round the corner from Frank.

After a brief phone call, over they come, armed with tea leaves from the subcontinent. My eyes light up; others seem indifferent, reaching for the treasure chest of alcohol bottles instead.

On the south-west coast of Sri Lanka – or “Ceylon” as the odd pompous fart in Britain (like me) still calls the island – Ingo’s nationality had quickly become evident. While lounging on the beach discussing a restaurant for lunch, he suggested an eatery: ‘It is eight minutes by feet,’ he said.

Yes, he could only be German. Or possibly Swiss or Austrian. Anyway, later, he apologised in case his German efficiency was in question – the walk took nine minutes due to a bus completely blocking the road.

‘Ach so’ in German, I am told, means ‘really?’, though not necessarily as a question – it can be used as a reply when something of interest is said. The funny thing about ‘ach so’ is the extraordinary likeness, when spoken by a German speaker, to ‘arsehole’.

I decide to use this riveting revelation when Ingo demonstrates a restoring function on my laptop, just after he presses Alt F5. ‘Arsehole,’ I cry, delighted with my deliberate mispronunciation, and wondering why the rest of the room is regarding me as though a ghastly apparition.

Impressed with my grasp of German? As an event trucker in Europe I expect you’re wondering how fluent my European languages are? Well, I long ago gave up learning any language that ascribes a sex to such mundane items as tables.

The French regard a table as a woman – odd, but I’m accepting it – yet the Germans refer to it as a man. With logic like this, my excuse is that I may just as well stick with the marvellously expressive medium of English.

The subtext, of course, is that I am useless at learning another tongue, but don’t really like to admit it on those terms alone. And I’ve already forgotten what Alt F5 does..

A hundred yards is regarded as a good walk in Namibian’s book.

Now, remember that we sleep in trucks on the Tina Turner Tour? Right, well today we are not parked as cosily as normal – our lorries are parked approximately one hundred yards apart. If you live in Europe, and are happy to approximate distances, a yard is three feet. That didn’t help, did it? OK, well, a yard is pretty similar to a metre.

My mobile phone beeps, indicating an incoming text message from Namibian. It says: ‘flask ov tea is made wen u wake.’

Good heavens, has the advent of the cellular telephone led to the destruction of the English language, I wonder, with a tinge of melancholy? It has certainly led to a breakdown in communication.

Now, you will be pleased to know that this was how Namibian spelled words to start with, and so texting has made little or no difference in his case. I grasp his gist – that my pink thermos is steaming and awaiting collection from his cab – and make a dash through the snow.

He really is a lovely man, looking after me faithfully. The other eighteen truckers can make their own blasted tea as far as we’re concerned.

Oh, I’d better introduce Frank. And quickly. That picture in the last blog, of me holding a cat the size of a puma? That was at Frank’s place. So, now that we know who Frank is, he can arrive again – in a wonderfully-dented blue van, its ashtray bursting at the seams.

Once more, he has driven across the city of Hamburg to collect us, bringing us back to his paradisaical abode north of Hamburg.

Namibian has realised that he must shuffle around Frank’s house, feet splayed, to avoid stepping on mainecoon cats. We agree that, him weighing around 128kg, a misplaced sock could easily pulverize one of these €700 animals. The house is congested with them. Cats, not Namibians.

Frank’s wife, the smiley Miriam, maintains that we are welcome to stay, providing we can remember the names of all six mainecoons. Well, that was what she jokily demanded last year, which led to a jolly little game on tour with Frank.

For six weeks last summer touring with Lou Reed – remember “Walk on the Wild Side”?  – Frank allowed me three guesses per day until I had come up with all six names.

In the end, he had to tell me the genders and the first letter of each animal – which narrowed things down considerably. Even so, these are cat names we’re talking about: think Indigo rather than a more obvious guess of Imogen.

Now, just in case Miriam was to interrogate me on arrival, I had written the names down, taking the precaution of bringing the piece of paper with me. But I’m not sure why I mentioned all that now..

There’s been no need to “turn” Namibian, as it happens. In fact, he’s up and about, eager for exercise, like an asthmatic gazelle.

The weather remains unfavourable, the mercury up to about 1 degree by late morning. Midday on the Tina Turner Tour passes as miserably as the earlier hours.

‘I can hear my blood pressure,’ says Captain Birds Eye, over a bowl of cereal. Short of consulting a doctor, I can’t argue, but that sounds unlikely. Does he mean tinnitus?

The dastardly duo – that’s Namibian and yours truly, if you were wondering – board a train into the historic port city of Hamburg, heading immediately for the nearest shopping mall to escape the biting wind.

Namibian begins to sweat; he’s wearing tracksuit bottoms underneath his jeans, and umpteen cardigans. I deliberately browse in a leisurely fashion, choosing a non-specific brand of blank DVD, partly enjoying his discomfort but mainly because, only singly layered, I’m still frozen.

Now, I like to include the occasional travel tip in my blogs – a useful guide included in what is otherwise, give or take, by and large, inane rambling. So: Ferry 62 along the Elbe is included in a day’s city travel ticket in Hamburg, which saves booking a €12 cruise.

The passenger boat plies its way past dry docks and one of the biggest container ports in the world, more or less following the route of the expensive tourist option. You don’t get any commentary, though.

What you do get, however – to continue the lavatorial theme – is a free toilet onboard. Another fifty cent saving! In fact, if you were really hard up, you could actually board the vessel solely to use the loo. But please bear in mind the considerable danger of emerging farther down river.

Returning from this nautical jaunt, I find two German girls (whom Namibian and I had met at a Metallica show in Prague last year) have driven 470kms to say hello.

Their names: “Crazy Sandra” and Pat, who we might just as well dub “Crazy Pat” on the grounds that…well, on the grounds that she’s crazy. Sandra has heavy metal tattoos – the majority of which are incomprehensible to normal people – and Pat is a member of a clique called “The Metallica Club”.

They find it inconceivable that Namibian and I can talk about watching a feature film – or, even worse, having a short nap – backstage while Metallica thrash away to an adoring public. The feeling is mutual; we find it odd that anybody would stand in the rain, subjecting his or her eardrums to such volumes. Mind you, it pays our wages, so long may it continue.

Anyway, one feels awful about retiring to bed wearing earplugs – with a cursory kiss on the cheek and a hug – if ladies have driven a long way to visit. Upshot: another ridiculously late night. Anyone would think this is a rock ‘n’ roll tour..

If I can survive standing next to a trailer in Hamburg in this temperature – even without the wind chill – a stroll down to the South Pole from Patriot Hills ought to be a doddle.

Anyway, if it wasn’t for the nearby rumble of the A7 Autobahn, one could be forgiven for thinking that we are already in the polar regions today. Namibian is wearing a red fleece in which he looks like a corpulent Father Christmas.

Katabatic, a Greek word, means “flowing downhill”. Oh, if only we were in Greece, eh? This is part of the problem with rock n roll touring: although island-hopping in the Aegean would make a splendid itinerary for drivers and crew, Tina Turner would be unlikely to recoup the cost of sending twenty trucks down there.

So, we remain, teeth gritted against the North German gale, in a Hamburg blizzard.

I hope I’ve established that this is not a holiday; it’s quite the opposite – in fact, we had to work for a full hour this morning, unloading equipment into the Color Line Arena. The driving now completed, we have five days of freezing frivolity to look forward to. I’m wondering how often I should “turn” Namibian to avoid bedsores.

I should stress, actually, that this tour is not representative whatsoever of the music industry. Take that dreadful Madonna tour last summer for example – yes, I’ll give her ‘sticky and sweet’. It was just drive, drive, drive.

OK, so Madge doesn’t organise the tour schedule, but it was as though cocaine-fuelled executives had thrown darts at a map of Europe to determine the tour dates. Dusseldorf – Rome – Frankfurt – London – Lisbon etc. Bonkers.

Anyway, back to the Tina Turner Tour…and the relaxed approach. Breakfast chat hasn’t moved on much in intellectual terms among the drivers since yesterday.

I’ve tried introducing topics like late Etruscan pottery, but we inevitably resort back to the lowbrow: ‘The tablets for my blood pressure aren’t conducive to getting an erection,’ remarked Captain Birds Eye, before briefly discussing prostitutes.

We’ll stick with prozzies for a moment as we’re in Hamburg, the city of the “Reeperbahn”. It’s a seedy street where Namibian and I were approached by half a dozen women simultaneously last year. He, a picture of ebbing health (pictured above), got away with feigning a heart condition, but that was an excuse I couldn’t get away with.

‘Say you’re gay,’ my South African pal had suggested. The trouble is, they probably cater for that in another room. We simply blushed instead..

Not all of us are drinking tea and having early nights on the Tina Turner Tour; a number of colleagues were seen leaving the catering room at 9am this morning, looking wine-smudged and unsteady.

The recycling bin was full of empty bottles and cans. Very rock ‘n’ roll.

Now, how nice to have the bicycle again – I’ve missed frostbitten fingers. Cor, it’s cold. Really cold. Stopping at a newsagent’s shop to warm my nose from an electric bulb, I’m saddened to see that “spunk” is no longer sold.

This German liquorice – or is it Danish? – caused much hilarity one tour when my best pal Gary sampled the misnomer. ‘This spunk tastes a bit salty,’ he said before… I digress. Let’s get on with Germany’s capital.

A full fifteen Germans jump the queue this morning as I approach the metal detector in the Bundestag, Germany’s Parliament. I know the British love queuing to the point of national fetish, but how can people unabashedly push in like this?

I murmur something unmentionable about ‘you lot leaving towels on sun loungers’ but decide not to bear a grudge. All the same, it’s worth watching the news tonight to see how many BMWs have been nudged into the ditch by black trucks on the motorway to Hamburg.

Amazingly, approximately three million people a year visit the Bundestag, centre of German lawmaking. Incidentally, should you – miraculously – be at all interested, the shorthand writers here can note an average of 400 syllables a minute. That’s faster than people actually speak. On the downside, a cappucino on the roof-terrace cafe costs £4.50.

Truck manoeuvres start before 6am, and Namibian has a flat battery after boiling his electric kettle to make my tea.

It’s a reciprocal deal: he makes the tea in return for following me to gigs. It is, therefore, a bit mean that I make him go in front into cities, I suppose.

It’s for his own benefit, though; one learns little about international trucking from following a pair of black trailer doors for months on end. And I don’t feel too mean – after all, he’s chosen a pink thermos flask for me this year.

Now, by the time I’ve unloaded – or in the industry parlance, we say, “loaded in” (to the venue) – breakfast is up and running. Most tours, certainly twenty-truck Tina Turner tours, take caterers on the road to feed the crew. And it’s invariably excellent food.

We sit down to a fry-up and intelligent conversation from truckers fills the air: ‘I had a toothless ferret once,’ says my friend Mark. ‘If I could teach it to cook, I could get rid of the wife.’

The reply, from a chap who is the spitting image of Captain Birdseye, is something of a Chinese whisper. ‘I’ve never had sex with an animal I could cook,’ he says, without trace of a smile. ‘There was a goat once, but that was love.’ Funny lot, truck drivers.

Down at the DDR Museum: ah, the trusty two-stroke Trabant. In a word – “crap”. But, and it’s a big but, the average motorist could fix one nearly as expertly as a mechanic.

If you can believe it, there was a waiting list in East Germany of up to sixteen years for one of these four-geared beauties. As late as 1985, only every other family here owned a car at all..

P.S. Tour life is decidedly bleak: we’re having to survive on blackened tilapia with mango salad and a choice of only five puddings.