El Sweeney

So this is our last night in Spain, its been an amazing two weeks, met lots of you, played some shows, even recorded a show for TV. We always like coming to spain, but for some reason, when we are here, we seem to have things happen to us. Our Pain in Spain tour in 2002 resulted in half the band being ill/injured. And this time started with me having my passport nicked on the way out, then when we arrived, Kenny's pedals had been damaged during the flight and he had to buy replacements, Carey lost her purse, i've left my DVD wallet in a hotel room in Malaga (hopefully i can get it back) and the most bizarre thing that has ever happened to us as a band occured on Saturday afternoon on the way to Santa Pola.

We were driving down the autovia, when suddenly an unmarked police-car started flashing its lights at us, blue light flashing in the roof, it overtook us and forced us to pull over on the hard shoulder. There was only one guy in the car, he got out, came over to the Minibus, and started demanding all our passports. Luckily Jenny, our stand in trumpet player, is fluent in Spanish, as he barked at us, asking who we were and why were we in spain, wher had we come from, where were we going, were we tourists? MUSICIANS!!! Did we have cocaine? he searched all our wallets, pockets, searched all our euro notes for traces of cocaine (obviously he'd picked the wrong band, but he kept going) after he had gone through us all, he seemed satisfied that we weren't mules, and let us go, before flying off down the motorway after some other poor unfortunate soul. We were left sitting on the hard shoulder feeling a little shellshocked, ever so slightly shaken. I don't fancy having to go through that again in a hurry. As Arthur Daley once said, "I don't like abroad, funny water, sawn-off toilets and Plod with guns" I have to be honest having an armed policeman going through your pockets and wallet is a serious brown trouser moment. In comparison i don't mind the water or the toilets to be fair.

Gav