We'd long finished the Tuesday night gig in Birmingham & drawn Xs on our hands with black biro so we could get in free to the club across the road. I'd had a pill & was having fun, pretty pissed aswell but by this point of the tour it'd become habitual. I was even being complimented on my dancing skills by a break-dancer who was "trained in ballet". Ripper.
After things closed we took a small party back to the van in a car park around the corner, I think the idea was to drive back to the hotel. But someone turned the sirens on our tour bus on & "Ravey Davey" our sound engineer was dancing on the roof, so I got up & joined him.

There was a car driving around the car park in broad circles. Hanging precariously out of its window was Mr J Reeves & that Simon out of Klaxons. The car was going at about 30mph and accelerating, I don't know who was driving. They screamed in girly delight anyway, and i stomped and shouted drunk nonsense, probably clapped my hands a bit. Great. Then it started raining & Dave decided to get down, I decided to lick the sirens.

By now the roof was getting slippy, I'd lost my footing a couple of times but it was only when I decided to get down myself that I actually slipped, fell & felt the sharp thud of tarmac against my back. Luckily Iain, our tour manager had broken my fall, meaning that my head first plummet was more horizontal. But it still fucking hurt. I looked at my arm, the wrist was swollen like a tennis ball. Fuck.

An Ambulance was called & I screamed for a joint; I got a pipe. I was convinced it was just dislocated & pleaded for volunteers to pull it back in. No one. Then I tried, idiotically, to do it myself, by clamping my hand between my knees. Luckily I was restrained. Headlights appeared a few times but it was just the car, which, incidentally, Simon had fallen off, tearing the ligament in his leg. The break-dancer appeared again, shook my left hand & told me I had the potential to be a great dancer. Well, thanks mate, I appreciate that, but right now I just want to be fucking drummer.

The paramedics walked me to the Ambulance & asked me how many beers I'd had. I didn't know at the time that this would affect how much morphine they could give me. Thank fuck they didn't ask about anything else, cos i was being quite honest. We got to the hospital, where they declared me the injury of the night. Brilliant. They banged in the morphine & I floated into the x-ray room. Apparently I'd smashed it up pretty good, they'd need to do surgery – fine, fine. Just get it fixed, I've got a gig in New York in 3 weeks. They just looked sympathetically at me & gave me some laughing gas through a pipe. "Don't worry, you can't overdose on that" the guy said. So I stuck it in my mouth. The gas started giving me insane natural reverb, all the sounds of the hospital; clicks, whirrs, bleeps, a nurse laughing, all on an unending loop, round & round, picking up new sounds each time. Fucking brilliant. Maybe I looked like I was enjoying it too much but they took it off me & put me to sleep on a ward.

Surgery was the next day, I was hung over but they wouldn't give me a sip of water. Then; anaesthetized, 3 hours in theatre putting a metal plate & 7 bolts in my wrist. The merry band SHITDISCO had visited me while I was in there, then cleared off to Northampton where the next Hotel was booked, not even leaving me my toothbrush or a book. Luckily I had a drip of morphine every five minutes to make the day time TV interesting enough to pass the time: Ricky Lake on the mortal dangers of ecstacy, Jeremy Kyle sending single mothers to boot camp & Play TV on every channel after 11pm. They kept me in overnight, and then again the next night. My morphine machine kept on getting jammed & I tried to look innocent & un-junky like as the nurse came & fixed it repeatedly.

Then on the Friday, they told me I was going, booked me a taxi to the train station & found me a sling. It was the first time I'd been on my feet since Tuesday night & I got the train to London, feeling lightheaded in the queue & wearing the same filthy, tarmac stained t-shirt id worn on the night I went in. Then, arriving, walked down to Camdem & Koko to see everyone. They'd hired a session drummer for the rest of the tour, Mark, who'd previously drummed for Gang of Four. He'd only had a day to learn the set & was currently sat with headphones in his ears going through it one more time.

It was bizarre asking your own band what time they're playing. Even weirder watching from the side of the stage as they batter through the first two songs of the set. It felt wrong, to be honest & I felt like a spare prick. So, after gobbing a pill to counter the morphine withdrawal, I found a cymbal stand & Iain set it up with a cowbell. By the time I Know Kung Fu started I'd ran onstage and started battering living fuck out of anything I could reach with my left hand & a drum stick. I even tried my hand at a bit of backing vocals, (screaming in pain, mostly) & a bit of screeching nonsense at the crowd through the megaphone. All in all, I enjoyed myself. But afterwards, as jolts of pain shot through my back & arm I worried that I was pushing at limits that should be left alone. I was in uncharted health territory afterall, I'd never been in Hospital for this long before or taken this many varieties of painkillers in a day on top of a pill & booze & running about like a prick. I went to a squat party that night, but decided that continuing on the rest of the tour, even on cowbell duties, would be suicide. The next day I got a train up to Leeds for some much needed rest. And to contemplate the fact we won't be going to New York simply because one night I danced on the roof of a van in the rain. Fuck.