As well as drink red wine vinegar all week, I also spent a lot of english 5 pence pieces in german vending machines. The 5p was exacltly the same size as a deuschmarc and 20p would get you 20 fags, a can of lager, or if you were went to the train station, a pair of kegs from the vitally important kegs vending machines that were seen as vital on German train stations in the early eighties. I think I spent the whole week drinking. I bought a litre of Bacardi and a king size bag of cheese puffs when our ferry docked at Esberg in Denmark, and started drinking it as we left the port at about 8am. Cant remeber much about the journey to Essen other than three major events.

1. We were inevitably stopped at the border crossing and the cutoms people rifled our van. As they were doing so we were taken to a room where our bags were searched and they came across a tin of Andrews liver salts. The top was popped, a finger was dabbed and we were asked "was das ist?". Christie then did a mime, pointing at his stomach, make a groaning noise, drink an imaginary dose of said digestive preparation and made a watery shite sound with his mouth. We departed the border crossing shortly afterwards, our pokets bulging with 20p fags.

2. Our van blew up.

3. The steady diet of white rum and oily snack produce curdled as I sat in the broken down van in Hamburg, (wanting to die) and a stinking mess of projectile vomit was deposited over the luggage and sleeping bags at the back of the van. Nice.

Andy gibson made me clean the van up the next day.