The last time Pablo Eskimo headed to Perth the plan was simple.  This time, we thought it would be even easier. 

Two cars to split the gear and the band between and a fairly late ETA.  Having been out the night before, not having to leave Glasgow until the evening was welcomed by most of us.  The orignal plan was to meet at Bob's, load up and head on out.  Easy, right? Well, usually JohnBoy doesn't have a fairly dodgy suspension and some teeth-clencing metal scraping noises coming from the wheel every time he turns it.  So the plan changed, JohnBoy and I would leave early to ensure we got there on time and in one piece.  Alaine and Chris would pick up Bob and catch us up in their faster, less fucked car. 

Perfect, what could go wrong?  Well, I'm not sure if any of you have experienced a broken mobile network mast but it caused us a LOT of problems, so thanks for that O2.

After trying for about an hour to get in touch with Alaine, John finally just left a voicemail and sent her a text explaining that we were going to leave early and we'd see them up there.  Alaine finally managed to call back and we were good to go. 

Our journey started well, we listened to some tunes, cracked a few jokes about the sat nav not being able to recognise where we were until we were almost at Stirling, and noticed a little festival just past Stirling that looked more tempting than the rest of the drive to Perth!  That's about the time the real Pablo adventure started.  After texting Alaine to see where they were she replied saying "I thought when John said he'd spoken to Bob and you were leaving early that you were taking Bob with you! We're halfway there and have to turn back!"

...

Shit.

By this point we're about 30 minutes from Perth and wondering how the hell this managed to happen.  Then we wondered if Bob was sitting on the steps outside his house looking (and feeling) like the kid whose parents both thought the other was picking him up from football practice.  Then we giggled a little.  Well, I giggled a little, John just looked worried. 

We got to Perth not long after and found Twa Tam's fairly easily so we headed inside to find Smacky.  For the record: he's not and he doesn't, he was just a cheeky wean.

We found out that Pablo could go on anytime after half nine as long as they are offstage by half ten.  Nice one. Alaine and Chris have finally got back to Glasgow and picked up Bob, there's nothing for us to do except sit back, get some dinner and wait.  We decided to drive back to the outskirts of Perth to the nearest fast food chain to both waste some time and get some food.  The only problem is we seemed to have picked a fairly busy time to order so by the time we get our food it's almost 9pm.  Alaine had text earlier to say they were hoping to be in Perth not long after 9 so the race was now on.  As we ate the quickest we've ever eaten, we laughed at how funny it would be if we were now the late ones.  We raced back to Twa Tam's, still chewing the last bites of food, wondering where the rest of Pablo were and if we had gotten away with our dinner dash.

We pulled up outside Tam's just in time to see Alaine, Bob and Chris wander inside so we grabbed our gear and headed in behind them.  No one realised that we were so close to being late for soundcheck, all for a cheap burger.  Well, until now I guess...

The gig went well, there were plently of people dancing, loads of folk listening and generally having a great time.  Retraspective were funky and brilliant but all too soon it was time for the drive back to Glasgow.  As John and I left Perth and headed for the motorway, we breathed a sigh of relief that everything had worked out not too bad considering we'd accidently left the guitarist in Glasgow and ended up only being an hour later than planned.  We stopped at Stirling for some coffee and a break then carried on towards home.  I sent Alaine a text just to make sure... "You've got Bob, right?"  Only to hear back just before they overtook us on the outskirts of Glasgow: "Yes we do! We took 2 wrong turnings and ended up at the back end of Perth though!"

...

Not quite as bad as leaving one third of your band behind but still not ideal.  You'd think after a summer full of festivals and parties we'd be better at road trips by now.

Pablo Trish