11/25 Shakespeare says "Go to the Flapper"

After our scolding last night, I expected to walk out of the motel, where last night's manager is waiting on the roof to dump hot oil on us, but the new dude on the new shift could give two shits about us. We jumped in the car and headed out to see Shakespeare's birthplace. On the way, there was a ton of signs begging us to stop at the Warwick Castle, so we stopped. It was a bust. They wanted like 18 quid a person so you could hang out with a bunch of high school theatre people that never made it so now they're character actors in a castle. They just looked like extras from Young Frankenstein to me.

They did have peacocks. Then again, the Como Zoo in Saint Paul has peacocks, and it's still free.

About the only thing good about Warwick Castle was that it afforded Zach the first of his many tour attempts to cut off T'nealle's maidenhead.

Down the road, we made it to Stratford-Upon-Avon and checked out the Bard's childhood home. It was cool to see the house, and I guess it was cute that everything in the town was named after characters from the literary world of Shakespeare. But the Subway sandwich store next door and the surrounding shopping centres sprawling as far as you could see kind of ruined the idyllic scene I had created in my mind. Which was of course that the town was going to be quaint homes along a small stream dotted with fawns and fairies.

I kind of wished they had Shakespeare's body embalmed Lenin-style. That'd be cool.

So we made our way to Birmingham. Holy shit, Birmingham has the most looney-tunes drivers I've seen so far on tour. If a road has three lanes, there will be six cars crammed side by side vying to get to I don't know where, cause there's another six cars crammed side by side in front of them. Total free-for-all. But we made it to that night's venue unscathed, and wow, the Flapper is awesome. Micky and George are stellar promoters, and the club is fun. People from Birmingham also love shows it seems. If more UK venues were like the Flapper, well, then the UK would be way cooler. Just sayin'.

The show is a blast and we make a load of new friends before hitting the road. Due to my flagged status, tonight T’nealle and Zack checked into an unsuspecting Travelodge as a statutory legal couple. Then they returned to the car and let the other three of us walk in, with James disguised in all of the clothes that Zach was wearing when he just checked in. It worked just great.

I woke up in the middle of the night to a deep hollow thump rattling over and over inside my head. I sat up and looked around, only to find James on the floor in one of his hyperactive deep sleeping fits banging his head erratically against my bed frame. Cute that one.

Of course, we couldn’t get away without incident, so we got evil-eyed and kicked out the next morning when we weren’t out of our room by 12. I think it’s going to be hilarious when Travelodge sponsors our next tour.