A little while later, how long I couldn’t tell you, we arrive at the venue and I’m woken up. I get up and start loading in with everyone else. I should mention that I have, at this point, completely forgotten everything that has happened that morning and thus the following conversation occurs:

“What the hell do you think you’re playing at?” Eddie is screaming at me.

“What?”

“I would expect it from the band but not the crew. It’s disgraceful.”

“Well, er, Eddie, what are you talking about?”

“This morning, I had to get the maid to let me into your room because you were passed out and your room was full of empty bottles of absinthe and vodka,” he is screaming at me even louder now and his face is getting darker by the second. I can’t help thinking that he looks a bit like a Ribena berry and this makes me chuckle.

“You think this is funny?”

“Of course not, Eddie. I, er,” I start to try to explain that I’m not laughing at that but can’t think of anything else to say so just decide to shut up. Then, Eddie seems to think this is some kind of standoff and just glares at me.

”I have no idea what you’re talking about. Is this a joke? I got up with everyone else, just now.”  I cannot fathom why I’m in so much trouble at this point.

“Are you seriously telling me that you don’t remember?”

“I swear to god I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He pauses. “Bee, go and find your passport for me.”

I go back to my bunk only to find that I have hardly anything with me. I then go to sit in the back lounge with the two of the band already in there and ask them what’s going on. They are only too happy to fill me in but even they can’t believe that I actually can’t remember anything, either.

Apparently, after the bar, we all went to the hotel and the reasoning behind the twin rooms becomes clear. Half the band and crew, to a certain extent, like to party. I mean really party. So they are twinned with someone who doesn’t like to party quite as hard. This means that in the morning, there’s always someone to make sure the other gets out of bed. I had no such luxury, nor was I expecting to get so horrendously wasted that I’d need a nursemaid. I’m a fairly hardened drinker but I’ve never gotten into that state before. I decide it’s best if I stop asking for details.

I can’t believe it. Now I have to go back to the TM and apologise. How on earth is this going to play out? I don’t even know how to start putting this speech together. I manage to apologise for getting drunk, and then repeatedly apologise for arguing with him it about this morning (afternoon? What time is it?), and obviously my behaviour since then, since ridiculously, I can’t remember any of it. I must have been scarily close to comatose. He seems to forgive me much more easily than I thought he could, or maybe even should. I think this is because my naughtiness is so off the scale that he’s dumbfounded by it and presumes that there is no way in hell I’ll do it again.

Also, it’s probably easier to keep me on board than sack me. It’s not like they can just put me on a plane without a passport, but he’d be well within his rights to leave me stranded. It’s not big and it’s not clever but I can’t help chuckling to myself nervously and then thinking that well, at least I must’ve had a bloody good night!

Unfortunately, one good night’s sleep doesn’t quite provide the quick fix I’m hoping for. I am insufferably sick at the gig that night. I spend all day projectile vomiting and everyone appears to be smoking (they are) which is making it much worse.. Sitting there at the merchandise stall, desperately impatient for this to wear off, I can’t find a single person who isn’t pinching a cigarette between two fingers. The other crew keep bringing me water and I seem to be getting some sympathy, even though I’m pretty sure  they all thought I behaved like a complete dickhead (those English, they just can’t handle their drink, can they?). I’m behaving so green. In every sense of the word.

Unfortunately, this isn’t to be the end of it. We have to travel back to the UK tonight for a festival date and then head back out to Europe. I don’t have time to get a temporary passport so the TM and driver decide that smuggling me into my own country is the only option. I’m quite surprised and quite frankly horrified at this because going back over from France is normally somewhere you have to get off the bus and show your passport. Sometimes there are searches. They seem very calm about it but me? I am absolutely shitting myself. Just as we’re getting to Calais, I get into my bunk and basically hide until we are safely on the boat. I have to stay there for the whole journey on the bus, and it turns out to be the most frightening journey of my life.

Oh, that is, the most frightening thing apart from when we do actually get searched by the border patrol in Calais. One official gets on and puts a hand in my bunk through the half open curtains, feeling my leg under the duvet. They must think that I’m a bag or a pillow, though (I’d be insulted if I wasn’t pissing myself), and soon they move on. I strain, clammy and petrified, to hear if they have dogs with them but I can’t tell.

I hope not. I really hope not.

It scares me to think of what will have happen to me and the trouble it will cause. The band will definitely sack me in England, if I make it, and find a replacement. I know it’s definitely a guard that touched my leg though, because I can still hear him speaking to someone else in French, perhaps downstairs or on a radio as he meticulously checks along the bunks.

I hold my breath and try not to move. It feels like an eternity as I crouch there in the foetal position. My entire t-shirt is dripping with nervous sweat and when I come out from underneath the duvet, I have to peal it away from skin, my bones shaking. I must have been there for about an hour.

I have to do the same at Dover two solitary hours of rocking in the darkened bus lounge later, but this time no one comes on the bus. Thank god.. Plus, surely it’s got to be easier to explain to your own countrymen that you’re actually a citizen, no matter how terrible it is to sneak into your own backyard. This makes the whole thing a lot less worrisome, and the relief of getting out of the Dover ferry port is dizzying.

I’ve never been so pleased to see the backs of those sheer white cliffs.

I would like to say that the passport debacle ended there, but because we’re doing a festival date in the middle of nowhere, I don’t have time to get another passport and ridiculously, have to be smuggled back onto the continent. Unbelievable! At this point, I have faith enough in the driver and crew to be trusty smugglers, plus a complete lack in the competence of the French guards, to make my life as a stowaway a lot easier. I make it back to France after surviving all the custom checks., and plan to visit the British consulate next week for a new passport.

All this and we’re still just under half way through the tour.