Day Zero

It's two minutes to the day I leave for New York and I can't tell you how I feel. I can tell you this though, my teeth fit tight, and this time tomorrow I will not be in Bristol, I'll be in Brooklyn, alone.

One endless night three weeks ago I was lying alone in a freezing cold, lumpy, superking-sized bed with it's own second hand residue of cigarette smoke, in a freezing cold rented room, in a miserable tiny house in St George, Bristol. I decided the time had come.

I had left London on a similar impulse a year earlier. It had taken two weeks to decide, rent out my flat, pack up my stuff and drive away from my life that had ended in Docklands. At 5.15pm on the 14th of December 2008 I set off in my Transit into the night.

I was going to sit out the winter in Dorset hatching a Grand Plan. I realised I had made a terrible mistake within 20 minutes of arriving in Tincleton, a tiny town twinned with Darkness. By February I was living in Bath, better but still no biscuit. By March I had moved to Bristol with Le Plan - I was going to be a country singer and go to New York with a Show next Spring.

Bristol, the birth place of the Crustafarian, is awash with Cider, home to Ketamin, ruled by dub step and the streets smell of skunk, but it was very kind to me. Even though it wasn't interested in me painting the town white, the people are warm and gentle, and several musical car crashes and incarnations later "One Night At Betty's" was born with the darling Jimmy The Fingers at the keys.

One year to the day of arriving in Bristol I was leaving. I had found new friends, old friends, and a future in Vintage American Cabaret. [holds guitar in air] "Good Night Bristol".