Now you might think New York State would be a forest of skyscrapers, I know I did, but as it turns out the further north we go, the more dangerously rural it becomes. Farmland gives way to great empty stretches of what to my Brummie eye looks uncannily like wilderness. It’s one thing to get a bit lost on the Yorkshire Moors or scoot around bits of North Wales trying to read indecipherable road signs, but this is a far cry from anywhere that might have a petrol station or a chip shop. You could die out here and who the fuck would ever know. I’m convinced they have bears and wolves just itching to strip you to the bones. Not to mention hillbillies. Do they have hillbillies this far east? I thought I told you not to mention hillbillies! I mean, if I’m getting this nervous in Upper New York State, how the hell am I going to handle following the wagon train trails across the Great Plains or navigating the Florida swamplands.

“Breaker, breaker!” Miki suddenly barks.

“What’s up with old Mario Andretti?” Mulligan wants to know.

“Who’s he talking to?” Annette asks.

Miki turns fully round in his seat, completely ignoring the highway flashing at 70mph beneath our bottoms, and holds up a microphone from which trails a long black curly lead.

“We got one of these here CB radios, innit.” He says. “I only just found it.” He waves at the dashboard.

“That’s nice,” I say, “What does it do?”

He sighs and shoots me a look of disgust. “We can talk to truckers. Find out where the cops are. Speed traps. What the traffic’s like up ahead.”

“Think they can tell us where we are?” I ask, eying the complete lack of buildings flashing past the window.

“I know exactly where we are.” Miki announces.

“Yes, I know,” I say sinking down in my seat for a bit of a doze. “Directly above the center of the earth.”

“That’s a big 10-4 on that one big boy.”

When we finally find the club, I take one look at it and decide Miles is definitely taking the piss this time.

“He’s gone too far.” I tell Annette.

            “No, this is the place.” Annette says.

            “No, not Miki. Miles. He’s taking the piss.” I say.

            “That’s the biggest log cabin I ever saw.” A somewhat recovered Dik croaks, crawling from his nest of coats to peer bleary-eyed through the window.

            “The kraken wakes.” Miki says, baffling everyone except me.

            “But it’s a log cabin, not a sodding club.” Mulligan insists. “Fair does, it’s a big log cabin but it’s still a sodding log cabin.”

            “This is worse than that fucking scout hut in Wales you booked us.” I say.

            “Shut up Luke.” Annette says automatically.

            So I sit in the van and sulk a bit, refusing to help unload the gear, and not even Annette’s threats of no per deums will shift me.

            “You can keep your fuckin’ pocket money!” I say,  “Sick of being treated like a fuckin’ kid.”

            “Not as sick as we’re of you behaving like one.” she says.  

            “Bollocks!”

            But eventually curiosity gets the better of me and I go in through the side entrance, where I spy a steep dark flight of stairs. I’m suddenly very glad I’ve had my sulk and not had to hump gear up that lot. Dik appears at the top of the stairs and tap dances down like an epileptic Fred Astaire.

            “Hello,” he says, “Dressing room’s up there on the left. Can’t miss it. Watch out for the leopard.”

            “Leopard? Yeah, right.” He shoulders past me and hares off toward the van.

            Up the wooden hill to Gigfordshire I go, into the dressing room, and of course the first thing I see is a fully grown leopard in the corner of the room. It stares at me with look-at-that-huge-kitty-snack eyes and licks its chops. I note with relief that it’s chained to the wall and try not to think about dry rot or termites. I set my guitar case and bag as far away from Tiddles as possible, trying to act nonchalant beneath the smirking gazes of Miki, Mulligan, and Annette.

            “Bet Luke gets some pussy tonight.” Miki says.

            “Har fucking har. Just as long as pussy doesn’t get any Luke tonight.”

            Stewart Copeland heralds the arrival of The Police.

            “Hi guys. Holy cow! How cool is that?” and he points his Super 8 camera at the leopard.

            A grizzly bear-sized bloke sporting a grizzly beard, bib overalls and work boots clumps into the room and without so much as a howdy throws a whole raw chicken at the leopard.

            “Had her since she was 2 days old,” he says. “She’s still get her teeth” – the crunching of deceased chicken attests to such – “but we had her de-clawed.”

            “So at least I won’t get disfigured while she’s ripping my head off.” I say. 

            “Huh? Oh, no. Chain’s good and strong. You’ll be okay.”

            Sarcasm and Americans, oil and water, you have to love it, an endless source of amusement. It’s somewhat ironic that I haven’t even tried irony out on them yet.

We have a couple of hours to kill after sound check and as we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere Stewart announces that he wants to work on some more of the film. This is Sting’s cue to go off and have a sulk over the latest Nabakov novel he’s pretending to read. He’s sneered at my copy of Stephen King’s The Stand which is my road novel. I am on my 4th or 5th reading. But then I don’t have any Russian perverts in my lyrics thanks all the same, just the occasional pyromaniac or robotic sex doll.

“Now for this scene,” Stewart says, eying the leopard, “I want Luke on the phone. Demanding the ransom for Annette.”

“They’d be more likely to pay me to keep her.” I mutter.

 “You still got that leopard skin shirt?” Stewart asks me.

“Yeah. But if you seriously think for one second that I’m gonna –”

“Aw, c’mon! It’ll look great! With the leopard in the background and all.” Stewart says.

Gob, he is so bloody enthusiastic all the time, how can I refuse? So when I hit the stage that night my leopard skin shirt is already soaked through with sweat before I’ve even played a note. Still, at least it isn’t soaked through with my blood.

Just to show how unimpressed it is with monkey antics, the leopard falls asleep during the after gig party. Around 2AM Annette herds us back to the van. We have an overnight drive to Boston. The club’s owners, the lumberjack brothers – who claim to have built the place from scratch themselves, by hand, and who am I to doubt it – come out to say goodbye. They’re effusive about what a great night it has been.

“Great show tonight.” One of them tells me.

“Er, yeah thanks. Great … er, leopard, man.” I say. 

“Yeah. Y’know she really took a shine to you.” One or other of them tells me.

“Really?”

“Yup. Must have been that shirt a yours.”

“Er, yeah,” I say,  “Must have been.”

“That and the fact she’s in heat right now.”

For the next week or so my nightmares are unprintable.