For Miki Cottrell: Out somewhere on that Final Tour. RIP Miki, miss you man! New York City, 1979 Back at the Iroquois Hotel I’m taking a rare afternoon nap when the by now familiar thumping on the door rouses me. I sit up and blink at the sunlight streaming through the raggedy blinds. I yawn and sit up. Miki’s sitting on his bed pouring over a road atlas. “That must be our wake up call dear.” I say. “Hmmm?” “Wonder what she wants now, the old trollop. Got any fags?” Without looking up from the map Miki reaches over and grab his B&H from the bedside table. He tosses them in my general direction and I clamber down on all fours to retrieve them from the floor. Peering under the bed I see a cobwebbed chamber pot. “Here,” I say getting up digging through my pockets for a light, “you’ll never guess what I just saw under the bed.” “The very chamber pot used by Theodore Roosevelt on his visit to New York. Tuesday February 1, 1916.” He says and sniffs. “What?” “He was here to visit crippled children at the New York Orthopaedic Dispensary and Hospital.” Miki says. “You know, good PR, what with the Great War raging in Europe and everyone on his case about his foreign policy.” I get back down on the floor and fish the chamber pot out. I peer inside and see a small curl of fossilized turd sitting in the middle of the dusty porcelain. “Worth a small fortune on the antique crap market if there’s anything in there.” Miki says absently. “Here, do you have any idea how fucking far it’s from here to California? Road-wise I mean.” He looks up just as I slip the fossilized turd into my jacket pocket. Well you never know, especially with Miki and his bleeding psychic powers and arcane knowledge, he might well be right. And after all, if the band do go belly and bollocks up, I might well have just secured the retirement I would never live to see. “Oh, a long way, I imagine.” I say and stub my fag out on the bedside table. “Let’s go and see what the boss wants.”