Day 1 - it was a relatively easy and quite civilised journey to Italy. For a change there was no need to get up at an unearthly hour to travel via Stansted. Direct flights to Milan - just the ticket.

All went to plan - flights on time - no arguments with the check-in staff - nobody drinking too much - bus was waiting for us in Milan - bus delivered us safely to Ivrea …….. all went well until the sleeping arrangements were revealed - 13 blokes - 3 women – but only 2 rooms with 8 beds in each. The blokes were terrified. After much debate 5 brave gentlemen volunteered for the room of hell, which by sheer coincidence (or was it ?) was room 101 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_101 . George Orwell described his room 101 as a torture chamber in The Ministry of Love. They all put their car keys on the communal dressing table and chose their bunks.

A quick plate of pasta followed by bean soup (a bit too many beans for room 102 as they all discovered later on) and SPB went downtown Ivrea to suss out what was going down in the hood. Mike and Matt preferred to go to the shows.

Night time. Biff cracked first in room 102. He was caught in a McGill/Aitchison ambush. It was a classic pincer movement. For those that were managing to sleep through the log sawing competition between McGill/Aitchison - Biff kindly woke everybody to tell them that he could’nae sleep cos of the noise.

Matt cracked next and put his kit on and went for a promenade down the town at 5.00am

Day 2 - zero degrees and a sort of rainy/sleaty kind of day. This was a day of attrition. The afternoon play was a mammoth 6 km parade over 5 hours. What better way to prepare for this than playing all morning around the town waking folk up. This was the first day of the orange battles. By the end of the day there were numerous Italian Pudsey Bears roaming the town. After playing all day, the band did an ‘exxtray’ play in the Devil’s Beer Tent for some free beers. Later on the band entertained the locals with dancing and other antics. ‘In the Navy’ and ‘YMCA’ were the favourites for the drummers. Glyn left the tent at midnight to go back to the hostel. He then proceeded to walk in a large circle around Ivrea, ending back at the Devil’s Tent one hour later. This walk obviously did the trick and the re-invigorated Glyn treated the tent to some flower-pot-men versus Mr Tickle versus Morris dancing. Luckily this has been caught on video and will be on YouTube soon.

Night time. Glyn cracked on night 2, preferring to sleep on a couch in the hostel lobby. It was also too much for Neil’s pipes to take as they took off and slept the night in a flower pot.

Day 3 - the overnight noise in room 102 was so loud it was keeping room 101 awake. No play for the band until evening. The band went downtown to see exactly what this orange chucking was all about. Neil, Alan McGill and Alan Lindsay all had a go. The rest of us kept cover behind the plastic netting. The netting whilst effective at keeping the whole oranges from hitting you directly, tended to turn the projectile oranges into a fruit smoothie which then went through the netting. We were all piffed off at this. Good fun though. Lunch was a leisurely affair at the restaurant. The Vegetarian had to be translated to across the table.

The evening play was a cracker. Imagine 15 bands all playing at the same time through the same streets and squares. Must have been interesting to watch as the bands played through the narrow streets whilst the locals showered the bands with confetti. Nice.

Day 4 - Only 1 sleep to go. The final day was the mother of all muckle merches. This merch made PSM look like a wee play up and doon the street. The SAS are introducing this stamina test into their elite soldier selection process. However, SPB put their heads down and played throughout the afternoon. Kris had to stop for a wee while to retrieve his drum stick from some horse dung. Very unlucky. At least the weather was very good. After playing all afternoon, the band succumbed to the Devil and played for beer in the Devil’s tent and were presented with Devil bandanas. The PM donated his glengarry to the Devil.

Day 5 - back home. Many thanks to our guide Angela who helped us during our stay.