Things NOT to do after a gig

My guitarist is my son, which means we live together. This did in fact create an embarrassing scenario when one of CJ's (drummer) youngsters asked why we kept on arriving to rehearsals together. When CJ explained it was because we lived together, she thought he meant as 'a couple'.....some thoughts are best left where they lie.

Anyway, me and the boy tend to have a post gig tradition...that is a glass whiskey, Star Trek (yes I know, don't say it) and a Pot Noodle.

Please don't ask me how that tradition started and I know that there is probably more nutrition in the plastic tub that the noodles come in than the food is contains. However, it's our tradition and we are sticking to it.

Anyway, post last gig, we are huddled in the kitchen, kettle boiling preparing our late night vittles when Aaron announced that he wanted to 'pep' up his supper.

Now like most rock stars, we like our food hot and spicy and I always have a bottle of Hot Jamaican Pepper sauce at the ready for just such an occasion.

However, tonight I had something special.

A friend of mine, who is a Drugs worker had given me a bottle of something that bore the moniker "Ouch- I'm hot".

The fact that it had come from a complete Chili head should have been warning enough, and given the name we should have left well alone. But no, I just had to open the bottle didn't I.

I gentle unscrewed the lid, mindful of my friends warning that it might "fizz a bit".

Fizz is probably an understatement.

It had the appearance of a small volcano spewing magma over the kitchen top.

Groaning I placed the lid back on the bottle in order to stem the flow and wandered off to the sink to get a cloth.

As I was at the sink I heard and audible 'pop', a yell from Aaron and felt a strange burning sensation in my scalp. The bottle had quite literally exploded.

Aaron and the kitchen were dripping with bright red chili sauce, burning and staining what ever it touched.

Thank the Lord Aaron was wearing his glasses or I think I might quite possibly have blinded him.

He simply stood there...chili sauce dripping off the end of his nose, and crying with laughter.

The stuff even got inside the microwave. It was three days before we managed to locate the bottle top.

It took us an hour to clean up the worse of it, floors, ceiling, cuboards, kitchen utensils.....Aaron....by then it was 2am and we'd had more than enough.

However, I don't know what created the bigger explosion. The chili sauce or my wife, when she discovered the mess that we had made. I tried explaining what had happened but to no avail. Mind you it didn't help Aaron rolling around on the floor laughing his socks off!

Now I have a small understanding why Rock Stars do stupid things like take drugs after a gig...it doesn't make such a mess of the kitchen.