This has been said before, in many different ways, languages and levels of exasperation, but I'll reiterate: Mumbai is fucking crazy. Twelve and a half million people living on an island less than half the size of London.

Apologies to anyone who came to see us in New York, Chicago or any of the Canadian shows, but LA stormed in as our best gig of the tour. The room was big and packed, the sound was thumping and we played an absolute corker, even if I say so myself.

Coming out of Montana and into Idaho was so dramatic I almost parked the van and cracked into a few poems.

Minneapolis. I don't know about you, but when I think of Minneapolis (and granted, it's not often) I imagine somewhere quite westerly within the whole US of A scheme of things. Today I am finding out quite how wrong I am. It's not in the west. It's not even in the middle. Look at a map. It's in the east.

It's big. It's got tall buildings. It speaks French. It has strange red flashing traffic lights that confuse the hell out of us. It's like a cross between a North American city (which it is), a Scottish city like Aberdeen or Edinburgh (which it isn't), and in some strange way (and I'm really gonna get lambasted for this one) - Sydney. Where am I?

Throughout British rock'n'roll history, the USA has been an elusive, tantalising territory. Rather like an enormous, vertically rock-faced mountain with a finger-lickin' banquet hot and ready at the top, but with a steaming inferno populated by ravenous fire-resistant crocodiles lying in wait at the bottom, it has both lured and repelled practically every half-successful UK act since The Beatles first cheesily waved from the tarmac at JFK in 1964.