It was with great apprehension that we arrived in the UK without our guitarist Vijay Joseph and the man who was supposed to replace him was Varun Krishnan ..

So after the heart breaking news that Vijay could not make it, we were in a complete fix about how we would pull off the trip to the UK and one part of the answer was Varun Krishnan. He was the guitarist for Zero after Warren had to move to New Zealand and he came heavily recommended ;) - So we had nothing to fear!

We landed up at his house early in the morning yesterday and I must say it helps when you stay down the road from Abbey Road Studios! You know what you *HAVE* to do when you are in the vicinity of the Abbey Road Studios right? We did just that!

Sang Beatles songs and crossed the road and had someone click that famous photo! except small problems - the song that Jithin started singing when we asked him to sing a Beatles song was - “Hotel California” !! - though we can just blame his Mallu descent for it :p - and we most certainly don’t look like the Fab Four a couple of decades back, but then, it was a brilliant experience walking through music history!

Varun did not disappoint - he had his parts nailed, gave us cereal bars and cake and some excellent coffee and the morning session was a breeze! We ran through the structure on most songs we were playing and stepped out of his house to watch the long queue of people waiting to get into the Lords Cricket Ground! We have promised ourselves that we we will make it to the Final day of the Ashes test on Monday - I hope the Aussies stick around till then!

We then headed out to meet Sareata, our lovely host who has been quite an angel, helping us out with settling in and sorting out all issues we’ll face here about our travel and accomodation - its been brilliant! thank you so much :)

The evening practice session was at ‘The Joint’ which is a studio that is used by bands like Noah and the Whale and Coldplay for practice! and when we reached there, we learnt that we have been upgraded to use one of their bigger and newer studios - the Red Plus!

A LONG practice session and some Mc Donalds burgers (Thanks Sammy and Rajeev for that!!) and it was time to drag our tired selves to the flat and get some sleep! But its all good coz in a couple of hours - its us on the Gaymers Stage at the Lovebox festival!

Check out some of the pictures we’ve put up! - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=281666&id=522175007&l=fecccf746e