THE EXPLORER - A Newspaper for the adventurous

SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE PICKLE DESERT

Snod, up a mountain last week. Could he really have turned to crime?

 Famous explorer Captain Snod has been arrested for stealing the Glittering Gherkin, a unique and priceless treasure which formed part of the crown jewels owned by the Queen of the Pickle Desert. Although there were six other suspects and Snod says he is innocent of the crime, the Pickle police are unconvinced and say that he has no alibi. 

The glittering Gherkin has been kept in the Tower of Capers for the past 600 years and is rumoured to have magical abilities. Snod is a famous explorer who has published many books about his adventures in the Lava Regions, the Sticky Swamp and Mount Sidewinder. 

Is there no one who can find the true culprit and free Snod? The other suspects are Oceanographer Marky Shark, historian Alice Spyglass, test pilot Tommy Tornado, local shopkeeper Fiona McGuffin and botanist Flora Fern who was conducting the largest ever study of the prickly pickle. 

The Glittering Gherkin is made of emerald

Should probably mention this

Well I guess I ought to make it official, 7 months after it happened, but Ten Tigers on on 'indefinite hiatus', which means that it's over until we forget all the reasons it's over.

Our last show was in Cambridge, at the Portland arms, turns out Manda was pregnant for this gig so the good news is she now has a little boy called Joel who is doing well.

The album will emerge one day, when we forget all the reasons it hasn't already.

In the meantime you can get the last song we recorded by buying a copy of Any Love is Good Love, we wrote the title track, which is just because M compiled it and engineered things that way. If you pre-order a copy you can download our song straight away, you don't even need to wait for the release date.

Get it here.


A massive heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped and supported us while it lasted. What a special decade that was. By name they were:

Phoenix FM, Sophia Noisy, The Get, Ste McCabe, Toska Wilde, Cherryade records, Dandelion radio, Culture as a Dare, The Beatroots, Suck my left one radio, Hayley Moonlight, Shakey, Mike at Chinnery's, Superduck RIP, our families, all our friends and loved ones, Art Gruppe, Trash Monroe, John Hannon, Punky Steve, Malaysia Steve, Tom Robinson, Panic zine, The Railway, Rob ex of Bar Lambs, Fashoda Crisis, Death of the Elephant, The Lovely Eggs, Rishi, Tom Burgess, The Tiger MCs, The Grand RIP, Ladyfest Berlin, Johnny and the Mullets RIP, Hoffman's bicycle, the drum guy at PMT and Honky Tonk RIP.

And if you're not on the list and you feel you should be then that's because you're special enough to be a friend or loved one X

Pier Festival!

Tomorrow we are playing on Southend pier as part of the festival organised by The Railway! We will be on the Olympus camera stage at 3pm, followed by the Beatroots. After this we're taking a bit of a break as Manda is expecting her second tiger cub, a man cub this time, haha. Also playing are the Jim Jones Revue, Theoretical Girl and 'many more.'

Entrance is free although it will cost you £3/£4 ish to get onto the pier. There will be food and drink available although please note the pier is a no smoking venue, due to the fact it burns down every three years. 

Next gig

This Saturday. Except it will now be £5 on the door and there will be free cake. Huzzah!

Feet and Footie

Manda's foot has pretty much healed, hooray! We took it, and the rest of her, to the Portland Arms in Cambridge for a gig somewhat poorly timed to clash with an England football match. 

We were on first and it went pretty well, aside from M having a coughing fit during 'Any Love' and the normal guitar unplugging issues. Quite slick for us, really. On second were Poesi, who were playing their second set of soft rock of the day. 

CK has started bringing flasks of tea to gigs so he was pretty chipper.

Eureka Stockade had the happiest bassist ever and a drummer who looked like Dave Grohl.

Paul and Manda in the beer garden, doing the same pose they do at every gig. Seriously, take a look back through the archive. Lean in, beer, grin. In fact, I need never take a photo of them ever again. Where ever they go, I'll just use this one. 

Next gig on the 14th July with the Bobby McGees and Maria and the Gay, at the Railway for Culture as a Dare, then we're playing the pier festival on Southend pier in August. WOOOO!

Back to Cambridge

Hi everyone, sorry we've been a bit quiet of late. This is for several reasons, firstly M is poised to release an album with Lost Harbours which has been a bit of work, also she has just passed her City and Guilds level 3 in ceramics. She did find time to knock together a new Pettaluck release though, there might even me a video for one of those tracks soon, you can hear the new EP on soundcloud



Paul has got a new job, with interesting hours, and Manda has recently had her foot broken and reset, so it's been a busy year so far. The good news is we have a gig next Friday, back in Cambridge at the Portland Arms which we have attended but never played before.

Pleas come up and say hello if you make it! Really looking forward to getting back out there and meeting some new people :-) we may even have some badges left if you're especially nice. 

The Temptations of Salford

On the 5th May we were invited to play Toska's Salford Temptation, a three day event organised by Toska Wilde who we had previously played for in Margate. We'd never played up North so we were quite excited. Unfortunately M totally lost her voice on the day before we were due to travel. Being us, we thought we'd go anyway, in the hope of a sudden recovery.

It was a pretty cool journey, we got to see some sheep and mountains, some spherical children and a sign to 'lolsworth'. Plus three of the band at least were able to sing along to the in-car mix tape. It was apparent though that M was not able to sing, or even to rap which was our plan B. So we went to the venue to make our apologies and it turned out that the gig might not be going ahead due to a flashing incident the night before! Apparently, even though it was a very punk venue, the sight of Luis Drayton's member had caused great distress and the further publication of photo evidence on Facebook nearly sealed the deal.

Luis Drayton - offensive penis?

Luckily, good sense prevailed and the show went on, although the furore had set sound check back by a couple of hours so we we high tailed it back to our Premier Inn to get changed and get some food in so we could come back and watch the other performers. As it turned out, several bands had had health and safety issues and had to pull out.  Toska suggested there might be a curse on whole weekend! Of course we don't believe in curses. Except, then a vital text message from the Get saying they were setting up on stage got delayed for 45 minutes between Gary's phone and M's, so we didn't get back to the venue in time to watch them which was really disappointing.  We did get to see the anarcho punk of the Black Light Mutants though, and they were pretty good.

note the pinky held aloft - even punks can be classy.

  

Unfortunately there was a smoke machine in the venue and it was quite difficult for Manda with her asthma and M with her throat infection to breathe. We hadn't had time to eat so we thought we'd quickly nip to the nearest chippy and get some fresh air, then head back to see more music. 

However, it wasn't a very chip shop sort of road

And after about 40 minutes we gave up, got in the van, and found the nearest chip shop we could, which turned out to be in Oldham. 

By this point we had missed quite a lot of music and M was really flagging, so we went back to the Premier Inn for a nightcap and turned in about midnight, like the soft southern indie kids we are. 

Back at the venue, Toska was sporting his tiger stripes and being an absolute star for taking on such a huge task as a three day festival, no mean feat even without a curse! 

Thanks again to Toska for being so brave and for inviting us to play, even though we epically failed. 

And now, at the risk of turning this into the Lost Harbours Blog, here are some scenic photos M took while on the chip quest.

God moves in mysterious ways, and so do the working class.