Vanter: /'Vanta/ noun: The playful and friendly exchange of teasing remarks. Like 'banter' but in a van.
E.g. 1. "There was much good natured vanter... before they killed each other"
E.g. 2. James: Shut up Sophia or I'm going to suffocate you.
Sophia: Calm down. It was just a bit of vanter.
We spend a lot of time on the road. A LOT. No, I mean really... A LOT. And though we have bonded as a team, we are, frankly, a bunch of relative strangers passing the time together on the endless motorways, highways and byways of this land. This, let's call it 'time', is spent in the pursuit of equally endless amounts of verbal garbage, of what I call 'vanter' It is a peculiarity of touring. Inspired by the intense experience, physical work, late nights and early mornings, adrenaline fuelle performance... and beer... that bonds the group and allows us to spout seemingly endlessly about anything and everything to each other. For hours at a time.
For a group of people who only met two months ago, we now intimately know each others favourite foods, music, bad habits, sleeping patterns and bowel movements.
The utter rubbish we talk. For example... this morning's topics included 'what's your favourite shot in a bar?', corny jokes from Josh, stuff that SERIOUSLY can't be repeated here, the value of friends coming to see a show you're in, coffee, the shopping channel... the list goes on. And on. And
on.
But when the vanter stops for a minute because we can't stand it any more...
Music taste in the van is an issue. Joao, for example, likes bands probably called something like 'Smash My Dead Granny's Face Leppard'. I do not. Josh also likes bands like that. I DO NOT. An 8am call to the van, no breakfast but caffeinated to the eyeballs, only to listen to songs probably called 'I Hate You And Everyone You Ever Met B**ch' inspires quite a lot of heated vanter culminating in my attempting to jump from the vehicle. I like bands like The Divine Comedy or Bare Naked Ladies or Van Morrison or even Billy ****ing Joel, not to everyone's taste but... anybody who can sing a tune, Joao, A TUNE... But I won't let this little hardened nut of hatred in my heart for Joao's taste in music ruin an otherwise fruitless friendship! (Ha!)
Eventually we fall out of the van into a coffee shop where the vanter at last dries up. Devices emerge from bags and the modern phenomenon of not talking to each other in favour of Twitfaceogram takes over.
Vanter: /'Vanta/ noun: The playful and friendly exchange of teasing remarks. Like 'banter' but in a van.
I bloody love it.
James