well, most of you now know this due to meeting us, but this is more a press statement type thing just to let you all know what happened and what's happening. on the friday night (day before the gig), we parked our hired van in our hotel carpark in salford, manchester. we thought all was well and went to bed peacefully. we woke at about 3:30 by some weird noise, but the van was still there and bed beckoned. the next day at breakfast stuart david came over and pointed out that there appeared to be a box of shirts or something outside the rear of our van... we went over and discovered the mess. the rear window had been smashed to non-existance and every piece of merchandise was missing - except about 2 1/2 boxes of mugs. what we've had stolen is: the last of the bus design shirts, both green/yellow and brown/orange designs the cartoon design shirts, the white, blue and green designs a lot of mugs cd's of every release (except dog on wheels which we'd sold out of) enamel badges ink polaroids (hundreds of 'em) what we need to ask is that of anyone lives in manchester and sees any of this, could you please inform PC Aspey at Greater Manchester Police, or if anyone sees any merchandise appear in any publications (UK or worldwide) or any shops, again please call the police. the only exception is that a few shops in Glasgow do have the cartoon shirts, but everything else is exclusive to us, if it's seen then it must be part of the stolen loot. we'd also appreciate it if you could also inform us so we know what's going on -- the other part of this press release is linked to the theft. because of the amount of stock we've lost and the time it will take to produce a basic stock again we are temporarily unable to supply orders via mail-order or the Internet, as such our merchandise page will be removed until we have new stock. we hope this is no later than the beginning of Feb, but this is also around the soonest it will be. we are able to honour a few of the smaller orders that were submitted before the theft. we will notify everyone personally after the 7th Jan to let you know if your order will be honoured (we're taking a well deserved holiday to Glasgow and won't be able to help before the 7th). -- apart from that, the gigs were heaven and the people we met were lovely. it's a shame our weekend was tainted so, but sometimes that's just the way it goes. we'll speak to you all when we get back from Glasgow. with love david and katrina @ the fanclub -- ******************************************************************** Belle and Sebastian Fan Club merchandise, mail-outs, chat, lyrics, poetry, fiction http://www.totalweb.co.uk/bluesoda/ mailto:bluesoda@totalweb.co.uk ******************************************************************** ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . This message was brought to you by the Sinister mailing list. . To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". . For subscribing, unsubscribing and other list information please see . http://www.majordomo.net/sinister . For questions about how the list works mail owner-sinister@majordomo.net . We're all happy bunnies humming happy bunny tunes. Aren't we? -----------------------------------------------------------------------