Songwriting and Slugs

In the past two weeks I've read and marked more than a hundred undergraduate essays. Sometimes this has been utterly dispiriting; yesterday's workload, though, involved listening to 5 CDs of songs written by students, and it felt as though the sn had finally come out this gloomy January. There was one that was so good that I had to listen to it again and dance round the kitchen; In nearly all of them I could hear that the students had really enjoyed creating their music; there was one where one band member had been a bit sulky and you could hear him playing crossly, only to be shoved firmly back into line when the joyous vocals thrust him out of the way to chorus their message.
Today I start with a new Songwriting group. This is exciting; last year's group came up with Alex Lipinsky, who won a lot of funding from the Musician's Benevolent Fund Peter Whittingham Award. I am hugely proud of the students who do this songwriting class. Emmy the Great is touring the UK and is doing brilliantly; Jamie McDermott's orchestra, the Irrepressibles, got a four-star review for their EP in this month's Uncut. Back in the past, Kevin Mark Trail sang on The Streets' first album and is now an artist in his own right; and (perhaps irrelevantly?) Arianne Sherrine passed through the gates before she graduated to become a journalist and scriptwriter and engineered controversial red bus slogans! Perhaps the most famous University of the West graduates are The Feeling, or two thirds of them. They didn't do this songwriting thing, sadly,but I did give one of them a place on the music course in spite of his overwhelming shyness, which meant I had to peer under his hair to make eye contact, a little difficult as his eyes were fixed firmly on his shoes all the way through the interview.
Meanwhile I am completing some new songs and will be possibly playing some of them at the next couple of gigs, Saturday and Monday. One of them is six minutes long, the longest song I have ever written.
I suppose it may be just too long and drawn out ever to play live; if that is the case I will line up a neat set of slugs in the garden and play it to them instead.