Woops....h

Didn't realise- I have a gig supporting Martin on Friday at the Kelvedon Institute in Essex.

Part from that (and I need to rehearse- I have bitten my right-hand nails right off due to some stressful family stuff this week and need to practice blunt finger guitar pickin').....

Today has been OK: up early to meet the Deputy Head at the little school I do Song Club with. It is being closed down and absorbed into a much bigger school miles away from the estate, and the secretary was in tears.
It will be the last ever Song Club, the last little box of boisterous fireworks who spill out their ideas for song lyrics onto gigantic sheets of white paper with coloured felt tips so I can tease and bash them into verses like a pizza-baker with a lump of volatile dough!
It will be sad, the end of a professional era for me, but a new beginning for them, which is what the song will be about.

I think the CD will be ready in time, so very exciting: 300 of them will be delivered here next week to join the badges and the dream of cupcakes for the launch next Friday.
Sometime between now and then we have to have a rehearsal, but suburban life throws up its surreal routines: off to the vet with the cat for his yearly vaccination: 'Miaoooooow' a hundred times in the car in the pouring rain; as I got into the car afterwards, i noticed a dead baby rat on the ground in a puddle, its mouth stretched in a nasty mock-guffaw, its eyes closed in the relief of permanent sleep after a destiny of ratdom was cut short by an unseen assailant.

I found a bag of guilty empty booze bottles in Offsprog One's cupboard, including an empty very expensive bottle of wine I was saving for a special occasion, and was looking for the other day, because the other day was a special occasion.
Offsprog One blamed Offsprog Two, and Offsprog Two blamed Offsprog One in a perfect mirror of innocence.

I wrote a song about failing to become famous.

A gig with Jude Cowan and Kath Tait is brewing, with a special CD, which I think I will write something new and funny for.
We will have a theme, and meet here in suburbia to put our plan into action. Take that, neighbours with twitchy curtains and Daily Mails under your arms!
More lady musicians with personalities and style walking down the street, lowering the property prices and raising the insurance premiums in one fell swoop! Last week it was the Song Circle girls. Will my miss-demeanours never end?

Then I made a cake, with too much vanilla (I'm a vanillaholic) and ate half of it at once while it was still warm, looking out at the rain-sodden garden and listening to the new album by The Bird and The Bee, which is brilliant, and shines even when the sun doesn't.