I now have two finished songs that I recorded a couple of days ago at Angello Sound Studio in Hermitage, a few miles outside Nashville in lake country, and that Bob Angello mixed and mastered yesterday. I’ve had a number of demos recorded there already, but always from a distance, and although Bob and I have spoken many times on the phone, we’d never met in person. So it was a delight to meet him and to have much more direct contact with everyone involved in the recording of the songs – and to put down my vocal right there in the studio. I’m delighted with the results, and this has been a highlight of my US trip.

Bob himself is a brilliant pedal steel guitar player and all-round guitarist, having toured the world with many of the country greats, including Pam Tillis and Suzy Bogguss, so to have him play on, as well as produce, my songs was a thrill for me. On keyboards this time was Howard Duck, who didn’t flinch at the fact that one of the songs was in C sharp major (easy enough on the guitar with a cheatin’ capo, but a swine on keyboards!), and in fact generously said he relished the opportunity to flex those little-used C-sharp muscles! That particular song started out as ‘That Kiss’, but has ended up with the title ‘It’s Wrong’ – thanks to Howard assuming that must be the title, and me then realising that yes, of course that had to be the right name for the song, as that phrase crops up far more often than anything else in it.

The other song is one of my new Christmas songs (I seem to be going through a festive phase at the moment – just in time for the season itself!), and whereas I’d imagined cheesy sleigh bells and the like, what we’ve ended up with is much more imaginative and evocative, and I love it!

The man who introduced me to Bob a few years ago, Jesse Poe, was there too, on the desk, and it was really lovely to see him again and benefit from his expertise and judgement.

I’ve been invited to a Halloween party this evening. Not a great one for dressing up (unless it’s on stage!), I mooched around Target yesterday after leaving the studio and ended up with a witch’s hat and some fake cobweb stuff, so I need to get creative with that in a few hours’ time. It being Nashville, there’ll be a bevy of songwriters there and I think I’m playing a few songs as soon as we get there. Never played in a cobwebby witch’s hat before. It’s an image, I suppose…

I thought I’d take a bottle of wine along to the party, and naively went along to Kroger’s supermarket to buy a bottle of Pinot Grigio. I say naively because I hadn’t even thought about the fact that alcohol is by no means as freely available over here as it is in the binge-drinking UK, and it turned out that all that was available at Kroger’s was beer. So I had to find a ‘liquor store’ to source my Pinot, its barred windows making me feel slightly illicit as I did so. While I was there I also bought a teeny bottle of gin, finding Seagram’s to be suspiciously cheap and probably pretty rough, but worth a shot.

Discovering that the Dolly Parton store that used to be a fixture in downtown Nashville is no longer in existence was a bit of a blow, and Tammy Kitten, my showbiz partner back in ol’ Blighty, is still recovering from the shock. I’m now having to look elsewhere for Dolly memorabilia for Kitten Kaboodle’s act. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of cheap(ish) souvenir tat shops in Nashville, just not many selling cheapish Dolly-related tat. We may have to create our own…

Turns out Best Buy, the US electrical equipment chain, has ‘Geek Squads’ – equivalent to the so-called Apple Genius Bars – so I took my non-functioning satnav (or rather, GPS) to the one in West Nashville today, having had to first memorise the Google map directions in order to drive there, which was no mean feat, I can tell you, as nowhere is close by in America.

The country music playing loudly through speakers hidden in the parking-lot hedges put me in better spirits, but they soon dissipated when I finally got to see the Geek and he told me there were no US maps loaded on the satnav that I had bought on eBay on the promise of it having US maps… However, he went on, he could upload US maps onto it for $60, but it would take 8 hours to do. That would be a problem because I needed (a) to be able to navigate my way back to my B&B and (b) to come out to play at an open mic this evening on the other side of town from the B&B. So I called Alamo rental cars to find out how much it would be to hire one. A shocking $179 for a week, I was told… So I went back to the Geek and said I’d have the $60 upload please. “That’ll be $60 … plus $40 for labour,” was the more detailed reply this time (well, he actually said "labor", but I’m writing in British). I blanched. “But you could get a new one for $120,” he then told me. So that’s what I bought with great irritation at already having forked out for the non-functioning one before I left the UK. The new one worked a treat, thank goodness, and I sailed home to the instructions of my American-toned GPS girl. (I set it to American English, thinking that it might more closely resemble the correct pronunciation than posh British Emily would.) As soon as I got home I fired off a testy message to the eBay seller – who, on the second reply, agreed to refund my money if I sent it back when I returned to the UK. So that’s something, I suppose. I still have no idea how I managed without it last night though – someone must’ve been watching over me, I reckon.

In the evening I went along to the Commodore Bar and Grille, where I nursed a G&T (this seems to be becoming my tipple of choice…) while awaiting my open mic slot later on. The way these ‘writers’ nights’ work in Nashville is that three or four people take it in turn to sing a song at a time, each eventually singing three songs, and because these are writers’ nights, all the songs are original. Then another group of three or four songwriters gets up and the process is repeated, and this goes on through the evening. I’ll be on later in the evening because I’m just doing an open mic slot – the acts on before are all doing showcase sets. By the time I’d contacted Debi to tell her I would be in Nashville at the end of October the showcase slots were already filled, sadly. Still, I’m happy to be doing the open mic – this IS Nashville, after all! :)

There’s a youngish woman at the bar with a high, shrieky voice practically yelling at the chap next to her by way of casual chit-chat. I stood it as long as I could, casting significant looks her way each time she got particularly loud and shrill in the midst of a singer singing his or her heart out, but finally moved closer to the stage. I can still hear her clearly, however. How obnoxious and rude! I hope she’s gone or lost her voice by the time I get to sing.

​She had gone, I think, but although I’d carefully tuned my guitar before I got up to sing, it was hopelessly out of tune again by the time I was on stage, which was embarrassing and made me looked quite unprofessional :( Somehow a not very satisfactory evening. Not sure exactly why I’m feeling like that at the moment. I’ll mull on it a bit more… But I’m looking forward to tomorrow, when I’ll be recording two songs at Bob Angello’s studio outside Nashville.

My last day in New York: mid-morning I took the subway to 42nd St and Times Square to visit my brother in his office with a spectacular 21st-floor view overlooking the Empire State Building. Had a lovely chat with him and his secretary, who didn’t betray any disappointment with my unexpectedly cleanly appearance. On my brother’s suggestion, I then walked about forty-five blocks back along Broadway to the apartment – great idea, as the route took me past numerous iconic landmarks, and I even took part in a filmed survey in Times Square: ‘If your body was a type of food, what type of food would it be?’ 'Avocado' was unaccountably on the tip of my tongue, but what I actually said was ‘Ben and Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream’… The English interviewer seemed delighted with my answer, but I have no idea what Freudian significance was behind it.

​ A few blocks later, I very nearly copped it on a pedestrian crossing at about 72nd Street when the some idiot in a dry cleaner’s van parked ON the pedestrian crossing swung open the back door with great gusto just millimetres from my face. I kept reliving that moment all the rest of the way – inches to the right and my nose would have been splatted all over my face and I’d at the very least have been knocked out. True, I might then have more closely resembled the battered rock ‘n’ roll singer the office staff were expecting, but I was relieved to have so narrowly escaped that fate.

Although I had been planning to take the M60 municipal bus to LaGuardia Airport, the lovely secretary arranged for a driver to take me there instead, so, having arrived nice and early, I was able to sip a (hideously expensive) G&T while awaiting my evening flight to Nashville.

There was only a handful of passengers on this flight, meaning plenty of empty seats around me, so at least this time (unlike on the flight from London) I could type on my laptop without any danger of an irritating neighbour pointedly covering his face with the in-flight magazine as a not-so-subtle way of saying the light from the screen was keeping him awake.

I do not like turbulence. I do not like turbulence. I do not like turbulence. I HATE FUCKING TURBULENCE!!!!! Why it seemed like a good idea to book five flights when I hate, hate, hate flying, I cannot begin to fathom right now. How I could possibly be the daughter of an RAF fighter pilot who lived to fly, I cannot imagine.

That was me in trying-to-quell-rising-panic mode on an unexpectedly bumpy flight from New York to Nashville… And this is me relaxing on a lovely comfy bed in a fabulous Airbnb apartment, beer and snacks by my side, reliable internet connection for my laptop, TV on in front of me, and luxuriating in the loveliness of it all – and still feeling absolute wonderment that I made it here from the airport in a rental car in the driving rain, on the wrong side of the road, and with the US satnav that I’d bought on eBay for this very occasion having totally let me down by not being able to find the USA in its memory bank when I desperately needed it to. It really felt like I made it here on a shaky wing and a prayer and a vague memory of this neighbourhood from my explorations of East Nashville four years ago. But here I am at last, back in my beloved Music City – yeeeee-hah!!!

This morning began with a trip on the subway up to Harlem – the furthest north I’ve so far ventured in New York. I felt I was beginning to look like I’d been using the NY subway all my life, though, when someone who looked to me like a born-and-bred New Yorker asked me if he was on the right train! My reply that he was sounded utterly convincing even to me – even though in reality I wasn’t 100% sure that even I was on the right train… Miraculously, we both turned out to be, however.
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My preconceived idea of what Harlem must be like (a bit dodgy and scary) turned out to be totally wrong, with mainly classy café bars and restaurants, health spas and hair salons lining the main streets. I was hoping to find some funky arty boho kind of shops, but there didn’t seem to be any. It didn’t matter, though, as that’s not really why I was there – I DO NOT NEED to be shelling out any more dollars on crafty things I don’t need, so thank god there were no funky arty boho kind of shops, actually.

When I later made my way back down on the subway to my brother’s apartment, it was only because I walked a little way past the entrance to look at the bus timetable that I happened upon Thor, the cool cowdog, and his almost-as-cool cowboy human. They kindly allowed me to take a pic of them, and I was glad to be able to return the favour and take a snap of them with the cowboy’s iPhone. Round these parts, one good turn deserves another, y’hear?

Later in the afternoon I set off in the other direction – i.e. downtown - to play at the Sidewalk Café open mic on the Lower East Side. It turned out to be a mammoth trek there from the subway station at W. 14 Street and Seventh Avenue, and the evening itself was a strange mixture of the good and the not so good. An English chap I’d met at the Bitter End showed up with his friend Susan (who took the pic of me – thanks!), and we all hit it off, so that was the good part. The not-so-good part was that all those who wanted to perform drew numbers at random to determine the order of play, but in the event some – well, quite a few – people seemed to manage to push their way by other means to the top of the list, so that although I was officially number 13 (eek!), I didn’t get to play until nearly 11 pm, after which I didn’t want to risk taking the subway back, so had to shell out for a taxi ride all the way back up to the Upper West Side. I was very glad I did though – especially after seeing the state of some of the folk, from the safety of the taxi, as they staggered around on the streets that I would’ve been walking along… Some of the acts also left a bit to be desired – in particular the female stand-up who thought that talking in lurid detail about the most gross bodily functions and sex acts constituted rollickingly funny comedy. Let me tell ya something bluntly, darlin’ – it didn’t.

Tomorrow evening I fly to Nashville, so here endeth the tales from New York, to make way for musings from Music City, Tennessee! Yee-hah!

Today I learned not to assume that information gleaned from a 2007 New York guidebook will still be accurate. After taking a stroll in Central Park first thing and finding myself caught up in a continuous stream of runners – more even than on Hove prom on a busy day – and belatedly realising it was the Race for Life – I had breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien, where yet again I was assured there was wi-fi, only to find that it wasn’t accessible by my laptop. Being deprived of the internet, I resorted to scouring my 8-year-old guidebook and discovered that there was a weekend flea market on Canal Street – just my kinda thing! The fact that it was some distance away in Lower Manhattan didn’t bother me – I had all day to explore, after all. So I took the subway down there and half an hour later emerged on Canal Street and Broadway, expecting to find something bohemian and crafty like Camden market, but seeing around me nothing but cheap souvenir shops. There was nothing to do but ask – so I accosted the nearest cheap-souvenir trader and asked him where the flea market was. To which, inevitably, he replied that it had ceased to exist some years ago… DOH!!!

Walking a bit further down Broadway, I found myself unexpectedly on a very clothes-and-shoe-shoppy stretch - so what else was there to do than window shop? The only problem with that was that I would fairly inevitably succumb to the lure of the gorgeous shoe shops on that strip and end up with yet more fabulous footwear. Which is what happened. So there. ;)

On the journey back to 86th Street, I happened to get into a carriage on which ‘Gypsy Joe’ and a female chanteuse, dressed as wookies (of course!), were entertaining stony-faced passengers with ‘You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Wookie’. They made me smile and made the journey go much faster, so I gave them my loose change and initiated the applause at the end of their song. I do love a good busker, me!

I was back at the apartment by early afternoon, as I’d been invited to go with my brother, sister-in-law and nephew to the last New York City FC match of the season. This new soccer team’s home is the Yankee Stadium, home also to the New York Yankees baseball team (who fortunately weren’t there this afternoon as well…). I haven’t been to a football match since my brothers and I went to see Oxford United play QPR in the Milk Cup Final many, many years ago, and found ourselves unaccountably seated at the QPR end... Oxford won, but you wouldn’t have known that from our muted cheers, kept low so as to avoid antagonising the enemy…  A tense game, that, as I recall… :-/ Anyway, it wasn’t a great match for NYCFC this evening – they lost 3-1 to the NE Revolution – but it was a great experience for me, even if it didn’t quite have the feel of a British Premiership match. I can’t quite put my finger on why, except it all seemed rather more orderly and polite than we’re used to in old Blighty.

Tomorrow I’m back on the open mic trail – but let's not jump the gun... :)

An early start to today as I wanted to get to the Guitar Center to see about getting a hard case before heading over to the legendary music venue in the Village, the Bitter End, to stand in line (as I was sure there would be a sizeable queue) for the popular Saturday afternoon open mic there. Perhaps a bit too early of a start actually, as the music store wasn’t open yet when I arrived at the W.14th Street address… It was after that that I ended up at the Silver Spurs Eatery for breakfast and their non-existent wi-fi, and then hit upon the Coffee Bean for their nice coffee and existent wi-fi. I then discovered a fabulous artisan market very close to the Bitter End, but realised that I could easily spend so much time idling around there that I would be in danger of finding a long queue outside the Bitter End when I finally made it along there. So I cut short my perusal of all things handmade and retro and went along to the live music club at 11.40, to find two people already waiting outside. Given that the sign-up wasn’t going to be until 12.30, that was dedication – and I wasn’t about to lose my place at the front of the queue, so I joined them for an hour’s idle banter and increasingly cold hands. It was worth it though, because it was a fab afternoon – I got to play my new little travel guitar with the pickup that I fitted yesterday, sang a new song and an older trusted faithful, got really nice comments afterwards, and thoroughly enjoyed the other acts – including the Kate Bush sound-alike Samantha Echo, who kindly took the photo of me performing. And guess who came over to me as I was saying my goodbyes and said, ‘You’re not from around these parts, are you?’ None other than Matt Sage, host of Oxford’s equally legendary Catweazle open mic, who happened to be visiting New York with his son this very week - a small world indeed!

The MC, a nice guy called Evan, had some running joke going about my name, however – he clearly found it hysterical (Mandy Woods, that is, not Randy Moods…), and I have no idea why. Am I being dense/naïve?? Somebody else came over to me after I’d played and said he had no idea why Evan thought my name was so funny either…
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After the open mic I headed back over to Guitar Center, only to be persuaded by the sales chap that the soft case would be fine as long as I took the guitar as cabin baggage each time – he’d flown to Israel with the very same model guitar and case and it had survived intact. So, happy not to have to shell out another hundred bucks on a hard case, I took his word for it and made my way to the subway to catch the train back to the apartment. There on the platform, however, I was seduced by the most gorgeous-voiced busker – Silvia Jhony – her details are in the photo – check her out! So seduced was I, in fact, that I caught the wrong train and ended up having to get off at 42nd Street and ask a NY cop how to get on the right train. Very helpful he was too, and two trains later I found myself on the now-familiar 86th Street platform and close to home.

A long but enjoyable and productive day. I may take tomorrow off from the open mic trail, but am hoping to play at the Sidewalk Café on Monday, the day before I head off to Nashville…

Bit of a nasty surprise when I took the little guitar my brother had been storing for me here in New York out of its gig bag to play at my first open mic here yesterday evening... The back had pulled away from the sides, causing a huge irreparable crack that reminded me of San Andreas all over again. It wasn't a valuable instrument (except sentimentally), so I wasn't completely devastated over its loss (unlike when my darling Ovation guitar was nicked off a Greyhound bus when I first moved to Texas many years ago and I felt like I'd lost a friend...), but it did throw me upon the mercy of the others at the open mic, and has forced me to rethink my US music plans rather radically. I will tomorrow be scouring the New York pawn shops for a reasonable guitar, one that I can sell back when I leave. (Thanks, Paula, for that clever idea, planted back in the UK but only now having to be put into action!)

The other folk at the Path Cafe open mic on Christopher Street in the West Village were very friendly (particularly Andrea from the UK and Bobby Blue from Brooklyn, pictured below) and I had no shortage of offers to borrow an instrument. In the end, though, it was easiest to go with the battered but nice-sounding house guitar.

The procedure involved drawing a number from a bowl, and with over 40 people wanting to play, I could have been there until 11 pm. Fortunately, however (given that I was by 7 pm beginning to flag from the effects of the previous day's travel and not a great night's sleep), I drew number 3, which meant not only that I played early, but that I got to do two songs, unlike those who played after the number 12 slot, by which time it was limited to one song each.

I played 'Slick as Texas Oil' and 'This House', and when I got home much later, I had a message from a steel guitarist who'd been there, offering to play some steel for me - open mics are such a great way to network!

I stayed as late as I could to listen to the other acts, but was having trouble keeping my eyes open by 9 pm, at which point I caught the uptown subway and was back at the apartment by 9.20, hitting the sack by 10 - and now that it's 4 am, I'm ready and raring to go again... :-/

Stay tuned for my NYC pawn shop adventures...

Right, I’m typing this somewhere above the Atlantic, having made it through the scariest part of any flight (other than the turbulent middle and the landing), which is, for me, the take-off. I practically soared through it actually, thanks to my malfunctioning in-flight entertainment device that I was attempting to fix as the plane rumbled along the runway. At first I’d just smirked at the affected gravelly American voice describing every pixel of what was being shown on the screen. (‘A three-dimensional W and B drift together inside a stylized shield to represent Warner Brothers Productions … A diamond attached to a floating trail drifts down to attach itself to a seven-layered L-shaped vortex…’) But then it continued in what became a very intrusive way into the film itself: ‘A silver corvette drives along a mountainous winding road. At the wheel is a young female, singing to a tune on the car radio. Pebbles hit the windshield. The car skids off the road and somersaults down the mountainside…’) It took me a while, I grant you, but finally I realised that the audio description aid for the visually impaired was turned on. It was at that point that the engines revved up and the plane began to speed up for the dreaded take-off. But was I bovvered? No! Well, maybe a little… my right hand did clench the back of the seat in front of me a little tighter… But on the whole I was more concerned with turning off the gravelly toned audio description. In the end it took the flight attendant resetting my screen to solve the problem, but by then we were safely up in the air. (Well, it never feels completely safe to me up there, but you know what I mean.) But now that I’m sitting here nursing a glass of Sauvignon Blanc while watching the highly disastrous disaster movie San Andreas, I find myself slightly regretting having turned off the audio description, as it would have been quite entertaining to have listened to the growly voice becoming ever more frenetic in an effort to keep up with the increasingly destructive earthquakes that comprise the movie’s ‘plot’.

That’s maybe a little unfair, as there is more of a plot than just a few quakes happening and people and cars being swept en masse off the collapsed Hoover Dam and Golden Gate Bridge. A bit more anyway. This is it: Several very high-magnitude earthquakes suddenly destroy the west coast of the USA out of the blue, and an Action Man figure of a helicopter rescue pilot and his estranged wife fly to San Francisco to find their daughter amid the rubble and water left after a 9.6 magnitude quake hits the city followed by a tsunami. Somehow they know without a shadow of a doubt that because she’s so smart, she’ll have figured out a way to stay alive when all those around her are not, and somehow they find her from their speedboat as she flags them down by flashing a small green light at them from the top of a crumbling high-rise building. Somehow she’s become trapped up there with her love interest – a foppish, ineffectual Hugh Grant–type British chap – and his little brother. Somehow, even though the daughter very clearly drowns at one point and can’t be resuscitated, Action Man brings her back to life after getting very angry about it all. Somehow the US flag then unfurls – as of course it would do – over a destroyed Golden Gate Bridge and the reunited happy family, at which point the no-longer-estranged wife says, ‘What now?’ To which Action Man stoically replies, ‘We rebuild.’ The End. Oh, and Kylie Minogue’s in it somewhere, but I can’t for the life of me fathom where. Maybe she was the small green light.

Well, it passed 114 minutes, so I can’t complain.

It’s now the next morning and I’m in my brother’s apartment in Manhattan, trying and failing to get connected to the wi-fi. I woke earlier thinking it was 8.30 am but was confused by the fact that it still seemed to be dark outside and all my devices showed different times. It turned out to be 3 am. I think it’s now just gone 7. I should still be asleep as I’ve only had a few hours’ kip, but in UK time it’s past noon, so I’m more than ready to be up and hitting the streets of New York. My plan is to play an open mic tonight. We’ll see how bright eyed and bushy tailed I still am by then, however…

Not the nicest of days to set off on my trip to the US - by the time I boarded the National Express coach in the coach station in Brighton that I never previously knew existed I was cold and soggy with white fingers and wet boots that will take forever to dry out and that I was intending to do most of my walking in in the US... Ah well, at least it was a fine excuse to indulge in a brandy and Coke as soon as I cleared security at Heathrow! The security officer who retrieved a forgotten yet forbidden bottle of water from my laptop bag engaged me in unexpectedly friendly conversation about playing the guitar, after noticing the guitar-pick silver quarter around my neck. That put me in a better mood - though trying to find a bar amid all the outrageously expensive boutiques and duty free shops and then struggling to get onto the free Heathrow wifi put a bit of a dent in it. Anyway, my gate is apparently about to be announced, so it's time to pack up the laptop and prepare to leg it to the gate, which will undoubtedly be the very most distant one from where I'm now sitting... :-/

I’m just back from one of my favourite kinds of days out – a day in a recording studio – Tigersonic Studio in North London, to be precise. What made it even better was that half of the day had been gifted to me by a wonderful anonymous well-wisher. Whoever they are, I hope they’ll be pleased with the day’s results – I certainly am!

This is by no means my first recording session with Felix Macintosh and, as usual, at the end of the session she put a wav file of part of the day’s work onto a memory stick for me to take away with me. I had my laptop with me, but knew I’d have to be patient and wait until I was on the train back to Hove before being able to listen to it.

As I arrived at Victoria station and negotiated my way, laden with laptop and guitar, through the crowds, I could hear the depressingly familiar announcement over the tannoy: The 19.16 departure to Littlehampton via Hove has been delayed as a result of an emergency on the previous train at Haywards Heath… Doh! I wanted to listen to my newly recorded song, and I wanted to listen to it NOW!!

Eventually the platform was announced for the 19.16 train, and the mass of weary travellers staring up at the departure board flowed as one towards it, with just minutes now to go before it left and a seemingly unending train to walk the length of in order to board one of the front four carriages to avoid being on the wrong part of the train when it divided at Haywards Heath.

By the time I reached one of the front carriages it was jam packed, with just one window seat remaining. The gent in the aisle seat very kindly made way for me and my laptop and guitar, which I managed to squeeze in beside me after he failed to find room for it between the opposite seats, after gamely scrabbling around on the floor trying to wedge it in. I now barely had room to breathe, let alone do anything involving use of my arms – such as retrieve the laptop and memory stick from the case and finally get to listen to my song…

But I was utterly determined to listen to it by then, and so I DID remove the laptop from the case, and inched it onto the table in front of me, then opened it up, trying not to knock over the open bottle of beer belonging to the woman sitting across from me on the other side of the table. Mission accomplished, I then plugged in the earphones and delved into a side pocket for the memory stick, feeling excited that I was at last about to hear my day’s work. I went to insert it into the USB port on the side of the laptop, gave it a little extra push… and the bloody thing dropped out and fell to the floor, invisibly and irretrievably wedged somewhere under my squashed-in guitar case… DOH!!!!! VERY SAD UNSMILEY FACE!!!

I simply couldn’t cause another ruckus, having already disturbed the entire carriage once as, with my guitar and laptop, I’d bumped down the aisle to the one vacant seat and had the man in the aisle seat crawling around on the floor trying find somewhere to stick the guitar. So I had to just sit there, increasingly worried that the precious memory stick containing so much of my work might never be found, or that I might get off at Hove forgetting that it was down there. I prayed that one of the three passengers sitting around me would get off before Hove so that I could more freely scrabble round on the floor to find the memory stick. But they all stayed resolutely put.

So at Haywards Heath I screwed up all my resolve and, in a very tiny and guilt-ridden voice, said to my kind neighbour, ‘I’m going to have to be a nuisance one more time, I’m afraid…I’ve dropped my memory stick…’ At which point he leapt up again, dear man, and got down on his hands and knees to look for the missing object. When he failed to spot it, I too leapt up, convinced that my worries had been well-founded and that the stick had indeed vanished into the Southern Railway ether.

However, I soon located it – as I suspected, it was indeed wedged beneath my guitar case. I had to practically slither under the double seat to retrieve it, drawing a huge amount of attention to myself from the packed carriage for the umpteenth time on that journey. Once I had sat back down, I promised the still good-humoured gent that I wouldn’t trouble him again, and stuffed the wretched memory stick firmly back into the side pocket of the laptop bag, where it stayed until I arrived back in my flat. At which point I whipped it out, plugged it into the laptop, and FINALLY, several hours later, got to listen to the rough mix of my new song, ‘Love Me Back’. :)

Thanks, Felix – it was a great day, with a gorgeous-sounding result! See you next week to finish off the other two songs!

​And thank you my kind and mysterious benefactor for making the day possible in the first place. Your generosity is very much appreciated!