Its been a fairly busy week to lost of recording for two separate projects. 3 gigs and I open mike slot, which we don’t do too often, but it was on a Wednesday night when there wasn’t anything else going on and not too far away. It was mostly young folks enthusiastically doing there thing, and its seemed to go across fairly well. We were a bit surprised as we were told we were headlining it. We did the equivalent of a short first set and off we jolly well went.Thursday we were in the studio again and for once it didn’t rain until after midnight.

Friday nights gig was good, but I seem to have gone down with some sort of a bug as I felt very rough and as if I had a temperature, was nauseous and had no appetite. Got stuck in some traffic on the way back due to an accident too so I was not at my best by the end of the evening.

Saturday was OK as I felt a bit better, but again a very wet night so not the biggest audience, but the gig went well enough. I also managed to find something akin to a duck pond on the 3rd lane of the North Circular on the way home that made for an interesting couple of seconds.

Sunday was a strange day. We did a tea time gig in London that’s was a complete waste of time as the place was almost empty. That did not put me in the best frame of mind as it was a pay on the door gig and only covered the cost of a couple of drinks, and there is nothing worse than playing to an empty room particularly if the room is a largish one. We took off for one of a regular drinking haunts that also does live music on some Sundays (one we have played at recently). The London Irish Band (Back of Beyond) were playing and jolly good it was too. Made me feel much better. Bizarrely they had seen us a few years back (The electric band, not the Duo) and we had a brief chat in the break about music and stuff. We suggested a few venues that they might try and stuff.

At the start of the second half they invited us up to do a turn so we borrowed a couple of instruments and did our bit. I had a brief bout of fiddle envy as I borrowed a very nice modern 5 string fiddle, from the also very nice Antonia Pagulatos (made by Bridge)(first time I have played a 5 string, so of course it had to be in front of a fair size crowd ) but it went OK. I would love a violin like that but its not very lightly that circumstances will allow. It was also virtually effortless to play… So I need to get a lottery ticket for Wednesday 😉

I am slowly starting to work in more stretching and exercise now to help free up my back and I now have a lot more movement in my left shoulder, so the Violin playing is getting back to normal though its rather more tiring than it used to be physically and I often find I cannot get a comfortable shoulder position for too long though this is easing a bit now.

I am still searching for something and I haven’t found it yet, but it would help to know what it is…