I am starting to get back into the more usual routine of gigs now. It varies from slightly chavey pubs (though often with very nice salt of the earth types) to proper music venues so the vibe is quite different although the shows the same. We had a couple of good gigs this weekend, and the one on Saturday night was a real work out in every sense, but my stamina is returning. If I can remember to discipline myself to keep doing my exercises that will help a lot too.

My back is not up to getting serious with the accordion yet, but I do need that for the folksy stuff we are starting to do, perhaps in another month or so I will be able to get stuck in a bit.

My sleep patterns have completly changed now as I seem to sleep for exactly 6 hours no matter what, after having been permanently tired for about a year or so. My abilty to concentrait on stuff is much improved too and the pain has eased off quite a bit.My temper has not improved much though unfortunately.

Long term prospects with the music seem to be slightly better gigwise but not quite enough for financial stabilty yet. We have got some good stuff coming up though including Cambridge Folk Club for for the Deltas that should improve our employabilty though. If we can average 12 gigs a month that would get us about right, we doing between 5 to 8 at the moment, so its not a huge leap in the amount of stuff we do really.

I also need to try and get a bit of IT work again to help out with the cash flow which could tip the balance, its very competitive though of course, and I ‘m not. I am still 10 years of the state pension age so I need to be doing something to boost my income that won’t tip me back in to mental health problems.

There is still quite an issue about this, and it seems to me that regardless of legislation, its mostly lip service thats paid rather than actually following guidelines. I commented on a thread recently that I thought it may be easier to get employment if you have just transitioned than if you have had mental health issues as it is still the case that people regard depression as laziness and then there are all those really scary ones like schizophrenia (which is often conflated with bi-polar by folks that don’t know) though some symptoms are similar.

I had musician friend who was schizophrenic who I have now lost touch with who was mostly harmless, and I wonder from time to time how he is getting on. We spent quite a lot of time working on music together a few years back…