Fresh Bread and Tomatoes....

Up at 5 today and quickly into burning and printing the latest batch of CDs for Jamie – much to Anne’s delight. She wants to know what all the noise is – I didn’t realise as I have my headphones on – I must admit that, at 5 in the morning the whirring of a 48x burning of a CD and side to side swishing of a high speed printer, even on silent mode, must be pretty annoying.

We call a truce as she heads back for more beauty sleep and I save my latest CDs onto the hard drive in preparation for when my new Jukebox arrives – checked yesterday, they have the old one and the replacement should be with me in a week or so (last time it took three weeks). It’s guaranteed again for three months from when it arrives. That’s not very reassuring considering I’ve had to have it replaced twice in eleven months…

Then I update the blog re last night’s karaoke adventure and generally just surf around on the net, visiting my usual haunts, Jim Park, Richard Herring, Out of the Bedroom, E-Bay, BBC.co.uk, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Norman Lamont, Alice Cooper, Impossible Songs trying to avoid too much noisy typing.

By the time Anne gets up and we’re ready to go for breakfast it’s already 10:45. We head for Patisserie Florentine in Stockbridge and I hold off from the full Petit Dejeuner and just settle for a pain au raisin and a latte – Anne has a plain croissant and cappuccino – don’t know why they call mine a latte – it’s just as strong as a normal coffee…I prefer Starbucks’ lattes - especially the "vente" size - huge cups that leave a mark on your forehead they're so big....

After breakfast we wander down into Stockbridge for a look round the shops and buy some fresh bread and tomatoes for lunch. I also pop into the Oxfam Music shop – they usually have a few bargains and sure enough I pick up Jordi Savall and Hesperion XX performing music from around 1600 by the composer William Brade.

I stick it on in the car – not Anne’s Cup of tea but I like it – 400 year old music – one day people'll be listening to music recorded four hundred years in the past….probably by the Beatles, probably not by Cloudland Blue Quartet..but I'll be dead and so won't be bothered....

On the way home we head to Haymarket where I pick up 200 blank CDs and, for the first time, some blank DVDs. At home I update the software on the computer (thanks Craig) to allow burning MP3s onto a DVD.

No wonder recorded music is so undervalued today – I managed to get the last 92 CDs I’ve bought onto ONE DVD!!! 992 tracks – Eighty-One and a half hours of music on a SINGLE DISC. Maybe I should put my entire back catalogue (around 200 CDs) onto a 2DVD set and sell it for a tenner?

A while back, I unplugged the speakers from our computer and put them away but I got them back out today and fitted them back again – I’m tired of having headphones on all the time…

After lunch of, it must be said, very tasty fresh bread and tomatoes, I head up to the studio and run through the Deeperdown songs – my set for a week on Thursday will be “Where Are You”, lead track from the 7th Deeperdown EP plus the second studio track from EP 1 and EP 2, “Still We Doubt You” and “The Beauty Of A Foreign Land”.

Anne’s out in the garden – the one thing she really enjoys more than anything else I think is gardening. In fact my song “The Gardener” is about her, written one day, like today when I “worked upstairs on this song” and she was deadheading some flowers…

I’m round at Ian Sclater’s again tomorrow for the next session re his CD and I promised last week I’d come up with some backing tracks for him. I completed one on Tuesday but haven’t had a chance since then to do anything. I work on three more and finally complete them around 8:30, stopping off to watch Dr Who accompanied by a Vegetable Madras from the Taj Express. Mmmm mmm..

Then it’s the Eurovision Song Contest until CSI : New York and Law & Order : Criminal Intent then off to bed, knowing I still have some work to do on Ian’s stuff first thing tomorrow before driving to his place for 11 am.