Can you believe it's September already?? Well, yes I suppose. I'm not too unhappy to see the back of August-the dullest month since records began. I feel vindicated against all those who said 'we've had bad summers before'....again, yes I grant you that-but I feel that the last 2 summers have been the shittest in my lifetime for weather. In our area, where it's grim up north, we've had around half the normal average hours of sunshine in August. It's enough to make you want to emigrate to somewhere brighter, like Norway, the Falklands or Antartica.

Gigwise it was quite a bright end to the month (a super pun there I'm sure you'll agree). 3 nights out in total, starting on Wednesday with The Grove open mind night. This was my first visit since April, and although I went quite well with 'Seven Shades' and 'Lola' the piano is now so bad it's beyond playable. The tuning is by the by, but the pedal doesn't work and there is a natural sustain which lingers on and on. I was also upstaged by a cute hispanic girl playing something which sounded even worse than the Grove piano, a sort of oboe-sounding wind instrument which put me in mind of those hooters you get at major rugby league finals. Needless to say she went down a storm. There lies another lesson in showbusiness. One I ought to recite more often: no-one owes you their adulation or indeed their attention, and as a performer you are in competiton with just about anybody that can vaguely play anything.

Enough said, the Chemic Tavern on Thursday was better this time. I played 'Shadow', 'Angels' amd 'Life', the latter after a long absence. It was well received and I think the night was fairly succesful.

On Friday it was the latest band instalment at the Cricketers Horbury. Whilst never going to be as good as the previous Friday (see last blog) it wasn't a bad night, the 2nd set in particular doing it's job once the transient audience had settled down into a group more prepared to listen. I think the pub is part of a 'run' through Horbury on a Friday night, which must be an exciting experience. 'If He Knew You' was debuted pretty succesfuly. It's just a shame that we haven't another gig until September 23rd. I've a couple more observations about the night which I'll save for a week or two...just in case the people concerned are reading this, I doubt it, but it can keep for now.

This week will be the first in a long while where there'll be no gigs at all, so next week's blog may be on another of my interests, or perhaps it will focus on recording and writing songs, something I occasionally find time to do!