Last week was a very busy one, with 2 more solo gigs. It's a good job I'm used to playing to small audiences as Tuesday at the Travellers Rest, Britannia, Bacup and Thursday at Verve in Leeds were both very thin crowds.

I played 2 short sets at Bacup, it was a wild and rainy night and you have to wonder what chances a pub has of survival when it's as dead as that (on any night). The night was organised by the same team that do the gigs in Hebden Bridge, namely LiveSpace. My sets went well, although I was a little worried about 'Message In A Bottle'. Please tell me you didn't really think I wrote it guys!!

I made a throwaway remark that it was something I'd knocked together recently, and then there was silence....this being Bacup this was hardly a surprise, but afterwards one or two did congratulate me on the new tune. It worried me slightly.

No such problems on Thursday and the small crowd there did at least pay attention. It's a nice venue, a bit young for me, but it went ok.

In between this I went to a Musicians Union seminar on Wednesday in Nottingham. This was entitled 'releasing your own album'. I found it pretty useful, in many ways because it qualified a lot of what I've been doing up to now rather than any new revelations.

The Ariel cyber PR continues it's progress, although at the moment I do wonder who is working who as I seem to be putting in a lot of time on it. On Friday last week I recorded nearly 30 radio station drop-ins ('hi this is Paul Jeffery and both of you are listening to etc etc...) and so I'm hoping this will be worth it. I'll try and update things on here in full, including a nice review I've had. It's early days yet, so we'll see.