I thought I'd write something down today just before the first concert of the year which is tomorrow at the National Portrait Gallery. Adrian and I have been practising hard and have written a whole new piece for double barreled recorders and another for fiddle and guitar. Working titles are 'Scrambling' and 'The Bonnie Miller' both have Northumbrian pipe tunes at the core but a definite contemporary element.

It's hard to play recorder with the hiccups! That's what I discovered today, but I persevered. The news is that maybe we will be playing as part of the Escalator Showcase in May at Norwich Arts Centre so we'll have to see if that is the official album launch or if it happens earlier. we've still got exciting dates coming in for the year ahead which is great and I have put new strings on my fiddle so it has a little more sparkle.

Since the terrible ordeal of the fingerboard coming of it hasn't sounded quite right, strings help, but something is different, a resonance or something has changed. I'm not sure it is necessarily a bad thing, but I have been playing the same fiddle for nearly 12 years and it might be time to move on....(I did cover my fiddles sound holes incase it overheard)

The cat (shoogs) is flopping her tail on my left hand making it a bit tricky to type. Things are feeling very busy already with the album, my re-chord air contemporary recorder project, a couple of recorder concerts with Carolyn Gibley of the Brook Street Band to programme and another TUNE-UP Folk Day. Though none of these things are happening tomorrow or even the next day, so I think I will empty them onto a page and focus on playing some lovely brawly tunes.