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See yas on the other side

Cheers!

Dave

There’s a couple of festival contracts to be sent back and posters to be done for half a dozen shows. Rather than overprint old posters, it’s become cheaper and easier to do full colour posters for specific shows…all I need to do is email the artwork to the printers and a few days later a package arrives back with all the posters. Always worth doing a check online to see the best prices for digital printing – I’ve been getting full colour A3s on heavy paper for around 20p each – less than a crappy A4 colour photocopy from Staples which is 29p (or 99p for and A3!!). Also means we don’t have to make a trip into Glasgow.

In the past I’d get five or ten thousand generic colour posters printed with a space for over printing…but they’re expensive and it’s a bit of pain printing out the overprint info then finding somewhere with an A3 photocopier that can handle the posters as stock paper. I guess the ‘unit price’ per poster isn’t much cheaper and it’s nicer to have unique posters for gigs. Plus we’re not stuck with the same design for 12/18 months or however long it takes to use up all the pre-printed poster stock.

Finalising my account for the accountant last week showed up a few areas I can save some money….my AIM (Association of Independent Music) membership costs nearly £150 a year and I haven’t really taken advantage of it for the last few years. A great organisation and I’d recommend joining to anyone wanting to set up a record label or make a living from music…but I’ve had my money’s-worth so after 12 years of membership I reluctantly send off an email saying I’m gonna bail.

I’ve noticed our BT direct debit has gone up by 1/3 while we were away with no notification, so I put in a call to find out what the fuck they’re playing at…I wait in a  call queue, put in a  ringback request but nothing happens. I’ll try again tomorrow.

Mikey’s coming to stay for a night or two, but we’re not sure when he’s arriving so I spend the afternoon in the office trying to copy all my WordPress files for the website and related databases to a new server. Can’t really tell if it’s worked until I get the name servers switched over but after an hour hanging on the phone it’s time for dinner and I give up.

Margaret goes to pick up Mikey from the bus and then we all go to the community council meeting…then on to the pub. That’s where the real business is done

PHEW! THE sickness has stopped and I had a good night’s sleep…feeling 99% when I get out the shower.

I stick some before and after pix from the beard shave on Facebook and send thank you messages to all the folk that have donated while I’ve been missing in action. I’m keeping the justgiving.com page open for another few days as I’m keen we raise as much as possible and at least break the £1000 barrier.

Catriona and Will are coming later on so I go across to the studio right after breakfast and dump the video Margaret took at the beard shave onto the computer. There’s a good 1/2-hour of footage – I reckon I need to get it down to under three minutes if anyone’s gonna watch it. I get about half-way though selecting the bits I might want to use when Catriona and Will roll up.

It’s nice to see them and we have a cool afternoon blethering…I decide to stay off the beer as my insides still feel pretty fucked up by all the straining and wrenching. Besides won’t do me any harm to stay off the bevy…it’s probably over a year (maybe a lot longer!) since I had a completely alcohol-free day, let alone two!

I make Italian sausage pasta (with sausage from Peitro’s Deli at Tollcross, of course…I picked up supplies on Friday) for an early dinner and then it’s apple and rhubarb crumble.

Catriona and Will head off early evening and I go back into the studio and finish off editing the beard shave video which is duly uploaded to YouTube, Facebook and anywhere else that lets me!

There’s not too much hanging around there (not that I would know, I am out the game by this time and can’t even string two words together) ’til the doc comes and gives me usual jag to (hopefully) stop the sickness, takes some blood for tests, blood pressure and all the usual stuff. He keeps an eye on me for the next hour or so then writes out a prescription for   a load of powders, pills and potions and sends us on our way.

I’m still feeling terrible when we get home and it’s straight into bed…and some sleep. Next thing I know it’s 8pm and I’ve stopped being sick. Still feeling rough tho’…and pissed that all the post-beard shave photos and video aren’t sorted and online along with all the other stuff that was in the diary to do today. Catriona and Will’s visit had to be postponed until tomorrow too

Back to sleep. Hopefully all will be well tomorrow….

Spanish Alison make the first cut...

WE HEAD through to Glasgow early for the big beard shave stopping en route at Queen Street station to pick up Margaret’s pal Spanish Alison whose name came out the hat to make ‘the first cut’.

As we wander along Gibson Street to Alice Rocks, where John Comerford will do the shave, we meet a  bunch of folks from our village who’ve come along to offer their support, including Ben’s folks and sister. Ben’s been getting treatment for leukaemia at Yorkhill Hospital and is the inspiration for the beard shave and fundraising.

John greets us and a few more pals and folks we know turn up to watch. The shave is pain-free and the underlying features not quite as scary as I first feared.

Afterwards we go for a quick drink across the road then we all get on with our various bits and bobs. First stop for us is the hi-fi shop where I leave my poorly Arcam amp for repair. There’s stuff to be dropped off at my accountant’s in town and some other stuff to be picked up before lunch and Costco.

Our pals Jon and Maggi are taking us for dinner tonight so we pick them up and then go for a drink before dinner. We’re having a great tme and the food is brilliant…but I start to feel a bit queasy as we finish and after a few discrete visits to the toilet have to come clean and spill the beans I’m not feeling to good. Terrible in fact.

I feel really and having to bail early but it’s the best thing to do as I’m sick on the way back to the car and all the way home in the car. It’s not the drink – just two pints and a couple of sips of wine, and Margaret checked with the folks in the restaurant to make sure there was nothing I’m allergic to in the food and it was all OK. I’m hoping it will pass,  but it’s not looking good as past experiences like this have seen me in the hospital.

I’m sick every 1/2-hour and starting not to know where I am….not good.

...and John Comerford finishes the job

I spend the morning and early part of the afternoon knocking the spreadsheets into shape and working out all the ‘other stuff’ like percentage of car expense/mileage for business and other stuff that we can claim against tax-wise. Then all the spreadsheets go of I an email to the accountant and all the other bits of paper etc he needs go in an envelope to be dropped off tomorrow when we’re in Glasgow.

The hi-fi amp is definitely fucked. I call the hi-fi place in Glasgow where I bought it about 12 years ago and they ask me to bring it in and they’ll send it off to Arcam. At a price, of course – but when the guy tells me it’d cost over £800 to replace it I guess it’s worth having it fixed!

Meantime, I rummage in the attic and find an old NAD amp…if I get time over the weekend I’ll try and figure out how to connect the bi-wired KEF Q30.2 speakers.

There an AA renewal in – more than double what it was last year. OK, I added Margaret as a joint member, but still should;t be so much. I call and they realise that my complimentary home start has been lost somewhere so knock £60-odd off which brings the price more into line.

On the way back from voting we drop in to Fiona and Barbara’s to pick up the ice bucket Fiona kindly transported back from Finland for us. A bottle of wine later we’re heading home for a quick dinner before we all meet up again at Betty and Joe’s…for more wine and banter

Before Is end it out I have to go through all the mail list sheets from the tour and add the new folks who’ve signed up. Eventually I get it away then head across to the office to sort through the pile of receipts and stuff from the last couple of months….once they’re sorted I start on the spreadsheets. Fuck, I hate doing this.

My eyes are falling out my head, so I take a break from gawping at the spreadsheets on the computer screen. Margaret’s pal Spanish Alison’s name came out the hat to make the ‘first cut’ at Friday’s charity beard shave so I knock up a last minute news release and photo call invite and fire it off to a bunch of newspapers along with a hastily taken ‘last look at my beard’ photo.

Back in the office I break the back of the accounts job. A couple of hours tomorrow should see it all up to date and ready for the accountant.

I attempt to recreate the amazing stuffed courgettes we had in Viljandi for dinner. It’s close, but it’s gonna take some practice to get them right…they are edible, though, and taste OK.

Cleaning up afterwards I manage to shut my right-hand index finger in the cutlery drawer and spend the next half hour swearing and running it under the cold tap. Ouch.

There’s an email in from an Italian magazine with a bunch of interview questions so I spend an hour or so writing answers and drinking wine. It’s all fairly straightforward but I like to give folks little bits of new/extra info here and there so they don’t all have the same old, same old.

Seems to be some kind of problem with our hi-fi amp. It works for a split second then goes back into standby mode. I’ll have a look tomorrow…too late to be messing about with it now.

We've had a great time but it's great to be home...we miss the loch and the boats are back in the water

WE WAKE up early…just a few things on the to-do list today! It’s weird tho’, when I wake up it’s like we haven’t really been away and the last six weeks was just a dream.

There’s so much to do we don’t really know where to start. I tackle the mail pile…it takes me most of the morning to get through it all and deal with stuff like overdue car insurance renewals and stuff.

It’s a bit like eating an elephant – one bite at a time. I have to organise flights to London for a meeting in two weeks’ time. While I’m doing that I copy all the video from the camera onto a hard drive ready for the studio.

Margaret has a dentist appointment just after midday and as she’s about to go Dog (the cat) turns up. Hasn’t taken him long to realise we’re home. He’s got a sore front paw though and isn’t putting it down. Looks a bit swollen so we’ll have to keep an eye on it. He seems to be getting pretty good at working with three legs – a sore paw seems to be becoming de rigeur on our return from the longer trips.

Our online shop from Tesco arrives mid-afternoon – that was a good brainwave Margaret had to order the shopping while we were away.

The garden’s a bit of a disaster, although the grass isn’t quite as long as I expect but still badly needing cut. I fire up the lawnmower – not that there’s much actual grass, the back is mostly moss and lichen. The front’s not quite so bad and just as I’m finishing the strumming a courier turns up with the hard drive I ordered online from Apple yesterday while we were waiting at the airport. It’s first job will be to handle all the video files and stuff for the d-i-y rocku-bloga-mentary of the tour.

There’s just time to gather all the receipts and stuff from the tour (so I can sort the accounts tomorrow!) before we head along to Betty and Joe’s for an aperitif. It’s great to see them and catch up on all the local comings and going of the last six weeks.

It’s after 9pm when we wander back home along the loch side. Still very light – odd, for when we left it was dark by 6pm! And the boats have started to go back in the water after winter.

I cook the pepper beef stir-fry and we sort a few more things out before turning in for an early night.

Tallinn to Helsinki...the first of our three flights to get home!

MARGARET did a lot of the packing preparation last night but there’s still a load of stuff to do before we leave the hotel at midday.

After breakfast Margaret takes a pay of shoes back to the shop – she bought them a few days ago and wore them for about five minutes on friday night before one of them fell to bits. The shop don;t want to replace or refund, instead they want Margret to get them repaired and they’ll pay the bill. That’s bollocks. Margaret tells them so and gets them changed

Our friend Merli has been taking loads of photos of the urban project stuff I’ve been doing for the JazzKaar Festival and brings a DVD of images along to the hotel so I meet her in lobby, say a quick cheerio and thanks, then get back to helping Margaret finish packing.

A taxi has been arranged for midday and we’re hoping to see Krista before we go. She comes to the hotel and mets us in the lobby while we wait for the taxi and sees us off.

We have three flights – first to Helsink, then to Heathrow, then Edinburgh. A fourteen-hour journey then an hour or so’s drive home. RyanAir has stopped direct flights to Scotland from Tallinn which is a pain – although RyanAir frustrates the hell out of us, we could put up with using the airline if it saves us 11 hours and all these changes.

The flights all go smoothly, although a guy sitting beside us on the Helsinki to London flight arrogantly keeps using his Blackberry after the announcements to switch of all mobiles etc, hiding it under his newspaper each time an attendant goes by. Now, we don’t understand/agree why you can’t have stuff like an MP3 player, Kindle etc switched on when the seatbelt signs are on, but we abide by the rules…so when a arrogant fucker like this blatantly ignores the rules we get annoyed. Margaret can’t contain herself and eventually says something to him….he replies “it IS off” as he continues to type an email. Is it fuck, the guy must think our heads zip up the back. I resist the temptation to smack him in the mouth. Our impression of him isn’t helped that he’s a complete yuppie dork.

Anyway, we get the guitars in the cabin on all the flights and the big bags, checked in for the whole trip, even make it to the carousel at Edinburgh.

It’s nearly midnight when we pick up the car – nearly 2am if you take into account the two-hour time difference – and head for Loch Lomond stopping at a petrol station for fuel, sandwiches and some milk for the morning.