The DIY will wait for no man, and I woke around lunchtime to discover that it had already started doing it itself. This is, of course, a lie. However, I couldn't spend the day playing around with music. I had to get myself motivated to paint. I had two bathroom style rooms to do and I reasoned thus. I can paint the downstairs of the rooms today, leaving myself able to grab a nice shower before going to my gig tonight. This I did.

At least, I started down this road. Then I discovered some more penetrating salts in a section of wall I was planning to paint. I painted around it. There's more work for the plasterer, it would appear. Sigh.

A shower was had and I made my way to Winchester for the gig I was scheduled to play. This gig turned out to be a corker. I did pretty well in my slot and I rolled out the new song - the one I'd only played on stage 4 times before, but had spent a good 3 or 4 hours perfecting a recording of. The recording process had really helped. I'd set a pace in my head for exactly how the song should be delivered. I knew the key moments in the song. I knew how it should sound and why it should be funny. There's a moment in the song where I play something odd on the guitar and then go back into the regular chords - the audience had a laugh-out-loud moment of realisation just after this, and I couldn't have given them that moment if I'd been spooked by their lack of reaction at the joke in there... they now laugh at the joke, but they laugh off the beat, because it needs a moment to settle - a moment where I'm still giving the song full conviction. This is the beauty of the recording process.

I stayed around for the end of the gig. This time, having not died on my arse, I was happy to stay around. The headliner did ages, largely just dealing with a surreal heckler. The whole night had a slightly surreal edge. However, it had some naturally funny moments. I'd told the headliner the story of my awful gig on Friday night (awful for me, perhaps - it was a nice charity night and I'm not taking away from that) and I also told him about the emergency joke. He thought it was a good emergency joke.

After he'd dealt with the heckler, without even getting as far as his material, for a good 30 or so minutes, the headliner pulled out the emergency joke. It worked well for him, the audience and, especially, me. I almost cried with laughter as this special incantation. The emergency joke. I can't even tell it in blog form. Come up and see me and I'll tell it to you and make you smile. (Note the lyrical perversion in there somewhere).

Back home, I think I may have had some more time with my recording equipment. My new song was taking shape, but wasn't ready. I was recording versions of it to listen to, but I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, or even which key it was in, so I wasn't recording more than draft versions of it. This particular song needed space enough to grow its own way.

I was also dissatisfied with vocals I'd done on some other recordings, so I re-did them.

Sunday was quite a fun day all in. Painting, music, gig... and there was still another day of the weekend to go. This weekend had been going better than anticipated on Friday night before the music plan. Having said that, painting gives me time to chew things over, and the radio wasn't always distracting enough.