Wendy and Lisa were round on Thursday (no, not that Wendy and Lisa) to start looking at the songs for our Edinburgh concert (sold out, judging from the EIF website). We'd decided that we're going to wing it rather than working from printed or written-down arrangements, and it's going great, but the main problem is that by the end of the day we've played so many songs that I can't even remember the tunes, let alone what I was playing. All I have is a bit of paper with a list of titles, the instrument I played in each song, and what key they were in. So I think there may be a DAT machine or two running in tomorrow's rehearsal as an aide-memoire for my addled memoire.

There are various bits of diary shuffling going on at the moment, to see whether we can fit in an extra ConCal date or two in September - I'll update the concerts page when it starts to take shape. 

Meanwhile, some good news on the publishing front: the Mercat Press (I hope you have more luck accessing their website than I did) have re-issued David Johnson's Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth Century. If you're interested in the music, there's now no excuse for not having this book, which after 30 years is still the first port of call for loads of basic information. Ring BookSource on 08702 402 182 or +44 141 558 1366 if Mercat's website lets you down, as it did me.

My reading of American comic-books (OK, graphic novels, sequential art, whatever) on holiday a couple of weeks ago led me via 'No More Shaves' to the wonderful world of the Duplex Planet, which I've been hearing about for years and am only now discovering in all its glory. It leaves you looking forward to growing old.