I've been keeping this diary for a year now, and just like last year I've hit the same post-Edinburgh Festival phase of not much happening in the immediate future, but lots of planning ahead to be done.  

By phone and email this week, there's been a fair amount of what might be called 'post-match analysis' of The Gentle Shepherd: I think the consensus is that while it was great to do, we didn't exactly set new standards for group cohesion - we felt more like a bunch of disparate people gathered together than a single-minded group.  So I'm re-thinking our November dates with that in mind.  

I found time to be an audient this week, when I went to a great gig by  accordion player Karen Tweed, who'd gathered a English/Scandinavian band, including Timo Alakotila and Timo Myllykangas from the Finnish fiddle band JPP, and Maria Kalaniemi.   In the late 1980s I met the group Tallari at a festival in Yorkshire, and I've been a bit of a fan of that Finnish Sibelius Academy-based folky stuff ever since.  Also, Karen is enough of an XTC fan to have persuaded the Poozies to record 'Love on a Farmboy's Wages' a long time ago, so she is clearly a woman of impeccable taste. 

Last night I was playing piano in a session for a TV docu-drama called 'The Tartan Pimpernel' about the gay Islay-born minister of the Scots Kirk in Paris at the outbreak of WW2 (this may only be partially correct, I wasn't paying that much attention at the vital moment).  It was great just to be a session player, sat there with headphones on, not being responsible for anything other than my own playing.  A lot of the cues were done in one unrehearsed sight-reading take, and when the tape wasn't running (yes I know it's not tape any more, but what do you say, "when the hard disk wasn't writing"?) we played all manner of things to while away the time, including a glorious rendition of Elmer Bernstein's 'Magnificent Seven' theme on accordion, bass, fiddle and piano.  Yul Brynner comes over the hill wearing a kilt.

I had time for a chat with the director at the end about some of his forthcoming projects, including the complete Bach organ works for television (honestly), and the possibility of Concerto Caledonia appearing on celluloid.  Yes I know this sounds ridiculous, but it could be perfectly plausible and I'm not telling you why.