USUAL early Monday alarm to get sourdough in the oven. It’s done by 8am and I go up for a paddle while it cools.

There’s time for breakfast – fruit and yoghurt followed by mashed avocado on fresh sourdough toast – then a session with a Zoom guitar student.

With approval for a custom kilt pin, I go ahead with a second version with different initials. It takes me a good five or six attempts to make a decent master for casting. I have time to do some castings but none of them pass muster so I abandon it while I go and edit some video from past shows to spin into tonight’s Wildcats’ livestream on Facebook. Nine Pound Hammer from BluesAlive in Czech, and Whisky Trail from The Cluny, Newcastle.

I suddenly panic about timescales to get the second single from the album – Hellbound Train – off to my aggregator (digital distributor) in plenty time for its scheduled release date of Friday 6 June. That means lyric files and artwork then upload of all with the audio and relevant metadata.

I’m a few days tighter than I would like but it’s there and ready for them to deliver to all the digital services.

I have the video edits finished and my prep done for the livestream with time to attempt another casting of the kilt pin. Another fail but I manage another pour before rushing back to the studio to go live.

The livestream goes good and by 9pm I’ve shut the studio and headed to the garden to check the last casting. Success! Thank fuck. This one has been a challenge.

Not out the woods yet, though, as there’s a lot of tidying and finishing work to be done,

Finally dinner and then chill…