IT’S after 9am when I wake up. Feel a good bit better tho’ – the last week has been non-stop hectic.

Of course there’s a pile of stuff in the office to deal with – and my pal Rab needs some web stuff done. There’s also merch orders to be packed up and sent out, some much needed stock-taking and a load of bills to be paid.

I’ve made a slight dent in the to-do list by lunchtime then I start the phone call list before gettign the smoker going for a batch of chicken…I trimmed up some chicken thighs last night and put a rub on ’em. We’ll have some for dinner tonight and the rest will go in the freezer as an essential ingredient for jambalaya.

I’ll be due to sort some Scottish shows for around end February/beginning of March and we’d like to include my pal Andres Roots from Estonia on the shows. I put out the feelers and start putting together a wee plan for a few shows.

We’re well into December and haven’t tackled the Christmas cards yet so I print out ‘the list’ and relevant address labels so we can make a start on ’em after dinner.

The chicken is the best I’ve done yet – most likely as I paid close attention to temperature and pulled ’em out in stages as they became ready. We have some with salad, coleslaw and the Alabama White BBQ sauce I made earlier.

After dinner we discuss the Scottish shows then onto the Christmas cards. We get the international ones done and a start on the UK lot…every year we try and cut down the list a bit – fewer and fewer folks bother with them now…and the postage is an expense we can’t really afford in light of the ever-rising cost of stamps.

I GET my blog posted and a couple of other things done before we grab an hour or so’s sleep lying across seats in Tallinn airport.

The, around 4.30am, we stagger to the check-in desk. Funny thing, you can tell immediately which ground staff are likely – or unlikely – to be be ‘guitar-friendly’ and, as we predicted form the queue, today we’re unlucky.

The girl is still pleasant though and suggests we go to the baggage wrap place and have the two guitars wrapped together in that weird cling-film stuff then they can be checked as one piece of hold baggage at no extra cost.

It’s €18 to have ’em wrapped, but it saves us €100 and they look pretty secure. Thank goodness for the Reunion Blues Continental Voyager bags…this would have been impossible with my big old Carlton cases. Not only would they have been impossible to wrap physically, but they’d have been well overweight.

We’re through security just after 5am and at last somewhere’s open for some grub. Our flight is at 6.40am. We sleep through the snacks onboard and wake up as we land in Frankfurt around 9am – but with the time difference it’s only 8am. Six hours ’til our connecting flight!

We immediately go to the gate, grab some seats and have another kip then go and find some grub at a  wee place adjacent to our gate – beef sausage, potato salad and beer. Then back to the gate for another kip.

All the bags and guitars arrive safely in Glasgow and we make a few stops for shopping on the way home where we start unpacking, have a shower, some dinner and then hit the local pub to have a drink to celebrate a pal’s 70th birthday.