I've spent the morning in Walthamstow, mastering the new Free French album, which in order to be given sufficient “lead times” should be out some time in 2525 (if man is still alive.)

The guy who did the mastering, Dave, also mastered the first two Free French albums, and established himself in my affections within an hour of our first meeting when he said “great lyrics, mate. Very clever.” He's said the same thing each time I've taken an album in for him to work on, which either means he takes careful notes of each client and the kind of comments they respond well to, or I'm genuinely an astounding lyricist.

I'm not one to blow my own trumpet, but I think I'm probably better than the lyricist in the band Giver Of Life, whose CD Dave had been working on the previous day, and whose tracklisting lay next to the console. I suspect they are probably a Christian Rock Act, with titles such as “Lord, Your Love” (unless of course it's a tribute to the sexual athletics of Melvyn Bragg) and the rather splendid “When I In Awesome Wonder”. Brilliant title. Just like a hymn – keeping you on tenterhooks, wondering what the chap actually did when overwhelmed by awesome wonder. I could adopt it myself. “When You In A Fit Of Sexual Jealousy”, or “When My Baby In Bra And Panties”.

For those of you unfamiliar with mastering suites, they're different to recording studios. Recording studios smell of beer, fags, sweat and arguments. Mastering studios smell of leather and fat cheques.

Anyway, now I duplicate the thing and give it to important people, in the hope that I (sorry, we) become exceedingly successful. The new hitBACK Records strategy for publicity (in the absence of any success using established routes) is to send copies to people we admire who have nothing whatsoever to do with the music business. At the Free French Christmas party last night (the 5 of us sitting in a pub in Lambeth) I put this to the assembled group. “Who would you like to like our music?” Matt knew. “Edward Norton.” Yep, fair enough. That's the idea. We'll send him one.

This is the kind of fun we have at our Xmas party. But not as much fun as the employees of some local office were having at the next table, with crackers and party hats galore. Two fat women were pissed out of their heads and danced to Earth Wind & Fire at the end of the table, while Sandra from accounts looked at them with disbelief for about 15 minutes solid, as up until that point she'd probably only ever seen them filling in dockets.