A rotund, jovial Polish builder called Mirek came round to give me a quote for putting in a new kitchen. Mirek's rushed off his feet these days, as Londoners start to realise that gap-toothed builders from Eastern Europe generally won't turn up at 11 and clock off at 2, leaving rubble in your hallway, a hole in your ceiling and a set of spanners in your bread bin. Every question I put to him was met with an expansive, open-armed gesture, a confident smile and the phrase “Not A Problem! Not A Problem!” Mirek is either a very capable man, or a supremely able confidence trickster, and by the end of the conversation I felt like assigning him to solve various psychological problems that I've been battling with since my teens, never mind the bloody kitchen. We'll meet up next week to “Make A Drawing!” – which I'm imagining will be a plan of my new kitchen, rather than the two of us comparing still life sketches of arrangements of various root vegetables.

Up to the LSE, where The Butterfly Stitch and Scarlet's Well were playing a secret gig. The main reason for it being a secret was that the promoter, by all accounts a rather unstable character, had failed to inform anyone that the show was taking place. Two other bands on the bill, sensing disaster, pulled out at the last minute, and the promoter stamped his indelible mark of incompetence on the evening by failing to turn up at all. Kate and Martin, both due to perform imminently, were rather downcast at 8.45pm. Martin had friends coming, and he didn't want them thinking that he was in the kind of band that performed to a smattering of people in a cavernous student bar. I looked around and counted about 20 people, and counted Kate and Martin reasonably lucky. Maybe I'm just desensitized to abysmally attended gigs. Let's see:

2nd February 1990. The Keatons + Spit Like Paint, The Old Queens Head, Brixton. A clinically depressed promoter books a series of gigs in this somewhat frightening pub. We play a set to the members of Spit Like Paint. Then Spit Like Paint play to us, and one additional paying customer. For the last song Spit Like Paint all sit down and attempt to play the theme tune from Roobarb to cheer us all up. It doesn't work. The promoter later attempts to hire famed Dalston gun-toting nightspot The Four Aces club to put on gigs. We make a plan to turn down this opportunity.

27th August 1990. The Keatons + Pregnant Neck, some hotel in Stornoway. We drive for HOURS from London to the Isle Of Lewis for the first night of our Scottish tour, and end up hanging around outside the venue, begging people to come in for free. 4 or 5 bravely take on the challenge. We go to bed, depressed, at 2am, and have to get up at 5 to get the ferry back to Ullapool.

7th September 1990. The Keatons + Dawson, The Spotted Cow, York. Steve books the gig, by ringing the local promoter and telling him about The Keatons. “We did a gig at the Spotted Cow earlier in the year, with Thrilled Skinny?” Through some bizarre thought processes the promoter decides to bill the gig as “A Night With Phil Skinny” and no-one comes. We eventually decide to pack all our gear away, at which point a bedraggled hippy arrives having hitched all the way from Scarborough. But we don't bother unpacking for him.

2nd April 1992. The Keatons + Foreheads In A Fishtank, Nancy, France. We arrive at the gig, a fantastic venue with a great-sounding PA, we soundcheck, then go and have a nap upstairs (the journey we had getting there is another story.) We come back down as the doors open, to find a distressed promoter explaining that there is a punk-rock-festival on the other side of town, and no-one is going to come to our gig. We put this down to typically French pessimism, but by 9.30 there's still no-one there. We pack away, then remember that Dave, our guitarist, is still asleep upstairs. We concoct a story that we played the best gig ever but we just couldn't manage to wake him up. He believes us, for about 2 weeks, until I let the truth slip in a pub in Dover on the way home.

There's so many more, but I'm getting depressed, so I'll stop.

Anyway, Scarlet's Well and The Butterfly Stitch eventually play to a goodly sized crowd, coming across very well despite pretty bad sound. You see? Not A Problem!