I'm experiencing the usual scenario of waking up absurdly early after drinking. Last night was the Guided Missile night at the Buffalo Bar. All bands were on top form. HOST particularly splendid. They rock obliquely and with supreme confidence. The Zoltan Kodaly School For Girls don't rock and lack confidence but still were great, entertaining as they did with recorder quartet versions of Chicory Tip and Led Zeppelin numbers.

Halfway through Sally's set, someone standing very close to the stage blew an enormous wad of thick cigar smoke in my face. If he (I assume it was a he, alternatively it could have been a she, or concievably an “it”) thought it was going to put me off laying down my lordly basslines, well, they were wrong. I coughed loudly and annoyingly in that way people do when they're downwind of a smoker at a bus-stop. The smoke ceased, but that may have been because the person had left the area in order to find a blunt instrument with which to smite me. I remain un-smitten, so I can only assume the venue's over-zealous security nabbed him. (The Buffalo Bar is one of those places in London where standing on any stairs for longer than 5 seconds can get you a lengthy spell in chokey. The bouncers start moving towards you even if you start slowing down whilst ascending or descending.)

Post gig I waved coquettishly across the room at my ex-wife and her boyfriend The Pillsbury Doughboy, whilst my drunken girlfriend attempted to make me dance un-coquettishly to The Rolling Stones. The DJ had a penchant for playing 90 second snatches of tunes, which is fine if it's bIG*fLAME playing, less appropriate for groove-sustaining dancefloor hits. “New Life” by Depeche Mode proved to be worryingly popular amongst the youngsters. Emily, star of Free French album sleeve, gyrated her bottom in a Home Counties-style response to Beyonce's now famous arse-manoeuvre.

Memo to self: How is it that I, a musically literate fat boy with a wide appreciation of many combinations of notes, beats and words, can not name an album by The Rolling Stones? A rhetorical question. But certainly a gap in my cultural knowledge similar to never having seen any Star Wars film (also true.)

Got up at 7 feeling appalling, left the flat to go and buy the Observer, for which I'd written a thing. They omitted the word “provocatively” from my submitted piece. It was funnier with the word “provocatively” in. Never mind. Felt enormously pleased with myself.

I wonder if I'll ever get bored with seeing something i've written in print? Another rhetorical one.

Yesterday was spent in peaceful bliss, writing and demoing songs for the next Free French record, and dreaming of hitBACK winning the lottery and sending me to a nice studio. Nothing extravagant, just a place not rancid with damp where I can assemble a string octet and some trombonists (not possible in my flat unless they all stand in single file down a corridor.) The chorus of one new song features the memorable line (memorable in the sense that I've not forgotten it the next day) “You're visiting more than ever / I've got a feeling that we're living together”. I like the idea of someone realising they're co-habiting with someone only when it's too late and their partner already has more space in their wardrobe than they do.

I appreciate that this is long and lacking in interest, but I need to keep going until I'm tired enough to go back to bed.

Later today my friend Alison is taking her child to some big coloured tents on Clapham Common where apparently you get given a big coloured cape to wear, presumably before eating some big coloured food and hearing some big coloured music played by big coloured men. I've been invited along. I might go. I don't think anything could quite top last weeks foray into horticultural festivals, though.

“Everyone's coloured, otherwise you wouldn't be able to see them.” – Captain Beefheart.

Good morning.