I came back to England after the Carl Barat mix a bit of an emotional wreck, and the fun didn’t stop there. Last-minute string overdubs, trans-atlantic phone calls in the middle of the night, frantic tweaking and interpersonal soul-searching were just some of the highlights. The last of the mixes popped into my inbox an hour before I left for mastering (which had to be done 3 times). Now it’s off into the world, fending for itself like a cocky teenager that will never call home.

I returned to Marianne Faithfull’s welcoming bosom (figuratively speaking) for a show in Dublin, before throwing myself back into Brett Anderson’s record. We ended up recording most of the lead vocals over just a few sessions, which was in keeping with the spontaneous spirit of the whole project. But there were no compromises, and it sounds amazing.

There were a few guitar sessions interspersed, various things I said I’d do but never got around to. But really over the last month I’ve hardly played. So when a couple of days ago I found myself in a massive studio doing the guitars on the new Jack Black film, I realised with a sense of forboding that I wasn’t exactly match-fit. I think I got away with it, but felt like a bit of a flabby jogger. The highlight was playing a version of Sweet Child O Mine, which was the first song I ever played live, at the age of 14, surrounded by mysterious girls who were older than me and might as well have been from a different planet.

I went to Ireland to curate the opening concert at the Festival Of World Culture. This involved overseeing collaborations between Iarla O’Lionaird, the Norwegian group Adjagas, and the Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq. The artists only met the day before the show, but there were warm feelings everywhere and somehow we managed to put together an hour and a half of extraordinary music with a very generous spirit, with seemingly no effort whatsoever. What had seemed obscure and risky turned out to be an unalloyed joy.

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