As we know, one of this year's big ambitions is to publish. Sadly, Wendell's hard drive, along with text, photos (see how I didn't put an apostrophe in there?) and notes about my grande folie has crashed and burned, and so the project is delayed even further than it would have been if he hadn't already been concentrating on jobs that actually have a positive and immediate effect on his mortgage repayments. 'Twas ever thus. Being the good sort that he is he had been keeping this from me for as long as possible, but a Picturehouse rehearsal scheduled for his kitchen made it difficult to keep hidden.
Mr Wendell was calm, collected, and reassuring about the prospects of the book coming out this year, and assured me that he had kept Editor Jessica's post-it notes exactly where they were and could recreate the magic that only sub editing by someone with a far greater appreciation of the impact of a sub-colon than we have could bring. You can probably tell that she has no input into this farrago of a blog at all.
And so we sat down with the band to learn some new stuff. Having greeted Mr. Gibbon at my front door with a charming rendition of the solo from Show Some Love by The Feeling, I was surprised to find Kilbey doing the same thing to us when we turned up at Wendell's. Not as surprised as he was to receive a phone call from Frisky Pat calling from the band rehearsal room, mind, but fair play to 'im for fielding the "We're all at Steve's - where are you?" call with such admirable aplomb. As it turns out, Kilbey's up for a bit of guitar playing on this one, and I'm up for a bit of the ol' bass. Unfortunately, the first run through is so capable that the rest of the evening is given over to trying it one more time, drawing tattoo templates (on Pat), smoking in the garden, looking at Pat's mobile phone photos and checking out Kilbey's kids' band's MySpace site.
Don't tell 'em - we're thinking of doing a cover. I mean, A and G - how hard could it be?