Looking back over this year which started with a big move and an emotional concert in London I can say that it is possible to shrink the world with an acoustic guitar and a plane ticket. I don't feel very far from wherever you are reading this, in fact I feel closer than last year. The Victorian rain is pouring down after a week of temperatures over 30 and the New Year looks like one filled with a war nobody wants and the continual work of artists and the rest of us to keep the beauty of the world intact. We all have the same news now as well as the same chainstores, so keep a close eye on the truth.

Lately I have been writing songs since ... well since the 'andy white' album really. Either that or as long as I can remember. It takes a long time to light the spark which lets a whole album catch fire. And this year has been a gradual process of trying to find the money to buy the matchbox, the time to open it up and the right moment to strike the match to make the spark. The whole process started in my head after a few months in Australia. Of slowing down after the touring of last year, of putting up shelves and sanding things. Taking a break. How many folk singers does it take to change a light bulb? I don't know, 'cause I just changed it.

The writing for the next album started after putting together 'A Million Miles'. Halfway between Australia and touring and staying with friends in Canada. After putting that solo concert to bed, so to speak, that whole series of concerts and on the road experiences from Europe, I spent a lot of afternoons on Stephen Fearing's porch in Guelph Ontario listening to minidiscs and cassettes from Melbourne. I spent even more late nights at his kitchen table with fine bottles of beer and my acoustic guitar. He joined me for a couple of nights and we co-wrote a couple of songs which I am sure will make it onto the record.

Then there was a week in London in late October. I was booked in for a ten day recording session at the end of the last UK tour. Three days in it was cancelled. I had a week in London, far from home. Neither here nor there - with good friends but caught between family in Ireland and Australia. With the Bali bombing and Blair-ing support for attacking Iraq. I was in an empty house in West London (page 76 of the A to Z) with only Radio 4 and an Italian coffee maker for company. A couple of bottles of red later and the songs started. At the end of the week I had enough to go into a London studio and demo rough versions on the acoustic guitar. The album was really on its way ...

In the last month or so I have been going into a small studio here in Melbourne, playing all the instruments and recording with my old friend Simon Polinski. Preparing an album for your further enjoyment. Shoring up the fragments and - as above - trying to add to the sum total of beauty in the world. Or truth. Or a bit of both is best.

In the meantime, I am supposed to be telling you about last year. Here are some impressions and photos and things. If you were part of them - thanks. If you are just passing through - see you sometime. Just remember - the fortune teller is always right. And don't forget - blurred is back.

Andy
31 December, 2002
Melbourne, Australia

january in switzerland, germany and london

I cannot believe the tour schedule I am reading. It seems like another lifetime when I was playing that club in Luzern in a beaten up old damp-walled brick rock venue. All by myself with a clanging PA and grafitti on the walls. The usual attractive mixture of alternative kids, folk rebels and hip-hop cool customers who populate European venues like this. We drove there and back in our small beige Polo. I remember an Italian asking me if I was in Rommel's desert army when I rolled up in it for the first time (all I wanted was a haircut, not a North African campaign).

So that was Luzern and the very next morning I was on a train at an unbelievably early hour to travel to the North Sea. Can you believe it? 1000 kilometres of Germany later I was stepping into an admittedly perfect venue of beautiful wood and into the soothing arms of an exquisite PA system. The place used to be a grainery I think. Or a store for some marvellous import to Bremen. I am not sure how the evening went but I can remember sleeping on the way to where I was staying and waking up in the middle of a forest with the new Church record playing and a lot of sheep and goats etc. in the immediate vicinity.

I made it into Norderstedt for a show in a basement. Where halfway through my mobile phone rang inside my bag which was onstage at the time. I pretended not to hear it for a while but everyone knew what was going on by the second verse. Turns out they had locked the door of the venue after it had sold out and the record company boss was outside phoning me to try to get in. Yes, rather a once in a lifetime experience I feel. Interestingly enough, the company has not booked one single show after that tour.

The next date was in the former East Germany, and there was a long and interesting train journey into my past as I spent months in the DDR just after the Berlin Wall came down but before reunification. When I wrote 'Berlin 6 a.m.' and 'Palaceful Of Noise' and a lot of 'Out There'. Everything looks like it has had a makeover. New things everywhere, not shiny just new. The place I am playing is a hilarious bar and I am staying upstairs. There is a support band from hell and I get the feeling that a lot of people would rather I played 'Whiskey In The Jar'. At least that is where their heads are at.

From here I trained it all the way down to Basel. Where Germany, France and Switzerland meet. Friends live there and also David flew in to play violin and Joe McHugh pipes. For this is a trio of shows where we are to play the songs with more traditional instrumentation. The way people really want to hear a lot of them I think. For the rock thing of two years ago is shifting. To where I don't know, I am just sure it is shifting. Maybe to more solo shows, but maybe towards this kind of experience. The third show in the series - at Sommeri - was a farewell to where I have been living the past while, and was recorded. I must dig out the CDs. I know where they are.

Sommeri was my last Swiss gig for a while. The country which first opened up to my albums in 1990 when 'himself' was released. It brought me to Europe for the first time and here I was leaving it in a crowd of friends and family, the kind of show which is like a party you have organized. You are there, but really it has developed a momentum of its own which is unstoppable. Vito, Betty and Edo arrived from Milano. Joe and Davy were superb. I must look out the CD, yes I must

Two days later and I was in a hall in Karlsruhe with Sandra organizing things and talking about Jeff and Liam and doing her amazing thing between Irish English and German. A great show in a really modern place and there is a lot of friendship there too which I hope I see again one day. Her family is remarkable, more next time. From there I went to Ansbach, where Kaspar Hauser lived, and Ingolstadt a few days later.

In between was the 12 Bar show in London which was recorded and became 'A Million Miles'. The setlist is here. There is a poem on the album sleeve which kind of sums up that time. I remember the leaving and the friends and being nervous because it was being recorded and singing songs I hadn't performed for ages and being fairly knackered overall but that is the way the best things happen sometime. Paul and Jacqueline arrived from Holland with a box containing everything I could possibly need to travel to the other side of the world. Including a gnome.

Mandy had my sister and close friends round on the Sunday afternoon, before I flew back to Switzerland at 6. Time was too short, but then it always is going to be. Unless you are a gnome and you have your hammer permanently raised, of course. Tearful farewells and soon I was hurtling into the final show of this season, at Ingolstadt in Germany. One reason I took the booking was because I knew I could stop off and see my Godmother on the way. Loni introduced me to a way of looking at life I have found invaluable ever since those first holidays in Donegal and Kerry. We met this time in an Italian restaurant near Munich station. It was good to see her and the walk up the platform was a very long one.

The other reason I took the booking? They made it 6 months previously and I had no idea I would be packing to go halfway round the world on January 24.

february to july in australia

Those of you with the wisdom and foresight to join Mandy's marvellous 'world wide white' club will know a lot - some may say too much - about the first few hours spent in Australia. We arrived on their most national of holidays, January 26, in the 40 degree heat. Wow.

A veil of mystery is drawn over the next couple of months, as the religion known as DIY takes over. Followers of this cult are to be observed in superstores wearing dark glasses and ordering up different thicknesses of sandpaper. Worried? I myself was this person for a while. I knew the names for different kinds of nails and joists. As I write, all is forgotten. I couldn't open a window without a diagram and a freephone number.

Eventually, I was rescued from the halfworld of paint-mixing by being asked to play a show in The Famous Spiegeltent - a music and cabaret venue that has travelled the world since the 1930s. These days it is based in Scotland in August and Adelaide in March. I put the guitar in the boot (that is the trunk) and drove 900 kilometres to get there. No worries.

You may just be able to see a Shapeshifter or two. Let me explain. Around about May or June I started playing shows with two rhythm sections. One in Melbourne called 'The Sandy Row All Stars' featuring an old friend from Belfast on bass - Joe Creighton - plus whichever Melbourne drummer we can pin down on the night and the wonderful Monique Brumby on vocals. The band in Sydney are called 'The Shapeshifters' and the line-up is Iain Shedden on drums and Robert Renfrew on bass. Cool dudes from Scotland.

Tall men all, though not as tall as the Canadians with whom I was to spend the end of July and most of August. Including another memorable encounter with The Edmonton Andy White.

The day before going to Canada we went to watch whales off the Great Ocean Road. I was playing a university campus miles from Melbourne. We slipped down to the water's edge and watched the huge grey shapes surface and dive, surface and dive. Blurring back into the waves and putting everything into perspective. Wonderful.

july and august in canada

This time I was travelling the other way around the world. From Australia to Toronto via Honolulu. Riding the wave of the never-ending Friday. I worked out it lasted about 42 hours in total. How it works is this. You have to get on a plane in Melbourne very early on Friday morning. After a long flight you arrive in Honolulu the night before - Thursday. Back on a plane and you fly for ages across all of North America, get out in Toronto and it is Friday afternoon. A car trip, a rehearsal with the Tall Friends (my Canadian band), checking in at the folk festival, staying up for beers and ... you guessed it ... it is still Friday evening.

Saturday finally dawned and I was back in the bosom of my Canadian buddies. If you have read these diaries before you have met these chums. Andrew McPherson - tallest of the Tall Friends and their multi-instrumentalist supremo. Colleen and Brian Hodgson - brother and sister rhythm section and two of my oldest friends in the Canada, the world, the universe, all history of recorded time. The tall and fearless Stephen Fearing, folk superstar born in Dublin and moved to Canada when still an impressionable young thing.I am sure I have some pics here ...

... as I recall we stopped by a garage sale in Montréal just near to the famous Fairmont bagel shop. The plastic coat is not the model's own.

hillside

Where was I? Finally the morning dawned on the day after the 42 hour Friday. We were on the main stage at Hillside Festival in the middle of the afternoon. I was staying at Lisa's place. Lucinda Williams playing, the cats on a leash. Back with my North American family. The festival is a great event - sunshine and massage places, food and loads of great music. The stage was big for us and it was strange to have our first concert the largest, but everything went fine and the rest of the day I drifted round the site. Digging the music and missing Melbourne. That Sunday I had a Beatles workshop to host. Sounds dodgy but it turned out to be a classic afternoon. There was a rhythm section who knew everything, but not too slick. We introduced everybody with the start of Sgt. Peppers ... guests sang 'Oh Darling', 'Let It Be', 'A Little Help From My Friends', 'Help'. I got to do my Liverpool accent and version of Peter Sellers' 'Hard Day's Night'. Looked out to the audience to see people literally laughing and crying. Hugging each other. Someone told me that after so much new music in these festivals they used to have folk song sessions where everyone would know every word. Now these songs are the ones where everyone knows all the words. That evening Alejandro Escovedo played the most awesome set you could imagine. With big loud guitars and a cello player and full dramatics. They were pushed offstage early by Michelle Shocked - I guess because Alejandro was too good to follow. The night ended late. Very late. I can remember hearing one of a punk folk duo called Bitch and Bastard (I think it was Bitch) conversing with one of Alejandro's band. The conversation went something like: "I ainÕt got no bowels" "That's coz you're playing repressed folk music" "I got no feelings left" "Let's go swim and forget about it".

toronto

There follows a couple of days of drinking coffee and/or beers on Stephen's porch, depending on the time of day. Writing and playing. The Tall Friends reconvened for a show at the Rivoli in Toronto. A rock club run by girls and a groovy one too. As with all of our Toronto shows, there was a small audience filled with celebs. I walked out with a CD of the shows but you know what - it won't play. I will send it to someone I know will be able to fix it. Did I tell you how hot is was in Toronto? It was so hot in Toronto ... sweltering. The band works because they play so well and we have all been friends for so long and would be friends if we didn't play together. Toronto is a place I would love us to do well but you know it is difficut here. The only thing is for us to stay up really late and have a huge breakfast in the morning at a sun-baked café round the corner from Colleen's place. I read a chapter of 'Hammer Of The Gods' yesterday evening, trying to find the outrageous chapters. A bit like being 10 and trying to find the rude bits in the Bible. They are there - and the pages are probably thumbed well enough for you to find them quickly - but the contemplation of them is a lot wilder.

wakefield

Into the black HRV and we're on the road again to get up to Wakefield, nestling near to Ottawa. Many donuts and bagels and Tim Horton's coffees later we stagger out into the afternoon sunshine. For it is a wonderful day and the river looks like we will be swimming later. The show that evening is great, though not as amazing as the legendary one last November which was recorded for posterity. I thought of making this recording the fanclub CD this year ... who knows. I cannot work out if it is a "you should have been there" recording. 'A Million Miles' works if you weren't there, which is why I took so long to put out a live album waiting for the right recording. Anyhow, I digress. We are left the venue and with all fans running in the rooms upstairs we head out to the river and sit on the railway lines which run along the road by the river talking about stuff. Watching the moon and relaxing. Some Tall Friends swimming.

montréal-blue skies

We stopped off in Montréal for a show at the infamous Club Zone, over which a veil shall be drawn, and stayed at the incredible mansion of Pierre/Peter, Stephen's wife's cousin. Next morning P/P took Colleen on the back of his bike for a hazardous drive through the hills of old Montréal and led us to a Portuguese café where the day started like it was to continue. Full on. That evening we were the mainstage act at Blue Skies Festival. A beautiful gathering of people halfway between Montréal and Toronto in a place on the map defined by Mapquest as officially being 'the middle of nowhere'. We stock up on bagels before leaving the city and arrive behind mainstage around 4 p.m.

The Blue Skies vibes are special. Anne D is there. Michael Wrycraf - photographer, designer, comedian, bird-lover - is there. Little flies which bite my legs are there too, in force. These bites will stay with me long into the year, finally disappearing around December. But tonight the show was special, the way you hope it will be (not always) but sometimes. Reaching that place where the audience and band and songs all come together. Underneath the wide Canadian sky. Exciting.

We sat up far too late drinking that alcohol referred to the next day only as 'Never Again'.

vancouver–victoria

There was a lot going on that afternoon in Vancouver. Peter my cousin was filming a video for one of my songs. The one about him in fact. There was a CTV interview with Peter Grainger at the Railway Club and on top of all that, Chris and Stephen had flown in with Lisa from Guelph, and Stephen was going to join me on stage for the show. One fine Japanese meal later, everything seemed well under control. The show is good with the two acoustics. The video may well rock. The interview worked fine. Where was I staying? Peter's front room, I just remembered.

Next day was a huge one. That morning I tried out a very beautiful very old amplifier in a music store. That afternoon I was off to Victoria with Peter and David. How were we getting there? By plane of course. Have a look at some of the photos on this special page here. Thanks Peter!

Rootsfest in Victoria was another great festival and the Sunday afternoon concert with Stephen was my musical highlight of the tour along with the Blue Skies Tall Friends performance. Things just built up from the workshops onwards. Met Mae Moore, a fantastic singer and songwriter and a huge ALT fan. Maybe in fact the most serious ALT fan in Canada. She sang an amzing song called 'Bohemia'. There was a workshop with about 10 of us across a stage and I got to meet Martyn Joseph at long last. What a pleasure this festival was ... Victoria itself has a lot to see. One evening I walked around the harbour with Lisa taking it all in. Eating crisps and drinking bottles by the harbour, watching the tourists. Sunday after the show I sold out of CDs totally and the line for them went on and on. All the carrying around was worth it. I felt like I was on my way home. I caught a set by Dave Alvin and lay on the ground in front of the stage in the sun with '4th of July' sweeping over me.

The last night in Canada was spent in a hotel room with friends, laughing. Just laughing. I am still trying to remember the jokes. When I do I promise I will get them to you. Or publish them and achieve Total World Peace. Which is what they would do, they are that powerful I promise you.

Soon I was in downtown Vancouver buying Australian dollars. Taking the bus into town and finding my Uncle and Aunt, going to their place and seeing them before heading to the airport. None of Canada has ever seemed very far away since my mother's sister lives here. In fact, let me tell you, it is getting closer all the time. My Aunt told me stories about Ireland before the war, my grandmother's family in County Cavan. About Burke of Burke and Wills - she has the family tree at her place and gave me a copy. About Donaghadee and the Ormeau Road. The piano sitting in the front room, just like ours in Belfast ...

At Vancouver airport I am looking forward to the shortest Monday in living memory. My head hits the headrest and I wake up in Australia, coming home for the first time to this huge green and brown island with the shadow of the plane tracing the contours. Ours to look after. With a guitar case full of action and songs and new words.

september–october in the u.k. and ireland (and two days in sicily)

A whirlwind month in Australia, when I took my son on tour up to New South Wales and played an aquarium in Melbourne in front of the big fish. The big Irish fish.

Then I was back on a plane and headed for the U.K. with the 'A Million miles' CD in my hand. ALT CD 7 looks good on the spine. What a personal production - Marcel, Mandy, Stu and everyone did a great job. And arriving in London I got to see all the Floating World 'andy white' CD new edition copies for the first time. I can feel momentum building up. The tour is the first organized with Harry my agent. Jonathan from Floating World will be at the London show. There are two London shows. Anna from Melbourne will be there too. I will be seeing my family in Belfast and Dublin. There are 10 days recording booked at the end of the period. What do you think? Enough going on? Oh yeah, there is a radio session tonight at BBC Radio 6 where Tom Robinson has a new nightly show. Walked in with no sleep for two days and did a cracker version of 'Speechless' which went straight into his Top 10 of the year. Tonight I slept and slept.

18/9
Glasgow is first, and one easyjet flight later I arrive at the hotel to find boxes of CDs and T shirts everywhere. I have rented a car called a Picasso, which is a cubist masterpiece of a car. It is also very soon totally full up. I am getting in the Picasso and heading for David's place over by the Byers Road. Picking up him and Sealn - his new & lovely South Korean girlfriend - and heading to the Tron. The theatre hasn't put us in the programme for the show but I know the tour has its own momentum brought from halfway round the world and it is full up with mailing list types and Glasgow groovers. Exit the bar very late on and stagger towards the hotel. Forget everything I said about hotels in the new world - in the old I am delighted to be taken into the arms of a multinational fully globalized corporation.

19/9
I first visited the Bein Inn near Perth, with the Englishman Irishman and Scotsman tour. Took to it and the chap who runs it immediately and tonight is another great experience. These venues are all about personality - the personality of the person or people who have chosen to run them. And that is where they win. David plays like a dream and there are photos somewhere which definitely prove we were there. Dig the new T shirts baby! Bright blue and baby black with red trim .. what do you think?

20/9
To Otley in Yorkshire and the world famous Otley Folk Festival. Back to the gents who recorded 'A Million Miles' in the first place. Rod and Richard, who drove down to London and did a great job for us. The Folk Festival is buzzing and we are playing two sets. One is a big hall and then there's a haul with everyone carrying a piece of equipment down the street to the legendary Black Horse (or is it Black Sheep?) venue. Past where John Wesley spent a lot of time a couple of hundred years ago. Mandy has arrived from London and all of us stay up late talking. Tomorrow is London once again with all that holds.

21/9
Fill up at the Thrust garage on the corner and wave goodbye to Richard, Janet and the world of Otley Folk Festival,the kind of place we definitely will be back. The road to London is bright and clear, we are in Southampton Row by 4 or 5. Today I am worshipping once more at the altar of the decent hotel and Floating World have organized a cracker really close to the venue. Marvellous. The show is a whirlwind and flows like a great flowing thing. It is a return to friends and there are a lot of people there. Everything works and I end up at the hotel with Jim, a friend from childhood. He lived on the other side of the street and we used to kick a ball most days and listen to Van Morrison and Rory Gallagher albums the rest of the time. This turned into punk music and Dr Feelgood and ... good times!

22/9
Brighton on a Sunday sounds easy. That is if you leave on time. Of course the Picasso rolls out very late and then grinds to a halt in Croydon. The pro-hunting countryside march is the problem. Bryan Ferry's son and his friends marching on central London for the right to ride horses and kill small furry animals. You get to see the landed gentry grovel, which is always a pretty sight. Pathetic barbour-wearing snobs whingeing about freedom. I ask you! We stop in Burgess Hill at Mandy's mum on the way and then straight to The Greys and The Kingdom Of Mike. Paul and Ashlea are there, the set is good but too short because of a support act. I like support acts but if the music has to stop at 11 there is not enough time to tell the story. Means the show feels a bit unfinished. Anyhow, The Greys is one of the truly great places to play in England. Character guaranteed. One man's vision and a great pint of ... Landlord is it?

23/9
Today we are at large in Brighton. Tonight we play in Portsmouth at the Folk Club there. The set is excellent, the best we have played so far - though not the wildest. Sealn does the merch and all is very well with this touring world. I feel it is the right time for us to be playing these songs in the UK, sliding gradually into a war that no one wants. Playing folk clubs where peace can still be aired.

24/9
Leaving Brighton would have been hilarious if we were more rock and less roll. David in an uncharacteristic clumsy move breaks a toaster and tries to mend it. This is an impossible task, they are constructed to be unfixable. Our hosts are out at this stage - in fact they have gone to London to see a show. I pack the car. We leave the house. David's bag with everything he needs in it is locked inside the house. There is no way of getting it out. The neighbour is in, we met him yesterday. The neighbour has two wire coathangers. There is a delivery of building goods. We break in, though it takes a long time. Warning - if you have nice looking antique doors, watch out for a violinist with a coathanger. It is definitely easier to break in to a house than mend a toaster. We are in Birmingham by ... just before going on stage. And it doesn't stop there. After the show we are off to Janice Long's programme on Radio 2 ...

25/9
... where we do a soulful interview with the national treasure and all round wonderful person Janice before getting in the Picasso again and heading for Heathrow. Because, dear reader, we have been booked to play at WOMAD Palermo in Sicily, beautiful island basking in the southern Mediterranean sun. And our flight leaves at 6.15 a.m. Check-in is at 5.30 a.m. and we make it just in time. Goodbye for now to Sealn and we are in the air, changing in Milan, landing in the shadow of Etna which has been rather lively lately. The morning sun and the shadow of the plane on the sea below. By 1 p.m. we are eating glorious pizza and drinking white wine with our WOMAD friends. The afternoon is dedicated to sleep and I wake up just in time to eat more glorious food and ... prepare for performance tomorrow. 'Cause it needs a plan.

26/9
Thomas and I are taking a taxi to the airport to hire a car. We are in an ancient Mercedes and we know that the taxi fare is way up on what it should be. But transport is in short supply here on the island and you've got to take what you can. I have a DV camera on me to record what goes on today. There is a lot going on at the airport. The guy from Hertz asks me if I could film a girl at the Avis counter he fancies. I take a bus to pick up the car and the whole side of the bus falls off. The driver drives on regardless screaming "Welcome To Sicily!" Thomas has forgotten his credit card, I drive back to get it. His hotel room is wide open, nothing has been stolen. We race to the venue in the Punto. We have devised a plan for the show this evening. An African drummer, an Mbira player from Zimbabwe, ourselves, a Colombian solo singer. It went so well that the show may be taken to the UK next year, see what happens. Later that night we are in a square eating as much as possible since the flight the next morning is as early as ever.

27/9
The flight may be early but we are in Heathrow at 6 p.m. and the soundcheck is not going to happen. My bags are in Milan though my guitar has turned up OK. The second London show is tonight and a different character to the first one. It rocks and rolls. Anna is here from Melbourne. Vito and his family from Milan (funny how things work out isn't it?). The same beautiful hotel and again Floating World has done what it promises to do. A great night. The 12 Bar is once more the heroic place to be.

28/9
The Shed we have been to before. Simon at the crease on strike and James Brown on sound. Best venue in the UK outside London I am tempted to say. The evening in The Shed is marvellous. Amusing and fantastic. I play 'See-Through Smoker' for the first time in ages. I exit with a minidisc of this show. It is the end of the tour for Mandy, David and Sealn. Richard and Janet are here from Otley and we all eat Indian late at night in the hotel which is to be found ... no idea where. A village somewhere near Brawby. Which is somewhere near Castle Howard, the stately home nearby looming out of the autumn mists. Beautiful and untouchable. Elegant and patrician. But not as much fun as ...

29/9
Liverpool, my favourite English city. The afternoon I show up at Owen's house in Southport and somehow make it into the city on time. The incredible Acoustic Engine team have set up the gig and I play on my own. I am remembering Liverpool and taking the boat over from Belfast when I was still at school. The heavy atmosphere of that boat still makes me shiver. Having a Zippo lighter stolen by a soldier. Jostling and people throwing up everywhere. Jesus! The bloke at Radio Merseyside has cancelled the interview, it is that kind of day. I walk past The Cavern and again ... 'A Day In The Life' is blaring out of the doorway. Maybe it is on repeat. The Cavern ...

30/9–6/10
Flying to Belfast ... family times and days off ... there is a Radio Ulster interview with John Bennett I really enjoy. He knows my father. He remembers my grandfather! There is another interview with Stuart Baillie which works in a totally different way. Myself, Terri Hooley and Stuart choosing songs from favourite albums and a good amount of Belfast slagging going back and forth. I play 'Bobby Moore' and 'I Want It Straight'on the guitar and and by request a version of 'Irish Heartbeat' and ... a carol for the Christmas show. 'Good King Wenceslas' if you really want to know. Terri ran Good Vibrations and signed The Undertones. When I was at school I would queue up the stairs as punk luminaries signed albums in the shop. Around 77 and 78 all the groups hung out there or paid a visit when touring. Folk singers played Belfast because they didn't care or needed a show, the punks wanted to get their photos taken by barricades. There was Terri's shop or Rocky Mungo's. I was buying The Clash album from one and Roy Harper and John Lennon records from the other. Great days. Good Vibrations just went bankrupt again, so good luck to Terri and Stuart who keep the scene rocking at home.

The Errigle show is another trip down the tunnel of time. I spent many evenings of my youth playing bass in bands here. Nights when the place would be full of people smoking and drinking. Hippies and groovers getting down. 10 people in the band on stage. I remember playing for Ciaran MacGowan and he had a horn section in the band. Would record shows on a mobile outside, everyone stoned inside. Me in the corner playing bass trying to look over-age. Now I am in the centre still feeling underage and the place is a palace and everything is kind of grown up. I wonder what happened to all those people and all that talk and smoke, deep in the Belfast underworld of the 70s and 80s.

The Dublin show is at a similar place called the Cobblestone, though it looks more like the Errigle in 1977, or a folk version of it. A great concert with all the emotion and excitement of a Dublin gig. The city where I first thought I belonged musically in Ireland, I have played so many different amazing types of shows there. Tonight there are people and faces I want to spend time with and time is one thing I don't have. I know I don't live here right now, I am attached by an invisible thread to Melbourne on the other side of the world, and I have 18 days left before returning.

We head out into the night and a Dublin club on the Quays which is full of Africans downing soft drinks and Irish blokes polishing off huge-looking pints of lager. Black guys and Irish girls dancing. Crazy talk and deafening music. Another wild Dublin scene on the edge of the river, different to the Dublin I left behind.

To London in the morning. To record and write...

12–20/10
A break from writing to play in Belper in the Dales of Derbyshire. I drive up in a Focus through the mist and the rain. To find a beautiful scene there and great people. Another family experience. When we get home from the show we hear news of the Bali bombing and the mood of the year shifts. It is serious, as serious as this time last year. Back home in Australia everyone is affected. It has that effect of Diana's death or 9/11 or that enormous society-shifting power which the troubles in Belfast never really had. I am not going to write about it now, but the Bali bomb certainly informed a lot of what I was to write in the next while.

Play Manchester the following night and then back to London. To write, to listen to the radio, drink coffee and wine. I had a book of manuscript paper and a yellow legal pad, plus all my notes. I wonder where I left all my words on tour - it was Otley. And Richard and Janet brought them back to Brawby. Friends are the best. Those words were important for me.

The Belper show was great and the one in Southampton too. I was playing on the same night as a rocking Southampton outfit and the place was jumping.

On Friday 18th I took a bus to a studio in Chelsea and recorded all the songs I had been working on in the empty house on page 76 of the A–Z. 14 songs. On 21st and 22nd I finished off the three songs with Stuart Crichton in another studio. The album has started and I am on my way home.

november and december in australia

To spend time with my family. To start recording all those songs written on the other side of the world. To feel summer coming in again, spend hours looking at the light and the way it hits the hills. To get on a stage and tell the truth with as much beauty thrown in as I can get together at the time. Highlights? The Spiegeltent in November, the Gladstone and The Sandringham in Sydney. The year is ending and I am looking to the next one and surprises it will bring. Shapeshifting for sure. Blurred and beautiful. Serious.

See you out there.