Finally. This is what its like with these one-off projects. For months, years, ideas are in your head - sounds, songs, people, combinations. You get an invitation to try something - you accept. You invite the musicians - they accept. More thinking, more ideas. And months, years, later you and a bunch of people are in a room together and they're looking expectantly at you and finally we're starting.

The other day Beth Allen and me in my living room singing gently to each other. She gets it, it works. Then today me, Paul Sherwood's  hurdy and Carolyn Francis' border pipes - the folkies, with Shaun Blezard's electronics. The challenge for me, musically illiterate and barely able to repeat the same thing twice, is to get my ideas across coherently. It beings to look like I've done that. Keys change and there it is, the sound that was in my head now in the room.  The reckless wilderness of the pipes swirling into the buzzing, droning cackle of the hurdy. And me singing my lungs out into it. Shaun cuts, shifts, dubs like a masterchef and serves up cool and steaming - instant memory salad. They get it, it works. I'm left with a dozen fresh sounds and combinations in my ears. Finally we've started. Onto the jazzers!