Last I went to see Karine Polwart. I'd not heard of her until Thursday, when I received word that the Equation concert was cancelled because Kath has a bad throat and lost her voice. Equation are one of my favourite bands, so I was pretty disappointed, but Jon suggested the Karine gig instead, and boy am I glad we went. She's amazing; a beautiful voice, cleverly worked songs and great guitar work. I can completely understand why she won three gongs at the BBC Folk Awards. A thoroughly good evening.

And this leads onto a little hobby-horse theory of mine, which is that the double bass is the coolest instrument in the world. Over the last year I think I've seen four bands with a double-bass and each time the player is the coolest person. By far. Now the law of statistics dictates that somewhere there is a double bass player who is a complete dweeb, but so far my theory is holding up and I stick to it.