The weekend was great.  Prog Neil and I drove down on Friday, listening to 7 hours of prog to get us suitably in the mood.  35 tracks in total I think.  Heh.

Met with Bruce and Sharla, enjoyed some fine beer and went to the venue to enjoy some Steve Hackett.  Wow, he was something.  As an opener for the festival he was hard to beat.  Many albums were bought. 

There were loads of great bands on the bill, and the stand outs were Godsticks, Pallas, Karnataka and Pendragon.  All the rest were good but these guys rocked the house.

But it was good to get back to the familiar comforts of home.

And the familiar disappointments…

The Spires Of Midnight has been put on hold for the time being.  Neither Ruth or myself are totally convinced that it’s a good enough concept for the Dundee Writing Comp.  That’s fair enough but it does leave me in a bind.  But where there’s imagination there’s hope…

There is something, just in concept stages, which is where the vampire story is, that i’ve been pottering about with.  It might have the spark I’m looking for that Spires doesn’t quite have.  And I’ve got 3 weeks still before the story is due.  It should be plenty of time.

And then there’s the Whiteinch thing.  I don’t even want to go there.  Not yet anyway.  I’m still too disappointed about that one.

(Not that I’m disappointed about not getting accepted, as far as I know I’m in the book although official confirmation hasn’t come through yet, but this is something else…)

- Alistair