The birthday has almost arrived, meaning I've survived another year. I say survived quite literally, as I got hit by a car a couple of Thursdays ago... but luckily I'm still here; I was a bit bruised, small cut to the wrist, nothing major. It did, however, shake me up—it took my legs out from under me, I rolled over the bonnet but managed to land on my feet.

I laughed about it for a bit, but when I went back the next day to look where I'd landed I saw that there was a small wall behind the spot; [obviously false] premonitions of my not landing on my feet flashed through my head—and got me thinking about what I'd actually done with myself this year.

It's been a real life-changing year for me—I've done more interesting projects this year [the gig with Orphy and Steve, the session with Quantic, Walt Shaw's Polarities and Timepoints]. I've sustained a band for more than two years now with only one personnel change—and that's amazing for me; I normally get bored of one thing and flit to the next... and in Nature's Glory, Fancy's Child I've found a beautiful set of people to work with and produced something of which almost everyone says I should be proud.

At the moment, I'm trying to organise a tour; Quantic's asked me to do another session with him, and although I'm not playing quite as much as I'd like—work gets in the way!—I think I've done well when I have played, and that's rare for me to say. Things feel... more grounded, or stable; and it's an interesting state for me to be in. With rushing around so much, trying to do some many things at the same time, I hadn't noticed that I was quite happy and have been very lucky with my musical friendships and work; it took someone without his headlights on to make me see that. Weird, eh?