On Friday evening, I was in Oxford with the Dive Dive boys, resting after a hard day’s rehearsing for the tour, when a phone call came through to say that there was a free slot on the bill for Equitruck, a mini-festival in Oxford that falls exactly between last year’s Truck Festival and the next. The slot had originally been for a Dive Dive acoustic set, but Jamie wasn’t able or ready to do it, so in the end we carted our gear down there, and broke our live cherry with a half-hour set to a full but slightly bemused room.

It was a pretty weird experience, being back onstage with a band, and we were not perhaps as ready as we could have been, but it was on balance a good set. It’s got me a lot more excited about the tour, which kicks off in Leeds on Wednesday. Really looking forward to being back on the road, and in a van with a band, as opposed to on my own on the train. It’s going to be great – I’m making some compilation CDs for the van right now.

The first week of having an album in the shops has been lovely… It’s great that people can finally catch up with me in terms of my body of work and how the songs should sound. Apparently I’m at number 4 in the 6 Music chart, which is great, for whatever it means. I’m just happy that people can and are buying it. I hope everyone’s learning the words to the singalong bits for the tour… See you all on the road.