I’m in a cafe in Den Haag; this is my first time here, tonight we play at Crossing Border festival. A Dutch breakfast and cornucopia of European languages around me accompany my blogging. How terribly metropolitan of me. I often read John Betjeman poetry when I’m away.

Some updates for you all! Hurrah! First of all, the Second Three Years is nearly upon us. People from the UK can, as ever, happily order a copy from Xtra Mile Recordings. I know, I know, many of you are not from my little patch of land, and wish to know how you can get a copy in Australia, USA, Canada or Europe (or further afield). Well. Unfortunately legal schmegal shennanigans means Xtra Mile can’t just ship out to everyone. The good news is that we’re sorting a scheme to get it out to everyone as fast as we can, and I’ll post detail when I have them. In the meantime, you can check this link to see about picking up a digital copy in most parts of the world. Thanks for your patience.

The tour is going well. Actually, scratch that, the tour is going great. Everywhere has been sold out so far, after a long US tour and a short rest we’re at the top of our game, and the crowds have been fantastic. Shows in Cologne and Glasgow are now sold out too, and other shows, in Bournemouth and most of Europe, are selling fast, so get your tickets now. In Germany, we’re especially looking forward to the Festival Van Cleef shows coming up next month, in Bielefeld, Trier and Dresden; check out the details here.

Also on the subject of (sold out) shows, and indeed Twitter (it’s the 21st century, egad!)… I usually try and retweet people who have tickets they want to sell for sold out shows, though I pass on people looking for them, in an effort not to clog up people’s feeds with my wittering. Well, the scale of people trying to exchange tickets has now got a little out of hand (these are big shows, after all), so I think I’m going to have to calm down on that front a little. If you have a ticket you want to sell for one of my shows, by all means tweet about it, but I may not be able to spread the word for everyone; the forum on my site is a good place for making exchanges.

And obviously, we’re talking about people making an honest sale or swap here; no fucking touts.

Finally, a scattershot of various links. Here’s some video of me at the recent AIM awards, basking in the glow of victory and whisky. I was fortunate enough to do a session for the lovely folks at Daytrotter recently in Austin TX, which you can check out here. And finally, here’s a video of me mangling the German language. Enjoy.