Funky Train

December 2010. Not only did we have a lot of snow but I learnt the hard way one of modern life's great lessons - *back up your data*.

Something simple - a laptop balanced precariously on a coffee table falling onto a carpet - resulted in a hard drive crash. Everything was gone. When had I last backed up? The start of March 2010. A haiku ran through my head:

With searching comes loss
and the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found

Ironically my next book was fine, backed up onto a USB stick so I could take it to work and update it at lunchtimes. But holiday and anniversary photos had gone forever. My soon to be released album - that I had been working on for years and finally made a leap forward with over the summer - was also gone. It is times like this we either:

a) give up
b) turn to Walter Scott's 1828 Tales of a Grandfather:

Whilst doubtful of what he should do, Bruce was looking upward to the roof of the cabin, and his eye was attracted by a spider endeavouring to swing himself from one beam in the roof to another. The insect made the attempt six times without success. It came into Bruce's head that he himself had fought just six battles, and the persevering spider was in the same situation with himself. "Now," thought Bruce, "I will be guided by the luck which shall attend this spider. If the insect shall make another effort to fix its thread, and is successful, I will venture a seventh time to try my fortune in Scotland; if not, I will go to the wars in Palestine and never return to my native country again." While Bruce was forming this resolution, the spider made another exertion and succeeded in fastening its thread on the beam which it had so often in vain attempted to reach. Bruce, seeing the success of the spider, resolved to try his own fortune.

And so I started again. The whole album is gone: the tracks are being recreated from scratch and released as mini-albums. And now the first one is out! It's a six-track powerhouse called Funky Train and is free for you to download now...



... so what are you waiting for?!