The weekend starts here!

Right, all tasks for the week finished (or not as the case may be). I've got a near full tub of sour cream and onion pringles, a glass of scrumpy jack cider, ZZ Top playing (Tush has just started ;-) and a few hours of my own to enjoy.

Tonight we had our first proper worship band rehearsal in months and months, and you know what? It was OK, in a kind of loosely timed, out of tune and unbalanced way. Thanks everyone that prayed for me/us. People got on with no hassle, the issues that came to a head this week have backed off and we could play through and even worship a bit.

Helen, who's really a singer and flautist was kind enough to play keyboards when our keyboard player did a 'no-show' (he also helps run the youth group on a Friday - not a gig he can miss easily). At the end she was just running through some chords that she was familiar with, rather than struggling to play songs she didn't know too well. Now I've been getting slightly worried about the Les Paul. It looks fabulous, but although it sounds great in the living room, it's not actually been that great live. Although it's been OK, the Strat actually sounds significantly better for chord work; string separation is better, and with a higher action you can really dig in when strumming. Anyway, Helen was playing away, and I dug out a patch on the effects processor that I'd created for the washburn - a silly high gain, compressed and enormously overdriven patch. On the LP I hooked the neck PU and sudddenly it was singing in that way that I'd always wanted. It was smooth, full of character and expression, yet sustained evenly for ages, even when the strings were tickled.

I found myself playing new stuff, sliding in and out of emotions, pushing things to a peak, backing off, then winding up for another peak. It's amazing the length of a run that you can squeeze into such a small number of frets. Usually I'm restricted to the top 4 strings - with the strat playing like this, the bottom 2 lose precision and clarity, but here I could run all the way across the fingerboard and back again, slide up on the G and B strings, bend gently (shorter scale length - strings are under less tension than usual) so as not to overshoot, then back again. And all the time it's just singing away under my fingers. Makes me get a lump in the throat just at the memory. Even Helen, who's fairly cool about guitars, was quite happy to be playing for me. It all came to bits at the end; I stopped to talk to someone as they were starting to pack away, then couldn't recover the thread.

Ah well, there's more water in that well to be drawn, now I know it's there :-)

Now, how shall I finish winding down? Surf, Mech-commander II or a DVD?

Decisions, decisions.