Well, I must say it came as a bit of a shock to get a sudden phonecall, out of the blue from Howie - the guitarist in my former band Nobody’s Heroes last night. But I took it all in my stride, like you do in these circumstances. Though I had difficulty hearing exactly what he was saying, due to a car alarm sounding continuously in the background, I made out enough to gather that a big record company in America were so impressed with our demo, that they wanted to fly us out to the US immediately to cut an album!

In all the excitement, the preparations for the trip; packing, organising visas, getting through customs at either end…​ etc. etc. must have passed me by in a blur, because the next thing I knew I was standing in the recording studio, raring to go and just waiting for the cry of "Rolling!" from the technicians behind the sound-proof glass. I remember feeling a slight niggle of doubt as I looked round at the rest of the guys and thought to myself "Maybe we should have done a couple of rehearsals first. After all we havenae seen each other for thirteen years!"

…​And then my fucking alarm clock went off!

O cruel Morpheus! - How could you do this to me? I dinnae mind the dreams where I’m trying to get to work, and inexplicably find myself naked on the bus. Or the ones where I’m playing football, with an open goal at my mercy but suddenly start running in slow motion. They seem to have stopped a year or so ago, when I finally lost interest in football. Even the pain of that distant morning as a child, when The Mammy patted me sadly on the head and told me I didnae have a giant tin of everlasting blackcurrant 'Kojak Lollies' in the kitchen cupboard after all, has dissipated with the intervening years. And the recurring dream where I’m pissing in the corner of someone’s livingroom, or in their cupboards I now know is just your way of telling me my bladder’s full.

But how could you make a farce out of the only nugget of hope I have left? -that of spontaneously becoming a middle-aged Punkrock god! An unwritten contract has been irretrieveably broken here. I doubt I shall ever be able to trust you enough to go to sleep again!