Last August Linda and I were at a jazz weekend in Perthshire, where at the end of the course I got the opportunity to stand up on stage and sing a Billie Holliday song with a real live jazz band, with a double bass and stuff. I was in heaven. To this day I don't know how I had the nerve to volunteer myself to do this. Never ever had I done anything like this before, in my wildest dreams. Well, the adrenaline rush took hours to wear off, and all the way home, motoring down the M90, I began composing "My Fantasy Blues Band", which later became my first song. Linda said to me "You know, it doesn't have to be a fantasy." An interesting juxtaposition of events, including the Edinburgh Jazz Summer School, and a week-long course in music production at the Academy of Music and Sound, had led up to this moment of epiphany. So that's how it all began: just a laugh to start with. Then suddenly, I was drawn into this weird creative vortex, and on an equin...