Yesterday was a good day. In the morning I took Miles out for a driving lesson and he is now starting to get it. In the afternoon with the family I had a really good walk around Durham. We did a different walk because I wanted to look at a driving route for Miles to take us to Durham avoiding the motorway. So we parked up near the Durham crematorium and walked through the woods and on to our usual route. In the woods, because it had been raining very hard the night before there were large amounts of leaf debris and sand strewn across the path carried by the rainwater. The woods were really good because the leaves falling off the trees had become quite deep. When we got down to the weirs in Durham we saw salmon attempting to get over the weir right between a pair of cormorants who were looking hopefully no doubt to try and get a meal. The trouble was the salmon are bigger than the cormorants so they had no chance. It was remarkable to see salmon because about 20 years ago the River Wear from just above Durham was quite dead and polluted and now it is alive and vibrant with life. No matter how bad it looks for the ecology on our planet there are some positive moves happening. It is the same on Teeside where the River Tees also has salmon running up it because several years ago we saw them attempting to leap over the Tees barrage. Our usual perches in the centre were all taken up so we had to have biscuit break up by the St Oswald's Hall Park .

We had a good evening set up because Fiona and I went to see Digital Earth at Kennedy's Bar in York. This was the first night out just Fiona and me for as long as I can remember at least 10 years I think. It was a great drive down because we played Bob Dylan and when we got to York we walked in from a Clifton past York District Hospital and as we were going past I noticed that we could see into the corridor of the maternity unit and off the corridor where the birth rooms for women to have babies were. This is where Fiona gave birth to our 2 fine boys. I had mixed memories about this because the birth of Miles was quite difficult but Clifford's birth was very easy. That's if you can say that giving birth to a child is easy. I may regret saying this! When we got to Kennedy's Bar Digital Earth were having a run through and the band sounded pretty good . I really enjoyed talking with Sybil's husband Jon Wood and then I went to talk with Nicky Young the wife of the keyboard player David Young. It was really nice sitting there and noticing all these club, party type people going by because the last time I ever was in a pub was when I went to the Irish sessions in York and they were mostly folk people there who were very different! Digital Earth started playing at 11 o'clock and they were really good. I really enjoyed getting swayed away by the brilliant rhythm and keyboard section and then listening to Jon Woods excellent flugelhorn playing and the vocals of the lovely girl singer and a man who was a MC doing rap like speaking alongside the singing. I thought he was excellent and the rhythms reminded me of bebop rhythms which is quite interesting. Very syncopated and catchy and I actually wonder if anybody else has noticed how bebopish rap rhythms are. It has inspired me to think of my own songwriting having some sort of rap talking going on as well or before and after the words I write. An interesting idea. I also found it really funny that these big bouncers were walking through the club to make sure everything was all right which made me feel quite reassured. These characters I always find quite interesting because whilst they are very big and strong which is quite good for grabbing somebody quickly and subduing them to propel them out of the club they absolutely cannot run! It was lovely seeing Sybil again the last time being at the Peace Festival in York. Fiona and I also talked for a bit with Jon Woods mother June, Sybil's mother-in-law who is a really nice lady and she told us to get in touch with her to go and see her when we have another night out in York. We left the Bar at about 12:30 a.m. and walking through York was interesting because there were so many people around. The last time I walked around York at that time of night in the late 1980s there was hardly anybody around. York certainly has a more late night cosmopolitan feel about it than it did in the late 1980s and this is really good. On the way back going through the Vale of York we went through a huge rainstorm but given that Fiona was asleep after 10 minutes in the car she left me on my own to fight my way through it and listen to Leonard Cohen as well. She didn't actually wake up until I parked the car on our drive at around 1:45 a.m..

A lovely day and a really good night out. Thank you very much Sybil, Digital Earth and my lovely wife for wearing a nice short skirt which really showed off her hiking legs. I have never seen my wife wearing such a skirt out and about and I noticed myself staring at it several times during the evening particularly when she was dancing through the Digital Earth set. She and Sybil danced through the whole thing. Two fine wives, mothers, and ladies!