"rehearsal, research, learning and arranging."

All of the above, indeed. Classical musicians like to practice for several hours per day, and even us traditional musicians would love to do that if we had time. Research can involve hours on the internet or in public libraries, or with our own collection of books and CDs. Learning and arranging (or writing) new material has to be allocated time additional to instrumental practice. Teaching and workshops are a significant proportion of earnings for many of us, and they take a lot of preparation too.

Travel time and expenses are of a different order of magnitude to most commuters that I know. And we have days of enforced idleness away from hearth and family because it's not worth travelling home in the middle of a tour, and it's rare to get every successive night booked.

Those of us who prefer to be our own agents (it makes loss-making tours less likely, for a start!) have plenty to do with stuffing envelopes, signing contracts, keeping the publicity blurb up to date. And that's not to mention actually getting the gigs....

Not giving away any secrets but I would be very happy to earn £37K a year. I'm certainly not grumbling about my career choice, but a part-time job it is not!