The more you make me laugh, the more I feel better. With regard to Mr. Mole's metaphysical view, which I love, my partner in the disastrous duo also shares this idea. He's a graphic artist, and occasionally he shows a client a rough draft, and they say 'perfect'. When he says no, it isn't finished, they insist it's just right. He concludes that there is a mystical transformation between what is put out and what is received.

As for Louisa's 12-string guitarist, I lasted three months in a really awful Irish folk trio in these parts; a 12-string guitar, fiddle, and me on bass. Only the singer/guitarist was Irish. Apart from having no sense of rhythm, he was a string-breaker. How many strings do you break onstage in an average year? One, or two? I swear, this guy broke four every night, and that is the absolute honest truth. One night, someone from the audience went home to fetch his own guitar, because this singer had run out of strings.

On this particular night, he broke into an absolute breakneck rhythm. Of the twelve strings, perhaps four were tuned somewhere near where they might be. I couldn't work out the key, nor the rhythm… it wasn't three-four, 4/4, 6/8, or anything I'd ever heard. As the rhythm grew weirder and the strings farther out of tune, I had to make a decision - as bass player, do I go with the guitar or the fiddle?

I glanced at the fiddler, who looked away as if to say 'nothing to do with me, mate'. I ploughed a course between the two, and eventually a couple of the guitar strings went, and the number clattered to a halt with a sound like a freight train hitting the buffers. In that eerie half-second of absolute silence which often occurs in such moments, the guitarist looked round and said 'Ian, you're putting the whole ****ing band off!'

I quit!

- Ian B