You can't beat fate. I tried and I failed. I had hoped to use my new guitar pedal at the gig in Penzance, but it hadn't arrived in time for me to play with it (and it wouldn't have worked anyway) despite the fact that I tried to speed up its arrival by paying with something other than a cheque. It arrived on Wednesday, but that was still too late to use it for the gig I had that night as, again, I hadn't had time to play with it.

Given that I wasn't expecting to see my girlfriend that night, I skipped home for lunch (she wasn't coming to the gig and I thought I'd be home after she went to bed). While at home, mindful that I've had a bunch of sound-checks recently that have gone awry, I picked up some equipment which should make plugging into odd PA systems a lot easier. This mixer would have saved the day single handedly in Penzance, and would have given me more control over the sound of the guitar in a couple of other gigs, recently, where all I've had is a DJ booth to plug into.

As I drove to Manchester for the gig, I was feeling optimistic. As I got to the gig and realised I needed the kit I'd brought, I was over the moon. We got the guitar plugged in and sounding great. Brilliant!

You can't beat fate.

There was no mike stand. Without a mike stand, a guitarist can't use a mike. I tried using the MC as a pretend mike stand, but he kept moving the mike to my mouth and it kept getting too loud, cutting out, and making me giggle. After all that effort, I had to do the gig acoustically. Plus, my wee guitar is not quite loud enough to do that effectively, even though it was a small room.

Under the circumstances, the fact that I kept my set going for about 30 minutes was quite something.

I got off stage at 10.20, I drove home 10 minutes later and got to spend some time with my girlfriend after all. We watched "Big Game TV" which was rubbish!