"What are you doing on Monday?"

As my final day in 'proper' employment came to a close last week, my (then) boss asked me, "so, what will you be doing on Monday?"

It was an important question; she wanted to gage what exactly my plans to be an 'artist' actually involved. I get the sense she was secretly hoping that I'd say "I have no plans, please take me back to your wonderful world of spreadsheet slavery" so I made a point of not saying that. Annoyingly, my show for Monday in Somerset was cancelled due to poor ticket sales. They weren't bad, if it was a local show I would have done it, but it's a long way to go and fuel is quite expensive and I probably would have lost money on it, which isn't great given the situation. But telling the boss that on my final day...it just gave her the opportunity to turn to my line manager and raise her eyebrows. She did that a lot in my time there.

Taking days off is acceptable, I don't plan to have any until next Saturday (when my young lady is back for the weekend so I can actually see her), but your first day? I was never going to let that happen, so I've spent the week writing a Christmas novella (half a novel), with the plan to nail it before the week is out and get it out there. A couple days before that I performed the solo show in Kings Lynn, then dashed to Market Harborough to play a long gig with the band, and the next day I had meetings about how to do the whole self-employed thing (tax returns etc) and then a photoshoot for next year's Edinburgh show. I've also found the time to work on the press release with Griff and Vix ahead of our Christmas single, went to dinner with good friends Adam and Vanessa (who seem really, really into the idea of '50 Way to Leave your Drummer' - must finish this film at some point) and play a gig in London. I also turned down a job doing telesales. Tomorrow the solo show heads to Bury, Saturday I'll be performing in London, Saturday night I'll be in Bristol socialising (but let's be honest - there will be an element of networking involved, as always), Sunday I'm moving house, again.

And then suddenly it's mid-November and I'm on a proper run of the solo show and all things Christmas kick in. I could have done with Monday off, really.