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Yesterday I was at the Made In Roath festival in Cardiff doing a songwriting session of some kind. It was straight off the back of a Ukulele Workshop that took place in the garden at Deli Rouge. There was a decent number at the workshop, many total beginners, learning how to play the ukulele. Some people then stuck around and attempted to write my song for Day 289 with me. We managed the first verse and chorus and the first line of the second verse together. It was fun and we got a lot more done than I thought we would in the little time we had and with little idea of how I was going to organise it. Mark and Nick who organise the Uke Nights in Cardiff (and are part of the band the Fflip-Fflops) led the workshop and helped out a great deal with my workshoppy thing. I came up with a chord structure and then passed out paper so people could write certain parts of the lyrics and then we collected them together. It’s obviously not the normal way I go about writing my songs, so it was good to try something new.

I then performed the song on my ukulele last night (in what was my first proper gig) along with 2 of my other tracks on my guitar as part of an evening at The Gower in Roath that closed the festival. It went surprisingly OK. I was nervous, but not as nervous as I thought I’d be. I went with the same tactic as when I spoke at the Oxford event – I tried to ignore that it was even happening until I was up there. It proved quite helpful. I’m pretty pleased I did it, it’s something I would never have thought of doing last year.

To mates that might see this: Sorry I didn’t invite you – I just felt like I’d be less nervous if I didn’t really know anyone there!

Thanks to: Nick Canham, Mark Isaac, Kevin Day, Natalie Healey, Alan Jones, and Lizzy Birchall for writing this with me.

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