In my current spare room stay, I’m sharing the place with a cat, a kitten, two guinea-pigs and three chickens. There are usually a couple and three primary school-aged girls as well, but they’re all away for the weekend and I’m holding the fort with the animals. Most of them don’t need much looking after in about 48 hours, but the cats do of course need feeding. And the kitten is of course a total wildcard.

Earlier today I fed Myrtle (kitten) – she’s supposed to get three meals a day, and she’s usually always hungry. However, when I put her food down, she more or less ignored it. While this might be to do with whatever it was she’d been trying to lick off my dressing gown earlier in the morning, I soon discovered it was more that she was more interesting in nabbing leftovers from Dibble’s (grown-up cat) breakfast – Dibble only gets two meals a day, and what was left was considerably less in quantity and interest than Myrtle’s supposed lunch. But the thrill of theft (or something) overcame that.

Music is a rather individualist business. It’s all too envy to see everyone as a rival or a competitor, and to be always making comparisons with their previous bands, jobs, pay, achievements, etc. And of course it always seems to someone starting out that you’d trade what you’ve got for what anyone else has. But it can be just as delusory as the Myrtle food preference. And anyway, unlike her I don’t get to try stealing someone else’s, even at the risk of being batted by someone twice my size and legitimately angry.