I genuinely find the experience of buying tickets infuriating at times.

And it’s remarkable how squeezed out of tickets you are if you are not with the 02 network. They have a dominance over the U.K. live music scene.

So Tool are coming to the U.K. and I knew this was going to be a hot ticket so I had my laptop ready at 9am to order.

So, the ‘buy tickets’ opened at 9:03am and I was put into a queue of about 2500 people, it took about ten minutes to get through. When I finally got through, I had to deal with a poor website page that told me seats were available when they weren’t.

It took me 20 attempts and that point, I thought I had missed out. So I changed venues and that did the trick. I finally secured tickets.

The whole process though was unnecessarily stressful due to the website being completely lacking in user friendliness and reliability.

Others weren’t so lucky and the page crashed on them.

And then before long, you see Viagogo promoting tickets for a extortionate multiple of the original ticket price! It’s completely unethical and shouldn’t be allowed to happen.

So there are a myriad of obstacles to deal with when buying tickets and it’s situations like this where the customer is on the back foot.

So Live Nation and Ticketmaster need to figure out how to make their pages work when dealing with high volumes. If they are the two main players, there shouldn’t be excuses.

And Viagogo and secondary ticket touts need to be cracked down on. How many times does the news have to discuss it and acts have to tweet not to use this service before it dies a death?

I rewatched the extended edition of Lord of the Rings recently.

I make the tradition of watching it every year because I utterly adore these films, and they are my favourite franchise from me being a child. They also make up some of my most visceral memories of being absolutely struck with awe when I went to the cinema.

And to this day, they still hold firm in their look, aesthetic and artistic execution. In fact, they set a benchmark that overrides so many films released today. Purely because Peter Jackson and his team were willing to put hours of work in where others would just stick it into CGI, especially these days.

So usually when I watch the films, I get the middle earth bug and do a bit more digging, I read the books, I look up YouTube videos exploring the films and this time round, I watched the appendices through from start to finish.

It is honestly astonishing to see these documentary films unravel the process of making the films in such a generously informative way. The time, years and personnel that was involved is remarkable and so many people around Peter Jackson put their heart and soul into this project.

I’ve learnt about costume and sculpture design, script writing, camera work, sound design and effects. I also was fascinated by Howard Shore’s approach to writing the music and having a live feed between Abbey Road and New Zealand shows that these guys knew how to work remotely decades before COVID ran amok!

Having watched the series, I’ve been inspired to attempt to give to my creative projects, the same energy, desire and passion that these people did. I also learnt that so much of what makes the films so good is the willingness for happy accidents to occur, or the desire to push each other to go that one bit further.

Watch it and you’ll learn so much about different worlds of work within the filming industry. You’ll also crave for more films that have departments dedicated to bigatures as well!

Just an hour up the A470 in Cardiff is the National park, the Brecon Beacons. One of three national parks here in Wales and it’s worth getting out of the urban areas to realise just how extraordinarily beautiful the country is.

I cycle regularly around a 80km radius and going to and from Cardiff is in itself lovely courtesy of the Taff trail, but go to the vale and you are in countryside territory. Where I’m based, I have the Garth virtually on my doorstep and then the taff trail can take you all the way up to Brecon where there are mountains and all sorts of other routes to take.

This weekend, I decided to make the most of the weather and head to the beacons to do the famous waterfall trail there. It was a popular choice last Saturday. It wasn’t too busy thankfully but certainly vibrant.

So near Penderyn (know for their whisky) is waterfall country on the river hepste where there are a series of four absolutely stunning waterfalls. Probably the most noteworthy is Sgwd yr Eira (the fall of snow) where you are able to walk underneath the waterfall.

There are steady parts of the walk, but there are also steep climbs to access some parts so having good footwear and knowing what your capable of is strongly advisable, but there is an opportunity to experience extraordinary natural beauty here and I’m glad I got to see it all again.

I absolutely love building a pedal board. It’s part of the fun of being an electric guitar player!

It’s quite common place for some guitarists to use all encompassing effects units like Kemper and Helix, which are amazing options but I do love the old school approach of putting individual pedals together and running them through an amp.

And my board needed desperate upgrading, since we are going to be gigging again soon. So I decided to invest in new power and a new board.

There are lots of options out there and here’s how I made my approach.

1. The power

I decided what my essential pedals were and what I needed power for to get through a set. I lined them up together, took note of their power requirements. 1 was 12v, 1 was 9v 300ma but the others were straight forward 9dc. 9 pedals altogether, so I needed a relatively big power supply and wanted one that could provide space for future purchases.

I decided to get the Truetone 1spot. It is mega high end but isn’t as expensive as the Mondo or Strymon. Their YouTube tutorials were super helpful and they also sell the thing with mount brackets. the power is all isolated and my rig has never sounded so beautifully quiet!

2. The board

I used tape measure and cross checked it with board sizes. Also with the consideration that I may add to my board in future. The pedaltrain Novo 24 was the one, with a fight case to ensure full protection on the road. The tape is super robust so all my pedals are well truly stuck on and ready to carry about.

So today was a fun creative day building my board and I really look forward to taking it out at my gigs with Kinky Wizzards.

Summers in the U.K. are quite something.

They are a mixture of optimistic hope as days grow longer in spring and days and evenings are lighter, and a mixture of agonising dread as days are dominated by rainfall such as what we had in May and many periods in August.

Throughout this summer, when sun has come out without disruption, I’ve made the most of the weather, I’ve sat out at parks, I’ve walked through countryside and I’ve cycled hundreds of kilometres.

I’ve sat outside, enjoying drinks with friends and taken in the blue skies and beauty that we are surrounded by in South Wales.

As we come to September, the academic year starts, but normally we are graced with quite lovely and cool weather and as days grow shorter and colder, I’ll think back on this summer fondly as a time I became fully acquainted with home and the beauty that surrounds me. Especially after having spent many years travelling.

Summer has been a period for me to be active physically but take it easy mentally and with my creative work, which is at times very consuming.

I’m ready to come back to it a bit more fresh and sometimes the best thing you can do for a project is step away from it for a short while.

Watching this series was a warm embrace of familiarity.

It is increasingly common to see divorced families in the western world, and this Swedish dramedy explores the complexities of such family set ups. One superficial difference is that in the U.K. we call our parent’s partners ‘step parents’ whereas the Swedes use the term ‘Bonus’. That’s the main difference because the dialogue and character interactions are a truthful reflection of family life itself.

So Patrick and Lisa are a new couple in the 30s, both of which are recently divorced from their former spouses, Katrin and Martin. Katrin is cold and career driven, Martin is a bit more carefree and he can’t quite get over Lisa having left him.

Both Patrick and Lisa have a ten year old son from their former relationship and Lisa also has a teenage daughter. Patrick’s son William is polite, does well in school and introverted, Eddie is sporty, social but also loud and outrageously sweary, Bianca is a typical teenage girl.

The premise is fascinating, and the characters all bring about idiosyncrasies that bring about conflict, Patrick’s desire for routine and order vs. Lisa’s embrace of unpredictability and chaos. One of the key features of the series is Patrick and Lisa’s couples therapy sessions and what is great that we see the therapists discuss and analyse their sessions afterwards as well as see the shortcomings of their own relationship.

So many questions are explored in this series, and some of the characters earn your respect from the get go (Henrick in particular is a character I greatly admire), some drive you insane and some grow on you. There are plenty of laugh out loud moments as well.

How do you create a desirable family life in such complex situations?

How do you communicate with your loved ones and your exes?

How do you manage career aspirations and family life?

How do you raise children in a way that is consistent and fair?

How do you accommodate all generations in a family environment?

How do you manage disappointment and your expectations not being met?

It is a fascinating, hilarious and warm series and I whole heartedly recommend watching it.

What kind of work space is ideal for you?

Is it minimalist, or chaotic, spacious or enclosed, filled with decorations or clear?

How important is lighting for you? I for one thrive better when there’s some natural light available.

The other thing I find that like doing is changing my environment.

And working from home, I enjoyed taking my portable laptop around different rooms and switching it up as it created the placebo effect of refreshing me.

I also consider myself to be quite kinetic, and walking and pacing are things that I do to get myself thinking with more clarity.

It’s worth exploring what works for you and feeling free to experiment with it, especially when the nature of offices may be changing as we move forward.

I always admire adults choosing to continue their learning path and start something new.

Learning should be laugh and for the most part, age shouldn’t stop from learning a new musical instrument, language or skill.

It’s easy to let habit or the story we tell ourselves say that the time has past for us to be able to pick something new up and that mindset along is the biggest challenge to overcome.

Everyone owes it to themselves to be encouraged and excited by the notion that everyday gives us an opportunity to elevate ourselves.

We just need to be brave enough to decide for ourselves that that is what we will do.

I wouldn’t be so quick to write off Liverpool for this season. They played rather well today too.

There’s this expectation that because Man City and Chelsea have spent big, they are the main contenders, and they would be right! Man United are in that category as well, such is the modern game we see today.

And some (to put it bluntly) plastic fans are kicking up a hissy fit because Liverpool haven’t bought big this season but if you look closer, they are securing long term contracts with players who have grown and established themselves whilst younger players are coming into the fray.

Maybe another signing could happen, but it’s not a necessity, and we will see if the squad has enough depth.

But the ethos of Liverpool, as it is with a team like Brentford is to be admired and it’s great to see some teams thrive when they’ve played the long game in terms of their recruitment and belief.

Over in Spain, we are seeing Barcelona suffer the sever consequences of spending big and beyond their means and it’s frankly astonishing that a club of that stature has got itself into such a mess.

It’s satisfying to see a club buy into the long term ethos, and I think companies, artists and all sorts of organisations can reconsider ways they plan their way forward to plan for success, and succeed with integrity and dignity.

How do people, most notably tradesmen, survive if they don’t do this?

The shoddiness on display from supposed professionals at times is outrageous and it seems to occur more than people think.

The dominos effect of this can be enormous. You fail to show up to the wrong person and they can spread the word, and reputation does count for a lot when you are out there doing your work.

Things do happen from time to time, that inhibit you from showing up on a day or on time but at least give the courtesy of letting your client know as soon as possible.

No sign of showing up at all, especially when you say you will is amongst many things disrespectful.

You are essentially giving your competitors far reaching advantage as well.

So when offering up your work and services to others, do it with passion and commitment, make promises you can keep and show up.