It was fab to be back for a warm-up gig at my favourite pub in the UK, the infamous Square & Compass Inn (surely the only pub with a dinosaur in the back room).

I sang my first ever song in public in this pub thanks to my great-uncle Tony Viney who said very firmly he was going home unless I took my guitar in. It was a music night.

Being a bit frightened of my great-uncle I reluctantly took it in and hid it in a corner and I thought I’d got away with it until this booming voice (my great-uncle) announced to the whole pub that EMILY IS GOING TO SING A SONG. I nearly died of embarrassment. Ah well, I’ve come a long way since then :).

The Square & Compass Inn is in Worth Matravers which is in the Isle of Purbeck which is my spiritual home and I try and do a gig there at least once a year. Well worth a visit for the beer alone… and the dinosaur of course.

Thanks to Kevin Hunt (pictured) for having us again and to everyone who packed in the room. It was a great night.

xx

Another song recorded in my attic, this one ‘Old Valentine’ from my album ‘Bird Inside A Cage’ which seemed appropriate for Valentine’s Day. Some of the songs I write take a lot of time and effort but others just seem to come out of nowhere. This one just fell out of my head onto the page.

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Counting down the days now to the release of my fifth album ‘A Bit Of Blue’ on 24th February. I’ve been so delighted reading the reviews – the latest one in from Maverick Magazine.

Thanks to BBC Radio Scotland who have been playing my single ‘For Free’. The song has also been getting airplay on BBC Radio Wales, Ulster, and Merseyside. You can watch the ‘For Free’ video here. This is the radio mix… the album version has two extra verses.

Finally one of the highlights of my career so far… watching my 7-year-old nephew Vincent Taylor sing my song ‘Anything You Do’ today with which he has got through to the second round of the St Stephen’s Got Talent contest. I am so proud of him. Next round on Wednesday…

Hope all’s well in your world.

xx

Here is another song recorded by me at home in my attic studio. This is ‘Falling On My Feet’, a song I wrote in a hospital in London called Park Royal Centre For Mental Health. The staff there very kindly let me keep my guitar with me on the acute ward. In the midst of a psychosis, I scrawled the lyrics over and over in my book trying to put the words into some kind of order.

When I recorded it in Australia the following year for my album ‘Stranger Place’ it took several takes and some sangria to get through the verses without tears. But despite the fact that it was written at a terrible time the song turned out to be a premonition – I’d thought I was just falling but actually I was falling on my feet.

xx