This time last month I was relaxing in a field with a lot of good friends at the Shambala festival. On the Saturday morning I met Captain Hotknives and his guitar. He started playing and almost immediately we were singing some very unusual songs together. Mimi joined in on the clarinet and a small, curious audience emerged from various tents nearby as the sun shone down.

It was a wonderful moment of spontaneity and I was feeling very pleased with myself for remembering to record the whole thing on my phone. But tragedy struck on the last night of the festival when my phone slipped out of my pocket and got wet while I was having a ‘ticcing fit.’

Back at the castle I discovered with horror that the phone had stopped working altogether. Leftwing Idiot had a look and couldn’t get it to work either so in a last-ditch attempt to retrieve the recording I took it to Databugs. It was touch and go but after several days I got a call saying they’d managed to bring it back to life for me.

I picked it up earlier and have spent several hours frantically locating the recording and getting it safely out of the phone and onto my computer. High-pressure data retrieval doesn’t come naturally to me and I had to work hard not to overreact. But I stuck at it and much to my delight I managed to rescue the recording.

Have a listen for yourself – it’s definitely not suitable for work but, for me, it perfectly captures the spontaneous joy of my first creative encounter with the Captain.

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