“Cos my sorrows did not drown my friend, they always learned to swim…”

I’ve been taking a lot of early baths – in the middle of the night when the electricity is cheaper, and I created a playlist for that – over 300 tracks. As I was lying there I thought ‘this would make a good podcast’ and here we are – recorded in my bathroom!

Paradoxically that’s where I used to record my podcasts not to disturb John, annoyed by the ever-present echo – now it’s a stylistic choice.

Talking of John – he’s famous! He’s featured in a book about Switchboard (formerly Lesbian and Gay Switchboard) as he was one of the co-founders. One of the many things he did…and I am so proud. Halfway through reading it, and the book is great – but also you can also hear his voice on famous The Log Books podcast – Series 4, episode 1.

Hearing his voice again was wonderful but also bittersweet. Ugly-cried when it came on.

So I’ve done readings across the podcast from a few bits of the book around him. It has nothing to do with baths, but given it’s his bath in a weird olive/grey shade (which made recently fixing a hole in it with Milliput easy actually, it’s that sort of weird grey/green!) and we used to have baths together when I was lot thinner.

I talk about that, the music, the state of the world (Iran So Far Away) and how I am glad that John doesn’t get to see the rise of the Fourth Reich, Icy Dumb and Dumber edition.