It’s three thirty a.m. and I’ve just got back from my brother’s birthday party, which involved going to see his teen heroes in concert, Deep Purple at Wembley Arena.

I wore earplugs. But we were 7 rows from the front of the stage and the air displaced from the kick drum was enough to shoot a cat from one end of the hall to the other. I should have worn a neck brace.

Yours aching to be in bed,

S.

P.S. Thanks for a great evening Dunc.

A cool moment today… my cowriter won two Dove awards this week and when we connected on video Sue was holding her ‘birds’ and I was holding a champagne glass (apple juice actually). I’ve heard of people bringing in their son to a cowrite (which let’s face it is pretty bizarre) but never before a flock. We are all so delighted for her. The whole family came in and we had a kind of iParty.

Congrats to all my friends that won birds this week – Sue, Tony, David, Wayne, Ian, Rob, Jason, Bernie, and Matt. For a full list of winners look here. For Tony’s acceptance speech look here. He's such an amazing guy.

Yours thinking how cool it is that Chad caught that on his cell phone,

S.

It was the London Marathon today – some 30,000 people fulfilling a dream by doing something extraordinary, mostly for charity, in a city that grinds to a halt for a day. Five years ago I injured an Achilles tendon toward the end of the 26 miles and 385 yards. It was my third consecutive year but my worst time. It felt like age had got one over on me and put my running on hold for a good two and a half years.

But seeing those brave souls crossing the finishing line today brought it all back – queuing up at the start wearing a black bin bag over my running kit on a crisp April morning, the feeling of being able to run forever after all the training, the relief of the water tables, the extreme emotions that went with taking the body through something (in my case) it really wasn’t designed for, the incredible support of friends and family that came to cheer me on, the pain of hitting ‘the wall’, the inspiration that came every time I thought of those little bald heads I was running for (Children with Leukaemia), the punishing cobble stones near the Cutty Sark, the joy of seeing Big Ben in the last mile of the race, the ecstasy of my legs finally carrying me over the finishing line, the feeling of triumph holding a medal to the camera, the comfort of that first long bath where I nursed my beaten up feet and tired legs, meeting up with family and friends for the after party at a local curry house.

It’s difficult not to wonder if I might do it again.

Yours feeling hopelessly out of shape right now,

S.

Just got back from London… my vocal coach took me all the way up to top F today… never done that before. Still some work to do. Golly I wish I’d found her 20 years ago. Celebrated my top F with sushi in Harrods and a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts for the family.

She was telling me how Take That started writing their last album at the end of August 2006 and it was in the shops by November! I like that. Especially with it turning out so cool.

Yours writing with maple glaze around my chops,

S.

PS The tragic shootings in the US are all over the papers here... praying for all those involved

It’s April and so warm that people are swimming in the sea IN ENGLAND. Last week there was snow in Nashville not long after it being as warm as it is here. So what’s the deal?

I can understand people freaking out about global warming. But would it be heresy to think that God might have made the earth smarter than we think? What if he made it to heal itself like he did the human body? Shouldn’t I be celebrating the promise given with the first rainbow? I'd like to hear some Bible teaching on that.

Somehow it seems easier to celebrate while flicking through garden furniture catalogues.

Yours with a recycling bin full of wrapping paper and cardboard after my birthday and Easter,

S.

Just noticed the song Twila and I wrote, ‘Livin in the Rain’ is already at #3 in the Singing News Southern Gospel charts for May… if we could vote it up from Britain we would!!!

S.

Had a golden day today at Arundel Castle today. Seems like the sun’s come out for Easter week. At the castle they held a Medieval tournament which re-enacted a battle that took place in 1498. They were all dressed up in costumes and had an encampment, fires burning, armour, swords, archers, the whole thing. Apparently a suit of armour would cost what it would to buy a house in 1498. Golly. Kinda puts it in perspective. The Duke was out amongst the crowds.

Anyway we had a fun time getting ferried around on golf buggies (on account of Sa being a month or so away from D-Day), watching battles on the lawns of the Castle, refreshments in the castle restaurant, pizza at Pizza Express and just loads of fun.

Got some nice pics from my cell phone (that seems to now take better pics than my real camera!).

Brought back some lovely memories of when Sue and Ross came to stay with us.

Yours hoping the weather stays like this for the week,

S.

Happy Easter everyone.

S.

OK, I deliberately wanted to do this trip on the cheap – I bought my economy flights with discounted airmiles, an economy group car to hire and a smaller room than I normally do. After all, it’s was only three days.

I thought I was doing well when they upgraded my car to a brand new SUV (4x4) and gave me a nicer room than I was expecting.

But I’m writing this in Virgin Atlantic's Upper Class lounge at JFK Airport with a bunch of waitresses offering me free food and unlimited champagne (oh, and free wireless).

So how did I get here? I just told the ticketing people at Virgin Atlantic that it’s my birthday and a wonderful lady behind the desk gave me a free upgrade. She even wished me a happy birthday. A $3000 birthday present. That's nice!

Better dash – my banana cake has arrived.

Yours thinking that getting older does have some perks after all,

S.

Reached my 100th cowrite today - what a cool birthday present!

And the prize goes to…..

SUE C SMITH!!

Thanks to Sue and Holly for making it happen, and to everyone that I’ve written with over the last 18 months – you have made this journey so much fun - it's been an amazing time. I hope I am improving for you.

Yours restless to make this 200,

S.

Been a fun couple of days.

The trip over to Nashville was fine – via New York this time – still took 20 hours though. Guess I was hoping it would be a little quicker with Virgin Atlantic’s online check-in. Got to my room at about 1.30 Tuesday morning so after whizzing off a few emails I crashed out.

Made good use of my time on the plane – loaded up all my ideas into SongData. I still need to do some work before I feel it does more than simply keeps things in one place. Although that’s a result on its own.

Yesterday was really productive – worked on 5 songs with Sue and another with Belinda. So I already feel like I’ve got my money’s worth!

In the evening there was a BBMP writers’ night which was one of the reasons for coming over. It was a little like Friday evening at WAJ but we had a few more artist writers. It was fun, I got to meet Cindy Morgan for the first time and there were a bunch of friends from WAJ it was great to see. I played piano for Sue on a cool song we wrote when she was with us in England and I sung a new song Twila and I wrote called ‘Shadow of Mercy’. Fun evening.

Today is another action packed day… writing with Joel this morning, there’s a possible cowrite this afternoon and I’m with John Cox this evening. Might be a late night!

Yours thinking how cool it would be to spend a little more time here,

S.

I know I’ve not been getting enough sleep recently. Trouble is, it’s difficult to tear myself away with so many cool things to play with in the studio, so many ideas to explore, music to play (now the studio is soundproofed from the rest of the house), songs to listen to… and having a MacBook doesn’t help either… in fact it makes things worse – my new battery easily gives me over 4 hours which means going to bed when the power is used up sends me into the early hours of the morning.

This weekend, when we went away to visit some friends in Tunbridge Wells (about 2 hours away), I deliberately left all tech things behind. So I managed to get a couple of early nights without any temptation of adding another screen to SongTools or working on another idea for this week’s writing.

And I must say I’m feeling better for it today, which is just as well because in about 10 minutes I’m making that 20 hour trip to Nashville for a few days intensive writing and a performance in a writers’ night. Should be great fun.

Yours hoping that better sleep doesn’t mean worse jetlag,

S.