I know it’s not as cool these days to blog but I just fancy it today.

The last two weeks I’ve been preoccupied with the weather - mostly because lurking on my to-do list for the last five years has been "paint the railings on the first floor seaside terrace" and the time has come to get rid of it. Too much weather of any kind makes painting anything at the front of the house pretty much impossible.

OK, I can hear you thinking already “after all this time it sounds like Simon has lost the knack – he used to say things that were sometimes a little interesting and even funny but how can he turn this one around?”

Well,  stick with me her a few minutes because I'm about to give you my top 10 lessons for songwriters that I learned from painting the railings:

1. Sometimes it’s worth trying to cover the territory and then going back to fill in the details later.
2. No matter how hard you try to get it right the first time there will always be something you’ll have missed and you’ll only be able to see it looking at  your work from a completely new perspective.
3. Sometimes a job just takes a long time.
4. If the conditions aren’t right in the first place your work will get messed up by the conditions. So you may as well do is go for a swim if you can stand the wind chill.
5. If you want the end product to look exactly the same as something you’ve produced before then approach it in exactly the same way.
6. The power of obsessively following a routine is one of the most powerful tools we human beings possess.
7. Anything can be fun if you’re doing it to the music of the waves.
8. If you try to do things too quickly the result will look like it was done too quickly.
9. Sometimes the only way to tell whether you’ve done a great job is to stand back and admire it from a distance.
10. Encouragement from your family is one of the best fuels to getting anything done.

So there we have it – my top 10 lessons from two weeks painting the house. Whether or not I’ve succeeded in turning a boring subject into something vaguely interesting I’m not too sure but I certainly feel better for having got it down on paper. I’ve also realized in the process that I’m a little disappointed my songwriting lessons have come to an end.

Here’s to my next www.berkleemusic.com course! Can’t wait.

S.