BACK FROM RORYGALLAGHERLAND

Back home last night from a brief trip to Cork for a talk about being In Search of Blind Willie McTell at the small but sold-out Triskel Arts Centre: my third visit there but the first in five years. I took two cheap flights to get there and three to get back.

After the weekend I'm flying to New York via London - because from London I can fly return to JFK on Air France for literally half the price of flying from Paris to JFK on, er, Air France...

Then I'm hiring a car and driving about a thousand miles in the course of four days, returning the car, flying to Toronto for two days, flying back to New York, flying back to London and then back from Heathrow to Toulouse. And that's just the first of three transatlantic trips I'm making between now and Bob Dylan's birthday on May 24. My carbon footprint is not getting any lighter.

But my heart is not weary.... Came home to learn that it's all happening in Ledbury, Herefordshire, where I'm doing a gig on Saturday May 9 - an online news item tells me that a pub in the town was painted Barbie Pink in the night. No-one knows by whom. Except of course the action painter.