We founded 27th Club three years ago as a way to take ourselves out of our musical comfort zones, while drinking over-priced, underwhelming beer. It’s a simple concept: on the 27th of every month, we venture out to see some live music. There are only two or three venues nearby so options are limited. But this does mean that we get exposed to music we might not otherwise have contemplated.

We’d imagined that 27th Club would expand our musical horizons into new and unexpected places and, in the process, we’d find ourselves imbued with a kind of hipster cosmopolitanism. In reality, all it seems to have done is to confirm our own well-worn, needle-scratched prejudices.

I was late arriving at tonight’s gig but I couldn’t miss him. This was, in part, due to the room being sparsely populated but also because Darren was holding a giant placard, on which was written the words “GOLF SALE”. The sign’s arrow was currently pointing in the direction of the ladies’ toilets.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘had to come straight from work. Didn’t get a chance to change.’

We watched a procession of singer-songwriters file onto the stage in order to sing songs that they’d written.

‘I met Sophie’s new man last week,’ Darren whispered while a woman was warbling about the comfort of trees.

‘Oh, really?’ I replied nonchalantly, my attention suddenly grabbed by some accomplished on-stage finger-work.

‘Really nice guy,’ he said.

‘Mmm . . .’ I responded, admiring the interesting chord progression.

‘I reckon he’s loaded. He drives a Maserati.’

Some kind of car, presumably. What might have been a Dsus4 rang out. I tried to focus on that.

‘Sophie’s really quite taken with him.’

Turning to Darren, I told him in no uncertain terms how disrespectful it is to talk when a singer-songwriter is in full flow. As he headed off to the loo in a huff, I held his sign and listened to how branches can bend in the wind.

Sunday January 28th

It was one of those beautiful, cold, crisp January days that are perfect for a long, bracing walk through a pine forest, while admiring the wintry elegance of trees snugly wrapped in their soft coats of frost and listening to the silvery half-silence of frozen streams.

And that’s why I stayed inside all day, staring at a screen. By the time I went to bed, I was filled with self-loathing. It makes me wonder how poets of yore would have coped in these distracting times; it’s hard to imagine Yeats sitting down to write ‘Lake Isle of Innisfree’ if he’d had Angry Birds downloaded on his phone.