Well a serious unexpected dose of English snow meant me and my fella Mattie didn't make it down to London for the annual UK folky party fest that is the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Instead Mattie cooked a smashing big chicken, sausage and honey roast parsnip tea at our house for my lovely band mate Inge Thomson and her other half Martin Green, one third of Folk Group of the Year,  Lau (hurray, hurray much deserved for the lads!), all of whom likewise turned back home yesterday.

On the subject of Lau, me and Inge and our pal Corrina Hewat spent a day earlier this month adding some vocals to their splendid new album "Ark Light". They're actually my favourite band, even if they are my pals, so it was great to help out. More info on their myspace - follow my top friends.

Folk Awards kudos this year go to the excellent maverick Mr Chris Wood, Folk Singer of the Year and Album of The Year, and, by all accounts, speech of the year too! The fella can talk, I tell you. I'll be writing with Chris next month in the Darwin Songhouse in Shrewsbury, a residential songwriters project to celebrate the bicentenarry of his birth (indeed I've just signed up for an Open University Course in Darwin and Evolution to prepare myself), and touring with him in rural Gloucestershire and Leicestershire in early April.

It's been a full on month of musical extremes. I visited The Arctic Circle for the first time, which I fear does my green credentials no good whatsoever, in vain hopes of seeing the Northern Lights in Norwegian harbour town Tromso. They were not to be seen but I did fetch back some nice cheese and a very fine green hat, which in yesterday's blusteriness, was most useful.

It is a very expensive place to buy a beer ...

That gig followed on the heels of the debut show for The Burns Unit, a new collaborative genre hopping band project (with six other Scottish songwriters and my fella Mattie on drums), at which I myself played drums, if you can believe that (the proof will be on their page - again follow my top friends). The project is two thirds though recording an album, which will encompass Indo-Caledonian political dancefloor action, Jacques Brel-esque torch music, Nick Cave meets Tori Amos murder balladry, and cheesy eighties pop. Brilliant fun!

My old bandmates Malinky had a ten year anniversary show at Glasgow's Celtic Connections the following night: a show at which I forgot the words to one of my own songs (mortifying) but after which the expanded ten piece managed to convince a Festival Club full of less than sober young folks that we were in fact a party band, rather than a posse of ballad singers. Also a lot of fun!

I arrived back from northern Norway in time to catch a lift to two shows that same night, the first of which, at Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall, celebrated the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns. I was privileged to watch one of my all-time musical heroes, Dick Gaughan, sing perhaps the finest song he has ever sung, Burns' "Now Westlin Winds", a poetic metaphyisical musing on humanity's place in the world (for good and ill). A great song.

I hot-footed it down to Burns' birthplace Alloway immediately after for a Burns Supper before Scotland's high heid yins, including the country's First Minister Alex Salmond and classy, sassy newsreaders Kirsty Wark and Sally Magnusson.  I have a lot to say about Burns himself and will post that in another blog. But I was quite honoured to be involved if the truth be told.

Next night was another Burns related adventure. I've done more than a few collaborative shows over the past few years but singing the Burns classic "The Slave's Lament" with Jamaican dub-reggae legends Sly and Robbie has to top the league of bizarre gigs so far! I mean these guys made records for Bob Dylan, Grace Jones, Sinead O'Connor.

Sly is very, very wee. And smiley. And plays his kit slung low to the ground.

Robbie is very, very big. You would not fight with him. His bass was so powerful I had to walk away from side of stage at one point because I thought my body might erupt into an uncontrollable judder.

One to tell the grandkids I think.

Last gig up this past month was my own solo show at the sumptious and elegant City Halls in Glasgow, normally reserved for the BBC Symphony Orchestra. It was a double header with lovely Northern lassies Rachel Unthank and the Winterset and featured not only regular KP trio compadres Steven Polwart and Inge Thomson but also fellow Burns Unit collaborator Kim Edgar on piano and vocals and the lovely Jenny Hanson on violin and viola. I made it an occasion to play some songs I had never or seldom played live before, including the brooding ballads "Wife of Usher's Well" and "Death of Queen Jane" from trad album "Fairest Floo'er" and oldies that have been getting a bit dusty like "Faultlines", as well as a wee improvised community harmony singalong.

It was a delight to create something spacious and elegant and a bit different in the venue.

And, bold or wreckless, for the first time ever, no "Daisy", no "I'm Gonna Do It All", no "Rivers Run" and no "Sun's Comin Over the Hill"

And no riot! Indeed just a lovely warm glow in the place. So enjoyable.

Anyway, bit of non-discursive, descriptive blog this time but that's where I'm at. More coming on Burns, Darwin and the ethical dimension of songwriting ... but before that a huge pile of washing and a Ready Brek encrusted kitchen floor to contend with.