I was to spend the morning in Cheltenham, mooching about until the real fun could start in the afternoon. I assumed I'd get bored, so had a bag of tricks, including my laptop, a book, mp3 player, pretty much all I could bring with - ooh, a notepad too, with my new song written on it. Perhaps I'd write another? Perhaps I'd buy a newspaper and write some witty ditty on the subject of the credit crunch?

No, I went to Starbucks. I spent some time in Starbucks working on www.ashleyfrieze.co.uk and have added a mailing list to the front page - feel free to join it. I also made a song accessible that has been there a while, but I didn't have enough confidence in. I'm happy to have it public, given that I've performed it publicly a few times. It's not quite me, but I did a reasonable musical effort to make it.

After that I went out for a wander. I'm the sort of person, it seems, who can amiably wander round shops buying things I need/don't need/can make use of, and looking for stuff I know I should be looking for.

In the end, I bought 40 sheets of sandpaper, some batteries and some bedding. This is not surprising. I often buy random things. My favourite random purchase was 7 metres of velcro, but that was years ago. Over 4.

And so I managed to make my day into a lot of street walking, shop visiting and only two trips to coffee shops. Starbucks was breakfast and Costa was elevenses.

With my mobile phone and Orange providing me with effective and non-charged internet access, and with my laptop's new battery proving reliable enough for all my non-plugged-in-laptop-usage needs, I had a good experience in sorting things out online from wherever I happened to be. A morning like this can be very restorative. Shame I never get the chance to do this very often, and even if I did have no agenda of a Saturday morning, the chances are that I wouldn't be up before 7 and in town by 9.

Dancing to the beat of someone else's drum can lead you into some good places.