The first sketch of 2025, but this one turns back the years, a very long way. On my last trip to London, I finally brought my old guitar back to California with me. Much to the relief of my mum I’m sure, since it’s been sitting in the back of her cupboard for years. This is my old Westone Concord I, which was given to me on my 14th birthday by my older brother. It was my first electric guitar – technically not my first actual guitar, since I picked up a really crappy acoustic at a car boot sale the year before for a fiver – hey it did the job, I learned my first chords on it and I learned how to change guitar strings on it. This one though was my first proper guitar, Japanese built, sleek and heavy with a very smooth lacquered wood finish and rounded edges, it was something to love. I didn’t want to put it down, and I rarely did. Between this and the drawing all the time it was a wonder I got anything done, though I did spend a lot of time in libraries reading language books and planning round-the-world trips. I never got that good at it, really, just enough for the sort of thing I liked. I could not and still can not play fiddly solos and do all that guitar hero stuff, but then I was never much into that sort of music. I played a lot of Beatles, Pogues, Irish music, and of course Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks. I started writing songs on this guitar right away. I wrote a lot of songs as a teenager, as you do. A lot of crap but also a lot that was immensely fun, something I’m well proud of. This was my only electric guitar for a long time, and over the years it got a little battered, the frets worn down (making it obvious I played the ‘D’ chord a bit too much) and the pick-ups and connections totally knackered. I also never had an amplifier; I would sometimes plug it into my mum’s stereo, into the jack used for a microphone (there would be a lot of karaoke singing at our family’s parties, lot of Irish songs going on), but I usually had to play with headphones on. At school though, whenever I got access to an amp, that thing would get turned up to 11 and a half. The sound it makes is dirty. A proper punk sound. I still have tapes of it, echoing through the school canteen, ending with the dinner ladies yelling at us. A friend had a small amp I’d use sometimes too when we’d get together to make really bad music. Bad, but great. I remember drawing this before, during my A-Levels, or maybe GCSEs, we studies a lot of still-life which was mostly bottles, vases and guitars. I always loved its distinctive shape. The Westone guitar did not make the cut when I moved to America. My main instrument was my big Hohner acoustic, and even that did not fly with me in 2005, I brought it over a year and a half later. So this one floated about in London, at my brother’s where my nephew played it, then one year it turned up at my mum’s again, and that gave me something to play whenever I’d come back. I’d always intended to bring it over some day, but airline allowance and everything, it was too hard. This time though I flew with Virgin which has a good policy on instruments (thanks Branson!), and I was expecting to pay the extra to have it checked in at the gate. No you’re fine, they said, it doesn’t take up much room, it’s not that heavy, and so I was able to bring it on as an extra carry-on, very easy. So, after all these years, I have all my guitars reunited. I do need to fix the frets, and the connections, maybe get new pick-ups (as long as they are as dirty a sound as the current ones), and maybe then learn how to play it better. Nah, I’m good! The Westone is back! It’s 2025, already a way worse year than even imagined, it’s time to rock out.