Belle & Sebastian - "Women's Realm". A train is bearing me south, to London. It's the day I leave Scotland, "leave" in a real sense, for the second time in my life. I like these times, times when your life jostles free and everything's as easy as some jangled Charlie Brown piano chords. Still, the least Scotland could have done is to send me off in style. But the heavens are indomitably clear, the sky frustratingly blue. It's not dreich in any way or form: it's beautiful and green and I'm almost in England.

Since the weather refuses to cooperate, I turn to Belle & Sebastian. Not for a rainy-day music but for something closer to sunshower. An ambivalent meterology that's better suited to the bittersweet taste in my life. And Scottish. It's a song in the rising major key of If. The question: "Are you coming or are you not?" Hands clap, snare snaps, and Stuart Murdoch duets with Isobel Campbell. Are they together? They don't sing together. All we know is that they're both wondering: If, if, if. And the sun strafes my screen so I can't see what I type. It could be anything. If, if, if. A train is bearing me south.

One day I'll be allowed to DJ somewhere and I'll put this song on and I'll jump the fence to be there on the floor, there with all of you, even Jordan & Julian, Darek and Hamza there too, Milo and Mel and certainly Ania, and I wonder if amid our softshoe sneak they'll be able to make out the pattern of our moves, the words our soles press into the dust.

If they do, I hope they send me the answers. On a postcard.

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Dan Rossen (of Grizzly Bear) - "Graceland". The music of my childhood car-trips: Bach, Scarlatti, Mozart, Capercaille, The Roches, Dick Gaughan, that one Loreena McKennitt tape - and yes Simon & Garfunkel. But no Simon solo. No Grizzly Bear either. So it makes sense to me that this rendition of "Graceland" feels a little like eavesdropping on someone else's memory. There are angelic voices and the sounds of buried guitars. There's a man so happy to be longing.

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This weekend I made these cookies, these cookies and these cookies. All are recommended.

Sunday night in Glasgow I saw Joanna Newsom perform with a small orchestra. They did all of Ys, very elegantly, and then with her two buds she played "Bridges & Balloons", "Sadie", "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie", "Peach, Plum, Pear", one Scottish original and one new one - replete with "Yip!"s. She wore white and her harp looked like something from a Marion Zimmer Bradley book-jacket. Her voice was lovely, practised, less burred than any of the three times I've seen her previous. And the concert was on the whole very pretty. But unfortunately for me, I'm realising "pretty" is never what I search for in Joanna Newsom's work. I seek sudden beauty. I seek the breaking more than the tasteful. And I wait for her to catch hailstones from the air.