Young Mrs Receding Hairline came to visit last weekend, which was very very lovely. It was the first time she'd been to Bath properly – this is, not in the welter of form signing, bank-balance depletion and desk-humphing* that characterised our previous visits – and I think she now feels much more positive about the move.

On the subject of Better Half, I should record for posterity the immeasurable good she has done to the apparent taste of my music library. Yes, Max Raabe is still in there – nothing to do with her, I hasten to add – but it's been very rewarding to have a proper muso for a wife. And I do mean proper muso. As a teenager she was an avid reader of Q and the NME, and, though not quite as fundamentalist as she once was, she still maintains a pretty hard line on novelty records, bubblegum pop and the musical stylings of Phil Colins. But then, that's quite as it should be.

If it weren't for her, though, I'd never have sought out and discovered so much music that I now love. Case in point: The Divine Comedy. (I know they qualify as mainstream by most people's reckoning, but work with me here.) I recently bought Victory for the Comic Muse and it's been on continuous loop on my iPod ever since. You can preview it on iLike or through iTunes, and is one of the most rewarding albums I've bought in ages. I humble direct you to A Lady of a Certain Age, Mother Dear, and, just because it amuses me, Threesome.

* No, not humping. Humphing may be a Scottishism, and just means lifting, though it suggests that the objects being lifted are heavy and unwieldy, and that the process of moving them around is tiresome and unwelcome.