I nipped down to see a brilliant thing at the Barbican the other night - it's a room full of finches playing loud electric guitars, and it's wonderful. This video gives you an idea of what it's like, but add in the 50-odd finches flying around your head from guitar to guitar, plus the fact that the guitars are wired to surprisingly loud amps, and the effect is wonderful and surprisingly musical. It's like a gig and a zoo - together at last.

After a while, I noticed there was a hushed commotion going on next to one of the basses. Turns out, one of the birds had LAID AN EGG ON IT! An egg which was now rolling around perilously on the body of the bass, four foot off the floor. A couple of times it looked like it was going to fall to its certain doom, and members of the crowd lurched forward to stop it, only for it to roll back to relative safety, lodged between the G-string and the pickups.

At one point I went to catch it myself, but was then told off by a bossy lady in the crowd, who said that the smell of my hands on the egg would cause the mother to reject the egg! Argh! It was unbearably tense - since everyone in the room was now watching the bass, the finches flew on to it to play to the crowd, meaning the makeshift Gibson nest wobbled even more...

I alerted a steward about the impending eggtastrophe! He didn't know what to do! He panicked and disappeared to call his supervisor! She took one look at the precarious egg, in its eggstreme peril, panicked as well and disappeared to alert the artist herself! Clearly this sort of thing wasn't supposed to be part of the installation. Although it did make it a lot more eggciting.

Anyway, when the supervisor lady got off the phone, she immediately evacuated the entire gallery! The finches were allowed to stay. But I never found out what happened after that. I hope it made it. That little baby bird is going to be so rock and roll. I subsequently checked and found out that the egg smell rejection thing is nonsense, so IN YOUR FACE BOSSY LADY I COULD HAVE SAVED THAT EGG I WOULD HAVE BEEN A HERO.

I had a music day today. The Skankhammer came over, and immediately complemented me on my teapot. It makes a musical sound when it pours, and I'd never noticed. The two great loves of The Skankhammer's life are tea and music, so this for him was a wonderful moment.

We whacked out a vocal line for the soon-to-be-techno classic "My House That Looks Like Me" and pretty much polished off recording a samba number about my happy goat, which is looking like it's going to be one of my all-time faves. It is so very very happy, and goaty. I get to go Uuuuhuuuuuh, yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, GOAT! This can only be a good thing.

We also had a crack at recording on the video camera a little ditty about the rooms of the house- a kids song - not a proper studio recording just a little fun thing- with Zak in it. He wasn't in the kind of mood I was anticipating though and instead of dancing around gleefully, which is what we had in mind, he shouted "STOP DADDY" every time I started playing. We would start again... twang twang "STOP DADDY STOP IT NOW!" - I'll see what it looks like when I've got the footage off the camera, but I think it might be even lovelier, if somewhat more shambolic, than what we were actually planning to do.

Today I have eaten my home-made pasta (lunch) and my home-made steak and kidney pie (tea) as well as various other things. I shall be making more of these things and I shall also be trying making bread in the near future.

Here is a photo of me showing my glorious home-made steak and kidney pie to Zak, while he evaluates it carefully, with the approach of a connoisseur of fine wines testing an exquisite vintage.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, 7 Seconds of Love are not the first people to record a song in honour of Laika, the first animal in space. We're in good company: The Arcade Fire, The Divine Comedy and Gorillaz have all had a go, amongst many others, and it's interesting to contrast the musical interpretations and what they reveal about their authors' feelings towards Laika and her mission.

Spanish 80s synth-popster Mecano, for example, leave us no doubt that we should pity Laika - just a normal dog who happened to be in the wrong suburb of Moscow at the wrong point in the space race. Their 1988 single 'Laika' is an earnest piece, with a soaring, heartfelt chorus of "Adios, Laika", and a lot of moithering on about how the awful chaps back at the control tower are popping the champers as Laika is left to drift off into the abyss. Oh boo hoo hoo. She's in FLIPPING SPACE, for god sake! IT MUST'VE BEEN THE MOST FUN ANY DOG HAS EVER HAD! Anyway, here they are on Rockomanía playing it live. Or as "live" as music on TV ever was in the 80s.

The Divine Comedy also leave the listener in no doubt that Laika was a tragic figure - 'Laika's Theme', a haunting instrumental from their 2004 album 'Absent Friends' has a hint of redemption at the end but is essentially another sob-story about a lost dog.

Why can't these people just get over it? HE GOT TO WOOF A BIT IN ZERO GRAVITY!

Worst of all, The Arcade Fire, on their 2005 album 'Funeral', compare the geniunely awful loss of their friend's brother to the luckiest rocket dog of the 1950s in 'Neighborhood #2 (Laika)'. Now, I don't want to trivialise their loss at all, but for goodness sake, enough dog pitying. FOR A PRECIOUS FEW DAYS, LAIKA GAZED AT THE EARTH AS A DISTANT AQUAMARINE ORB! HOW MANY DOGS GET TO DO THAT?

Clearly, all of these musical interpretations missed the point. They're obsessed with the canine tragedy of Laika. Surely if we can pity a dog for suffering, then we can also celebrate her wonderful journey into the abyss? I'll wager 6 days in space was a lot better than a few more miserable years begging for butcher's bones in Khrushchev's Russia.

Which is why our bombastic polska romp 'Rocket Dog' is the best song about Laika ever made. Apart, perhaps, from this wonderful Romainian-sexpop extravaganza which, although it doesn't specifically discuss Laika's mission literally, it definitely captures the spirit of the rocket dog. As you'll hear.