All the gear. No idea.

I'm on my third guitar. The first cost £120 including a carrying bag. It travelled back and forth to Munich with me as hand luggage in the days when airlines were much more flexible about such matters. I bought it to learn as an alternative to beer drinking, which was the chief leisure activity of the engineer abroad. Indeed, it was clutching this guitar when I met Robert Plant on the airport shuttle bus. He was playing at The Olympic Park Stadium with Jimmy Page. "Where are you playing?" He asked me. When I told him that I was learning, and playing only in my hotel room he suggested that I might have left it a bit late. The guitar died when it fell on its face and snapped the top of the neck.

While in Munich I managed to write my first song. I was at the end of over two years travelling and had captured the experience in a delightful song called 'The L30 Blues'; named in honour of the Land-Rover project I was working on. This was to be my first public performance and I sang it at my leaving presentation as an alternative to making a speech. It went down quite well.

The second guitar I still own. The desire to play was still quite strong. It cost double the first, including a hard case. It was an electro-acoustic and I bought it with the intention of amplifying it at some point. With it being slightly smaller around the neck, and a bit shorter in length, I found I could reach some of the chords that proved impossible on the old one. I wanted to learn Beatles songs, but George Harrison's hand span must have been extraordinary.

This year I got my third guitar. It was a present from Shirley. It is a Martin, it sounds fabulous and my enthusiasm for playing would be astronomical but for one thing; my inadequacy.Owning a Martin, for me, is a bit like feeding caviar to a mongrel; owning an Aston Martin without having a driving licence.

So I have decided that without some help I will never be worthy of this lovely guitar and had my first proper lesson. I now understand, at least conceptually, how chords work and what this means over the full length of the fret board; and given opportunity to scratch my head and pick the wrong notes to play simple tunes with six notes on the first two strings. This boy does deserve good food, but I think it is going to be a while before I am fed.