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Life I'm writing this to a soundtrack of Russian music. The Moscow State Circus is back in town or more specifically the park and I can hear what I think must be the third show today sonically bubbling through the window. You know those moments when you think that a performer may have made a mistake and then quickly rectifies it and you all applaud. It may be staged. Because I'm hearing that same applause at the same moment in each show breaking the illusion somewhat.

In other news, if ever I was going to develop a crush on a newspaper columnist, I think it would be Laura Barton, whose music columns for the Guardian are often a Friday highlight, simply because her tastes so perfectly match mine. Once again today I found myself grinning in that 'me too!' kind of way. As well as name checking Regina Spector (whose new album I seemed to buy about four months before anyone else noticed it) there's the following which literally made me yelp:

"An album I play most Sundays: the soundtrack to Kissing Jessica Stein. I picked it up in Moscow airport once, inexplicably. It blusters in with Blossom Dearie's Put On a Happy Face and ends in the wallowing depths of her I Wish You Love. In between it flutters with Sarah Vaughan, Ernestine Anderson, Shirley Horn, and Dinah Washington singing Teach Me Tonight: "Let's start with the ABC of it/ Roll right down to the XYZ of it ..." It's jazz-lite, it's how I imagined New York to sound before I ever visited, it's a really good album for eating boiled eggs and soldiers to."

Which is of course one of my favourite albums. It's just wonderful and has probably indirectly influence my musical taste for at least three years. Certainly wouldn't have listened to as much Diana Krall if I hadn't heard her work here first. It's one of those rare occasions when a film soundtrack lives up to the work that inspired it and also works as an entity in and of itself. Laura, I know this is sudden and we hardly know each other but ...