TWO massive causes for celebration last Friday, both defying the pundits and showing what hard work and determination can achieve. The Seagulls beat Man U to secure another season in the Premier League, igniting massive celebrations which went on far into the night. I still can’t remember how I managed to cycle home ...

Just about everyone supposedly "in the know" in the media had said we’d finish bottom along with Huddersfield and now we’re both safe. One in the eye for modern football predictability and a testament to the work of two great managers, Chris Hughton and David Wagner.

Tomorrow afternoon we end the season at Anfield and I’m hosting a "staying up" celebratory gig at the 81 Renshaw community space in the evening. Poetry from the wonderful Laura Taylor, then some from me and then my band Barnstormer, partying like it’s 1649!

And on the same day that we beat Man U it was announced that our local Labour Party had won four seats on Adur and Worthing Borough Council. Until last year we’d gone 40 years without a single councillor in Worthing, proof that the media-fostered notion that Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership can’t deliver results in previously Tory heartlands is a load of rubbish.

I was certainly inspired to trudge round delivering hundreds of letters and chatting to people on behalf of our local candidate, David Balfe, who in a previous life had managed Blur, founded successful indie label Food Records and played keyboards with The Teardrop Explodes.

Well, now he has his reward. He won the seat and I think it’s fair to say that anyone who could manage to play in a band with Julian Cope will find being a local councillor an absolute doddle.

Just finished recording my new album Restoration Tragedy with Barnstormer and it will be launched at Wigan Diggers’ Festival on Saturday September 8. There couldn’t be anywhere more appropriate. It’s 58 minutes long and it’ll be released on vinyl as well as CD, which means a double album with a gatefold sleeve, something I might have sneered at 40 years ago as a young punk rocker but seems perfectly OK now after 20 years of trying to cram my lyrics and ideas into a tiny CD booklet. The vinyl revival, long established in mainland Europe but now well and truly happening here, is a wonderful thing.

Yesterday I had the honour of taking my band to the John Peel Centre in Stowmarket, set up in the great man’s honour by his widow Sheila. I played there once before several years ago and she was kind enough to put me up in her home, which gave me the opportunity to spend an hour looking through his legendary record collection.

It was very moving to see all my albums there but not at all surprising since he played tracks from them many times and also invited me to do two sessions on his show in the early 1980s, giving me the initial exposure which has enabled me to earn my living doing what I love ever since. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, thanks, Peelie.

Tonight, Barnstormer do an entirely acoustic set at the Cross Scythes in Sheffield. An ideal opportunity for those interested in our approach to early music, but put off by the punk rock element, to come and hear some rebel Roundhead renaissancecore!

And next week we’re at Lewes Medieval Fayre, so I will finally be able to play my rauschpfeife in public because it's outdoors. It’s a 16^th century German instrument whose name translates as "noise pipe" and it sounds like a duck being castrated in a megaphone. The neighbours don’t like it, neither does my wife. But I think it’s fantastic.