Too many smoothing irons in the fire

I have been keeping up my challenge, I've just not got round to blogging it, so a quick catch up:

Thursday
Iron Maiden Songbook (Arr Ray Donato) - Prodigal Son (classical guitar)
I mostly spent my time complaining that the arranger, whilst probably trying to make his transcription easier to play, has done precisely the opposite. I worked this out by ear, and this guy has written the opening:
E-------------------------------0-
B----4-------4--5----2-0-----2-0--
G---4--4----4--4----2-------2-----
D--4-------4-------2-------2------
A-2-------2-------0-------0-------
E---------------------------------

Which to my ears is plainly wrong, and quite difficult. The reason is, you get open string ringing and they'd have used a block pattern and shifted it down like this:

E---------------0---------------0-
B------0-------0-------0-------0--
G----8-------8-------6-------6----
D---9-------9-------7-------7-----
A--9-------9-------7-------7------
E-7-------7-------5-------5-------
etc.

How much easier is that? I don't *know* this of course, but it's what 20 years of guitar playing tells me.

I also had last rehearsal of term, and very good it was too.

Friday
Not a book, just a piece of paper I had lying about - Fly Me too the Moon (classical guitar)
I did it as a kind of waltz. My housemate told me it sounded like lift music so I stopped.
Also lots of good work on n34 which I'm chuffed to bits about so far

Saturday
Liasons Diatonique (Alexandra Browne) - Coconut Dance by Alan Lamb (melodeon)
Pretty cool book this where she's tried to annotate the inflections on the melodeon. Quite a nice tune, clearly written for the box.

Today
I'm still actually practicing variation 6 (Wednesday's tune) like mad on my guitar, and it's coming on a treat. I may have to redo the recording at some point. I also found a better way of fingering the most tricky bit.
Today's tune however is:
Folk Songs for Choirs (John Rutter) - Dashing away the Smoothing Iron (mandolin, acc. guitar, bouzouki, bass)
I've recorded the first few bars of this here:

Quite pleased with this really, I think it's bordering on sounding like Mike Oldfield, who I admire, if not worship.