Thursday 24th

I find myself in a garden of calm. In a lush green pocket of alive. Somehow, somewhere along this almost two year journey of making this album, during which time I spent a lot of time thinking about many things I'd avoided, something shifted. I am no longer the girl I was, and I'm staring down the barrel of woman. Demons have been scared so far off I threw away the pitchfork.

I'm not saying I'm trouble free. But I feel lighter. I feel stronger. I feel more like the woman in that photograph, the one with the cheekbones who owns her own DT100s and knows how to use them. Some days, I look in the mirror and I almost believe it's her looking back. I feel like I've been trying to track her down for years. I feel like we could be friends.

And that's enough.

Wednesday 23rd

Tips for the procrastinator

Working as I seem to be recently in my newly discovered role as guru and all-round soothsayer, I thought I would pass on today's wisdom. And it is thus. If you find yourself with a long list of things to do, and are a naturally inclined procrastinator, as is right and proper,here is what you should do.

1) Make a list of all the tings you have to do, even the trivial ones like laundry and all the little jobs which get neglected.

2) Pick the one which scares you the most, or which you are desperate to avoid doing. It should be something important, not cleaning the loo.

3) Go to bed swearing that if you do nothing else the next day, you will do tht one thing (and that once it's out of the way, the rest wont look so bad).

4) When you get up the next morning, reitorate your firm and honest intention to do that one thing.

I promise to you that by the end of that day, you'll have done every single OTHER thing on that list. Wish me luck for tomorrow - I'm out of other jobs.

Sunday 20th

The last couple of days have been wonderful. I've been out meeting and talking to new people, sharing ideas and just generally having a lovely time. I particularly enjoyed two events from the last two days.

The first was a seminar (followed by a club night) run by burnt progress called CDR. It was on the future of musical discovery given the rise of the internet. It was not only interesting but also lively and fun, which in my experience is unusual for these kind of events. Ran into a couple of people I knew, met some new ones. Generally, super good.

The other was coffee with Sean Eskimo, who I met on a course a while back. We have a number of weird coincidences in common, and it was a lot of fun. Given my massive social inadequacies, I call that a win.

I was up til 4am this morning buzzing from the fun I've been having over the last couple of weeks. Even though every preorder creates a fair amount of work for me to do, I've loved how quickly and prolifically they've been coming in. Thank you to everyone who's ordered. And over the last few days we've been editing down the video I was on a shoot for in mid-March (yes, that was the Big Secret Project - I was worried it'd turn out terrible and I'd have to hide it in the attic or bury it in the woods in the middle of the night). It's come out pretty well. When I was a child I briefly was sent to one of those weekend "stage schools" and was given the job of "presenting" the video for one of the showcases. Whenever I looked directly into the lens of the camera, I froze up completely. I was worried that might happen again. Needless to say, this time it went a bit better.

Shall be putting that up in a few days. My production services have been requested on Monday by a friend-of-a-friend's band, so I'll see what I can do for them. Busytastic. And I've been very naughty and took this afternoon mostly off, so I'm behind schedule on my to-do-list. Lots to make up for tomorrow.

Wednesday 16th

Tonight I have been swearing at my mac. A lot. Despite their usually excellent basic software, my edition of imovie is so buggy is makes cubase look reliable. Having forgotten to save just before it crashed for the fifth time, I lost my temper with it all a bit. However, I didn't go all Rock God and chuck it out the window, and the thing I was doing is almost complete. Another couple of hours, I think. I shall share it with you when it's done.

I spent about an hour and a half [almost] failing to change my nose ring for a stud. I must return my Cool Membership Card immediately.

And now, back to Stephen Fry and the story of the printing press before bed.

Sunday 13th

I've been sitting in the darkroom all night making a bunch of new prints for the ltd edition packages, because the pile of complete packages (ie the ones with photos, because they take such a long time to do) is already starting to get significantly lower. So I've been listening to Mr da Bank & loving his tracklist tonight. The Soulwax reedit/remix of "You Can't Always Get What You Want" was totally awesome.

Didn't get home til 3am last night - once the gig ended I went over the Boyfriend's club and we had a ridiculous number of chips and I did all the washing up in the kitchen that the boys who run the place had been ignoring. Their dad came in halfway through and feigned massive shock that someone other than him was doing it, so hopefully that's a point in my favour. Sold another two copies of the album just sitting in reception, which was unexpected but nice. Glad I had a few on me.

Been taking it slightly easier today, mostly because I only got up at midday. Which I maintain is perfectly reasonable for a Sunday. But there's about another 45 photos done for the albums tonight, and that only took about 4 hours, which is a record for me. Was explaining to a friend last night how [almost] everything in the album ltd edition packages is handmade - the art cards are cut by hand (by me), tied up with ribbon (by me), charms chosen and placed in hand glued mini envelopes (by me), and everything else has been designed by me, from the audio to the imagery to the way they sit in the box. I even put the boxes together from flatpacks. I reckon there's at least an hour of my time in each box. It's been a lot of fun, and a lot of movies and music, and a lot of thinking too. What more could you want?

Friday 11th

Today has been a very good day. Well, to be totally accurate, this evening has been really good. This afternoon I almost gassed myself, which was clearly not a success.

You see, among my many other impressive genetic gifts (ridiculous allergies, short-sightedness, etc), I have no sense of smell. None of the women on my dad's side do. So, when I turned the grill on and left the burger to defrost and cook while I did some practice for the gig tomorrow, I had no idea that the flame had gone out and had been replaced with a pure strong gas flow until some time later. I also had no way of knowing when the gas had actually gone out of the windows. I'm slightly worried that there's a pocket of it left in my bedroom and I'll die a poet's death by accident in the night.

Tonight, on the other hand, was totally awesome. Give me a chilly marquee, tealights, free candyfloss & popcorn (two of my favourite things - add in a hot pork bun from a slightly odd looking man in a slightly odd looking stall and I'd be very very happy), and PERFORMANCE POETRY. Not just any performance poetry, but the guys from Aisle 16, who I'd helped organise a gig for during my working-for-a-poetry-publishing-house phase at uni (we've all been through that one). Rocked my (and everyone else's) socks. And now I'm in bed watching Top Gear. I'd call that a win.

Wednesday 9th

Today was a very good day. This afternoon I packed a backpack full of preorders and took them down to the Post Office, along with some posters in a tube, and sent them all out. It took a surprisingly long time to actually put all the packages through the system. Which was wonderful.

And yes, you can presume from this that the albums have arrived and are perfect! To hold the album in my hands and know that this thing which I set out to achieve when this all started is finally done is enough today. Tomorrow, I shall focus on the next stage. But for just for now, I am going to bask.

Tuesday 8th

The website revamp is complete! I think it looks super pretty. Hope you do too.

Hopefully, IÕll be having a big exciting delivery tomorrow. Fingers crossed for everything being fine this time around.

Sunday 6th

It went really well. Honestly, it did. Helped me work out the kinks in the live setup too - and believe me, there are some once you get it on a PA system. Overdid the reverb a bit. Irritatingly, absolutely no one (and this is the first time this has EVER happened to me at a gig) told me exactly who I sounded like. Usually, IÕd have been grateful. But now I have my tally on the website as a tongue-in-cheek method to deal with that kind of irrelevance, IÕm desperate for people to compare me to /someone/ (preferably as many and as ridiculous people as possible). So, next time you see me, please, do me a favour. Tell me how much I sound like the Ramones. Or Boyzone. Or Shania Twain. IÕll even settle for a real opinion.

IÕm sorry I havenÕt updated since - my body sort of dissolved back into itself after the gig had finally happened, and IÕd pretty much sorted out all the millions of things that went seriously wrong in March. I got up the day after the gig and looked around my house which was covered in the shrapnel from the many battles, and realised I was shrapnel too. So I did pretty much nothing for a few days, while my body healed itself back up again.

In this kind of weather - the just-touching-spring weather - I miss a very specific place and time. IÕve been yearning to go back for weeks. But thereÕs no one left there now, and nowhere to go, so iÕve been trying to put it out of my mind. But if someone showed up here and offered to take me for flapjacks and coffee and a row on the river in the sunlight, IÕd be joyous. Yesterday, I just wanted to get in the car and drive north, until I ran out. Given the option, IÕll always go north.

Been code-monkeying again today. Hope you like the tweaked site - I think it looks better AND is more functional. Whoop.

Pee Es. I won all the battles. Oh yes. Rah.