Friday 29th

Before I begin I should state that anyone significantly older than me is likely to read this as the ramblings of an idiot child and that those significantly younger might not be able to empathise.

In a little under two months it is my birthday. I will be entering my mid twenties. For the last couple of months I've been feeling really stuck & stagnant. I guess I suddenyl became worried about wasting my youth. That I'd look back one day on this time and go "did you really just play gigs and watch things on the BBC iPlayer?"

Since the album was completed I haven't really done a lot of creative work. Maybe that's getting to me. Maybe it's the isolation of moving to a new town and spending most of my time locked in a studio instead of getting out and mixing with people. Last week I built a 5 foot mannequin in my own image. I'm not sure why.

And then yesterday, I kind of snapped. I needed an adventure. On a whim, I got on a train. I ended up in Shepherd's Bush in London playing my first ever game of football. With 25 people I'd never met before. Surrounded by bemused drunks and an amazing scottie dog. I have a massive bruise on my thumb from a point blank shot from a football (before it exploded), one on my thigh from a similar mis-aim and one on my back from a tackle from my team captain. I might add that our team won. Yes we did.

I decided it was silly travelling two hours to London only to be there for a few hours and go home, so I went on to Kent and dropped in on my dad, who took me out for dinner and kindly let me sta in his spare room. Then back to London. Some wandering, a delicious lunch assembled from a variety of nibbly niceness bought from as many cafes in the St Paul's area as I could find. I am a chubby Leni now.

Then back to Derby to meet a Man From The Internet (my 16th of the last 2 days - I'm sure my mother warned me not to do this kind of thing). I spent three hours fixing up his dreads for him, which were in dire need of some maintenance. As of now, I am tired, my leg muscles ache and my knuckles are sore and I am happy.

Sunday 24th

I go through periods of having lots of long nightmares. Last night I was being attacked by a man I haven't seen in a long time (and had nothing against when I did know him). He kept grabbing me so tightly that it hurt and squeezing hard. TI noticed this afternoon that I have bruises on my back where his "hands" were. This means one of two things. Either all those sci fi episodes are right and you CAN injure yourself by dreaming it, or my subconscious is pissed with me.

In other news, as today isn't Monday after all, I will be taking to the stage at 9:40pm at The Maze in Notts TOMORROW night as part of the all day girl festival. I am well excited. I am also tidying.

Monday 18th

Small girl + lots of heavy equipment + driving around all the damn time = bad back. Genius. I am now almost incapable of bending over and it takes me a good while to go from sitting to standing. I am deeply unimpressed.

Thursday 7th

This was just going to be a blog of yesterday, but I realised I'd forgotten to post this:

Almost two weeks ago, Chris came over to mess about with the album tracks acoustic-style. We ended the day doing a version of Catechisms on piano, toy piano and toy zither. Nothing was in tune. It sounded awesome. More importantly, a grown man playing a toy piano is very entertaining:




Which brings us on to yesterday, because I've been totally crap at remembering to drag my camera around recently, which was particularly disappointing when i turned up to the gig on Saturday to find everyone in fancy dress.

This is the Channel M first floor studio:








These are a few of my fellow interviewees, alongside the lovely (and far too beautiful) Rachael:





These are the giant windows down one side of the studio which lets the general public look in. They can see us. We can see them. It's a great way to scare small children. (And slightly nervy solo artists.)





Most importantly, I met Frank Sidebottom AND his friend, mini Frank Sidebottom.











There are many amusing stories, but I am still sleepy.


Then I dashed across to the other side of central Manchester to meet Brin Coleman to do an interview for his Bing Satellites radio show. It was a lot of fun and, despite my family's concerned, he turned out not to be a murderer.





Then I went home and went to sleep.

Monday 4th

I have been writing lots and lots of blogs in my head over the last few weeks, always with good intentions of transferring them on to the shiny white internet, but every time I've found something better/more important/else to do when I actually got somewhere with a computer and internet connection. I will try to do better.

So what, after all this time, dragged me to my keyboard? What was of such importance that I couldn't hold myself back?

There is a site somewhere which details websites whose urls have not been well thought through, resulting in numerous inadvertent puns and innuendos. I love that kind of thing. The trickery of language, the easy fools. So just imagine my delight to discover that the official EMI youtube channel (GB division) is called "emirecordsuk".