Dear lovely reader of my blog

It's been so long since I have done one of these it's not funny. I had good reason for stopping, I found myself self-censoring and omitting things that were actually massive chunks of what was truly going on in my life. I didn't want the blog to be rated 18 now did I? And yes, this version is also going to be pretty PG too for all you wee ones and not so wee ones out there.

I was wondering whether I should get my coat on and check out the new, absolutely mega huge new branch of Lidl that has just opened up in Southall. But the cold is putting me off. I'm wondering if they have sexy new stock that the one in Hayes is not privy too, or whether they simply have an entire aisle devoted to 21p cans of sweetcorn rather than just a section on a shelf?

I'm not knocking Lidl, it keeps me in plain yogurt, acrylic paint and strangely enough wedge cushions that keep my back in good shape. And the best Balti jar sauce also hails from there.

So what's been happening? Well in brief ( lol, yeah right), Hush The Many are officially no more, which is tragic, but kind of inevitable when the folk in the band all flew away to different, new things. I guess partly this blog has been galvanised by the fact,  that the gig that should have been the apex of the band's career is now being played out at the Scala by Arrows of Love – which is Nima's new louder and more energetic outfit. I am down to review this gig for e-gigs, so will be sticking on my musical writers hat, and no doubt if you're there tomorrow you will see me dancing and then scribbling, dancing and scribbling..dancing and.. you get the idea don't you? : )

SonVer are doing really well and  have gone down well at summer festivals.  I went to see them play at The Good Ship last week after going down to check out the new B Never Too Busy to be Beautiful store that's opened up on Oxford Street. And they played a bloody, great set. They hadn't rehearsed in a little bit, but once the music was flowing it was just luscious waves of sound that ebbed and flowed and escalated into something so powerful I could feel my skin tingling towards the end.

 Khat Show Host and A.D. sounded really great that night, and for me, being at a gig like that, feels like coming home. I guess stuff from the scented pool that was the birthplace of Hush The Many is going to hold a special radiance for me, but I would have to be a really daft bint to go along to a gig repeatedly if the music sucked, and I'm not.  They're playing with the fabulous Revere on October 22^nd at Cargo, and even though it's a school night and I work locally to home which is great, but beyond awkward for nights out, I am so looking forward to this gig! It's Revere's single launch for the spine-tingling ' The Escape Artist' and you should come if you can. I am also watching Mogwai on the 24^th October, and it's gonna be an extremely good week, socially too, away from the stage.

Over the summer, I've been really skint and supremely creative. In a way taking more of a back seat from MySpace and reviewing bands freed me and my head to do other stuff. I had the domestic detox of all detoxes on Freecycle, gave away a dozen handbags and a dozen bottles of perfumes. Went through all my music and books and tried to do a dispassionate cull. Invited lots of friends to come and have a riffle through the bags and boxes. Some of it was mine, some of I inherited from family who couldn't deal with the disposal. I'm not really a fan of boybands or Manga videos but I had them in abundance!

And I painted – a lot. Hearts, eyes, skies, fire, the sun..

And I wrote – a lot, which was really, really cool : ) I re-opened Gunshot Glitter and went to town on it. I had a very lovely boy called Niall Spooner-Harvey who is a poet and keyboard player, come over and read it cover to cover when he came over to lunch one day, and he totally got my book and my characters, and that meant an awful lot to me, because I genuinely respect him as a fellow writer. It re-inspired me to get myself straightened out enough  to carry on, and a few months back, I wrote my first brand new chapter in about 3 years, scary but true. But this moment had been brewing inme I think? My friend John has been really encouraging, and when I was in Manchester my friend Jo drove me round the city so I could scout locations. I guess the momentum has just been building and building,

 I let life and love and the emotional tug towards the creative careers of artists I loved overpower me. They didn't ask me to, I just couldn't help it at the time, I tend to find when I find stuff that moves me I want to see it fly and succeed, but if it's not a two way street I just get angry, but still find it hard to let go. After much unclenching of fingers and untangling of heart strings I moved on from that completely. Let some pivotal, but emotionally draining friendships go, which was really hard, but definitely the right thing to do. Heavy eh? But it's always cool when you emerge on the other side.

And I started to have more fun, even though I was church mouse poor. I missed all the festivals I was keen on, but went to RISE (not an anti-racism festival - Boris, you strange one) where I enjoyed some fine salsa dancing, CSS being sexy on stage and bizarrely singing about dry vaginas and throwing bananas into the audience,The Aliens being fabulously psychedelic and then something wonderfully coincidental, was  my fellow May 4th born friend Anne from The Times, who took over my job spotting me in the crowd,when I was filming The Aliens. I'd not seen her since leaving the previous year though we have kept in touch. It was really cool to see her and meet her husband Fionn who I had heard so much about.

And I did go to the extremely reasonably priced ( if you ignore the bizarre admin/postage fees) Ben and Jerry's Summer Sundae where I danced my hiney off to Delays, enjoyed Florence and The Machine, Guillemots, Charlotte Hatherly(sp?) and except for some glassy eyed drunken buffoons really enjoyed finally seeing The Charlatans, and marvelled at the irresistible cuteness of the 40-something Tim Burgess.

And I ate 7 ice creams, and I wasn't sick, and somehow drank a whole bottle of Yoplait on the way home too. And I pinched the bottom of a man dressed as a giant chicken.  Not really sure what that says about me, but it made me happy!

On the way back, me and Trevor went to Ealing were a lovely woman called Janet gave me three rolls of ornate wallpaper called ( kidding you not) Yasmin and a brand new black chandelier. It was exquisite -  and I was thrilled. She was on Freecycle and originally it was intended for someone else, and I'd gone to collect a bath spa –yes,  I now have a reason to spend EVEN more time in the bath. And I saw it boxed there, and admired it massively and said I hoped the other freecycler was really appreciative off it, as it was beyond cool this gear. Later on she called me, as she was annoyed they'd been so non-specific with the collection time and said if I could take it home it was mine. Thrilled wouldn't even come close. I've wanted to revamp my boudoir for ages, but didn't have the cash to do so.  My friend Pete helped move the furniture into the centre of the room and then on a Friday I set about tearing strips of the walls. It's not often in life that tearing off wallpaper is seen as an okay thing to do is it? So I enjoyed this.

Unfortunately, I stupidly forgot that I couldn't mix alcohol with my painkillers, and was extremely delicate to put it mildly for the next 24hours, but somehow by the end of the weekend, had put up this frankly gorgeous wall paper. Then a few weeks later my friend Trevor very kindly put up both chandeliers so I have a bronze slightly distressed one in the bedroom and the onyx black one in the lounge. Very cool indeed.

It was a good night for seeing some faces I've missed from Ed's crowd like Stuffy from Stuffy and the Fuses, and Robbie who used to manage The New York Fund. I got frogmarched to Waterloo as I kept spotting folk or was spotted by folk, but it was for my own good as there was a bus strike on and I made the last tube to Heathrow by the skin of my teeth. All the pervos have alarmed me lately too in the area. They need taking in hand and I need to get a safety alarm. It has really scared me.

I didn't get to travel much this year, due to lack of cash, but I did have a super lovely day on the beach in Bournemouth. My friend Trevor chose this as the spot to see in his birthday, it was a perfect day, even the crappy traffic on the way in didn't hamper it as we just played tons of my compilation CDs such as the mighty fine ' God, I have a great taste in music' which is NOT available in the shops, as neither is ' Wake Up Yazz' which I burned when I went to Prague back in 2001, and played every day when I was on a tram going home to my flat in Ladvi.

I treated him to chips and an Italian meal, and he minded my bag, while I ran into the waves and then shouted half freaked and half delighted ' MY KNICKERS ARE SOAKING WET! '  Probably a touch too loudly. But it was true, and it took the sun a while to fix that .  We reluctantly drove back to London past 9pm, and I just about resisted stealing three young cats I spied in Boscombe after supper, and then the next day went and watched ' The Dark Knight' in Wood Green with my siblings. Cool movie, I still feel very sad when I dwell on the premature loss of Heath Ledger.  He was creepy and great in that movie.

And I got paid to write some copy for B Never Too Busy to be Beautiful – if you get their Xmas and Autumn catalogue, you will find about a third of it in Autumn and about half of Xmas was written by yours truly. Creatively it was a great, great experience for me, and wonderful affirmation that I am a bona fide writer who is good at the thing she loves doing.  I had a hell of a lot of fun doing this work. I sat on the bed with my parcel and looked like  drag queen after covering myself in glitter and face paint.

 I got to write about products such as Cleopatra's Golden Balls and got to smell perfumes called Dirty and Breath of God, and have a chuckle at Ladyboy. All men should have a whiff of Ladyboy so you can understand why an unpeeled banana accompanies the page in the catalogue and it's not just B being all coy and pervo about men's cocks lol.

Businesswise, away from the sheer passion of tartware and the love of words being combined, unfortunately not so straightforward an experience, but I think it's a really small world and paths tend to cross and cross again, regardless of the distance you put between yourself and the world.  For example, when I was in the Seychelles the taxi driver who took me to the airport had been to Feltham and knew Hayes. How scary is that?

Oh, and finally, after 11 odd years of berating this place as being and I quote, ' the armpit of the Universe' I can now actually say that I've found a genuine beauty spot on this ass barnacle of London. The amazing Norman Leddy Memorial Gardens behind the Beck Theatre are just stunning. I've been there 3 times now. I've even taken my family. Wow. Flowers, manicured lawns, peace, crazy trees, squirrels and a true, soothing silence only broken by birdsong.  Gorgeous.

On a sadder note the wonderful Masala Dosa van in Southall has now gone. Sob! Tis tragic. I've not found anything on par and I've tried about 5 places so far.

On a happier note, I met this awesome chickie who is like my twin except she's not me, and she's born 2 days before me, and she really makes me laugh. But she doesn't like coriander, but she does agree that The The's ' Uncertain Smile' has an amazing piano solo and like me she adores cats and dancing for endless hours.

Anyone who thinks astrology is crap is so wrong, we are spookily alike. It's always lovely to make a great new friend, so this working lark besides keeping me from destitution isn't all bad I guess? I've met some nice people since becoming gainfully employed again, and slowly, slowly I am learning to combine it with my creative writing.

I hope you've enjoyed this, I apologise it's been a long time coming, I really hope this year has been kind to you and this crazy credit crunch hasn't inflicted too much damage on you. Just remember what goes down will eventually go up if you keep working at it. It's the nature of life.

Yasmin x x x x

p.s. if you are ever in Uxbridge, go to Bouville Wright at the top of the High St, they sell really cool and unusual  things. I found an Alfons Mucha photo album covered in glitter, and a clock with a burlesque theme to it, which now hangs in my kitchen, and it was all very reasonably priced too…oh and the Fig Tree on Windsor Street is a very nice pub, especially when you need a photo of a wine bottle at 10:30am! x

p.p.s I have changed my mind about Colin Farrell after seeing him on Jonathan Ross's show, that Irish boy is hot!

Hi there sweetpeas ; )

Not quite the blog you were expecting is it? As it's shockingly wee, and secondly it's not really about me at all. I'm making this 51st one, after an absence from blogging all about SonVer. It's kind of a little birthday gift to my friend Mrs McLees. I will, I am sure, blog again properly at some point.

I also kind of had this internal debate about the value and honesty of doing these lately, if I wasn't going to truly speak my mind. Hence the queitness, I've just been too pissed off with someone I really cared about. Fuck it, life is too short and when someone elects to walk out of your life, it leaves a vaccum for positive, new things to occur in it.

Anway, back to more important things.  I had this day, a day of culture if you will, which a handful of friends accompanied me on. It was also the last day of drinking on the tube - I had these Aussie sweethearts try and run off with me, and I saw ' There Will Be Blood', ate at one of my fave noodle bars off Upper St, went to the National Portrait Gallery, got a Hot Chip CD, ended the night at the mighty Masala Dosa caravan in Southall ( why did you have to leave? Sob!)  and saw SonVer play a cool set at the Union Chapel.

I wrote a review for London Tourdates but they had to bump it due to space considerations and it's too late to go in now, which is well annoying and a first for me actually, but I know it's just a pitfall of journalism, but it's not too late for you guys to find out what's good for you ; )

SonVer comprise - Joanna Quail, Ruban Byrne, Ben McLees and Alistair Richardson. All three minus Ben, once played in Hush The Many. But that is where the commonality ends, as they don't sound anything like Hush The Many. They're post-rock instrumentalists and create mood music, which would sound wonderful in a film soundtrack or just against the landscape of a vivid scene in life.

There is a gig coming up at the Half Moon in Putney on Friday 25th July in London, and you should see their MySpace or Facebook for festival dates, coming up..

Here is the review below, and beneath that is a You Tube clip taken from the set. Hope you enjoy, normal service might resume soon....I already feel a bit better. I hope you've had a lovely year so far. Mine's definitely been different. Cat Power gave me a flower, that was really cool. I miss Ed Harcourt, he gives really good hugs.

Lots of love

Yasmin x x x x

SonVer

Union Chapel

Saturday 31 May 2008

Elegant, post rock London quartet SonVer brightened up Saturday afternoon, with a set of mesmerising pieces combining the inventive use of electric cello laced with guitars, drums and kaos pad.

Playing to launch the ' 3 Songs' EP – a collaboration with Belgian band Elephant Leaf - the soundscapes ran a gauntlet of imaginings with set opener 'Eyeman Praying' suggestive of barren, stark wilderness; to tracks such as 'The Atlas Tree', more evocative of a Middle Eastern exotic fantasy.

It's music to sink into, dream to, but so remiss to close your eyes when SonVer are such a pleasure to watch. Joanna Quail's passion for cello is cloaked in blissed out smiles, thrumming feet and an arched back, and the friendly intimacy between band members on stage tugs you into the thrall.

Stirring set closer ' Safety in Numbness' sees the band joined by Elephant Leaf's unique, but captivating vocalist Lucie Dehli, finally bringing the spell to an end and releasing the audience back into daylight.

By Yasmin Selena Butt

p.s. Another great gig to bear in mind is the wonderful Tallulah Rendall at the gorgeous Bush Hall, which is located in Shepherds Bush close to the tube station on the Uxbridge Road.

The gig is to launch her single and features a support slot by one of my favourite solo artists F.Lunaire

It's on Wednesday August 6th 2008 and tickets are here:

http://www.livenation.co.uk/event/getEvent/eventId/333124

I honestly think this will be a great show, and the venue's acoustics are just lush and the cornicing is so romantic in there.. x x x x

Dear you

It's true, this is my 50^th blog on myspace since I wrote a humble little note in purple italics back in December 2005 I think it was? This one was proving a bit tricky to get my head round, because up until a couple of days ago, I spent the last couple of weeks walking round in a ball of impotent rage, punctuated by decisive time outs to talk or get away with friends.

If I'd written this blog last week it would have been pretty destructive, but I've always been an optimist, albeit one who can see the pitfalls lurking even if they don't stir to the surface for a millennia. When I ignore these, then get a savage bite, it's not cool, but like all all optimists I give life a chance to fix things. And I do actually feel a lot better now, phew!!

Look at that, the first paragraph and I've already gone intense on you ; ) It probably doesn't help that I watched Saw, Saw 2, Saw 3 and Saw 4 over the weekend with the Scorpio. The movies were mostly way better than I expected them to be. He hadn't seen them either, but you know when you've got to stop when you see a bloke screaming and then poking his own eyes out and you're sitting there thinking… 'and?'

We also watched The Prestige with Hugh ' take your shirt off baby, please' Jackman in it, which was a fantastic movie. Christopher Nolan is a great director, he's yet to make a film I don't like. The other film we caught a bit off was this hilariously, bad b-movie called ' Insecticidal' on some horror cable channel - it featured this blonde with the most amazing pneumatic chest that had me in fits of laughter. Here she is:

It was all extremely tongue in cheek, and had this high school kids being pursued around their house by giant bugs. If I hadn't been ready to sleep on my feet by then, I would have given it the benefit of the doubt and waited to see how those bad boy bugs fared.

Since last blogging there's been some quite extreme highs and lows. Some gestures of generosity and kindness that put a huge smile on my face, like my friend Pete getting his mits on some extremely longed for Elemis tartware for me, and then disappointments like telling a friend that I was going to have to go to deal with putting my cat down and there being no reaction whatsoever.

The latter was pretty upsetting, but when I talked to my brother he said some people didn't understand the love a family can have for an animal, but I still find it hard to swallow that you can't just convey compassion for someone who's going to suffer a loss that's clearly a big deal for them. I take things pretty personally I know, but I don't know how else to on this score. I think it tells you something about the person in the context of who they are.

We lost Tigs last October to cancer, which was horrible. And Emma, the cat we lost on March 31st was the cat we got from the RSPCA when I was 17, on the basis of a promise I'd made my dad make when I was 7. Yes, indeed I have a long memory, and I reminded him every year as I got older. So when I hit 17 and I'd got my Maths GCSE resit out of the way ( I'd failed to turn over and spot the last page, ALWAYS turn over the exam paper kids, even if the page questions end half way down the penultimate page) I came home to find this teeny tortie at the top of the stairs with the biggest, greenest emerald eyes looking at me. It was a cool moment I will never forget. She was ferocious, sweet, patient, devious and demanding. We loved her. She would have been twenty years old this year we reckon.

As it was we lost her, due to a genuinely stupid vet standing in for her usual one who was on holiday, who lied in the case notes and provided shitty care. I am not going into the details, but suffice to say, a negligence claim is being pursued. This all happened in three days.

The day after she was put down, Hush The Many headlined their UK Revolve tour at 93 Feet East. I had several friends go along to this. I didn't go. It didn't feel right for several reasons, but again, I was touched by the consideration of some of the sweethearts that are in my life. My friend Helen sent me a recording from the gig, and my friend Fran rang me several times and held her mobile up so I could hear some of the songs. I was wrapped in a scarlet towelling gown, curled up on the bed listening. It was a very sweet thing of her to do. She's a great girl. I didn't go to Tallulah Rendall's EP launch either, I've hibernated a lot lately to be honest, despite all this stuff you're reading about now.

Losing the birthday cat was definitely the worst thing since last blogging. My family were gutted, especially my sister who's room she slept in. For the first time in almost twenty years there isn't a feline between us. Feels very strange.

One of the coolest things by contrast, actually happened the day before I discovered I was going to lose Emma. How's that for a 180 degree turn in emotion? It was going along to support Revere at Glastonbury. That was such a fun, spontaneous thing to do. The call came at a really good time as I needed a massive distraction from a bittersweet migraine, and what better way could there be then going along to cheer my heart out for one of my favourite, favourite bands?

Here are some pix from the night:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=33797&l=252ce&id=699005810

Revere had entered a competition with Q magazine to be short listed to open this years festival. Tons of bands entered and they were short listed down to the final 12, which is pretty damn cool in itself. The deal was that all 12 bands/artists then played a short set for listening pleasure of Radio 1's Huw Stephens, Michael and Emily Eavis and some music magazine and broadsheet writers and then a winner would be chosen at the end.

Singer, Stephen Ellis rang me on Sunday morning and said he had a ticket for me, and their manager Tony could collect me from my flat and take me up to Pilton and then the band could bring me home on the way back. Was I up for that? The answer. OF COURSE!!

So I jumped in the bath, got myself together, and me and Tony drove down in his very lovely Jaguar. He played me stuff he wanted me to hear for my opinion, and I played him Hush The Many and F.Lunaire to return the favour.

We got there in good time, in glorious sunshine to find van loads of fans, wide eyed musicians all looking like fetuses to my eyes. Me and Tony went in, found our band, hello's and hugs later we got our tickets and then went to find some sustenance.

We were both starving and found this lovely big pub enroute and I had egg and chips with a squillion sachets of condiments ( I am a total condiment freak, you should see my fridge) and a pint of cider. Then rushed back to the Pilton Working Men's Club to find the night underway. Revere were on second. We headed to the front. An extremely excited Gabby Young was there with her Ma. Ma Young was drawing the band rather than taking pix which was pretty cool. Michael Eavis was stood on the side, arms crossed, clad in courdroy pants, watching on.

Got to say he's not half as cuddly as his media persona makes him out to be. I was talking to Revere's guitarist Jon Fletcher after the gig about him, and he spluttered ' the man is a legend!' Maybe so, I liked his daughter, she's a passionate, friendly, down to earth heart, I would have liked to have talked to her more, but I had a ride with the band and only found her near the end of the night. But the man himself for me at least was a bit of a disappointment.

Why? Well when I spoke to him, he looked at my tits like they were candy when he was talking to me, and asked me if me and Tony were together, and no I don't think I took it the 'wrong' way, and no my top wasn't see through. As soon as I told him no I was a fan and friend of the band and a writer, his eyes glazed over. I told Stephen this later on, and he blushed and said ' he is but a man!' Nonetheless, I still think having this kind of competition was a great, great thing, and it didn't ruin my night or anything, just opened my eyes to how powerful PR is and made me chuckle. It was funny watching him chat to other wide eyed nubile lovelies throughout the night. What a man.

Revere didn't win, but they will be playing Glastonbury as will all the bands that competed. Eavis told me this at the start of the night, but no one else seemed to know this. The winners were announced in a slightly shambolic fashion, two were chosen in the end, both of them played the night before so it was a shame we couldn't congratulate them as they weren't there and Eavis got their names wrong.

But I had a fab time as no one I watched made me want to scream, I got to, talk to tons of folk around me who were there supporting loved ones, or playing in bands. There was a lovely guy who played in a band called The Franks who bore an uncanny resemblance to Florian T who sings under the name of F.Lunaire ( Flo's going to be playing at Koko in May), and a great singer called Rod Thomas who did a genuinely wonderful solo set of sweetly bright, melodic songs and used pedals to create quite a luscious sound. He's played with Revere so knew the band, but it was the first time I'd met him. He came upto me after the set, and gave me his CD and thanked me for wearing a smile throughout when watching him. That really touched me. My emotions when I'm at a gig are incredibly transparent, I don't know, good music when it makes sense first time is an aural pleasure for me. Sometimes I will dance to a whole set and not even know I am doing it.

Later on I spooked Revere's drummer James Garnett by guessing his starsign correct first time, and he, I and Jon watched last years winner Liz Greene together before the winners were announced. She's a bit like Coco Rosie, and later on I told her I liked the song she did when she jumped down from her chair the most.

The person I was most delighted to meet, even if it was only briefly was Huw Stephens who plays wonderful music on BBC Radio. He's got a genuine love for what he does and a supportive ethos for emerging bands. He was one of the judges on the night, and understandably with all those musicians in the house, pretty swamped. But I told him how cool it was that he'd been so supportive of playing Hush The Many and having them in for studio sessions and he looked really pleased at that.

So for me all in all it was a great night, Revere were amazing that night and probably the best I have seen them play. They gave it everything, I came home with Ellie, Nathanial, Eve, Al, Ryan and James at about 3am, and went online and played the winners myspace players, and while they were unique and hooky, in truth they did nothing for me, but music is such a subjective thing.

Anyway, I'm not sure I'd want to win an extra category created for a 'Muse and Coldplay type band' as described so lovingly by Mr Rampant Rabbit. I think Revere are going to have an amazing time whichever stage they play and this year is panning out to be progressive for them. If you want to catch them, they are playing 93 Feet East on Brick Lane on May 1^st, which is also Ellie ( plays violin) 's birthday. Go to their page and listen to ' The Escape Artist' I had it on my page all last week, it's just spine tingling as it peaks towards the end. Despite my still humble unemployed status, I donated some cash towards them making the video for this song. As bands go, they've been generous to me, sometimes it's nice to return the favour.

God it is bucketing down outside! I've just closed the sliding doors on my balcony, at least my flowers are happy, and even though it's midday as I write, I am going to have to turn the light on as it's got really dark here!

Yes, work or lack off. This credit crunch thing is partly to blame for how quiet the freelance side of things are I think, and also my own partial inertia. I have been applying for stuff as I see it there, but not been shortlisted which is extremely frustrating, but I do need to put more into it. I've already begun to do so now that my head is straighter. I met a new agency in Baker Street last week, and the consultant Matt Martin, is a drummer in a band called Exit Hero, so we had an unusual start to the meeting with him talking music for a while before we went into the career talk.

I feel extremely guilty that I should have made far more of my 'free' time but I've just had a lot of stuff churning through my mind, but you get to a point where it's out of your hands really, and being a control freak who's afraid of change, this is hard to bear. I did sort out a photo print order of 588 pix though so it hasn't been a complete waste of time : )

I miss my creative rush, I'm not sure where it's gone, but I would like it back. I have been doing some music writing. I was meant to review the wonderful GoldSounds gig I went to at 93 Feet East a few weeks back which F.Lunaire closed, but that whole night ended so weirdly and upset me I didn't want to think about it, and then a few days later my cat died and I lost my train of thought. London Tourdates seemed to be struggling to accommodate what I did give them, so maybe it's for the best I didn't write that piece?

The pieces I have written have left me with mixed feelings. I wrote a review of F.Lunaire's ' Mondestrunken EP' which I truly loved and that was published intact as I wrote it which made me really happy. I am proud of that piece. I went to Punk in Soho to watch him play at the launch with Alex Brown accompanying on bass.

I also reviewed the Fuzzed TV music launch, which featured Hush The Many playing at Cargo on Rivington Street, and was disappointed with how much of it was taken out. For a start all mention of Fuzzed TV went, the release info I'd written about the new Hush single vanished as did some choice adjectives and they didn't use the photo I supplied from Joe Lee, so here it is instead! Isn't it a great photo?

I know as a writer it's down to space constraints, but yes, it does frustrate. As for the Hush gig, I was massively curious as this was the first time I was seeing Jon White play up there filling beautiful boy Byrne's shoes. It was his first gig, on the strength of one proper rehearsal so he was understandably tentative, but I think he did well and told him to play without fear and he would be fine. He seems like a nice guy.

I heard he rocked at the 93 Feet East gig, so I am looking forward to seeing him play tomorrow now that he has the tour under his belt. The cool thing was seeing the animation video for Revolve on a projector and later meeting Angela in the ladies loo who is behind a huge chunk of it, the not so cool thing was the terrible noise emanating from the viola during the actual song. I actually thought Alex was screaming and I couldn't understand why she would do that especially as she was really ill that night and needed to ask a friend to get her a whisky while she was on stage.

For me, it was a fractured performance that got better as it went along, but that's me with my 'I've been to tons of their gigs and can feel the nuances in my blood' head on. The largely virgin audience liked them, went into a respectful silence during Paper Doll and afterwards I had a girl called Sarah come upto me and gush about how she loved the set wanted songs for a film, and so I took her with me and went in search of Dan Mongo Garbers's distinctive mass of curls to pass on that desire. It was also cool to see The Rum Circus's Velibor on drums. It's weird how entwined the London music scene is, as I know both these bands completely independently off one another.

On the same day as Hush's Cargo gig I also saw my lovely friend Nerissa for the first time in ages enroute to Zimbabwe. She lives in Finland so I don't get to see much of her, which is a shame. What has been nice during my 'downtime' is catching up a bit with friends I've not seen in ages or having friends over. I went to Norwood Junction and met my old school friend Miriam, she used to play cello for ' They Came From the Stars ( I Saw Them)' who I still have yet to see live, and met her children for the first time. That was a really good day. Her daughter Phoebe is amazing good at taking photos for a two year old!

Over Easter I was in Oxfordshire and caught up with friends there, had a great meal at a Raymond Blanc restaurant, and explored some beautiful villages with chocolate box cottages, got fed cake and tea in church, and found a house in Great Tew that had a warning sign that read ' look out kittens crossing' which was seriously sweet. I was gutted not to see any kittens though, but yes, Easter was wonderful.

Me and Steve watched Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise and Before Sunset back to back on DVD, and we cooked loads of food and varnished his floors. I like getting out of Hayes to be honest, a lot, even though I love my own flat and love having folk round. My friend Kit came down and I treated her to a legendary onion dosa from the St Josephs Fast Food stand, bit gutted the old man has left though. She gave me the latest Hot Chip CD which features the danceable ' Ready For The Floor.' We had hysterics when this ridiculous buffoon leant out of his car on the way home and bellowed' Hello! Hello!' at us, she gave him the finger, ah the lovely men of Southall, they're a bit special.

Ed Harcourt finally made it onto Later With Jools Holland on BBC2. Me and a lot of other people have been wanting him on this for aeons. He didn't get to sing his own stuff, but accompanied Dawn Kinnard on a duet, resplendent in scarlet cowboy boots and scratchy beard. And he's on again tonight with The Gutter Twins so if you've never seen this boy that I've been writing and enthusing about, then watch the show. I think he's playing guitar. He's on tour with them at the moment, so if you watch them gig, sit up and pay attention to his set, he's great.

Ed hosted another Retreat From The Greek earlier this month at Paradise By Way of Kensal Green. It was actually my first time out in a week or so after losing my beloved puss, and I had a really good time. For Ed it's a friends and family get together as well as a musical extravaganza. His wife Gita and her new band The Langley Sisters played their debut gig with Ed on guitar, which was a bit of a riot near the end.

I enjoyed this one more I think, it was still unbelievably crowded, but I knew what to expect this time. The sound is pretty temperamental though. This venue also hosts a burlesque night during the event calendar, which I want to check out. I watched 'Dawn Porter Gets Naked' on BBC3 and she had a lesson in it, and I've seen bits and pieces about burlesque and of course with Dita Von Teese its gained a lot more widespread attention over the years. So me and my friend Jo are going to go and check out some shows when I've looked into what's happening in London a bit more.

Being a lover of dance and lingerie myself I am supremely intrigued, I've been making myspace friends with burlesque performers too. Helene told me the band For Ramona have a dancer who's accompanied their gigs. Well I've seen them play about 3 times and she's never been there, which is a shame as at least it would have made their sets bearable. Ouch. I know. But true. I don't really like their stuff to be honest, and the last time they gigged at The Green last month, I was shocked at the unbelievably rude way they literally bellowed through their friends The Mooche's headline set. It was crass and distracting. I despise bad manners. If I talk during a gig, it'll be away from the stage, or in a cupped whisper or very bloody brief and it won't be during a quiet song. If I ever become that repulsively selfish, you can slap my butt.

I just had to get that off my chest. I am sure they were just drunk or something, I remember the singer did commit an act of chivalry when I first met them, so I don't hate them or anything, I just didn't like that.

Right, back to Ed Harcourt's Paradise thingie!!

Here's a link to some pix from the night:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=33809&l=add1a&id=699005810

This was pretty cool : ) I saw Evi Vine for the first time in ages. I first met her on the same day I met Ed Harcourt actually, three years ago. She was playing with Danny Valentine at the Marie Lloyd bar when Hadrian Garrard launched 'Signed Unsigned'. She has a voice like warm satin and her songs make me think of a velvet night. 'Inside Her' is very sensual. My friend John loved her set, and a few weeks back when I went to visit him I saw he had her flyer on his PC. I've seen her sing a handful of times over the years, and this time met her mum, and caught up with her in the ornate Paradise ladies loos. It was good to see her, and she went down really well.

Actually before that, when me and Fran arrived together the first performer on was Jeremy Warmsley, who was later accompanied by the baby faced Johnny Flynn. I love this guy, I saw him play a gig a couple of years back on a 2Bob night with the now sadly no more Special Benny, and he stuck in my head. He's a doll, but also a multi instrumentalist with a clutch of lyrically eccentric, spirited folk songs up his sleeve. You should listen to 'Tickle Me Pink' on his My Space player, it's fiendishly good. Fran is now a fan.

Both she and I were painfully excited about seeing The Veils. In the past, I'd never got her passion for them. We'd seen them at Koko and I was largely unmoved, then a few weeks back I heard 'Calliope' on her page and something clicked and I had an OH MY GOD moment, and then went onto their page and played that and 'Not Yet' to death, and thought how good it would be to see them, and then lo and behold, literally days later they announce they'll be playing at Paradise, so yes, to say me and Fran were excited would be a sore understatement.

We were right at the very front, and they performed a small clutch of new songs which sound immediately promising and they closed with 'Not Yet', which I have an appallingly distorted recording off, but Finn Andrews looks pretty glorious in it. It was over so fast. Fran had to leave. Ed performed his set and almost fell off his stool, which he tottered on precariously at one point trying to sort out the sound. His mother in law was in the house, a very funky lady indeed.

The big surprise of the night was discovering that Ed's drummer Raife was married to the actress Eva Birthistle. She's a real sweetie, I met her between sets and we were having a really good chat about cinema before her husband came and told us to get in place for The Langley Sisters. I've followed her career since seeing her act in Ken Loach's interracial drama ' Ae Fond Kiss'. It's not often I go out of my way to buy DVDs anymore, but I did with that one. I am still very passionate about good cinema even if I am writing more and more about music these days.

Oh and Paloma Faith was really cool too, she's like a performance artist and spectacle and singer all in one. I literally couldn't take my eyes off her, what a vision. She was dressed in a harlequin catsuit and just ate up the stage. Ed played keyboards while she sang.

The other band I was delighted to see back were The Deadbeats who are now called Ten Bears due to the threat of a lawsuit. They play dirty, sexy rock - is the best way I can describe the music. It's earthy, roots, sleazy beat driven stuff. If I was a stripper with nipple tassles I would take my clothes off to it in some bar in Texas, but I'm not, I'm a nice lapsed Muslim girl from North West London, so I will just dance my ass off instead. But you get the idea ; ) Definitely worth seeing them live again. The stuff on their myspace player doesn't do their live performance justice, but it's definitely worth a listen.

Me, John and Joe Lee (who took not a single photo all night!) left Paradise pretty much after the lovely Langley Sisters rocked the joint. Poor Joe unbeknownst to me ended up having a terrible time getting home. John stayed over with me and the next day we went into Southall as I wanted to shop and treat him to have an onion dosa, only to discover that the streets were eerily deserted, so not like Southall on a Sunday. Turned out the entire Sikh population was focused on the parade route down South Road.

The Sikh new year I was told was coming up in a few days. It was rammed but wonderful, all these lovely people were handing out cups of masala tea, cans, samosas, pecoras, rice and curry, pastries, battered bread. Man it was cool!! I ate so much my stomach went into shock. I love surprises like that. The dosa caravan was shut but it didn't matter, this was pretty special. We headed back into Hayes to get John on a bus, but this weekend was really lovely, didn't get much sleep during it, but it cheered me up a lot after all the other stuff that had been happening leading upto it. I christened my new microwave with it's first cooking task that night too.

John treated me to a lovely, lovely weekend recently in Essex, very sorely needed. This man can cook, he has a real passion for it. Cake, fish, green banana, fried eggs, curry and I so loved his black eyed peas and rice. I've not been to Essex in years, probably the last time was with the Scorpio who hails from Romford. Me and John went to see Retrofin headline at The Bitter End. Ah the Essex girl with her acres of skin on show, come rain or shine and now I noted supplemented with a patchwork of tattoos. But they all looked like they were having a blast which is the main thing.

As the Gourami cancelled, Retrofin headlined on the night, and even though I've not had a love for hard rock in a while, I was genuinely impressed by the passion and energy in their set. If it hadn't been 11.30pm when they went on stage and I hadn't been tired it was jumping up and down music for sure. I can see why John loves them as he does. There's some fresh and classic about them all at the same time. They reminded me of Reef and Red Hot Chili Peppers, and they clearly love engaging with the audience. I told the singer to see about hooking up with a good emerging band like the Mexicolas for a support slot. It's always a bit of a heart in the mouth moment when you're friend is checking out a band you feel so enamoured with. I get that way I guess when friends watch Hush The Many for the first time.

In fact that neatly brings me to the end of yes, another epic blog. Tomorrow they play at Bush Hall on the Uxbridge Road. It's a single launch for their new single Revolve. By the way, the B-side is StoryEnd, which is one of the most beautiful songs in the history of mankind. My friend Trevor went to their 93 Feet East gig on the strength of that song alone. You must hear it.

If you are a fan and you've somehow missed the plethora of bulletins that Nima has been sending out, then I am genuinely shocked, but that's okay, all the info is on their page. Go see. For me it's a gig and a little birthday treat, as yes I WILL BE 35 SOON!! That's just mental. My actual birthday is on May 4^th, but this is close enough to it to feel special for me, for that reason too.

So if you're coming, then come and say hello, and if you're sitting on the fence as it's a school night, screw that, life is for living, come. See what the fuss is about and wish me an early happy birthday. Oh and The Rip by Portishead ( see above) what an amazing, hypnotic, jewel of a song. Best new song I've heard all year. You will want to watch this.

Thank you so much for reading this blog. 50 is a good number to stop and reflect at things for a while I think. Hope all is well in your world.

Love and hugs

Yasmin xxxx

Hello you,

This is something I've been wanting to do for weeks now. And I am kind of terrified of how long it could get if I go for it in an unfettered, uninhibited way, but I am also well aware that some of you will be at work so can't be seen to be too distracted for too long, in which case I would recommend, checking it out in chunks or making yourself very comfortable! But there are pix to look forward to if you make it to the end.

The last time I did a proper one was back in December, and then I very quietly blogged a poem in January. So what have I been upto? I've just ordered the new Nick Cave and Beach House album of Music Wow, which to my knowledge is the cheapest CD seller online. Both of them came to less than £13. At the moment I'm taking a break from freelancing, and it looks like my combi microwave oven, monitor and washing machine are dying on me, so gotta cut costs! On top of that I broke my Bosch hoover last month ( the one funded by the sale of my bras on ebay) and I need to get that sorted as it's still under warranty.

There's loads of stuff I need to tackle, including a gig review for Powerdown, but I am utterly guilty of having thrown myself into the world of fiction, played a lot of Scrabulous on Facebook, gone to a lot of great gigs, cooked well, finally watched Queer as Folk series 2 on DVD, and discovered how much fun you can have bouncing up and down on a pilates ball while also toning your tummy to boot.

It's just grand to be home again properly, have the place to myself, lie in my bath, enjoying the candles casting shadows in the dark and chilling out to the awesomeness of PJ Harvey's ' White Chalk and soak in song after song after song. I am very open, dark horse if that makes sense and I kind of like it that way, though ultimately I love people too much to want to be some anti-social creature. It's just nice to have the option to vanish off the face of the earth if I wish to.

I am really looking forward to getting my mits on the new Beach House album. I noted they used a few of their songs during ' Skins' last night. Yes, I watch Skins!! It's my guilty pleasure, but I think it's a fantastic show and I am always moved and amused by it. So far it's better than the first series (unlike the mediocre Ashes to Ashes, shoot the writer now!). I read a feature on it in the Torygraph mag and they're going to be using new cast members as they're sticking to filming it in real time. So Tony's sister Effy, her with the precocious knowing eyes and silent lines will be the next generation they focus in on. But I watch it and think, 'nooo this isn't aimed at you Yasmin! You could be their ma's!!' But what the hell, I like it and in reality, I have friends who are practically half my age anyway as well as ones who are well into their 70s. Age is irrelevant, if I like you, you will be for me.

Let me see when I last did this properly? I was talking about perm roles and adoption. Well to cut a long story short, I didn't go perm, the adoption/babies idea is still a desirable for the future, workwise my January was hell thanks to my 'superior' who was a control freak with the empathy of a rock. So I didn't apply for my role, which she claimed I had on a plate and then did a U-Turn on without telling me first, but announced in an Xmas team meeting ( nice touch eh?) so I left at the end of January with tons of well-wishing ringing in my ears, which was lovely and HMV vouchers – which so far I've spent on getting the Beirut album. I fell in love with 'A Sunday Smile' after hearing it first on Ella's page. Stephen Ellis from Revere thought I would like them too and mentioned them ages ago.

My friend Trevor collected my stuff from my brothers in early Feb, and I felt sad on locking the door. Change can really freak me out if I don't have time to mentally prepare for it sometimes. Though a nice Thai lunch at Yum Yums and a visit to the organic farmers market in Finsbury Park certainly softened the blow. I had organic buffalo milk for the first time since I was seven

My team were gutted I left, but she was impossible and never listened. I cannot emphasise how important it is to truly listen when someone is pissed about something. I also wrote HR a mail as long as your arm revealing what had gone on, and now it's upto them to either turn a blind eye or do something about what's going on there and save the sanity of those I left behind.

I am still glad I worked there as so many people were just such a pleasure to work and hang out with. It all happens for a reason. On my very last day I practically ran out of there with adrenaline coursing through my veins, it was crazy to feel that joyous, like Tim Robbins in the Shawshank Redemption at the pay off, but I bloody well did and I mean that with no disrespect to my colleagues at all. In fact I was back a week or so later enjoying some food with some of my team on their lunch hour.

But when I got back to Stokey on my last office day, my brother cracked up laughing at the sheer smiling relief on my face when I walked through the door. I wanted a cake to celebrate. It was really cool to stay with him though, and I took him, Shirl and Ritson out to dinner at Lemongrass on Church St one eve as a thank you for keeping me upbeat. It was a great meal and my brother had us in fits, talking about how funny my ansaphone messages were and how I always got cut off by the beep. In January I just felt so demoralised and unlike my usual self it actually scared me. I resent being wronged, it will sap away at me if someone tries to exert too much control.

But there was good stuff too. Ritson and I would head off to the cinema across the road and argue about the ratings of movie's awarded by IMDB.com versus our own. We saw Sweeny Todd, which wasn't nowhere enough bloody enough for me, and I actually found a little dull and disappointing. He didn't realise musicals involved, that degree of singing. I enjoyed John C.Reilly's 'Walk Hard' - The Dewey Cox story, which Ritson would not touch with a bargepole, despite imploring him. Last week we watched ' Be Kind Rewind' – which was his choice but I actually ended up enjoying it more than he did. I thought it had real soul and it was also eccentric as most of Gondry's movies are. And Mos Def was hot in a nerdy kind of way esp when he did the blind test to see if this girl had facial fuzz on her upper lip. It was a charmed moment trust me.

Also, 'Enchanted' with Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey was a real surprise hit for me, there was tons of non treacly humour in it, which was great like when she calls on the city animals to help her and a swarm of flies and cockroaches come to her! It's a genuine family film, not a tit in sight. I can see I am going way back now, as I watched that on New Years Day. God, I really need to do these more often.

The movie that has really rocked me for six, which I think everyone with some modicum of taste and a hardy constitution should go and see is Eastern Promises. I've not seen Daniel Day Lewis's Oscar turn in There Will Be Blood, and I am a huge fan of his ( Last of the Mohicans…swoon! But Eric Schweig who played his Red Indian brother was hotter, here he is in make up for the role. He was fantastic in it too)

..but I thought Viggo Mortenson was extraordinarily good in Eastern Promises. The photo below was taken from it.

It was a subtle, nuanced and intense performance. He alternated between being the angel and the devil himself. Naomi Watts has never been cack in anything I've seen her in, and she was reassuringly great in this. All I can is WATCH IT. And that I would love to know what you think. It's out on DVD now. But if you can't handle blood and viciousness and men's willies…then erm, don't.

Since I've been home I've also been catching up on DVDs. My brother is a huge fan of oriental cinema and despairs of the length of time it takes me to watch the DVDs I've borrowed off him, but I finally watched 'Memoirs of a Geisha' which was really good and I have Hana-Bi to watch still. I saw Deepa Methta's ' Earth', it's about the chaos and pain the partition of India and Pakistan caused for the civilians. I massively admire the director for the risks she's taken as an asian woman in such a patriarchal society, it's earned her a death threat or two. You can read more about the movie here, it's subtitled in English and well worth seeing. http://www.filmeducation.org/secondary/Earth/index.html

Ritson gave me The Nines which kind of bamboozled me, I need to see it again. And there is so much stuff I've taped and not seen yet like ' Pan's Labyrinth', ' Enduring Love', 'Somersault' and ....'Elf'!

The show I am gutted they've taken off ( for a bit only I hope) is ITV3's re-runs of ' Wire In The Blood' – they were repeating these from the start. I was in the Maldives I think when these first launched and I never saw the point of Robson Green, but I've got to say, he is awesome in this as the criminal profiler Tony Hill.

When I watch something I am really into, I am oblivious to everything and you won't get any sense out of me until the commercial break.

There were a few weeks when I was out at gigs on a Wednesday eve, in fact even during the first Hush The Many one I went to as part of their residency I was texting my brother reminding him to tape it. Sad I know lol, but that's how good it is.

I love how tight the plots are, and how you can't see where they are leading and the sheer, apologetic humanity of the anti-hero. They've made the poor bugger impotent and obsessed with computer games. And I also dug out my library card and went down the road to get out as many of Val McDermid's books of the series as I could find, as well as a rather fine book on Johnny Marr (The Smith's guitar genius) I spotted. I am always reading or writing when I travel. That's the thing I guess I resent most about working is it takes me away from the creative stuff.

The librarian was wearing a Muse sweatshirt and was delighted to engage with a chick who seriously knew her music and could recommend gig venues to check out in west London, so that was really nice. He bent over backwards to try and find a book that was listed, but missing on the shelf, bless him. Hillingdon, Borough of thieves..

I am doing all this from memory, hang on I need to go and make some hot chocolate or locate my fingerless gloves, it's got dead nippy in here.. right I am back. Actually chocolate, yes.. divine substance. I actually did without it in any shape or form in January. Like a detox, I just can't believe how much of it I put away when I was working in Wood Green. I blame Poundland down the road with all the Lindt stuff. It was shocking.

I made two key resolutions in January, well one was more a bet. My friend Steve who I spent a lovely Xmas with in Cambridge, (though ripped open my knee getting there, ouch ) wanted to see if I could go a whole year without actually buying any chocolate. He believes I will come across enough of it via presents, visitors, friends , family etc to keep me in the cocoa.

So far he's proved right. It's now March and I've stuck to it. I've resisted seductive special offers and while at Wood Green, Dan and Ritson would bring me the red Lindt ribbons and bells as I enjoyed wearing them round my wrist and tinkling as I walked. I also use them around my flat to control my feather curtains in the study. But I didn't touch the chocolate itself.

Tell you what I have bought a load of…Boots tartware!! They had like the best new year/xmas sale. 50-75% off loads of good stuff. Even if I starve I will be clean, moisturised and fragrant. Have you smelt 'Gold' by Donna Karan? Well, you should…and Dior's Midnight Poison is so going on the birthday list..

And the other resolution? Wear frocks and skirts at least once a fortnight. And except for a really cold spell earlier this year, I have stuck to that too. I just want to revel in my femininity more and stick two fingers up to the freaks who follow me down the street around here. In fact the first time I wore a dress to work back in January, it was really sweet how many people commented and men were suddenly more attentive. It was a wrap dress from Next I got off ebay with peacock eyes all over it.

Helene was here when it came in the mail and we both sat in my bedroom laughing at how Dolly Parton like my chest seemed in it. G cup breasts make the most innocent of things look pseudo pornographic. I have since sewn a stitch into the wrap portion to ensure there are no 'happy accidents'. I wore dresses a lot when I lived in the Maldives, loved it, but I ran around barefoot a lot there too.

Did you know you can fly to the Maldives relatively cheaply via Monarch airlines? Okay it's the dodgiest airline I've ever flown with, and you'll probably be charged £5 for a sarnie, but worth considering still I think. I saw that at Thomas Cook. I once flew to Greece with Monarch and we had to land in Italy in the small hours to offload a drunken buffoon from Liverpool and then had to refuel and it was such a mare. My brother said it made the local news! My friend slept right through it with her head on my shoulder.

Helene and Marm are probably reading this, going, 'noooo don't encourage people to fly!' but travelling to foreign places is enlightening and reminds you that the world is bigger than what goes on in your city and backyard. Talking of those two, since they've joined musical forces things have been burgeoning. There have been some really good musical shenanigans as a result including most recently Powerdown, which I am writing a review of for Tourdates magazine . I will blog that when it goes live. This is Marm's labour of love and he was a great host on the night.

I was most impressed by the event, it was an eco friendly, electricity free showcase of great musicians held at the Islington Arts Factory, which is a converted church near Holloway Road. I wrote a note to a friend about it and am going to be super lazy and paste a portion in, as I think I described it so well there. "The place was packed and despite the lack of heat, really cosy as everyone was wrapped up in coats and scarves sitting knee to knee, surrounded by little lights and pillar candles. The church acoustics were lush and no one who played sucked. And there were organic beers and food too. This girl called Sara Mitra had us all singing by the end of her set, it was lovely"

Helene with her guitar and and some cowering racist chicks, not really there's Jen and Kazumi

Citizen Helene and her band The Racists were ace, and I found them singing away in the very romantic ladies toilets when I arrived. Not often those words go together but they were! Stone lit by candles is romantic. Helene was most glam in a slinky frock. They all looked lovely. I've never taken a pee to such sweet musical accompaniment. All toilets should be like this! Josephine Oniyama who we met via Ed Harcourt also provided a fine set. It was really good to see her again. ' I think it was love' is a smoky, cool love song. You should hear it on her MySpace page. Ed was AWOL, but was meant to be there, not sure what happened there.. by the way there is a Saturday extravaganza called Retreat From The Greek at the Paradise Bar on Kilburn Lane on April 5^th. I have no idea who will be there, but it will be hosted by Ed Harcourt and Nick De Cosemo and it's free. It's a secret gig if you will, that lasts all day, it will probably kick off at around 4pm I think? Come. Say hello.

I do need to hone in more on my writing. I still intend to do that, write more, until I am in gainful employment again. In a way this is my precursor. Gigwise it's been pretty busy, I saw The Mooche headline at The Constitution, Explosions in The Sky at the Astoria , that was a thrill as I've really enjoyed them a lot lately on the stereo and despite arriving late secured the perfect view, but was shocked they didn't encore.

Merz aka Conrad Lambert ( my friend Jo got me into him, but when he took to the stage I didn't recognise him which was embarrassing! He encored with 'Presume too much' which has graced this player a lot ) at the Roundhouse supported by the fantastic, dulcet voiced Jacob Golden ( who recently appeared on Jools Holland) and I met this wee, opinionated artist called Yasemen – yup same name, diff spelling – her stuff is so different to anything I've seen before check her out on http://www.yasemenhussein.com That was a really good night.

Morrissey was on next door. I also caught the eye of an intense photographer with the pointiest elbows ever, who gave me his card before vanishing into the night. He works for Base.ad magazine but their website was up the spout the last time I checked, shame as he was very intriguing.

..And thanks to a good bloke called Rob on the Monkey Swallows The Universe forum, I saw said band at Bush Hall. He gave me a free spare ticket after Chris pointed the offer out to me. This was one of those gigs were I had neutral expectations and they were blown out of the water. It was their last London date as a band as they've now split up, but what a last gig! People had come from all over Europe for it. It was sold out. A Sheffield band called Champion Kickboxer were the support, and reminded me a bit of XTC and The Teardrop Explodes.

I have Chris Iddon to thank for going on and on about MSTU, he's seen them a LOT. But melodically they had a real freshness and charm, and I stood at the front to the side of the stage marvelling at the love and party atmosphere this band had incited. Balloons rained down, these fashionistas at the front kept wailing ' we love you, don't split up!' and every time a place in Sheffield was referenced in a song this whoop came out of the crowd.

This song called Science is especially lovely. I love it when a band can impress me like that. It was a Friday I was still in the contract from hell, but going home I was really cheered by that, that night. And it was nice to revisit Maison Sousse in Shepherds Bush and indulge in a fine tomato and onion pancake again. Chris has a fondness for that café too now. It's near the Central line tube station, walk upto the KFC and you'll see it. I interviewed Headland in there for The Times. They're open until midnight. Get them to heat it the pancake for you, it's nicer hot.

So musicwise it's been full on. The day after my job at Haringey ended I lined up a day of high quality freedom and indulgences. I saw Eastern Promises at the Prince Charles Cinema, I had a free mini facial at The Sanctuary, bought some tartware, and saw a free but very sexually explicit art exhibition called Insomnia at the Photographers Gallery near Leicester Square.

It was seedy, dark, sad and kind of arousing all at the same time. It was I guess, if you want to pontificate and stroke your chin about it, about that time of night when inhibitions come down, people do whatever it takes to feel good, and the need for sleep takes us to extremes that we wouldn't contemplate in the cold light of day, a sexual anything goes, some real love and tenderness, some bartering for flesh and some disbelief that this is where you've ended up in life. I liked the exhibition. I fet like a fly on the wall.

After my culture fix, I used my Boots card for a free supper and then I headed over to the Union Chapel and enjoyed Revere and Gabby Young putting on an amazing eve of music. It was excellent. They couldn't go mental as there are sound restrictions there, but I know Stephen had been dying to play this place for ages and he was thrilled at the packed venue. The turnout was well deserved and they went down a storm, and at the end of the night pulled out a choir to accompany them on Maybe In Time.

A lot of people gave them a standing ovation, and Stephen was buzzing about that gig for days. After the gig I discovered my friends Lydia, Wayne and John were in the audience. I had meant to tell John about the gig, and hadn't realised Lydia (Rosered) was a fan, so it was a really pleasant surprise to see them all there. Their friend Tamara had been filming the whole set too. You should check out Joe Lee's pix from the set on his Flickr account. The band had family members down, and it was the first time I'd seen them gig since reviewing them at The Spitz?

Afterwards Trevor and I went to the bar to have a wee catch up and I marvelled at the impressive state of Jon Fletcher's hair and told Nathanial to check out this excellent Russian shop in Acton, which sells great chocolate and spiced aubergines in a jar. They've released an EP beautifully wrapped in paper called ' A Soundless Tree' with four tracks on it including the extremely special 'The Escape Artist' but to really get the best of that song, see them perform it with a full band, it's just stunning. They recently did an acoustic set with Hush The Many at The Wilmington Arms. Stephen's voice sounded huge in that cosy corner of London. Both bands have been in the studio working on an album. Revere went upto Scotland and Hush are in west London.

At the moment as I am writing this I am listening to KING OF HAY by SWEETBRIAR. Gosh I've gone all capslock on you. But this is a fantastic song. Some of you will know some of the band by the monicker of GoldSounds, but I've been loving their back catalogue. Please, please have a listen to this track and a song called Prints. I have played both them a LOT since discovering them, and also the keyboardist James Johnston has some of the most exquisite poetry in his myspace blogs, go see. The ringlet haired one really has a way with words. Sweetbriar's myspace is on my front page.

GoldSounds did a gig at Hungamunga for Valentines at the Bethnal Green Working Man's Club. It's a chance to paint, craft, knit and get arty and messy and have fun. You should go to one. Take a couple of friends and go and then you get to watch a band at the end of it all. Or go on your own and make some new friends, It's organised by Lloyd Ellis.

GoldSounds are a band I've been meaning to see a lot more off live as I really like them. So it was a nice hanging out with them before the set, and having a proper chat as we've never really done that. George Napthine ( dude who did the Hush The Many band sketch on their myspace) wore what I can only describe as a bonnet during the set. I have a little clip of them here. It is very noisy and I suspect I might have been dancing a tiny bit when I took it.

James admired my finger painted effort and surprised me on his sensitive, gentle vocals on the song Blue Moon. William said it had taken them ages to persuade him to sing. Matthew tried to teach me chords and have me hold his guitar so I could see the strings over my breasts, which has been a genuine headache in the past. I also met Ellen McGee who plays in a psychedelic folk outfit called Saint Joan, she has a lovely smile and taught me the A chord.

The gig was fun, I hoped they'd get to play along with F.Lunaire in the Hush residency but it fell through, it would have completed my dream line up. F.Lunaire played though in the end, as a v. late replacement for Fields who are holed up in the studio finishing up their second album so that was pretty cool, but it was a shame to lose them off the bill too, as they are really great and I was excited about seeing them.

I got to road test my new digital camera at my friend Kully's birthday do at Detroits in Covent Garden, which was great as it had nothing to do with music, sometimes I think I am in danger of drifting off the radar. It was ages since I'd seen her and she has a good crowd of folk and fab siblings. I have a list of old friends who I am in dire need of a proper catch up with, but now that I am in my own home things should get better. The camera is 8 million megapixels and better for low light conditions, but with that comes the fact, that file sizes are too big for You Tube and MySpace unless the clip is about 3mins long, so that's a downer.

I recently filmed SonVer at Café 1001 where they played this great, great gig – (come and see them the next time they gig, I INSIST on it – you get to see Ruban play his gorgeous Chet so hard his fingers blur, it's quite a sight) and the Turkish sounding song called 'Atlas Tree' clocked in at about 6mins and I could only share it with the band via sendspace and it took like an HOUR to upload the file. Darn. Jo loved that gig,

SonVer being hot. L to R - Ben, Al, Jo and Ruban

I watched curled up in a sofa, and it was worth freezing my ass off getting there. My body was physically shaking inside, I was seriously suffering even when on the bus. Yet I was well wrapped up in coat, cashmere, hat and gloves, so Mr Byrne was a bit puzzled. Bizarrely it was warmer by 11.30pm! It was really good to catch up with Jo and Ben as it had been a while. We met a weird bloke in there who wanted to stick a roll up that Jo had given him on his mums forehead. Strange.

I made clips of the Hush The Many gig recently too, but same hassle with file sizes, as well as when I filmed Helene in Racist band mode, which bizarrely came out silent, not sure what the hell happened there?! So I get to make better clips, but you don't get to see them which is poo, I'm still getting to grips with the camera though, I only figured out the lowlight setting button halfway through the Tallulah Rendall set at the Wilmington Arms. So there might be a setting for smaller pixel sizes when filming. Hope so, as I do like to share these clips and can't afford to faff uploading stuff an hour at a time. But you can see the photos on my Facebook photo link here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=29480&l=5b391&id=69900581

Ah Tallulah. She is really cool. This should bring us upto speed. Hush The Many played a three-week residency at The Wilmington Arms dramatically titled ;The Force of Thousands in the Hearts of Tens'. I went to two of the shows. In fact one of them was the day after the SonVer gig so I got a double dose of some members of the band. Jo Quail played with Tallulah Rendall on her set after Florian tinkled the ivories on a handful of his songs.

There was a big turn out for the gig. Helene came along, as did Pete, Joe Lee the photographer, Helen and my poor friend Fran who was positively feverish, but pleased to have got her wish of hearing Paper Doll and The Knife. Nima initially hadn't had Paper Doll on the set list. Going back to Tallulah. Jo reckoned I'd like her set and she was right. This realisation popped out when a song suddenly ended, the venue went silent and I heard myself announcing loudly to my friends ' I like her!' Jo said from her cello laughing ' I told you, you would!' I was so embarassed, but it was funny.

Jo Quail and Tallulah Rendall at The Wilmington Arms

Tallulah had flu but gave a great show, and the song ' Black Seagull' was absolutely hypnotic. You could have heard a pin drop during it. She has a launch event on April 3^rd at the Soho Revue Bar. That's shaping up to be a busy week as Hush The Many play 93 feet east on April 1^st and Ed has Retreat from the Greek on April 5^th. Blimey…

In truth, I found it a bit hard to immerse myself in the actual Hush The Many set as I had stuff on my mind, but it was an utter delight to hear Story End performed for the first time since ooh June 2006? They did it at St James Church on Ed's Beautiful Lie tour. Hearing this gorgeous song made me very, very happy. It's lush, sad, romantic and unashamedly wistful. The gig the week after for me was a lot better for me. I approached it differently with the mindset of being there just to think about the music and ignore everything else, and also I decided not to film anything or take photos during the sets. So I lost myself in listening to Revere and the Hush set

What was also special for me was having two friends of mine seeing the band for the first time. Kirtan's just observed MySpace/Facebook ravings and wanted to see what the fuss was about. But Akeela has been a fan of the music for quite a while. I was excited for her, she'd never seen them before, and I knew culturally where she was coming from. So I wanted it to be brilliant for her. Well in reality, it was brilliant for me too. I had a really lovely evening.

Joe Lee was back taking photographs again. Helen, Lloyd Ellis ( Hungamunga) and Mark came along. Alex Brown had been round facepainting the audience in her own distinctive way. Florian was there enjoying himself off duty. Revere were in the house, and Nima was in really fine fettle and it was just nice to enjoy him.

He was really pleased with how this last night went. It was reassuring to see some things don't change, like how he gets wildly embarrassed when you produce a camera for an off stage photo. Tonight with the band there was a girl called Stephanie playing an acoustic cello, and a boy called Matt on violin. Oh and I should mention how enjoyable Stephanie Steer was, I've heard some of her stuff on MySpace, she did a nice cover of Mozzer's Suedehead using a harp and keyboard.

Actually, the day before this gig for a bit of context, I'd had a job interview for a role paying almost £40k based in Tottenham, I had to do a presentation and everything, and though it went well, it hit me I didn't really want it, as the chemistry between me and my would be boss hadn't felt right, and I was utterly scared they might give it to me, and I knew I couldn't really say no without feeling like a fool and to cap it off, it was also permanent.

I wanted it for stability and the chance to move home and show on paper I could be reliable if I proceed with the adoption. Luckily though I was in the final selection I didn't get it, God was I relieved. I was actually nauseous until I had that phonecall. So when I went to this gig I was still calming down from that. I need a job that suits me ultimately, no point otherwise. It's out there, I am sure of it. But I also intend to finish my novel too..

Ruban was ill that night, but I could still hear his guitar parts in my head, which was weird in a lovely kind of way. The violin and cello were used to compensate for him where possible, and it made me more aware of Alex's bass and Nima's acoustic. It felt like I was seeing them anew with fresh, appreciative eyes, which was an interesting feeling. I guess it was because I was relaxed and happy with everyone around me.

I remember thinking Hush The Many are actually better than chocolate and the thought made me laugh inside, because it seemed ridiculous but true at the same time. Nima took the band into the crowd, to perform an unplugged version of The Man – I stood on the stage to watch this, last week he did it solo in an impromptu fashion but this way was better as the band were in on his little trip.

Nima singing into ears

(photo courtesy of Akeela Bhattay)

Due to the night starting late their set was cut short by a couple of songs, but it was cool to hear StoryEnd again, and let myself be seduced and soothed by it like a lullaby. That was probably the song that captured this here heart for keeps I think. We hung around afterwards chatting and I went round bestowing hugs and took a couple of pix. I was shattered in truth.

I'd had a busy few weeks of interview prep, errands, birthdays, gigs, travel and very poor sleep and a lot of reading. I've never understood people who get bored outside of work. I am never ever, ever bored. I kept saying to Joe Lee I was terrified of dark circles setting in and he was kind and reassuring that I had nothing to worry about.

So here we are now. Few last things, if you are ever in Southall be sure to visit the St Josephs Fast Food607/427/207 bus stop and have an Onion Dosa. The food is to die for and that Dosa costs £1.75 and I once met some boys from Oxford in the caravan who'd driven all the way from Oxford to have one! I've taken Pete, Helene and Trevor there in the past, and I am looking forward to taking my friends Steve and Kirtan when I hook up with them. I had this desperate craving for one a few days ago and despite the windy chill; flew out of my flat to head up there to have one. Mmmm. The sambar and chutneys are really delicious too, it's simple wholesome food cooked in front of you.

And also Hampstead really... is real. I passed through it back in August on my way back home and yet couldn't trace the bus route back there when I wanted to return for a leisurely browse. I discussed my bewilderment with Helene and she couldn't recall the bus for it either. I had a long chat with a man who worked on the buses and he couldn't work out how I did the journey either. It was like the twilight zone! Well you need to get the 46 bus from Lancaster Gate, last week on Sunday I just took a chance as I vaguely recalled getting off along Bayswater Road.

It's a swish, pretty place but has this cool shop devoted to all things fairy, and you will be served by winsome girls wearing pink tutus if you go there! I bought a beautiful mobile that has ' Bloom Early, Bloom Late, Just Bloom' written on it surrounded by coloured glass pendants it feels very apt at the moment. It's comforting.

The last word for once goes to Nima. He's looking for animators to help out on a video the band are working on for their new single Revolve ( or Resolve as BBC Radio 6 once called it online, haha) and he would love to hear from you if you have some free time. If you are not an animator, but you know someone who is, then please do pass this on, drop your mate an email or something, it could be good for the band and for them/you. They can contact him via MySpace or via Googlemail on HushTheMany@googlemail.com.

This is what he said:

'We have a really exciting music video animation with all illustrations finished and ready, and are now looking for about 9 people to each animate a different scene of 5-15 seconds, in their own style but working closely with the directors.

The timeframe is pretty short so we're looking people who have a few days free are able to jump straight in for a short intense burst, and with a natural sense of taste and ability to do justice to the beautiful illustrations and storyline on some challenging scenes.

For a couple of clips to get an idea of the illustration style you can click this link...

http://uk.youtube.com/user/HushtheMany0

Go for it and do spread the word..Wow, this was a biggie, but you can't say I didn't warn you. Hope you are very, very well and that you enjoyed this epic of love

Yasmin xxxx

p.s. Why are people comparing Juno to Little Miss Sunshine?! They are both great movies, but Juno is nowhere near the laugh out loud feel good flick Little Miss Sunshine is. It's just a lazy comparison. Juno had great taste in music though.x

Happy New You you

Yes I am a bit late, but I still really mean it. How is the year treating you? Have to say, it's been a tough one for me. In a way blogging a poem is good for me, as it reminds me of who I am beneath this current grisly veneer of a wage whore that I am having to bear at the moment. Bring on the end of February!!!

I've written over a thousand poems. And this is one of them. It's about the intoxicating power between our lips, when we kiss our hearts desire for the first time. Hope you like it

Lots of love..

Yasmin xxx

p.s. Regular blog filled with a squillion words to follow soon(ish!)

p.p.s good gigs in London to watch out for... Revere, Hush The Many, Merz, Explosions in the Sky, Citizen Helene, Fanfarlo, Rosered... x

no:1060            Her first kiss

Dearest you..

This has to be the biggest gap I've had to date since I first began blogging on myspace. It's not lack of desire that's stopped me, I've just not been living at home or had the mental space and clarity of thought. My weekend is almost over yet again, and this has been the first one since September I've had wholly to myself I kid you not. And I've spent it being ill lol, I'm cultivating a scrunched up tissue collection in all the bins in my flat! But I did buy a really nice angora beret yesterday, it's kind of greeny khaki, I had no idea that colour suited me. It's cool. I must keep an eye on the clock as Closer is on C4 in a bit, and I'm going to tape it in the lounge and watch it in the study, and do this crazy little routine of rushing across the hall to edit out all the commercial breaks as the evening goes on..

When I last wrote to you, I had newly lasered eyes, we'd lost our beautiful boy cat to cancer ( since then discovered my other cat has skin cancer but she's being treated with ointment as we can't subject this baby to chemo at the age of 18) , and I'd just started working for the Children and Young People's Service. The latter in some ways is going well. They're v.pleased with my work, which is always good to know. My office is hilariously overheated, but if you open the window the noise of the drills is enough to make you scream, and MySpace and Facebook are banned sites.

It means I miss living in my flat, and I miss my corner bath with gutache. I've made friends with this utterly witty, sweet fella who has a corner bath and I was literally speechless when he told me he'd never taken a bath in it. What a waste! I would have to revamp my bathroom to put one in if I moved home. There is a chance I may well go long-term or even perm, this would mean needing to move. I'm adamant on one thing, I won't work full-time. I'll do a four day week or walk away.

I've been awful at working on Gunshot Glitter this year. It's a combo of work, music, not living at home and lack of continuity. There is another reason why after a decade of leaving a trail of dust in my wake at the prospect of going perm I'm having a rethink. I am looking into where I would need to be in my life if I wanted to adopt a child.

I've known since the age of six I wanted to when I grew up. I know being a parent, and possibly a single parent is going to be a total lifestyle change and a massive responsibility. I know I can't swan off to gigs when I fancy or abandon responsibilities to be self-indulgent. My wee bairn would come first. This isn't a whimsy, I've worked with kids, and I am also as anyone who knows me well has twigged, pretty maternal. This here, beats a warm, soft heart, but with a viciousness inside to defend the ones she loves like a lioness.

There were all these little things happening closely together that pointed me to the fact that I might well be genuinely ready for it. For example,I was at a party and the neighbours came round with their baby, I held him for so long my arms ached the next day. He was well heavy. I was reassured more so about parenthood by the ma and her vivacity and honesty. She wanted pix of me holding her son, said I had a natural instinct.

It's not a desperate broodiness, it's more a feeling of excitement. I'm not about to steal a baby outside a newsagent and flee the country! Kids should add to your life, not end it or destroy it. I'm thinking of a child of about 5-6 perhaps? Old enough for a family-friendly music festival lol. We'll see, I'll need to move to a bigger place, put down some roots and gulp, downsize, or convince a child that their new mum owning a decades worth of women's and movie magazines is a good thing!

Also, my lovely colleague Norma next door works on the board that assesses potential parents for suitability, I had an article about adoption submitted for my internal magazine, and then to top it all off, I went to buy some fruit one afternoon and came back having signed my life away for a year to sponsor a girl child in Armenia.

I went into the shopping mall and there was this wall covered in pink hearts and this song ' Something About You' by Jamelia was playing that came out at the same time I last realised I'd very unexpectedly fallen in love, and I wanted to get a pink heart, donate to charity and write a declaration of tenderness for this sleek, dark horse who still gives me a headache, the cranky bugger, but has definite virtues, but there was no one there to give me a heart, so I went over to this woman with corkscrew curls next to the wall and she was with WorldVision and was born the day after me, and she was the same age, and knew her horoscope, it was funny, freaky and sweet. And before I could truly panic that I was going to sponsor a child's life for a year, I went for it and completed the form, and went back to the office without the fruit and feeling dazed and added the lovely lady to my Facebook as I'd promised to, too.

The spontaneity of that rattled me, I'm not that spontaneous a person with actions, but I figured if I could do that, and ensure that I have this sum of money in my account than this was a good first step…shit, I've just missed the start of Closer, I missed the start in the cinema too, and it's on C5 not C4, so no +1 perks

The night me and corner bath avoiding boy went to see Beowulf at the cinema I had a call to say my girl was called Anna and she was three years old. I now have her picture and everything. The sponsorship starts in January. By the way, is there anyone else who thinks Beowulf looks more like Sean Bean then the lovely Ray Winstone ( in his wildest dreams!)? Good movie though I thought. Jolie looked suitably unworldly in it. I met her pa once in real life in the audience at the theatre.

The other movie I enjoyed recently was Stardust, tons of folk I know went to see it and loved it, and I went out of curiosity, have to say was glad I did. It was lovely, funny, and made me thoughtful, about the notion of blind adoration versus someone earning your love. It was also awesome to see Michelle Pfeiffer back on the screen, in her biggest role in years - being a badass! Sienna Miller was sweet and petulant as the village hottie, and I actually saw her in the flesh last week when, her and Rhys Ifans were waltzing up and down the pews of the Union Chapel during Monday's seriously stunning Spiritualized gig.

The thing that made me chuckle was these two mousy acolytes scurrying behind them. What the hell was all that about?! Rhys would go striding down and behind they'd go. Sienna would rush by, head down demurely, and yup, a few steps behind there they were..

Musicwise there has been tons. I've had weeks were I've been to two gigs
per week, week on week on week. ( I've just blown my nose and my ears have blocked up, that's not good.) A few weeks back I was trying to work out what my Top 5 gigs of the year were. Have got to say that the Spiritualised one was in there. It was soothing, uplifting and that venue was stunning, all lit up in mauves and blues from the inside. Simple Kid was the support, he'd been at the End of the Road Festival last year but had clashed with someone else I was seeing. The guy has a lovely voice.

I was sat in the third pew and this sweet, spirited girl called Claudia was on my left. She'd been there the night before for the first date, said I was in for something special. Later on she told me she'd been to see Interpol twenty four times, which amazed me. I told her I was twenty two gigs behind, as this year I saw them at Koko and then much more recently at the Alexandra Palace. ( I was so tired at that gig, I sat in the disabled area to give my spine a break) I gave her a kiss on the cheek goodbye after we left together.

It's always a pleasure to meet someone as passionate about fine sounds as you are. I calculated the other day I'd seen Hush The Many gig twenty times since last year. Yikes. It hasn't always been a smooth ride, but got to say it's never been boring either, and the offshoots from the band have always been worthy of investigation.

Nine days before Spiritualised, SonVer played a gig at the Union Chapel too, it was a daytime event as a part of a music festival, they shared the bill with The Only Michael, who played this beautiful piece of music called The End of the Pier Show. He told me it was inspired by Brighton Pier. SonVer go from strength to strength as a four piece. There was one track that sounded Middle Eastern in tone, it was really cool, and on another Ruban and Al swapped places so Mr Byrne was behind a drum kit for the first time. I told him I didn't know he could play the drums, he told me there was a lot I didn't know about him. Unquestionably true. There are clips up on You Tube from the set, put in Yazzselena..

Writing wise things are cool, after Detwiije I had a piece on Ed Harcourt published in TourDates, he'd been on tour promoting his Best Of record, culminating in this amazing gig at London's prettiest venue Koko in Camden. It's the biggest crowd I've ever seen him play, and kind of freaky as I'm very familiar with his most loyal fans from his forum, and there were hundreds of folk there I didn't know from Adam. He was magnificent though, and The Veils were his support this time round. One track called ' Not Yet' went down well with me, but my attention was all over the place at the time. There had been a bit of a hooha with the guestlist, which I could have done without, simply a lack of clarity it turned out, but it was a top night.

This bloke covered in gold bodypaint came out to announce Ed and banged a massive gong to the strains of the theme from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey – Ed's always loved a sense of grandeur, I believe it appeals to the Leo in him! Then he launched into ' A Storm Is Coming' and never looked back. During ' Beneath The Heart of Darkness' The Veils and the golden laddie came back on stage and just tore the place up with grace and beauty, it was such a feast for the senses.

He loved that gig. A few nights later he helped Toby L celebrate the 5^th birthday of the Rockfeedback night at the Buffalo Bar, and I loved this gig for the intimacy it afforded, and being able to help make up the setlist as the night went along. It was cosy, and Jo and Helene were there too. Spooky to discover that Jo and her friend Liz, knew a colleague of mine from The Times. Small world and all that.

What killed me on the night was this sweet, ardent, utterly drunk girlfan who knew every word to every song and sang and sang and sang and kept trying to embrace me. I had one hand over my ear, but didn't have the heart to stop her as she was so oblivious and happy. Had she been an ass I would have bitchslapped her with the glare from my eyes! The only song that eluded her was Lachrymosity, he's had that here on MySpace, and I captured a clip on You Tube. It's a gorgeous, gorgeous song.

Ed and Nick de Cosemo finally relaunched their Nektar's 'Meet the Greek' extravaganza – if you've read my blogs before, you'll have heard me speak of these events before. I've seen Tom McRae, The Magic Numbers, Graham Coxon, Robyn Hitchcock up close and personal at these shindigs. They've always been informal and fun. Nektar was the reason I discovered Headland, Bikini Atoll and of course Hush The Many. I met Nima back in April of last year at one. Well, this one was renamed ' Retreat from the Greek' and the venue was changed to The Paradise ( by way of Kensal Green). Nick has dispensed with the corkscrew curls, but was in fine, fine form.

Ed had bought and donated a white piano to the venue room upstairs, and the staff downstairs had been told a secret gig was on, and little more. It was a new, grander venue. Gorgeous in truth, but as the night went on and the room got increasingly rammed, I missed the Nektar bar to be honest, it was easier to spread out and see stuff. But I still had a fabulous time.

Nick told me to pace myself as I was in for a long night. He was right, I was shattered by the end of it. It was nice though, I met more of Ed's family as his brother came along they stood watching the music literally brothers in arms which was lovely. Gita's sisters Amy and Rosie provided a string section to launch it all. Amy's kids came along, and this dog that was at the last Nektar turned up too. So it was a sea of new and old faces. Me and Helene had been to Nektar before, but it was Pete and John's first time. She'd bought her bandmate Marmaduke Dando with her, and Ed gave them both performance time on the bill, which was wonderful.

Helene went down really, really well. She's been much more prolific with her song writing, and has been singing backing vocals with Marm(ie's!) band The Mooch. Me and my friend Trevor surprised her by turning up to see them at a gig in Camberwell Green a few weekends back, traffic that eve had been a 'mare and I was terrified we'd have missed the whole thing, but the gods were kind that day. I heckled for 'Little STD' which is now on her player, check it out, it's a gem! Marm's band are also definitely worth a watch and if you see them on a bill, do listen up, if only to hear a bunch of lasses sweetly call him 'daddy'. No seriously, their headline gig was ace. They played in a church the other idea but I was pretty ill on the night. The gig Powerdown was name-checked in the Metro which was cool.

Anyway, back to (fake) Nektar! I'm all side-tracked, were was I? Grand National went down a storm – Nick did a stage invasion to sing a verse on a song, The Deadbeats had me shaking my hiney a lot, David Viner looked healthy and way better than the last time I saw him sing, and Ed played piano on a track with a singer he's been working with called Josephine Oniyama called ' House of Mirrors' ( I think) which just slayed everyone, it was heartbreaking, and I genuinely regret not capturing it. I told him I wanted to hear it again, like right now. It was the first time they'd played it live. Just beautiful and inspiring of images and gutache. We had bar tokens and the punch was strong but questionable, and made Helene pull quite a face:

Ed played a set and the mics were dodgy, Until Tomorrow Then had me covering my ears and he laughed at how bad it was himself! But he had this squirrel on stage with him which he larked about with, which cracked me up, but he was too embarrassed to show me a photo of him with it that some shady acolyte had taken who'd bequeathed said toy squirrel to him. I dread to think. The night ended with a superb set by The Magic Numbers, I was front row, close enough to risk serious poke-age to my newly measured G cups by Michelle's guitar, and the audience were just insane on booze and fine songs by then bouncing off the walls. ' Forever Lost' is immortalised on You Tube, for your viewing pleasure, even my sorry but well loved digital captured a fair recording of the song, watch and enjoy below:

Ed's now a free agent, the contract with Heavenly is now over, but he's barely paused since finishing his tour. He's played Europe in the last week and is now writing, producing and collaborating. Wish the man well, he's a genuine musical treasure.

I've had odd or repetitive dreams lately, one about having a gorilla, which I sleepily relayed to my brother and his wife one morning, and one about lifts, one about possibly plunging to my death, but then being able to save myself at the last minute. I was bloody glad to wake up from some of them I swear.

Back in November, Nima from Hush The Many did this sweet thing were he sent out free MP3s of tracks to fans on request, it was like trading Panini stickers in my early teens except with songs. I've never seen so many bulletins fly out of the band page as I did when the 100 Club gig was coming up, it was like Nima had a case of the verbals, but it was a very good gig, which I wrote up again for Tourdates, and had a right strop over have to say, but tis done. Nice piece though anyway.

The gig totally whizzed by, and we must have been kidnapped by the aliens in that Christopher Walken movie 'Communion' as there was no way they'd been on for 45mins, but it would appear they had. Nice sparklers too and a fab turn out of friends for this one from members of Revere to Ed fans to new fans born on the night. Special mention to Lisa-Lindley Jones for her fabulous, smoky tinged opening set, I really enjoyed it, and was endeared by her ankle bells.

I helped the lovely Lydia ( aka Rosered) celebrate her birthday in Aroma at Wood Green, she's well into her twenties and yet still got refused service in a pub on the High St! We went along and ate tons of food on the night, and I will never see Banana Fritters in the same way again thanks to Wayne, I am scarred for life. Dodgy geezer, but he does have good taste in literature in spite of that.

Every now and then I do the unthinkable and watch a headline act I've never, ever seen before and I did this last month with a band called Beach House – if you've never heard them check out their MySpace or the page for Bella Union. They are fabulous, I love them, I saw them gig at the Water Rats, along with The Pierces who are gloriously, glamourous sisters who delight in singing sinister, pretty songs – and this demented carneyesqye band of boys called Tankus The Henge who arrived armed with glowsticks and an army of pubescent fans I am old enough to nurse – but despite my raised brow on watching them, I was kind of charmed actually. The lead singer reminded me of the Artful Dodger, one of Chas and Dave and the divine Tom Corbett from Special Benny all rolled into one. But Beach House are special, almost like a tropical My Bloody Valentine without the feedback, reverb and more echoey, I've played them a lot this autumn. By the way cannot wait to see MBV next June, as Nick Cave once sang - Bring It On!!

In the last year, I have missed out on tons of cinema, it's only lately I've had a serious urge to play catch up. I treated myself to a DVD of The Fountain because a hazel eyed lad said he thought I'd like it, and he has some handy opinions. I didn't get time to watch the damn thing for about a month though!

But me and my friend Steve watched it one Sunday, with the curtains drawn after a luscious meal in town.You could see this was a real labour of love for Darren Aronofsky, who also ended up falling in love with lead actress Rachel Weisz, and lovely to see Hugh Jackman in such an emotional, challenging role. I once went to see her on stage when I was 21 in Design For Living, she is utterly captivating.

This movie divided the critics and I can totally see why some would have found it's dancing on the linear nature of time quite baffling, but like movies like Memento, and some of David Lynch's work, it makes you take risks with your own powers of deduction and interpretation, but is fundamentally a tale of love, loss and desperation and the timeless, eternal desire to connect and preserve love and the human spirit. I'm kind of looking forward to the Xmas break so I can watch it again on my own actually. It's an intensely romantic film.

This year, I've not been abroad at all, I didn't want to be here for Xmas or the new year and was gutted that the prices had shot up for flights abroad to the Maldives, as I was had a real desire to see in the new year on the warm shores of the Indian Ocean.

It's been a week and four years since I came home from there. I now have friends and an old love on my Facebook from that era of my life. Maybe I'll be out there to see in my 35^th birthday? As long as I am in the UK in June for the My Bloody Valentine gigs I don't mind! Can't wait for those, I've been playing ' When You Sleep' ' Lose My Breath' and ' No More Sorry' on my MP3 player when I'm walking the streets in the dark. Mogwai and Interpol also suit the streets when the sun has vanished I've discovered. I have Steve to thank for showing me I didn't need the malfunctioning software to actually load my songs onto the hot pink piece of kit.

Food tip for you. If you're ever in Chingford, go to Chongs, they do a mean food buffet. But if you're a hardcore vegetarian, don't. Unless you enjoy lots of cold puddings and deserts. The prawns were awesome, but give the squid a miss. I've never heard Shakin Stevens played with a Chinese twist though..

Last music mention of the blog must go to the excellent, shiny new artist F.Lunaire who is my favourite new singer of the year. He launched himself at an invitation only special at a recording studio on Friday night, which I went along to. It was rammed, and there was booze, an energy drink with mango in it which I opted for as I didn't think wine was a good idea mixed with paracetamol on 3 hours sleep, and a high fever – and he put on a great show with his band.

Florian also plays in Kid Harpoon who I've heard off, but not listened to in truth, but his own songs are just brilliant. I've had them on my myspace page a lot since hearing them. If you're going to listen to anyone I've enthused about on this blog, then go to his page after you've left this and listen to 1. Tarantella 2. Quantum Physics.

I have the most hilarious clip that is just a mass of sound and jerky imagery, as I made a half hearted attempt to video him singing, before abandoning the camera during the chorus to Quantum Physics so I could dance my heart out! Literally feverish dancing. Pete and Helen came along as Hush The Many were there too, but the night for me belonged to Flo and his band this time.

There is a teeny, teeny chance I will have blogged again before the new year is upon us as I do plan to be at home for a good week before I head into 2008, if only to wish you all a happy new year, but it will be a supremely wee one. But I do want to sincerely thank you for reading this, and for dropping in on my blogs, or writing me supportive notes, or notes to say you've been entertained, amused, or just felt a reaction. I love to write, and I love to share and that's why I do this. I'm sorry not to have been around so much lately, life's been all consuming. So cheers for giving me a reason to do it, and take care of yourself. I hope you read me again in 2008

Lots of love

Yasmin xxxx

p.s. There are pix on Facebook from Ed Harcourt's Fake Nektar here..
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20861&l=7ee6e&id=699005810

Hello you

 I am trying something new today. Normally I give myself as much time as I need to write a blog, hence you guys end up reading epics worthy of Tolstoy's, but there simply isn't time. I start a new contract tomorrow even though I feel pretty burned out by life in truth ( so pls wish me luck) and I have a list of things to do as long as my arm here before my head hits the pillow tonight. If I tick off half of it I will have done okay so here goes… I might add to this later, we'll see.

 Things now feel they might start to get better if I dare hope, and fundamentally I am an optimtist, though that streak took a severe bashing in the last week.

I'm not going to dwell on this much because it's still raw and I am only now beginning to accept it's happened, and deal with the pain, but basically we had to put down a seriously beloved member of our family on Sunday. And I mean family, Tigs was one of us. We are very serious about our love of felines in our clan. My sister once chased a boy twice her size up a tree when she caught him trying to drown a kitten. I adopted a kitten in the Maldives too.  My birthday cat is a rescue cat as was Tigs. We love them. End off. Tigs had cancer, we only discovered this grim fact a few weeks back. It knocked us all for six. I can't believe he's gone. I was in pieces on the day and my head was so not straight it wasn't true. I convinced myself of something pretty stupid in relation to a friend.

 I felt sick and terrible and cried myself eyesore. I lost about 4lbs in the last few days as my stomach was in knots. We did everything we could for him. It just didn't work. He was and always will be our beautiful boy.  He just couldn't eat, had no strength or life in him, A few days before this, I discovered an ex-boyfriend who I had loved very much. and am still good friends with had lost his mother to the same disease. I knew she was ill, but it was still a shock, and my heart really went out to him. Obviously, that's a massively private thing so that's all I will say about that, but it affected me in a delayed reaction.  It's been a dark time here. We could all do with a little sun I think.

I had my last day at The Times at the end of August. My replacement is a gorgeous girl called Anne who shares my birthday. They surprised me with a leaving do, and kind of freaked me out actually. I tend to get madly intense on my last day, with tons to do, so surprises really do my head in. I actually legged it I kid you not, and Anne had to come and find me. They had cake, flowers, wine – the works. Blimey. Me and my wee team had a lunch shindig which was fun, earlier that day and I was still stuffed from that. I took pix posing next to the soaraway Sun bus, which I had always meant to do, and later on I went around and gave everyone a Lindor choc as a thank you and goodbye, they went down extremely well. If you want to make me happy, Lindor and flowers = always goes down well, take notes

Btw if you are a blogger, have you noticed your blog count shoot up? Mine was always pretty healthy which always makes me happy, but lately it's been super healthy like it's taken a dose of Gillian Mckeith's spirulina or something. Not that I am complaining, read them, read them, read them! I love it when you leave me comments and your own observations.

September was a really mixed month. It started well enough with a good friend of mine coming over and taking a load of pix. It was something he had wanted to do for a while as he's done a photo course and we had a good day of it. You can see some in my online myspace album if you look. I was well impressed by the results, and was kind of delighted they were me and I wasn't necessarily smiling in them all. It was nice to try on different things I own and play with ideas. I would recommend you do it, if only to explore different parts of your personality and images in your own mind. He's someone I trust so it was liberating for me. I've always been one of those people who was never totally sure if they were pretty, but this was a positive experience in dealing with that hang up. I am not a minger, it's official!! Yay, the funny thing was that I initially made the handful of pix I put up on my page a free for all in terms of who could look at them. Not such a good idea I discovered. Thank you myspace pervos.  They are now restricted to 'friends only'.

I treated myself to a mobile phone. All the lettering had come off the other one as well as the knobbly stick thing.  It's dead sexy, but I swear Carphone Warehouse e-sales folk need a severe smack in the ass. They missed out a free 200m calls voucher in my package with Virgin. It took me 15 days and more calls than I care to recall to get this off them. It was meant to take 72 hours according to them. They never answered their calls. They put me through to the wrong folk. Their on hold music drove me insane. I almost lost the will to live. But I am a tenacious lass when it comes to crap like this. Onto more good stuff!

Ed Harcourt had a celebratory launch party at Ronnie Scotts for his forthcoming Best of release ' Until Tomorrow Then'. That was really nice. Me and Helene went along to it, and it was really good to see some of Ed's mates and musicians I had seen him play with in days of yore like the lovely Leo Abrahams and Austrian centrefold Arnulf Lindner.  We were greeted with wine and fries in little metal buckets -  as it was an industry ' do'. I got to try out the camera on the new Samsung mobile. Ed was wearing a polka dot shirt and was a touch bleary from having been celebrating his 2^nd wedding anniversary to the gorgeous Gita. You can see Gita on stage and on promotional stuff with KT Tunstall. She's the fringe heavy beauty with the cute turned up nose singing backing vocals. Ronnie Scotts was dimly lit and there were all these journo's wondering about. Ed did a really great set. It's been ages since I've seen him sing more than a couple of his own songs and as I'd had a barny with a friend a few days before this, a really great antidote to that. We were sat at the front, and on ' Until Tomorrow Then' serenaded our friend Richard with an affectionate ruffle of the hair, and kissed Helene's hand. It was sweet and funny. We love Ed! The only thing I was gutted by was how swiftly we were rushed out of the venue. Ed had been telling me about his new video for the new single ' You Put A Spell on Me'  - you have to see it, it's on his myspace page or look it up on You Tube. It's his best video yet. That best off record deserves to do well. He's been on the radio promoting it, so fingers crossed. Also, he's on tour at the moment, so check his page, and if he is playing near you. One word. Go.

I also went for it with the laser eye surgery, I had a call from Optical Express asking if I was still interested, the day before Ed's gig,  and the truth is I was, but not at the full whack. They'd offered me a small discount before but the date on it has expired, I told them I would go for it, if the deal was still on. Some to and fro later I was on. I also decided to take them up on a cancellation they'd got in, and lo and behold on 12^th September I had it done! Jesus, it was TERRIFYING, I am sorry it was! I was fine about it, literally until I met my surgeon and then I thought OH MY GOD he is going to cut my eye open and I am going to be awake. ARGH!!! Rodney Blumfeld was fantastic, I wanted to kiss him and all the nurses afterwords. They were so good to me. I needed to know everything all over again before I could even settle, and they even got someone in specially to hold my hand for the whole thing. It was once I let myself trust them, the most curious experience actually. There was no pain, but you can actually see the implement resting on your eye smoothing the flap back down and yet all you feel is this pressure. Could have done without the chainsaw noise though. I also ended up sharing the recovery room with a woman who I had gone to Brunel with. That was spooky, I'd not seen her since she had a mullet hairdo and played a lot of hockey when she was 21, and here she was in her mid 30s. It was nice to catch up with her, bleary eyed and dazed as I was.  My brother came to get me and as we were driving down the road, suddenly the fog cleared and I had 20-20 vision. It was the oddest but coolest thing. I actually went OH MY GOD out loud in his car. But the operation itself was exhausting to be honest, it is proper surgery. I had to use a multitude of eye drops and wear a mask in bed. No tartware, no this, no that. Totally cool with it as I didn't want to do anything, but heal 100% correctly.

(Wow I have 20 mins of my hour left)

I ended up having a telephone interview the next day for a role and darn, I got it. But it went stupidly pearshaped as the guy failed to ask me or tell my agency he wanted a WindowsVista user. I was a bit narked as the money was really, really good. Oh well. I was cheesed off, but in truth, exhausted, as I discovered eye surgery makes your head feel really, really tired. I found myself nodding off around 9-10am during the first few weeks. I had had a friend over from France and then my friend Helene needed a place to stay while she got herself sorted, so it's been busy here, when really I needed space,  but it was good to hear Helene sing and my god can she make good lasagne.  Helene's lasagne rocks.  We were very domesticated indeed and ate properly, and I made apple crumble using her brother Greg's recipe. I'd bought back two bags of Neasden's finest on a trip home. Very tasty. We did some low key fun stuff like nipping across the road to try out new posh food during the  Sainsbury's Taste Festival. There was one guy who was hopeless at the field sales spiel he was required to do when selling wine. All the wine made me choke as it was so bloody dry! The stuff of heaven was however the Taste The Difference Tiramasu. There was no one round to serve it to us, so we legged it after having two portions each! It was actually very filling.

Music wise it's been relatively quiet. I went to the Wupadupa Kingston Parish Chuch Amnesty International benefit, and through ambitious over extending of myself and very bad luck with the traffic managed to miss half of it. I was so pissed off,  I hadn't seen Special Benny play in absolutely ages, and missed other good stuff like Semble and Pink'n'Ruby. I arrived in the interval and saw Jo Quail from Sonver/Hush The Many and Tom Corbett on getting in. Gutted wouldn't come close. I sat on a pew with a prostrate, hooded Ruban behind me to enjoy the second half, which had short films and a few more performers. Jo was playing on stage too, which was nice and she had a really great time up there even though the atmospheric lighting made it really hard to read the sheet music. Once it was over I had a nice hug from Ben and Grace from the Bennies to see me off into the night. Tom and Casey walked me down and he said he'd try and see about getting a recording of the eve for me.

My younger brother treated me to some DVDs which was nice of him, so in the eve's we caught up on some good stuff like Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou  and the inane but fun ' Blades of Glory' Cinema wise I would recommend Atonement. Me and my friend Steve went to see it after a Subway feast and it knocked us both for six. Get past the posh accents at the start and lose yourself in it. I've never read anything by Ian McEwan and I now curse the times I've seen the book going secondhand and not bought a copy. I want to read it now. Ellie from Revere really rates it highly too. Which reminds me, I got published in  London TourDates! That was really cool,  it's a free music paper you get in gig venues and Stephen Ellis asked me to pen a review for them, and I did. It was the last gig for the band at The Spitz, which is now sadly closed. So there you go, published on real paper as well as on TimesOnline. There is something very romantic about paper I think..

Ellie asked me to cover a very special one off gig by her defunct, but awesome band Detwiije who are post-rock, loud and make beauty and  hell on earth in one fell swoop.  I went to see them last night at the Hoxton Bar and Grill. I've always been  nervy of the area at night to be honest, and I was still feeling low and fragile after Tigs but put on my bravest face and headed off. It was a good night and nice to see Kath, Jon and Nathaniel from Revere there in support.  I met a sweet boy from Ireland who was over specially for the set and was just delirious with joy at how much he'd loved the set. The support bands both had merit. This Danish combo called Lily something were good fun. I saw Dimitri Tikovoi for the first time in over a year. He's mixed their record, and still looks very blonde, slightly wild but as sweet as ever. I will write the piece in the next few days.

Today ( as my hour is up in a few mins) was damp but kind of nice, I went to the doctors for a check up and got collared by this old asian lady who couldn't speak English and needed someone to explain to the physio that her friend who was meant to come to translate for her couldn't make it and she was in serious pain and freaking out. So I said, I'll do it for you, its fine, I ended up sitting in with this woman for 40mins who I had never met before explaining her aches and pains. It was tragic and sweet as my Punjabi isn't that great, and then to top it off in the bay behind me, I heard this voice call out  - 'Yasmin?!'  My friend Kiran was back there, I cracked up laughing. It was so surreal. She came out and said ' you're speaking to her in Hindi and Punjabi' – I've never been able to tell the difference to be honest.  But that was my good deed for the day, and now my hour is up and I am going to make me some more apple crumble..

Love and hugs

Yasmin xxxx

Well, hello there you..

It's a glorious, glorious, GLORIOUS Monday eve in Hayes and I don't even mind I am in Hayes for it. I've spent several hours basking in the sun in my lounge (there is a pot large enough to crouch in on my balcony with a peony bush and a rogue tomato plant bearing fruit in it) stretched out on a sun lounger finishing off the latest Marian Keyes novel, which almost clocks in at 600 pages and feeling sorry it had to end, and listening to No Doubt on the stereo

 I've not played them in ages. Rock Steady is a brilliant album. It's funny, I had no idea how affected I am by the weather when it comes to music. I instinctively went for my summery sounding CDs and also played stuff I'd not heard in ages like the best of New Order, Nelly Furtado's first album ' Whoa Nelly', NERD's first album ' In Search Of'  and Gwen Stefani and her lads - .it's that or I'm having a Sesame Street style love affair with the letter ' N' today.  I am not in a post rock, alt rock, or folk alt experimental place at all. No desire for Interpol, Nick Cave, Hush The Many or gulp, Sigur Ros.  I want the sun streaming in everywhere. Though Glosoli by Sigur Ros is pretty damn cheerful as is the titletrack of Takk.

I've just been over tired lately, severely so, so serious chilling and self- indulgence is the ticket for me this weekend. I cancelled my plans. I've had these dizzy spells on and off for the last couple of weeks. I find I have to stop moving and steady myself until they pass. I think all the tro and fro of living between homes and the yappy dog waking me in Stokey has caught up with me.

Also, in the last couple of weeks my train of thought has been kind of forced towards a pretty dispassionate examination of my bonds, both musical and personal. Fessing up to myself has been tough actually and not remotely fun, but I am really glad I did it. Clarity is ultimately a good thing. But it takes two, and people change or you just take your blinkers off -  that's the cold hard truth. But you'll always have your memories I guess, and in my case, a hell of a lot of photos! Last time I counted I had about 30 albums of them. 

You kind of need to stand back sometimes and ask yourself if people you like are actually good people to have in your life. It doesn't matter if you like them, are they good to you or for you? 

 If after you've asked that question, you've felt like a prize fool when the answer is no, it's time to let go, and despite the gritted determination of your heart to do otherwise, really let go. You'll know when you've done it when you find yourself not dwelling on them anymore. It takes far longer than you think if you're anything like me. I get attached far too easily and am stupidly loyal sometimes, but then if you push my limit and then I wouldn't excuse the expression, piss on you if you were on fire.

 I'm not a cynic and I go on face value, so that means I engage really easily with folk, but you end up needing to sort the wheat from the chaff after a bit. With that trait, I only have myself to blame, the thing is I believe in the good in people. Like when I was in the Seychelles and spotted kittens ambling around on a hillside near a cardboard box. My immediate assumption was that they were strays and had come across the box as a nice place to live in. Seriously I did! 

 Then I realised there was no ma puss near by and then it hit me some fucker had put them in the box and chucked it down, down the hill, and I was utterly horrified and quickly got involved. My brain just doesn't work that way, who can do that to kittens?!

You know I've loved, loved, loved using MySpace, you lot are so cool, and it makes me extremely happy how appreciated and enjoyed these blogs are,  but the other day a man sent me a note and his page featured as close up of his clothed bottom and crotch, or there was a Ku Klux Klan fan I shit you not, recruiting for members and wanted to know if I was interested. 

But, aside from the anonymous weirdos who don't know you from Adam, what about the freaks that actually do, that you think you've seen the back off? I had this blast from the past when this right old moo from high school sent me a friends request. I looked at it in disbelief, she was Satan personified back then, did her damndest to mess with my head and rattle me. Horrible piece of work, and when she'd joined our school when we were about 14 or something I'd been very nice to her, as she was new and all that. No tragic background to excuse her. I googled her and discovered she'd sold her 'story' to the media and appeared on some daytime trash, her 'story' was leaving her kids and running off to be in sunny Spain as she'd been there on holiday and had a good time. Nice.

Gosh, this has been quite negative so far hasn't it? Sorry! The flipside of these sites is good stuff like getting to meet a lot of great and good folk, and also through my fledgling Facebook page, I'm now back in touch with the one who introduced me to some good stuff like Ed Harcourt ( yes, its his fault, blame him!) , Cat Power, Modest Mouse, Adem. We met up and had a meal in London in an almost comical Mexican restaurant with the most dodgy chairs ever, both his and mine took a drop and then we decided, nope, not sitting at this table. But didn't do that before we satisfied my desire to get Origins skincare samples with my Times vouchers. It was a really cool evening. We had a pitcher of cocktail each and I needed to visit the ladies 3 times in like, 20 minutes before we headed homewards. So hearing from some witch from your dark past is worth it when you rekindle something nice too.

If you're a UK dweller reading this, then you'll no doubt have noticed the wretched almost biblically bad weather we've had here. Floods and floods, and storms a plenty. Wettest weather on record etc, but at the start of August, we did, if you recall have a summery, lovely weekend. It was the weekend of the Innocent Fete, that was such fun, but what was cool was meeting up with Pete and his son Joe. That was grand, we hung out to watch Hush The Many perform a set in a big tent to babies and parents all seated cross-legged looking up, which cracked me up. Not sure how impressed Nima was by that, but Ruban looked amused. Pete loved the set but was gutted to have missed Paper Doll, but I am glad he got to see them, as it's been a long time coming. Six-year old Joe concluded they were ' very nice.'

 Ruban's actually now also in SonVer with Alistair Richardson who used to drum in HTM. They played a wonderful set at the Luminaire in Kilburn, supporting  Brazilian chanteuse Cibelle back in July, most impressive indeed. Probably the best gig they've played. I made it by the skin of my teeth after managing to get on a 15 bus going the wrong way when I was already running late. Stressy. Pix are up on Flickr.

I digress! After Hush, me and Pete went and found Al's other half Di at work in the Penguin tent. Pete took Joe to the kids area. I hurried off to catch some of Flipron, applied sunblock and just loved, utterly loved Adem's set.

The lovely Adem at the Innocent Fete in Regents Park

 The man was swamped by wellwishers and fans, he went down extremely well and little children wanted his autograph.  Later on when I was back home I had to find out what this song was called that I had utterly loved, and my friend Ella put me out of my misery and told me it was called  'Long Drive Home' you must check it out. It's beautiful. I liked the words.  This boy I was sat next to advised me to stay for the next act, by now I was very thirsty. It was baking hot, and I was dreaming of thirst quenching smoothies. Innocent had sampling points for them scattered about. The fella he wanted me to watch was Jack Savoretti. This is a young man who is not remotely touched with the ugly stick and is a promising tunesmith to boot. Worth a listen. His album lists credits to Boo Hewerdine who used to be in The Bible.

Innocent fete really impressed me, I loved that it was packed to the gills with stands, and charities, and a farmers market and giveaways, dancing and so many families were there with their kids. There was no riff raff and everyone seemed pretty chilled. Best day I've had in Regents Park and reassuring to see so many children. I never see children in the daytime that aren't kicking about the street in hoodies were I live, so it was good to see wee ones that made my girl parts twinge a little. Go next year, it's a cool day out. I saw some gripes about children's rides being expensive. I didn't have to worry about that, so maybe if you have wee ones that could be a drawback? I know Joe had a really good day, and me and Pete hung about near the Yogabugs corner, talking and people-watching with his son slumped sleepily on his chest.  I bought a brownie, a load of Dorset cereals, posh soap, this delicious rainforest salad and got given goodies to sample and take home. Top day and all for a fiver!

London has some really good stuff going for free if you care to make the effort to check it out. Before that day of sun and fun, was the slightly damper, London RISE festival in Finsbury Park organised by Ken Livingstone's posse. Maybe that's where all the congestion charge cash goes? It peed down with rain, my God! Especially during Jamelia's set. I love her. She was fabulous live. In the end I was oblivious to my sodden right arm, which poked out from under the brolly I was sharing with my friend Trevor. She exceeded my expectations, and for me, stole the show. I cannot believe her record label dropped her?! Have to say her last album was patchy in truth, but songs like 'Something about you' ' Thank you' and  ' See it in a boys eyes' are just class. I think the latter won her a MTV award if memory serves me well?

The Noisettes rocked, it was great seeing them again, and they went down really well. I first saw them at The Buffalo Bar in 2005 when they went on after Ed Harcourt's thrash metal outfit, ' Wild Boar.' Shingai was leaping about the place and Dan had fun chatting to the crowd between songs. Later on she came and spoke to a friend who had the sweetest little boy in her arms who kept trying to put his smile on his mums face with his fingertips from his own, like a transfer. It was endearing because the principle of it was so pure and innocent.  He might be a mare to control when he's home and defiantly ignoring bedtime but right there and then, I thought' Aw'

 It was surreal seeing Saint Etienne though, I saw them play at the Astoria or the Town and Country Club, not sure which, back in 1993 I think with my friend Simon who now runs the SlamIdol poetry podcast site, as he was a big fan and he got me into them. That was like 14 years ago?!! I was thrilled to hear them perform ' Like a Motorway' – I've always wanted to hear that sung live. And now I have : ) And Sarah Cracknell is still pretty hot all these years later. But seeing them again bought on many mixed feelings. Not sure why? An age things perhaps? The fact I felt I saw them in a lifetime ago and was it cool that they were still together? I don't honestly know. It bugs me that I don't.

 The only diva of the night was Kelis, who redeemed herself with some fine ass shaking at the end of her set with  'Trick Me' and won the crowd over, who'd been largely indifferent to her ministrations up until then. Winning them back commenced by ' performing 'MilkShake' about three quarters of the way through her set.  She'd got my back up a bit by taking her sweet time to take the stage, after this weird backing track announcing her awesomeness clicked on, I thought oh no Kelis is doing a Mariah!  The weather veered between muggy cloud and piercing heat. At the start I watched her sing Millionaire which I love, but then her stuff got very turgid,  and so I popped of quickly  to see if I could see Shazia Mirza or Bill Bailey in the Comedy tent, came back to find Trevor distinctly underwhelmed by old Kelis, until she started on about her Milkshake being the best and then things got better…

I know I've missed some proper festies like Latitude, Secret Garden and the much maligned all-dayer Field Day, and its all the more ironic as I have a really nice tent I can use now!  But I am pleased I went to RISE and the Innocent Fete as these were totally new experiences for me. I've never been to either of them before, and it's cool they were both positive experiences.  I think with me having not had a day off since working at The Times - and most festivals needing that to be enjoyed properly, I've been put off going, and the costs once you've got past the ticket price really does add up, when you factor food, transport, drinks and shopping into account. I have friends who treat it like a proper holiday, which of course it can be, sans crisp cotton sheets and luxury facilities.

Need to save the shrapnel for things I have up my sleeve that involve big outgoings, like finding a new home amongst other things, and with next week being my last week at The Times, I need to secure another role too, to boot. Ideally one were I can sleep in my own bed here. I've loved living with Tigs and the family in Stokey, that's been grand, but it's so far from here and my little luxuries and space. I know when I move back, I am going to miss seeing them in the evenings as I have become accustomed to. Change really rattles me to be honest, so its surreal that I freelance as I also have a fear of being stuck somewhere for too long(!). Let me know if a job or company looking to recruit comes to your mind. Would love to hear from you, I am open to suggestions.

I will miss working at The Times too. My manager Camilla had a baby boy called Freddie, in fact, she went into labour 20 mins after talking to me and telling me she missed the huge pilates ball that she had left at work. Camilla orchestrated the whole Kate Moss working with Rimmel London campaign many moons ago fact fans.

 My replacement, who will do my role permanently is this glorious girl called Anne who spookily shares my birthday and has a thing for Aquarians and expressed it most ardently by going on to marry one. I once had a party in my flat were at one point 8 folk were Aquarian and 8 were Scorpio I kid you not. I counted. I love Aquarians, you eccentric lot, you rule!  The Times has been good for me for sure. I got published, I made some good money so didn't have sell any more of my bras on ebay, I got some excellent freebies such as these heavenly Origins samples and various CDs and DVDs. Oh and Basil seeds, musn't forget those.

Change eh? It's good, but scary, but hopefully will be more good then scary. If I don't have something lined up when the role ends next week I will be playing catch up with sorely neglected friends en masse I think, while I am here at home. I must apologise, as I know how much it rankles me not to hear from my mates for ages, in between mails. But its been tough, not being in your own home and when you've been online at work, to be on a PC especially my brothers which doesn't have the ortho support in the chair I need for my spine, tis not good for me.

Did anyone out there get excited about the last Harry Potter book? I got my copy at Morrissons in Acton and then vanished off the face of the earth for the rest of the weekend to read it cover to cover, even getting indignant when this man came to the door to get me fill out a survey as he kept me from the book for a good twenty minutes. I even went to see the early showing of the latest movie the following day. The movie wasn't great but then neither was that particular book. I think Order of the Phoenix is the weakest one, Harry just throws an adolescent strop for most of it and feels hard done by, then again if you've got some evil fella after you who killed your parents and gives you a constant headache (literally!) you would too probably.

I did something I'd never done before when I went to the Red Bull aeroplane race competition thing at North Greenwich. My friend Trevor is a massive aircraft fan like my elder brother, so I actually know a bit about this sort of thing after playing endless rounds of Top Trumps with him as a kid. Go on ask me when the Super Enterard was launched… it's 1977, unless the cards lied. The Red Bull thing was a lot of fun once I knew a bit about who was flying and despite there being some old crusties competing, it was all very impressive. The tickets were pretty dear though, I was being treated, but I was still a bit alarmed at the price. Yikes. Sixty quid.  I did cook a rather fine tagliatelle dinner by way of a thank you.

Gigwise, the other cool thing was getting to see my MySpace friend Lydia perform live for the first time ever. Please check out her MySpace Rosered page on www.myspace.com/rosred. Her songs are very infectious and she really is a pixie, I couldn't believe it when I realised this. She's this wee thing with a little voice when she talks, but is resplendent in her individuality, and I smiled throughout her set. I was quietly thrilled to hear her sing StoneCold live as it was the song that made me sit up and take notice of her, and I found I had Where's The Summer going around in my head when I walked home. I was shattered when I went along, but was really glad I did, I yawned tons though post gig, it was really embarrassing. She sang at a venue called The Blush Bar on Cazenove Road just off Stoke Newington High Street. Marie Tueje was also pretty good, she had a powerful voice and a strong stage presence. I met a couple of Lydia's friends there too and we talked books and music and I've now converted John aka The Jacket onto the delight that is Ed Harcourt, and noted some good book recommendations from Mr Stumpy.

Me and Lydia at the Blush Bar, I stopped yawning just for the photo

By the way Ed is touring his best off record in October with The Veils as his support. Go along, do yourself some good. The man is wonderful live. Keep an eye on his MySpace player as he constantly posts up new songs when the fancy takes him and I suspect some of these will not be available to buy, but don't steal 'em folks, it upsets him.   If you go to the Koko gig maybe I will see you there? Look for a woman near the front in a heightened state of excitement and it may well be me, come and say hello. That's been one of the other wonderful things about myspace, it puts you in touch with like minded folk who you may not normally have met. 

The gig I've loved most since last blogging has got to be getting to see Mogwai at Somerset House in July. God it was special.  I know it won't do it justice but if you go on You Tube, I've posted a clip of them performing ' A friend for the night' off Mr Beast. I had the perfect view, practically at the very front. The setting was stunning, the surround sound was perfect and didn't hurt my ears at all,  the crowd attentive and totally into it, and this drunk fella got shushed by someone, I didn't have to shush anyone it was awesome!

 And except for them not playing Auto Rock, which I passionately love, I couldn't have asked for more. IT DID NOT RAIN. I was terrified it would as it was open air, but the weather held, the sky changed colour as the evening went on, and I felt exceedingly romantic and affected by the ambience, hues and sounds as the night wore on. Magic. What's really funny is that I wouldn't know a member of Mogwai even if he came and sat on my lap. For some reason I've always been happy for them to remain anonymous to me. I play them, I love them. I watch them, I die with pleasure. But have no idea who they are beyond the gentle Scottish burr that greets me at their gigs, and weirdly I am cool with that. Puzzling.

The audience post Mogwai at Somerset House

 Another band worth checking out is Beach House. I got their album a few weeks back, it's like Tropical alternative music, is the best way I can describe it.  It could even inspire this divine warmth we've had this weekend to stick around.They are on Bella Union which is a label owned by some of the Cocteau Twins, who were one of the best, and most original acts to be spawned by the bizarrely maligned '80s. Bella Union has a nice roster actually, the divine Sol Seppy is also on it.

The Spitz is definitely going to close by the way which is tragic. I had supper there with Trevor last week, which turned into a bit of a frantic affair as we didn't want to miss Gabby Young kicking off the evening which also featured Revere, Mozzy Green and Her Name Is Calla. The waitress was so cool she went and checked the time the Gabby's set commenced so we didn't miss it. So thankfully the last few mouthfuls of fine food were slightly more relaxed, as we'd been wildly rushing once we got it. Upstairs as soon as I walked in I got a bristly kiss on the cheek from Stephen Ellis, and was asked to review the night for a magazine.

Luckily I had a notebook on me. Stephen also slipped me a bottle of bubble blowing gear which me and a bunch of others unleashed with gusto into the air during the wonderful, ' The Escape Artist' Later on Ellie on violin told me she had no idea what was going on, so the bubble extravaganza was a surprise to even the band themselves. You have to watch out for that Mr Ellis

 It was a fab night of music though, Gabby was great, and  her parents were there too which was nice. The band that ended the night and unfortunately played to a largely empty venue as the sets had over-run -  were fantastic. I love it when you discover someone new by chance. Her Name is Calla' are my happy accident of August. They are like a smaller, more intense Mogwai with impassioned singing. If you see them on a bill, watch them.

I really must get some food. This man called Babaji who wears a chain around his wrist like a bracelet, has a van giving out food and stuff to the homeless and refugees at Hayes Town centre on a Saturday, insisted on of his acolytes  rustling up a bag of curry and rice for me after we had a chat. He's a pretty inspirational person and kicked all of this off after having a vision of a goddess. The aloo curry is going to be extra yum once I've blended a handful of coriander into it. I am hoping that The Times will feature him as he's been doing this for fifteen years now. He'll even help feed your pets if your struggling, and works with kids who are being bullied. You can find out more about him by going to:

http://www.kalimata.co.uk/

Really hope you're well, and have had a slightly less brain achy couple of months than me, but all the good stuff and the bad stuff happens for a reason, so I've been told.  Take care and stay well, and many thanks for reading.

Lots of love

Yasmin xxxx

p.s. if you can handle a lot of blood, gore and people being split into two – watch 'Ichi The Killer' if you can't,  avoid it at all costs

p.p.s Bad Santa is hilarious and grim, but Billy Bob Thornton does pee himself in it, but its fake pee I guess, unlike Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas. Give her credit, she didn't vanish off the face of the earth as I would have done in her shoes!!

…but to be honest both movies are bloody funny..no pun intended with the former.x

Hello you

I've just bought ten bars of Green and Blacks chocolate at half price at Sainsburys! I only went in for some All Bran, but how could I resist? It's heaven in a shiny foil wrapper! It's in the icebox. Go get some if you have a store near you.

I cannot believe I have not done this since May, that's shocking! This is the first full weekend I've had at home in about a month or so, it's been really hectic, but in a mostly great way. My dad's been really unwell, but is now much better, and a boy stressed me up bigtime, but he doesn't deserve anymore of my attention… life is alright, better than alright.

I've had two more articles published on Times Online and I got to watch my brother do an awesome tandem sky dive in Cambridge, which had him wide-eyed with joy and adrenaline at the end of it and moi beaming with pride. The weather threatened to scupper it all playing a game of rain or shine with us for the whole day, but the heavens came good in the end. My mate Simon Toon is now a proud father for the first time, which is awesomely cool. My lovely manager Camilla is off on maternity leave in just over three weeks and I have a good six weeks left at The Times and may well carry on depending on what's offered.

Today, when I was putting my trolley back, after getting six litres of milk, the man who offered me a pound for mine, was actually a man who'd proposed to me ten years ago. He's now got silver temples, but still looks pretty unmistakeable, he thought I had sold up and moved away. When I mentioned that I did hope to move later in the year, he said to come back to him, he'd buy my flat of me. Interesting…I actually want that.

I intend to skip the suited and booted estate agents altogether when I finally kiss these finger painted walls goodbye. Not sure where to go to though, could be Banbury, I saw some good stuff I can buy upfront, found an oriental store that sold Wasabi peas for £1.50 and there's an excellent Thai place there and my lovely friend Mr Brown lives there too - or maybe East London or South of the river if they'll have me. Either way, I really should go, it's gonna be weird being back here in Hayes again full time when my time at The Times (no pun intended!) draws to a close.  I am worried about how I will feel. Will I get depressed?

As per usual I am veering off track, mainly because I'm thinking of what's been happening, and how can I possibly put it altogether so it makes good sense to you?

So where did I love you and leave you last? It was the Hush The Many piece wasn't it? Thanks again to all of you who wrote to me to tell me you liked it. That meant a hell of a lot to me. Actually, they played a headline gig with Ed Harcourt and GoldSounds at The Water Rats last week and went down very well indeed. It was my first gig, post the smoking ban, and I have to say despite the outcry on the infringement of civil liberties, I've got to say it was heavenly not to come out of choking on fag smoke in my asthmatic lungs and on my clothes. It made me smile that when I got there I saw Ruban, Alex and Jo from the band, all assembled outside with their roll ups! That was a great, but hectic night. On the way home I worked out I know about 30 of the people in the venue that eve.

There has been lots of music, lots of work and lots of writing, the latter especially makes me feel good. It's like letting an animal do what comes most naturally and freely.  The more I do it, the better it feels, though I really don't like being edited, I've never been good with anyone trying to curb me actually. Hence ending up running away from home many moons ago. Though sometimes I do like to give the reigns over to someone else and let them take charge and follow their lead, I am under no illusions that I know what's best in all scenarios, how arrogant would that be?! But when it comes to my own stuff, I know what I'm doing, let me get on with it, and if I don't I'll be the first one clinging onto your ankles, sobbing. Help me!!!

The nice thing, taking you all the way back to May, was seeing Ed (Harcourt) play live for the first time since December. He's been touring the world with trumpeter Erik Truffaz, and played at the Jazz café in Camden, but just before it, they drove down to Ray's Cafe in Foyles to bless us with some free songs. I ended up rushing like a mad woman through the gridlocked traffic on foot. I could actually hear Anonymous being sung as I ran up the stairs.  There were all these folks standing about, all quiet and cool, and when I walked in, the only place to really stand was opposite Ed who was playing with his head down in the piano. It was smiles all round at the end of the song when he looked up, which was lovely. I met the lovely young writer and film maker Owain from Ed's forum for the first time, and gave Ed some seeds and CDs before rushing home to feed, and then head right back out to see (Citizen) Helene at the Biddle Bros on Lower Clapton Road.

She was playing a set for SongWriters Anonymous, which is an acoustic night organised by Neville. It was nice to surprise her, as I wasn't sure I'd make it in time. I really loved the venue. It was really bohemian and homey. This black utter tart of a cat wondered in from the open back door,  and proceeded to hog the limelight and went from lap to lap soaking up the TLC. It was hilarious! By far the sluttiest cat I've ever seen. Helenes' written twelve new songs, so keep your ears peeled for them on her player. She really does have a very beautiful voice, despite having a frightening ability to pull the most scary faces in photographs. The other singer of note that night for me was a man called Mike Halliwell who has a really wonderful voice, and played some achy songs of heartache, and was pretty witty. We had a chat post-set and it turned out he'd gone to the same music college as Ed Harcourt, and told me I was the first person he'd met who was familiar with Ed's teeny band 'Snug'. Tis a small world indeed.

A few weeks later he got in touch to send me his Tom McRae tickets for the Shepherds Bush Empire gig as he couldn't make the gig. I'm going to catch Mike later this month and buy him some pie and give him some cash for them, even though he didn't ask for any – as the gig was bloody incredible, Tom is still the most unbelievably sarcy, audacious bugger out there and had me in fits of laughter -  and swooning inside with the heartache his songs fill you with.

We also met THE most philosophical bar man in the whole world, who told us Carling beer was like piss and at one point was sure he was going to try and get us to join his mates eco cult were you eke out of a living in a commune. I hadn't planned to go to the gig, but was so glad to have been given the tickets. I took my friend Trevor and he was so moved by the music. Yesterday over supper he told me he'd had three of Mr McRae's albums arrive in the post in the morning. So thank you Mike Halliwell.

My sleep is still a bit random, thanks to the bird song in the graveyard behind the house in Stokey, I am using tons of eye cream day and night to keep those dark circles at bay. I've noted with asian skin, when you get them its hard to lose them again, it's a pain in the butt to be honest, but summer and sleep is traditionally a tad tricky for me. In winter I sleep like the dead, I have this cheerful theory you sleep better as you're closer to death when its colder.

I had my eyes tested for suitability for laser eye surgery at Optical Express. Does anyone out there know of a better place for the job? They did all these scans and tests to check my corneas and eye health, which culminated in them sticking a thing in my eye, which I had to say FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCKKK!!! -   before I could even contemplate allowing them to do, because I am unbelievably squeamish about  ANYONE  coming near my eyes. My work mate Nathan warned me about this bit of the test, but because it hadn't been mentioned, I started to relax thinking I'd avoided it or they'd got enough info. Not so. But they did stick eye drops in so I didn't feel any pain. I do want to get my eyes done, I'm saving up for it at the moment as I am looking at over £2000 for it. They'll probably need to manacle me to my seat to avoid me running off when they start though, or sedate me - or something.

I watched the whole of Series 3 of Nip/Tuck on one lazy weekend before June kicked off with all its weekends away and articles to write. God how I love this show. There is very little TV that turns me on, but this show is just crazy and awesome all at once. The drama and plotting is by turns touching and eccentric. My friend Kully leant it to me, God bless her, as I don't have SKY here. The only drag is that my DVD player has now packed up!! Argh! My microwave oven is also dying slowly too.  I'm wondering, do I replace now or wait until I move on to Home No 2? It's not urgent yet, I can wait, but I miss my DVD player, curling up in front of the PC doesn't quite do it for me…

 Make sure you don't miss 'Wire In The Blood' next week on Wednesday, that's always been an excellent series, I love the exploration of human darkness, it's like taking a peek into the places you know you should never go, because your mother always told you not to.

At the end of May, SonVer launched their excellent Vigil EP. It's really atmospheric, and I find it's particularly suitable for my night time baths as its leads me into intense musings. They chose this really unusual, almost Victorian style basement venue called  'Hedges and Butler' replete with dusty bookshelves, and worn out antique sofas with antiquarian prints all over them. It was a members' only venue, which was, I was told actually a converted wine cellar. Jo really loved the place.

On my way there I was disarmed by the most unusual of sights, walking along Regent Street, I saw about 300 people roller skate down the road behind a car blaring out disco music from massive speakers. It was one of those rare occasions when everyone stopped in their tracks to watch and smile. There was just something sweetly innocent about it all and a bit mental. I have no idea why it happened, but was glad to have seen it, it put a big smile on my face.

SonVer have a gig coming up at the Luminaire in Kilburn, and although walking down Kilburn High Road at nights makes me nervous I am especially excited about this one as it'll be the first time I see Alistair Richardson and Ruban Byrne play with Jo and Ben, as a four piece. I just know it's going to be super good, so you should come too if you fancy it.

The gig I am looking forward to next week is Mogwai at Somerset House. I actually got the last ticket from the box office ( hence avoiding horrible admin fee) as this utter honey called Ayesha bent the rules for me a little, you're not meant to hold them back, but I paid  for it over the phone even though it was a paper ticket, and I was so over the moon, it made my week I swear. I saw them last year and they blew me away, and if the weather behaves next week I think I will be blessed with something special out there in the open air.

I saw Sparklehorse for the first time ever at Shepherds Bush too. That was a bit gutting actually as I didn't know it was an acoustic thing, it was still pretty relaxing though to nod out too. I'd been hyped about hearing certain songs, and hoped Sol Seppy might show her face, ah well, but Mark Linkus was in fine fettle and I got home at a civilised hour which helped with it being a Sunday eve. Mike Halliwell was at the same gig with his lass and I waved at him from the balcony. It's a nice venue. I still don't feel like I've seen the band though if that makes sense? I found their new album as a promo going spare at work so it kind of balances things out in a way.

My second piece for Times Online was for the band Revere who are helmed by the lovely Stephen Ellis. They are the band I watched on  my birthday and who sold out  The Spitz last year when Hush The Many supported them. They were 100% on the ball with this piece with pix and download, which was a sweet relief. This was such a pleasure to do actually from start to finish. Their manager Tony was wonderful and treated me, Kath, Jon and Stephen to a curry at Café Bangla on Brick Lane so we could have a bite to eat before the gig at 93 Feet East. So I set up my Dictaphone on the table and was all geared up for the first question when the waiter came over and loudly asked us if we wanted poppadoms – and we all cracked up laughing, he looked utterly bewildered but took the order and

I summed it up as 'Space-Age Gospel' from something Stephen had said, it's a nice line. One he loved too, when it went live, the band were so pleased they sent me this amazing bouquet of flowers. It was a sweet surprise and some of them are still in a vase in the lounge at Stokey at the moment.

I caught them at The Barfly a few weeks ago, which is a venue I've never been to despite having known of it for ages, and then Stephen and Kat Flint whisked me off to Monkey Chews for the EARmuisc acoustic eve down the road in a spontaneous little adventure to watch Stephen sing with Gabby Young. That was a lot of fun, it was a pity to have to leave and be all conscientious about needing to have slept enough for work the next day. Kat impressed me hugely with her blagging skills that night too. MonkeyChews is a beautiful room with interesting things hanging from the ceiling. It's like the best teenage bedroom you can imagine with loads of little prints and posters all over the wall.  All dark colours and cosy.

Stephen's got involved in running music nights in North London, I think in Highgate? He ran an all-dayer about a month ago, which had some great talent on it, at Ginglik at Shepherds Bush – you have to check out Lady and The Lost Boys if you get the chance. I'd gone along after somehow only achieving 3 hours sleep the night before, I got up at 6am and wrote most of the Revere piece before leaving home. Since then, I've pressed on him how important promotion and awareness is with musical shindigs. I see things going very well for him in the future with the right balance in place. The dude has a great voice and an amazing amount of energy, I don't know how he does it.

After giving him a hug goodbye I jumped on a 31 and went to The Good Ship in Kilburn. Enroute I got followed by two assholes and asked by a strung out lady if I wanted to find a hotel with her and shoot up. Nice. That day I wore a nice frock and heels, I'd like to think there is no correlation, but to be honest I think there is. Either way it was grim and I arrived at the venue feeling quite on edge, but thankfully John (who runs the myspace page and the theme nights) and his galpal were really sweet and did a great job of dispelling my apprehension. I was nervous about staying on too late, but really wanted to see Silver Springs play, I mean this crap happened at 8pm on a Saturday eve, whose to say what it would be like at 11pm?

As it was, it was fine. I was walked to my stop by a really very lovely lad called Joel  who remembered meeting me at Ginglik and came over to say hello and stuck by my side to enjoy all the music and catch up. He's a guitarist in a funk band called Animundi but has also played on the latest Primal Scream record and more recently on the forthcoming Delays album. My friend Fran got very excited when I told her about the latter

 It was a really good eve actually, I really liked the place and I saw Indiana  perform the best set I'd ever seen them play and was really delighted to see them do ' See You In The Morning' which I think is their best song. The sound guy tried to cull their set as the timetable was running behind, but we drowned out his voice with our own, shouting ' TWO SONGS!!'  Befpre them, there was hilarious band with a lead singer who thought he was Donny from Towers of London, except this fella had a shock of black hair. Their girly bassist was ace though, someone should poach her!

 What was nice was also seeing Amos there when I walked in, he's a drummer who plays with a variety of great folk including Fanfarlo and Darren Hayman. It was so good to see him again, he was playing with Silver Springs who are a band that remind me a bit of Bikini Atoll who I really adored.  I really wanted Ruban to stay for their set as I thought he would like them,  but he was getting a lift with someone, but Parri from Indiana could see their merit so that was nice. There really is a lot of good music out there, and it's not often you see two great bands on an all dayer who are completely separate from one another. I like to mix it up

With the week being filled with work and the weekends with writing and music, it's been hectic and I seem to rush through my home and throw things about, live on frozen food and wash the dishes at 6am on a Monday before rushing off to work at Wapping again for the week, but I am enjoying this. I feel beautifully alive though also a touch jetlagged. I don't know how I will feel when it all ends. I feel productive but in a different way to how I was before. 

I  can't recall if I mentioned this before, but there's also a chance I might go back out to the Maldives next year, I was offered work at a resort presently being refurbished by my old manager who is keen to put together a team of folk he trusts and respects. For those of you who don't know, I was an English trainer to resort staff a few years ago, I really loved my work, and I was really good at it. It's a world away from our lives here, but it was the safest and healthiest I've ever been except for when my spine came undone towards the end! Much to think about..

My niece Tamara is doing really well at the moment with her band the JFS Collective, if you're into acid jazz check out her page and if you're near Andover you could go and watch her sing sometime. Her band won a radio competition recently which has made us all very proud of her.

Courtesy of work I got to see a preview show of Lord of the Rings the musical. Blimey, was it long and warm in there! I kept dozing off! I am always incredibly tired on a Monday eve, as I've been up since 6am and have travelled in and then done a full days work. I liked the show, but it was all so tightly packed in, and erm,  I forgot it was a musical, and Frodo's voice got on my tits, but Gollum was uber cool as was the fella  who played Samwise Gamgee. The stage was stunning, but I am glad I didn't pay £65 odd quid for my ticket. But I would say, make up your own mind if you are curious. I respect the fact it was an ambitious undertaking, you have to respect it for that, and I know it has divided the critics. I think the movies are still too fresh in peoples' minds to be honest, to have done something like this. I kept pining for Elijah Wood instead of this dumpy, charisma free zone that was Frodo.

The last piece I did for TimesOnline was on an awesome, awesome, AWESOME band called Headland. Even the lass who edits my pieces at works loved their track ' Monster In A Shirt' she didn't go a bundle over Hush The Many. I love Headland with a passion, as I can dance myself stupid at their gigs, and still play them at home on the stereo, and love the songs for their lyrics and melody. They are the perfect pop/electro band as far as I am concerned, and the whole world should listen to them, and embrace them, and clutch them feverishly to their hearts, and thank the sweet Lord in Heaven that there are three Toms in the band, and a lovely lass called Maz, and a man called Seb who took it upon themselves to get their hiney's in gear to group together to create such a melodic, funky sounding racket…. just my humble opinion. 

One hot Wednesday eve Tom Hat ( really Tom Weg-Prosser) and Tom Ball and Maz and I hooked up at Maisson Sousse and amid the sounds of Shepherds Bush traffic and a man talking into his mobi ( who Tom Ball offered to kill for me…. so sweet!) we had an interview about the band, the world, and life. It was with the clock ticking so I felt  conscious of that, but it was still really cool. I enjoyed hearing it all back when I transcribed. And after Maz and Tom Hat had said their goodbyes, Tom treated me to my favourite pancake and we had a very nice chat about my writing and life. He's a very lovely, chilled out guy, and has an interesting way of looking at things.

 I don't think I would get much pleasure out of writing about bands I didn't respect as people as well as musicians to be honest. I don't want to be hack, I want to write about bands who deserve the exposure because they are bloody good, that's what it boils down to for me. What's tricky is when you have a great band and half the members are gorgeous human beings and one of them is an utter stinker who'd you'd cheerfully like to smack or prick with a pin to bring them back to earth, what do you do then?  Then again,  life would be dull without those patches of friction.

If you haven't seen the Revere or Headland piece, what are you waiting for?!

Have a read and a listen.

Revere

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/student/article1926877.ece

Headland

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/student/article1989684.ece

www.flickr.com/photos/yasminselena

Ed himself, sang a handful of songs including a cover of Edith Piaf's ' No, Je, ne regretted rien' but I missed him immediately as soon as he left the stage to be honest. His voice for me is like a musical comforter that I can wrap myself up in and cuddle into. It's lovely. The world is a far lovelier place to me when Ed Harcourt is on stage. Hush The Many did well to organise such a top night Sneaking in Jeremy Warmsley into the mix was pretty inspired, though he should have been announced I felt, so people outside getting their nicotine fix didn't miss out.  It was good to finally hear Hush perform The Man as a band, I've only ever heard it as a solo performance. Kind of fitting for me in the circumstances.

I really need to do the hoover now. It's been at least two months, which is awful I know. Dust bunnies are in heaven here right now.  But I hope you have stuck with me during this mammoth blog and enjoyed it.  If you have, congratulations are in order I think. Hope you've had a good weekend

Lots of love

Yasmin xxxx

Hello!

How are you?

Are you ready for a wee baby, blog?

As some of you will know if you saw the bulletin that went out yesterday I finally, finally, FINALLY got my first article published for Times Online. In all honesty, I've never tried to write one before for a big publication, or sent in lots of  suggestions like some journalists do before being given a break. I would never have had the confidence to even try. Though I was a writer on a student magazine and an editor many moons ago. This just felt like a different league altogether for me, and I was never sure how good I really was to be honest. I hoped I was good, but it's only in the last few years I've really begun to truly believe it.

As I said in the last blog ( I think ?)I saw a piece on Fields and called the editor to share my enthusiasm for the band, and she asked if I wanted to write a piece, and I immediately said yes, as I love to write and am passionate to the point of pain about fine music. I was actually given a word limit of 500 words, which I know I exceeded! It was naive of me to hope they might not notice..but you can't blame a girl for trying! By the way Mark Kozelek who was headlining that night was wonderful, I'd never heard anything by him, and the Union Chapel is a really stunning venue. His fans were gagging for him, so the vibe inside was good. Loved it, it was a sold out gig, and the last Hush song of the night was a new one which Alex and Nima performed with pedals, and you guys are gonna love it - it's a gentle number, but has a great hook and the lyric ' it doesn't make me deranged' in the chorus went round and round in my head all the way home...

Ruban and Jo gave me plenty to work with between them, and if I could have been given 2000 words to play with I would have been ecstatic. Despite having known the band for a year I was really nervous about doing this to be honest, but it was sweet as I learned new little things about them.  I wanted to mention other things in it, for example Jo, a thoroughly gorgeous South of the river girl who still gets asked for her ID, began learning to play the cello when she was five, and turned up to the Union Chapel soundcheck two hours early so she could play her heart out and get her cello fix. She didn't really enjoy her Music degree, in fact it made her stray from her musical path after she graduated, but luckily for us she found her way back.  The cello for Jo -  acts as her voice. When she soundchecks; she uses heavy metal basslines for their power. She also thinks this performer called Elephant Leaf is pretty fabulous, and is an ardent gardener in her freetime. Now Jo really, really loves her heavy metal - Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Thunder -  which really cracks me up as I'd assumed a chick who plays the cello would be into classical sounds alone, I love the fact that she bulldozes over stereotypes and is very much her own woman. Jo and her other half Ben also play in  an industrial metal band called Earth Loop Recall, she plays bass while he sings and plays guitar. SonVer is her special project, it's her at her most unfettered and she relishes the chance it affords her to get dark and intense with her self expression.  The last live band to really grab ger was Dragons  and she was mesmerised watching their drummer really go for it. Both her and Ruban loved the tour with Fields, it's been their favourite time on the road in Hush The Many, and travelling and being looked after by Dan made it especially enjoyable for them both. Fields were really good to them and made sure they had plenty of time to soundcheck and Ruban thought they were funny but extremely friendly people. All of Hush miss them.

Ruban Byrne is an awesome mix of Sri Lankan/Irish and  likes Japanese movies, and taught himself the guitar when he was 15. He's been in bands since he was 17 years old and he feels really at home in this environment, it was around then he decided he'd like to try and make a life in music. When he went to Uni he stayed in London, but a lot of his Watford friends went to Nottingham and it was there that he met Nima who was studying Music Tech ( i think?) and was amused at how he kept bumping into him all over the place in various bedrooms. He really liked him, so they formed their first band Skyride after they graduated. Ruban adores his guitar,  let me see if I can get this right - it's a Gibson Chet Atkins Country Gent in a clear, amber finish, NOT 'red' as I insisted it was. And he loves the damn thing, which I can totally understand, as that guitar is gorgeous and he's beautifully experimental with it. He really admires Bowie's circa Ziggy Stardust era, now sadly deceased right hand man Mick Ronson and  ex-Suede's Bernard Butler, Joey Santiago ( Pixies) and Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood for their playing, and he sees himself as humorous, inquisitive and attentive, which I can vouch for as he has made me chuckle with his witticisms and stories, and he's a very genuine soul. However he is not like The Edge who reckons is a lazy ass player. Well he didn't exactly say 'lazy ass player' but you get my drift. Well I still like The Edge from U2. Ruban reckons he's more on par in sound as this fella who played in an early incarnation of The Verve, who's name right now escapes me. Sorry.

Right now he's enjoying the sounds of Arcade Fire, M Ward, this Swedish Jazz trio ( God were are my notes when i need them?!) and Gnarls Barkley's outfit Dangerfield - I think that's what they're called, though he calls himself Dangermouse in the band

  Mr Byrne would love to take Hush The Many on tour abroad. Both him and Jo would really like to record an album.  Alex Brown's answers got eaten up by MySpace which was gutting for the both of us, but I know the dulcet voiced bass player well enough to still a flavour of her in there...

: )

As it is, in the challenging constraints and conditions in which it was written I am really, really pleased with my virgin effort, and yesterday celebrated with supper at The Spitz with a colour copy of the piece plonked upright on the table.

Might I also add that the fine solo shot of Jo Quail you can see on the Times Online Student homepage, taken in a moment of intense, blissed out rapture is the excellent work of my friend Jo Chester. You can see more of her work if you go to her myspace page, she's on my front page - check her out, she's also responsible for the Hush The Many clip taken at the End of the Road Festival you can see on their page and their mine. If I was smart I could do a link here button or something but I'm afraid I am not that clever, sorry!

But if you haven't seen my little pride and joy and labour of love you can view it here, please do:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/student/student_life/article1803244.ece

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/student

But, down below is the unedited version, which is a wee bit longer and ordered a tad differently. Either way, if you like the piece/and or the band please post a comment on The Times page to say so, it would make both myself and the band very happy as I know this piece means a lot to them too.

There's lots more to say, but it's very late, so I'll be brief ( by my standards, trust me this is brief) on May 4th I had a  lovely birthday  with some of the awesome guys and gals from Revere. Stephen Ellis dedicated their gig to me that night which softened the blow of turning 34 and he totally won over my friends with his kindness with Revere CDs. It was a bit of a mad night. I didn't wear the sexy, black corset - I was intimidated into keeping my clothes on by the um, clientele of the White House. I didn't think adding my F cup assets to such an incendiary mix was a smart idea. You'd understand if you had been in my shoes when I walked into the place... you can see a few pix from the night up in My Photos on MySpace.

 I saw Interpol live thanks to Kit giving me a heads up on the Koko gig last week and it is my gig of the year, I was thrilled to pieces to be there I've wanted to see this band for like 5 years!!! And they did tons of their old material as well as three new songs.  They encored with PDA and I genuinely tingled and felt myself quiver and spasm with ecstasy during the guitar solo in the song. I've not had such a physical response to a song since seeing Ed Harcourt and the Hush boys perform ' From Every Sphere' at End of the Road last year. It was delicious, utterly, utterly pleasurable.The gig was over so fast it shocked me and I wanted to feel and see it all over again. Koko is gorgeous inside, it was my first time there.

I am really conscious that I am really glossing over things that I want to share more, exquisite wee details about, like the bewildering number of doors at Koko and how patient and cool the staff were when I kept getting lost trying to find the loo, trying to find my way out, and how I met this couple called Paul and Emi that stood behind me at the gig who I've made promise to check out Headland. They were awesome company as I was there on my own and had a bad headache when I got there. They'd paid £150 for two tickets. The demand for the show was immense, so I was lucky to pay my twenty quid plus horrible booking fee. It was my birthday present to me. I heard there was an e-bayer who sold four tickets for £150 each after buying six in total. Ironic that Interpol have a song called ' Evil' in their catalogue...

Today I've had this indulgent chilled out day here at home, which began with a decadent pampering bath ( of course!),  bought a long, rather lovely summer scarlet cotton maxi dress which I wore to Sainsburys with a silk tie died neck scarf and was bizarrely heckled at for wearing by some asian women in a car when crossing the road  - thats Hayes for you, most bewildering - got some avocadoes and apricots - caught up with a neighbour who is an ex-model and has shed 7 stones in the last year and now looks amazing, and have read about 300pages of Lisa Jewell's new book and am near the end of it. It's been ages since I did the cover to cover  read with a book, but she is hands down my favourite British contemporary writer. I love her. Not in a kissy kissy kind of way, but in an admiring, please keep writing books, please Lisa please! kind of way.. she is such a pleasure to read

And despite the cakes and chips I put away last week I've dropped another 3lbs this week.Suspect probably partially due to the angst incurred over worrying about when the invisible download track for the Hush piece was going to materialise I reckon. Had a lot of pent up feelings about that, so thank God it all worked out okay.  So since this health kick took off I've now lost about 20lbs which I am delighted with, and it's been a relatively painless exercise. Oh and I am two teeth down, and have got to confess:

 1. It didn't hurt at all, I only needed 2 paracetamol post op, and that was for when the numbness wore off, and I wasn't sure what pain I would be faced with 

2. When the dentist pulled out the first tooth, I actually burst out laughing in shock, it was all too surreal for me 

3. The bloody injection for the local anaesthetic- now that really stung! And it tasted foul.

4. I miss the teeth themselves, it's taken a good 3 weeks to accept they're not coming back : (

5. Women at work were endlessly amused watching me gargle saltwater in the ladies loo as I got really embarassed about doing it.

 My niece Tamara got me the  new Arcade Fire album,  I felt compelled to start a new ' Song of the Day'  thread on Ed Harcourt's forum last week as one morning when I was readying for work I played ' No Cars Go'  six times in a row, and it went round and round in my head all day. I know it was on the EP that came out a few years back, and I still love it now.

But without any further ado, here is the piece and if you go to the actual link you can download  Hush The Many's re-worked effort of ' Choose' - and folks, it's free.. so go, go, go! : )

Lots of love

Yasmin xxxx

Hush now, and listen up…

Hush The Many (Heed The Few)

Union Chapel, London Wednesday 9 May 2007

By Yasmin Selena Butt

It's not often an audience are seduced into reverential silence by a support band; no rephrase that, half a support band, but that was what happened tonight. You could have heard a pin drop when Hush The Many (Heed The Few)'s bohemian duo Alex and Nima took to the stage and launched into the mournful "In Bloom". Nima later murmured, "I think only a handful of you will know who we are."

 Since forming in 2004, the London four piece, named in tribute 'to the quiet unheard' have been championed by BBC Radio 6, and remained busy bewitching audiences across the land, with their unique brand of experimental, intensely melodic post-rock offerings.

 Their songs beguile and lull you, vocals gently whisper, passionately howl, and sometimes you have to strain to hear a note. Other times the rousing, uplifting intensity on songs; such as guitarist Ruban's live favourite "Roots Crack Stone" ("for its killer cello line") - will simply blow you away.

 
 Tonight, playing as a revolving three piece, Alex Brown  (vocals, bass), Nima (vocals, guitar) and Jo Quail (electric cello), were unusually -  due to venue directives - minus their guitarist. Ruban Byrne's innovative playing on songs such as the unhinged new single Song Of Page meant an oddly truncated version was offered up. However, the stunning acoustics allowed the elegant cellist to shine on the love song "Paper Doll". "That was the song that made me want to join them on stage when I first saw Hush The Many play," Jo later said. After the gig she approached the band and the rest is history.

Since then, with the aid of an Arts Council grant in 2005 they have toured the UK several times, been loudly championed by Ed Harcourt in 2006, headlined The Spitz and, last month, supported rising stars Icelandic/English combo Fields on their UK tour.

"It was brilliant, the best tour we've ever done!" Jo enthused. "They're currently in America. We all miss them," added Ruban.  Aside from hangovers and misplaced keys, they had a blast, "especially at the Glee Club in Birmingham. We had a really big crowd and the most comedy dressing room."

As a band, their influences are striking; Jo has a penchant for Motley Crue and heavy metal; Nima cites Spiritualised; and Ruban admires Joey Santiago of The Pixies.  In fact they all love The Pixies. Budding musicians Ruban thinks should "follow the things that excite you, not what you think people will like to hear." "Love it, do it with reckless abandonment, give it a million percent and you'll never fail!" Jo agrees.

"My Space," he adds, "has allowed the mightiest and the lowliest to stand side by side." It's a positive time for emerging bands.

Away from the band, they are all impressively prolific, with Jo designing dresses and fronting SonVer, who have contributed instrumentals to independent film soundtracks. Nima gigs solo as The Sliding Rule, and Watford resident Ruban plays for local, indie traditionalists Indiana, and even builds guitars in his free time.  Alex, who has toured with rock outfit Viking Moses, keeps it simple; "music…is vital."

They simply cannot stop, but it's a love affair, which enchants you when you watch them bathed in smiles as they feed off each other on and off stage. They look as comfortable up there as you'd feel curled up in bed on a Sunday morning.  As Nima said they "create something together which would otherwise not be possible". He wasn't lying, you'll see…

 Listen to Paper Doll and Song of a Page at: www.myspace.com/hushthemany

 The single "Song Of A Page" is out now on download and 7" Vinyl. See the www.hushthemany.com for further details

Hello lovelies

 The words 'where to start?' spring to mind. I'm home, I have the laundry on and this time tomorrow I am going to be without 2 teeth and this time next week I will be a year older. I've been wanting to write this for several weeks. I think this is the longest gap I've had between blogs, and I am going to attempt to be fairly honest without getting all Robbie Williams on you. The good news is that I'm working. Hurrah! After months roaming in a happy, but poverty stricken wilderness and being reduced to selling off my rather fine underwear on e-bay ( made almost a hundred quid doing so) I am in gainful employment. Oh and I have a new sexy, bagless hoover too.

 My agency got me a gig working for News Intenational aka The Times, in Wapping. I get to put together newsletters that go to folk who've subscribed to them online. The one for the Screen supplement is my fave as I get to write about cinema, and being a lover of film this is indeed a pleasure. My boss is genuinely cool, very pregnant and has the teeniest bump ever. Last Friday when I was packing up to leave she insisted on playing me the theme tunes to the Flumps on Windows before I left, which cracked me up.

 Unusually for a Marketing gig I am enjoying it and working very, very hard. She read Chapter 1 of Gunshot Glitter and really dug it and totally understands that though I rock at what I do in the office it's not what I am about. The great thing that could come out of this is also getting to do some freelance work for Times Online music for the student segment. It's going to be discussed next week once I no longer drool blood. I had the pleasure of watching Fields play live last week, and then a few days later was asked to promote the resulting band interview in one of my newsletters for the weekend. I had no idea The Times had sent someone down to speak to the band. It had been a genuine coincidence, when I rang editorial to enthuse about the night they sounded keen to work with me on other things so, watch this space as they say…

So being back in the money is going to be lovely, as I was scraping the barrel. My treat to myself was catching  Hush The Many/Fields live. The whole thing of finding myself in work was mega dramatic. I was told about the role on Tuesday afternoon, confirmed to start an hour later and found myself racing across London with a bag of clothes, pasta, tartware and shoes on Wednesday – and then starting on Thursday. A weeks handover was delivered in a day and a half, many notes were made. Just to give you a flavour of the small worldiness of Marketing, the guy who did my handover was someone I worked with at IPC Media last August. With Wapping being miles from Hayes the only way to do it is to stay in Stokey and then return home on the weekends.

This means living out of a case which is tricky, but I am lucky to have family that help me out in this way. I am not sure how long I can sustain it for. But it will be a good 3 months work I reckon, and so far workwise it's going well. My manager seems thrilled I've picked stuff up fast, I get to have as many daily papers as I can physically carry home, and each day I pass the Soaraway Sun bus on my way into work.

The Soaraway Sun bus

I do miss my home and I worry the herbs growing on windowsill are going to pass out in the sunny heat we've been enjoying. I lost a stone in weight, but want to lose more and that's proving tricky with an office role. I was too busy for proper lunch breaks for the first couple of weeks, and the crazy lateral thigh trainer, which was doing wondrous things for my abs is also being sorely missed too. My sleep for emotional reasons reverted back to poo for the last few weeks, so I was working while getting by on about 4-5hours a night which isn't great when you're an 8 hours a night kind of girl. I've been religiously using all manner of eye lotion potions to keep dodgy dark circles at bay. Dreadful things those are!

Life seems to throw endless curveballs at you, and I've learned the hard way that I need to be more careful with whom I place my trust.   I  believe that what goes around comes around. I won't have to do much for karma to eke out natural justice or to be vindicated. My very real flaw was having on Neptunian rose tinted glasses and assuming  a couple of folk operated on the same compassionate principles as myself. Big, big, BIG mistake and all mine.

Assumptions are indeed a dangerous thing, and if someone does not respect your vulnerability or feelings, get the hell out of there. Easier said then done though isn't it?  I am  bruised, but I'm here and I'm not broken or cynical, just extremely disappointed. As I stride into turning 34 I hope to be a little wiser, a lot happier and loved better by those who have some respect. For now I will just treasure the love of kith and kin.

Bizarrely while my heart took the worst hammering in aeons I've been looking better and better on the outside. How's that for poetic justice?! I am getting fitter and healthier and physically have been pretty damn perky! I'm not on the 'pull' ( ahem) but have been 'pulling'. The drag is not by ones I can reciprocate with, I'm just not in that mindset. I'm still in licking wounds mode. Though you would I hope forgive me for turning down a man at Kings Cross who offered to 'lick me out' and a local man in Hayes who followed me down the road on his bike trying to engage me in conversation. But there have been genuine good souls as Hush once sang ' the timing's always been so wrong' When it's a good soul, it is never less than flattering in my books.

 I asked for clothes on freecycle when I was destitute a month back and the lasses of Ealing, Hillingdon and Harrow did not disappoint. Between them they gave me 9 bags of stuff. It was so much fun going through it all and my wardrobe is filled with new old stuff, and what didn't work my friends are enjoying and the rest has gone to a fabulous Hospice. I had my hair cut last weekend because the fringe left me in danger of looking like Cousin It from the Addams Family but my hair was super long, by my humble standards.  I just came back from Cambridge and my friend Elizabeth told her mum to leave me 2 towels on the bed as I had 'loads of hair' which cracked me up. Cambridge rocks by the way, I hadn't been there in almost ten years and I've forgotton how gorgeous it is at night. It was my friends' birthday shindig and we ate sushi and walked the city. It scared me a touch that café's charged £3.95 for a chocolate brownie though..

Gigwise it's been really good lately. I had a triple helping of Jo Quail in just under a week, but as she's one of the coolest women I know in music this is no bad thing. Jo plays cello in SonVer and Hush The Many and also guitar/keyboards in Earth Loop Recall with her man, Ben McLees. Hush were supporting Fields on their UK tour, and initially I wasn't that enamoured with the news as I didn't really take the time to listen to Fields, but when I did, truly give them my attention I was pretty taken by them, especially the song ' Charming The Flames' which was on my player for a good couple of weeks. So seeing them live was great. They gave a rousing, passionate performance.  If you go to my profile you'll be able to hear the song ' If you lose, we all lose.'

There are also pictures on www.flickr.com/photos/yasminselena but here is one now:

The drummer reminds me of a cheeky chappie lad I used to know in Southend called James, but it's not, he's called Henry I think? Seems like a nice boy, his mum was in the house that night.  Fields fans seem pretty sweet. I met a few at the Kings College gig last week, and it was good to see Hush had endeared many of them on their travels.  My friends Mark, Fran and Helene from Camp Edward Harcourt came along too, and the look of outrage and indignation on Fran and Helene's faces when Nima said the tour with Fields was their best ever was hilarious. Dear oh dear.  I've not seen the lovely Ed in ages, he's been abroad with Eric Truffaz  playing gigs and getting homesick for Blighty.  You should keep an eye on Ed's player he's been hosting new songs on there and they are excellent. The dude is prolific to the max, and the world will right itself and catch up with him.

A few weeks ago I saw Tenebrous at the Spitz with guest musicians. It was for a records launch night and it was a great night of music. A lot of fun to witness indeed.  Steve Gullick, plays dark, heavy, twisted rock which leaves you aching in a good way, but can also be very, very, very loud. This time I retreated behind a set of leopard print ear muffs and ear plugs from the bar whenever it got a bit much for me. But the intensity he orchestrates with his band is wonderful. This time you had Duke Garwood, Alex Brown and Nima joining him on stage in various permutations. Did you know the Spitz could be closing? I was outraged when I heard this.  If you love the Spitz like I do please sign the petitition which can be accessed from here:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/TheSpitz/

This venue has hosted some of the best gigs I've ever had the pleasure to enjoy and I once had a birthday bash myself there many moons ago. I really hope it stays. It's my fave venue in all of London.

Second movie -  I utterly, utterly loved and left the cinema with a coat hanger smile, and if you've seen it I hope you're inclined to agree with me that ' Little Miss Sunshine' is wonderful and totally deserved the kudos it got at the Oscars last month. The script and casting was excellent. It was the little things that made me smile, and despite wanting to smack Greg Kinnear's character around the chops for making his baby girl worry about whether or not she should eat ice cream the whole experience was ultimately endearing. Under the wrong direction it could have turned into mawkish nonsense, but it doesn't – and it you've not seen it, GET IT NOW ON DVD!!!

I'd like to see Danny Boyle's 'Sunshine' – it has that Irish charmer Cillian Murphy in it. He's a great actor whether he's squishing someone's eyes out  with his thumbs in 28 Days Later or dressing up as a beautiful trannie in Breakfast on Pluto – he really lights up the screen. Though I think his eyebrows were plucked to within an inch of his life in the hilarious 'Red Eye'. God that film cracked me up. Not sure it was meant to though…

I think the washing machine has stopped spinning.  Another cool thing was one of my best friends returning to the UK for a visit, she looks like silver fox now with her hair all au natrel, and she introduced me to one of her best work mates who has very fine taste in music and has an uncanny amount in common with me. He got off to a very fine start by presenting me with a box of my fave chocolates of the moment Lindor – the dark ones. Seriously, seriously yum.

We went to see Citizen Helene play a gig a few weeks back at The Crossed Kings together. Helene only got to sing two songs thanks to this bloody band called Todger playing a 40min set instead of 20. They had a lovely spirit but God did they get to me. Especially some song about needing help with re-entry (?) the dirty bastards. The singer even had Todger emblazoned on his jacket in sparkly writing. I should have taken a photo to be honest. Nice venue though, it was all bohemian with sofas, oriental rugs and scatter cushions.

Another venue for excellent cosiness factor is The Big Chill bar on Pentonville Road. Me and some friends raced across London on a gloriously sunny Saturday afternoon to catch SonVer's set on the Big Chill's 6^th birthday. It's music to lose yourself in. I've sang the virtues of SonVer before and will continue to do so as long as I rate them. And I rate them. If you ever get to this venue, go downstairs and turn left. There you will find a cushioned alcove to snuggle into.

Me in my cosy corner

Very cool indeed. Maybe I should do a gazetteer on the cosiest venues in London, and tip you all on excellent snuggling spots? There is much to be said for nooks and crannies. Craziest thing I saw that day was the queue managed by security which stretched down the road at 5pm on Oxford Street for…Primark. Insane.

Madame Jo Jo's is a great venue, with the teeniest toilets ever -  so not cosy in a good way – but it has got the sweetest  fella minding the ticket area and  did host the London comeback gig of Earth Loop Recall recently.  I work late on a Thursday as it's crunch time in publishing, but made it there in good time to catch up with Jo who was manning the merchandise stand. We met some ace new folk including the band Freudstein who bestowed us with badges and a CD, and a French bloke from next door who promised us he would return to shake his booty for a few minutes if he could get away. 

Ben was restless to take the stage and as Soho Dolls were a no show, it was down to ELR to headline. This meant waiting for a wannabe Oasis band to sing and vanish, and another band who reminded me of a punky sounding B'52s to play too. I did write their name on my hand but then promptly washed it off which wasn't very clever.  When ELR took the stage I was quite tired but extremely excited. I've never seen Ben sing, and have only ever seen Jo play cello. It was very industrial rock, and lovely to finally hear these songs I'd only ever heard on the MySpace player unfurl in front of me. The audience were almost respectfully subdued to begin with, I think  they were just taking it all in. It's funny for me, even when I am exhausted if music moves me I just have to dance.

ELR at Madame Jo Jo's

 Later on there were a bunch of emo kids and a group of men doing the manly moshing thing. The latter going wild made Ben very happy. It felt over too fast for me, which is always a good sign. Afterwards I gave Mr McLees a moist embrace and saw Jo swamped at the merch stand which was wonderful. This was a nice London return for the band. I hope they get to play more shows, and would recommend you go if you can. If you love the sound of Nine Inch Nails but with a more melodic undertone and better vocals you'd like it. I got home at about 2am was in bed by 3am and up again at 6am to get ready to go to work. It was worth it.

The dodgy thing about not being home often is wondering if everything is okay. One night I came home to the smell of burning around my block and wondered what was behind it. Later on when I went into my utility room I found the rubbish chute covered in soot. My neighbours told me some doofus had thrown a smouldering match in the bin which had lead to a full on fire. Fire engines came, the works. The consequences don't bear thinking about. It took ages for the eau de soot fragrance to disappear.

The last gig to tell you about leads you onto my birthday. Back in March when I last blogged I went to see a band called Revere play an acoustic set at Ginglik in Shepherds Bush. My brother told me about this venue years ago but I was bewildered as I had never seen it. The reason for that became clear when I found out it was actually under Shepherds Bush Green!! You have to go down these stairs on the green to get to it. It was a Joni Mitchell Tribute night organised by Gabby Young, it was also this fair maiden's birthday. I made a decision to go on the night. I've always wanted to see Revere do their thing all pared down.

There was a really good turn out and to go to a gig there you have to be a member, but that itself is free. Just take ID, fill out a form and away yee go. I hadn't seen Stephen Ellis in a while so it was lovely to surprise him and then settle down to watch The Highs play, their cover of a-ha's pop masterpiece' Take On Me' made me smile. A-ha's 'Hunting High and Low' was the first pop album I ever bought. I own two copies as I wore out the first.  Stephen was joined on stage by Kath on cello and later on Gabby and it was a really great set. They really had the audience in the palm of their hands that night. It was wonderful. I was so pleased I went. He really sang his heart out and to pull off The Escape Artist with all its layered guitars so beautifully in an acoustic setting is no mean feat. It's not often I get to go to a gig that's a bus ride from my home. I would love to go back and see someone else at that venue.

This brings me upto next Friday. 1. Revere are playing a free acoustic set at The WhiteHouse near Clissold Park in Stoke Newington ( details on their page) – they'll be on at around 9pm 2. It's my birthday!!!! 3. You should come to the gig if you are about I will be there, wearing this awesome black bustier if my breasts are behaving themselves on the day. 4. If you wish me a happy birthday on the day, here or elsewhere I will be really happy. 5. I hope I won't be eating liquidised birthday cake on the night as I have an operation tomorrow to remove my wisdom teeth. 6.Ouch.

So that's me in a nutshell, lol, come on I haven't done this in 6 weeks did you really think it was going to be short!! I did try, I swear.

Hope life is treating you well. Take good care.

Lots of love
Yasmin xxxxx

   I've got a kitty cat in the house, and the allergy tablets have just come out of the cupboard. But he's a divine beast so worth the aggravation. He's been pestering me for food since I walked through the door and threw my bags down.  His name is Tigger and this is what he looks like right now.

 Hello you -  I didn't mean for there to be such a massive gap since the last blog, but I have been busy. And I mean good busy. The last month or so in many ways have been great. Things feel like they are coming together and even though I'm still looking for work I haven't been faffing or sitting around watching crap telly.. Lately TV wise I've been loving Ugly Betty, the sadistic craziness of 10 Years Younger and  E4's Skins cracks me up.
 

I did the Actimel challenge and fell in love with the one with coconut in it. I swear if they sold this as a smoothie I would be hooked on the stuff! It's really yummy. The gig famine came to an end when I went along to watch SonVer play and then Headland and then most recently Temple. Feels good to be showing my face again here and there, but more about that later.
 

The healthkick has commenced in earnest in happy tandem with the on going Freecycle giving things away extravaganza. I've also put up a couple of Monsoon perfumes up on E-bay to generate a little cash and pass on the pleasure to my fellow perfume groupies out there. Both sales are closing right now and I'm reeling in shock that one of the perfumes has 17 people watching it and bids are now in the £35+ region for it. It's quite exiciting! I've not sold anything on here since 2003. Wow, it's just sold for £40.20!

    The freecycling has been so mega from my humble possessions that the Moderator from the Harrow group wrote me this lovely mail praising my ethic and rewarded me with two bars of Bendicks chocolate even though ten other folk had beaten me to it. That was so very lovely of her. I sat here reading the mail and melted a little.  The way I see it, I've been really lucky with the things I have received. Very much so. Stuff is also selling on Amazon in bits and pieces -  so it's all good. The thing I find odd is exchanging mail with folk and then meeting some of them. They are never as you expect them to be. A guy called Jack wanted old records and I volunteered a few boxsets his way. I honestly visualised a bit of an eccentric old dear who had rediscovered his dusty old deck in a corner cupboard or something. Instead this fresh faced, extremely enthusiastic polite young man knocked on my door for them. I am constantly surprised.

    Back in February I seemed to be guzzling lots of hot chocolate and eating choc biscuits and nibbling constantly on the stuff. So for the last 2 weeks I've basically banned ALL of it. Nothing with chocolate in it, on it or around it has passed these lips, and it feels good. I was at my friend Mike's engagement party last night and I was surrounded by chocolate and nope, didn't have one. I was a bit gutted not getting to have his mums homemade chocolate brownies though, they looked really good.

     I've lost about 8lbs in the last few weeks, which I am obviously thrilled at.  On top of that I've been using this lateral thigh trainer and last week I went swimming three times in three days on a free trial thingie and also maxed out the use of  the sauna, steam room and Jacuzzi so my skin feels lovely, I was told last week I was glowing and looked radiant which was nice. It was  wonderful fun swanning around in my various cossies. I have quite an assortment. The pool was like a vintage movie star 8 shape stylee effort with one end sheltered with a mock cave surrounding it. That bit was good to float in.

    So physically -  I feel pretty good at the moment. I've forgotten how nice it feels when you break through the hideous achy stiff pain barrier.  I'm using Mogwai and a lot of Darren Hayman when I exercise. The Caravan Song is so cool!!  You have to listen to that record it's brilliant. He's signed up for this years End of the Road Festival, as have Hush The Many – so it all looks really promising so far as line ups go.
 

I'm going to turn 34 in a few months and though the actual number bewilders me as I have no feel for it, I would dearly love to be feeling pucker in every shape and form. I've never seen myself beyond 33, I don't know why.  I don't mean that in morbid way either. 34 is going to be seriously uncharted territory I think.
 

The chocolate ban is by no means a perm thing, but I'm going to do it for at least a month and then just eat it when I fancy a wee bit. My metabolism's getting stoked so all should be fine. It's all in the freezer at the moment.
 

    I had this really weird day recently, but good weird. I had this Goldline camera that I really loved -  and a few years ago I made the heinous error of stickng rechargeable batteries in it. It popped and flashed a spark at me in acute indignation. Then refused to work. I was GUTTED. It wasn't a sexy camera but it took great pix for a friendly little instantmatic. I came across it when I was sticking stuff on Freecycle and tried to see if it had fixed itself over the years, um no it hadn't.

So I thought if some genius can rejuvenate it they can have it. So I advertised it on there but asked if anyone had any idea how I could fix it. This guy wrote back to me and said he'd done the same thing to one of his cameras and suggested I put the battery section directly into sunlight for a day and see if that worked. It sounded really bizarre to be honest, but the next day the winter sun was out and the camera sunbathed all day in various parts of the lounge. Guess what?
 

It worked.
 

The camera now works, I put in normal batteries and the little display came on. Couldn't believe it. My freecycle hero was happy to have helped. It feels odd to use it as it looks like a relic of a bygone era and it can't do the zoom thing or anything but it's a modern miracle I tell you! The proof will be in the pudding. It did have a little fit during the Headland gig though so I don't dare get mega excited. We shall see.
 

The very same day, I waded through my various bags to try and cull them and came across a really battered executive, mock leather shoulder case. I used it when I was 23 and first striding into the world of temp work at Stockley Park. I put it on the bed to take a photo of it for Freecycle and heard a jingle of cash. How odd, as the pockets were empty. Yep,definitely some pennies rattling around, but where? One of the bags' virtues was that all the lining was intact, so how it got under the lining I have no idea. But money is money, So I made a tear in it, and poked about and found a pound coin. Blimey. Went in a second time, and out came another. And another, and another and another. I was really surprised. In total almost six pounds came out of this battered case.  It was an odd but cool day. My camera came back from the dead and I re-found money I never knew I had. Don't you just love it when that kind of stuff happens?

    One of the prospective future gigs I was really excited about in March was Hush The Many playing Dublin Castle.  I saw them play in January but haven't been in a Hush kind of place or in a mood for gigs for a while, but for this gig I was.  Fanfarlo where initially also advertised as sharing the bill so I was incredibly excited about it as soon as it was announced.. So I told myself to hang onto my savings but treat yourself to this one.  Then a few weeks back I got the mailer from the Spitz for the Spit Lit literary festival.  Some of you will know that I write fiction and poetry, and that I am writing a modern crime novel called 'Gunshot Glitter.' Last year I got utterly distracted by music and life and my tome was sorely neglected.

    The programme had a 'Night of Crime' advertised and I was really thrilled it seemed tailor made for my needs. One of the events featured Martina Cole who is presently the grand dame of mean East End crime fiction, and the other Catherine Johnson who wrote the screenplay for the critically acclaimed  Asher D movie ' Bullet Boy'  So all in all I had to be there. Guess which day this irresistible evening was on?   It fell on the same day as the Hush The Many gig. Gutted would not come close. But there was no contest. I have to get my writing crime mojo back so I booked the event, but I was mightily peeved. There was also a crime writers workshop on March 8^th. I've never done a writing workshop in my whole life but I was up for that. In the end Fanfarlo couldn't make the gig, but I heard it was still a lovely one : )
 

     It's weird I am so used to hanging out now with musicians when I go for my Ents and culture fix it kind of felt a touch alien to be in a literary environment. It's been a long while, but I was pleased to have got myself organised to make it happen.  I had been to a Spit Lit event several years back with my friend Estelle. It was organised by Myslexia and was all about the lethal business of getting published. We met the writer Shyma Pereira who as a teenager had designed David Bowie' infamous orange one-armed leotard during his Aladdin Zane era. She's a journalist and novelist now. 

This one was held at Toynbee Studios and the Women's Library. It was reasonably well attended. It always cracks me up when people avoid sitting at the front, unless it's some gruesome standup comedy gig it's the place I immediately want to be at. The evening interviews and Q+A's were really good. The first one was themed about the perception and experience of sex trafficking and prostitution among young adults. Some of the things I heard reminded me of that incredibly harrowing movie 'Lilya 4ever' There is an exhibition in conjunction with the Poppy Project at The Women's Library about the personal experiences of prostitutes, victims of trafficking, users of prostitutes and historical memorabilia of government initiatives and education campaigns. I went last Thursday, if you are in East London or around Liverpool Street check it out. Entry is free. I especially found the diaries interesting having kept one myself for twenty years. Sometimes I write mine when I am travelling from A to B and occasionally will have a fellow passenger marvelling at the writing and impressed at how I manage to keep a steady hand despite the 207 bus acting like a bucking bronco.
 

    The second event of the night was an audience with Martina Cole, Natasha Cooper, Dreda Say Mitchell, Cathi Unsworth and Laura Wilson. Ms Cole in terms of sales and prolific writing is in a league of her own -  her stuff sells by the ton I suspect. I've never seen her interviewed before and had no idea what to expect. She arrived late clutching a gin and tonic and basically took over the stage. The questions were intended for all the writers to share their insight with the audience, but in reality it frequently turned into the Martina Cole show with her drowning out their responses with her own anecdotes. Don't get me wrong I love her books I really do, but she was a naughty writer of crime novels this night. However the women sat behind me were hanging on her every word and thought she was wonderful up there – Martina Cole has groupies!
 

     I don't know.  But it was fun and Cathi Unsworth who used to write for the Melody Maker was lovely company and we chatted about books and music all the way back to Aldgate East together. When she slagged off Britpop on stage I pulled such a face she cracked up and I just knew we'd gel afterwards.  Natasha Cooper was wonderful and gave me fantastic tips too to overcome my blocks. I'd heard off her but never read her work, Even motormouth Martina post shindig was generous. It was nice how approachable all the writers were so that was good. I learned a fair bit that evening so I am seriously pleased I went.
 

    The writing seminar was really excellent, the woman who ran it, Dreda Say Mitchell said she felt an empathy with my style and told me to use my heritage as a positive.  She made us aware of the importance of pacing, structure, character development and the use of opening lines. She had us writing against the clock, and it was scary fun for me to share my words and have other writers let me hear theirs. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to build their confidence and extend their ability.

    I learned lots of little things that only a seasoned professional could pass on, but I was also chuffed that I was already sussed on some of her advice. I've not done too badly on my own but I am grateful for some help now as I want to get on and get ahead. I wrote a rudimentary short story, well half of one that I do intend to post on here sometime. It's at the infant stage at the moment, I've shared it with a couple of friends as I was curious to see where they felt it was going. I have this fear of being predictable, but it looks like those fears are ungrounded. So I do feel more revved up about dusting down and getting on with 'Gunshot Glitter.' So it's time to move forward.

    I went to a couple of parties recently and some of my friends have settled down, a few have had kids and a couple are expecting first babies. I would love all those things too, but it has to happen the right way so when the inevitable need to compromise kicks in I do it willingly. I had my hormone levels tested and they are A-OK.. I have enough faith to believe I am in the good hands of the cosmos. Does that sound like hippy shit to you? : ) 

    I have done many things back to front, more than just eating my dessert before making inroads into my starter!  My hair is by my standards amazingly long, and I always dreamed of having long hair. At the moment it keeps getting trapped in things. In the past there was no way it would have got this far before my boredom threshold made me want to   1. Dye it  2. Chop it into some spiky or backcombed affair. 3. Both of the aforementioned.

 I actually offered to freecycle all my temp colour mousses, but no one has opted for the damn things. Do you want them?

    Before I went to my friend Mike's engagement party over the weekend I went along to the Clarins studio in Ealing for a makeover that SHE magazine had run as a promotion. I've always been fairly confident with my make up, the first job I ever had at the age of 15 was as an Assistant Beautician, so tartware has always been a constant source of fascination for me. So I thought it would be fun to learn some new techniques and have an expert try out some new tricks on me.

It was a bit crazy as I was up on a stool in a corner but it didn't stop women from coming upto me and looking at Grace's handiwork with a critical, beady eye before nodding approvingly and wandering off on their way. Now I know how goldfish feel.

    Grace was a real honey, and I was genuinely pleased at the result, which made her happy so she bestowed me with a load of samples before I left. Clarins are a premium brand but I swear by their skincare range. I was lucky enough to stock up on creams at £2 a pop worth £20 each last year. So even though I am technically dirt poor at least my skin will look nice.

    As I mentioned earlier the desire for gigs has returned. I've missed some brilliant ones in the last few months, but I've got to follow my gut here. It could be a winter hibernation mode issue and like the daffodils now lifting their heads in bunches all over the country, my head's woken up too. The Wupadupa folk as well as having a pleasing mention in The Big Issue also hosted their first ever cinema night at The Grey Horse pub in Kingston.

    I'd decided to go a few days beforehand, but kept my intentions quiet from Jo who was playing there with her gorgeous hubby Ben in SonVer. I'd wanted to surprise them. I'd had a hectic day of to and fro before getting there and was really worried I'd mistimed it badly, thankfully they were running a bit late. The event was in this large room with heaps of character, I could see tiffin cake and bags of popcorn strewn over tables and the music was in full flow.

    Basically the set up was short films shown with live musical accompaniment. Some like the piano pieces set to a cheeky black and white episode of that feline lothario Fritz the Cat were great to watch, the one about a Gas attack made me wince – I can't cope with stuff being done to eyes. It creeped me out. It was great seeing SonVer play again, it'd been ages and their style of ambient, industrial instrumental metal has really grown on me.

        They've expanded now to include two new members includuing Alistair Richardson on drums which is cool. They did blow an amp though which Jo felt really apologetic for, but I told her it was worth it. They'd added this dark, almost pornographic toned film to one of their songs it made the experience quite intense. Ben said it was the first time they had seen it themselves.  You really should catch one of their gigs if you want to experience something different but highly impactful.

    They have a gig at 93 Feet East in East London on  April 29^th – stick it in your diary. It's a great venue on Brick Lane, so get a good curry in you then go!  It was also wonderful to see PinknRuby perform their stuff again.

    During my swimming and steaming three day exercise session I also finally, finally made it to one of Headland's Choc Ice singles launch parties at the Luminiere in Kilburn. Have to confess I was shattered when I went. I'd just started a period ( my first in 4 months) so was v.crampy, I'd swam 20 lengths a few hours earlier and my hormones were a bit tempestuous but they were great. Really great.

    Their brand of electro thumping alt indie pop never ceases to have me dancing my ass off. The new single Love/Hate is on their player now. There was a good crowd of folk, the graffiti in the loos is still insane and I was pleased to see the French singer William Besson in the crowd. If you lilke Beck you should check him out. He lives in Paris now but was over in London visiting friends. I saw him play at the Number 10 bar last year and we struck up a nice MySpace penpal friendship for a while.

    Headland live are brilliant, I can't emphasise it enough. I think this was my fifth time seeing them play and even though I had been seated quietly in the corner watching the support acts once Headland were on - guess who was right at the front, dancing away? Me. Afterwards, Mary got me a copy of the CD while I had my eyes closed,  dozing upright waiting for her to come back. The buses were kind getting me home quickly. The next day I mailed her and I got a mail that simply said ' The dancing was the best ever' which cracked me up.

     On the night of the Lunar Eclipse I went home to my folks and then on the way back took a trip to Ealing to check out Temple. I realised this was the first time I'd gone to see a new band I'd found and liked on MySpace in ages. In fact the last before this may have been Dark Captain, Light Captain I'm not sure? Jas and Kirtan between them manage this Anglo Asian rock outfit and Jas especially has put commendable buckets of energy and enthusiasm into promoting them. She's a great girl with a big heart and I was pleased to finally get to meet her in person.

    As for Temple themselves they put on an energetic performance including a cool cover of the Beatles Indian influenced 'Tomorrow Never Knows.' Ranj  the lead singer  recognised me from MySpace and post gig we had a really pleasant chat. He feels they're as good as Razorlight and has big aspirations for the band. They've played over a 150 gigs so far.

    It's the first time I have seen a band of asian musicians on stage playing passionate Indie rock, and it pleased me enormously. Growing up I was the only girl in class into alternative music, no one in my community touched it with a barge pole. So it makes me happy to see the generation below me embracing their natural instincts with their bodies and souls. You should never worry about wondering if what you dig is cool or not. Interestingly enough a few years ago I got a mail via Friends Reunited from an asian girl  who'd back then expressed a tentative interest in The Smiths when we were at school. When she'd gone to Uni she had become an all out fan of the alternative scene. I guess we all embrace our identities in our own good time.
 

     I would love to see a band like Temple embraced by the masses on the basis of their talent alone. They shouldn't be marginalized or promoted on the base of their race. It's a natural worry, especially on the marginalisation issue. There are no alternative asian bands out there and Ranj told me he felt they'd hit walls. I know Heaven's Heathen's lead singer is Sri Lankan. My beloved Hush The Many have an Iranian lead singer and Sri Lankan/Irish guitarist. Echobelly had Sonya Aurora Madan. Cornershop during Britpop were one hit wonders with their fusion sound 'Brimful of Asha' even though the Les Rythmes Digitales remix of 'Sleep on the Left side' was far superior. But a full cast of Asians?  Is there one? I have to say, so far Temple are the only band I know off. Ranj likes Ed Harcourt too. Good man.

    Did you see the Lunar Eclipse, it was a stunner!! Really lovely. After the Temple gig, this other indie band took to the stage but these two girls had me in fits when I was trying to watch the band with their dancing antics, the stage wasn't high enough to see above their bobbing heads so I wrapped myself up warmly and after kisses to Temple and co I left them all to it, to do a bit of sky watching from my balcony. The last time I remember there being an eclipse I was at a Mogwai gig and that for me for a few reasons was a really special evening. I think there is another one on March 19^th. It's a good time to make a few wishes as astrologically it's a very powerful time.
 

    Hush The Many have a new single out in April, it's their first one on Label Fandango and Pointy Records – bit of a crazy mouthful but they have an interesting artist roster. I heard the reborn ' Song of a Page' and I swear never have what seem to be the contents of a shopping list ever sounded so damn sexy. It's a gorgeous beast of a song. I am very impressed. They go on a national tour with Fields in a few weeks so keep an eye out for them. Trust me you won't want to miss out.

It's that time of day again. The bath is hot and waiting for me. I hope you're good and that so far the year is being sweet to you. Let me know how you are doing. Sorry if I've been off the radar! Very sorry.
 

Lots of love ..and thanks for reading this

Yasmin xxxxx

Hello

        It's the last day of January, I am meant to be at a Revere gig, but I got home really late from seeing some agencies in town and have totally messed up my timings. I am quite gutted actually, I've not got out much this month musicwise and I was looking forward to this one. I am going to see them on the 15^th February.

In case you missed it, I sent out a bulletin earlier this evening asking about Marketing or creative work in London on a contract or perm basis. If you know of any going, please do get in touch with me. I work at Executive or Junior Manager level. Run it past me if you are not sure, I would be so grateful and am more than happy to pass on my CV if you have something to share with me.

I am also aware it's been a while since I have blogged, and I know for many of the lovely folk I have been in constant touch with -  I have all -  but fallen off the face of the earth. So very sorry! It's not personal I promise and I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of someone vanishing off the face of the earth too.

How was your January? Did you start this year with a bang or with a whimper? This has been an extremely challenging month for me, but I've lightened up now there's some hope of a light at the end of the tunnel.

One thing I do know from previous experience is that its better when you have plans to not disclose them. It takes the mystery out of it all. Better to launch yourself on an unsuspecting world and take everyone including yourself by surprise. That way there is no chance of cold feet, someone diluting your enthusiasm, putting fears in your head or talking you out of things. I found when I wanted to go to the Maldives and work there, that raised a few brows but I told only a couple of folk my intentions and when I got the job, then of course I told everyone!

So I am not being vague or attention seekingly mysterious, just honest. This year is going to be a remarkable one but on a need to know basis. I don't want fear to play a part of it if I can help it, and sharing fears sometimes tends to crystalise them in a weird way, give them power. Not always, but, sometimes…

The month has kind of whizzed by, there were massive chunks of very real stress I could have done without. Predominantly personal to the good old 'flesh and blood', so pants that my head hurt enough to have me need to miss a couple of very luscious gigs. But it's got better now, and because of it I also saw my first gig online which was a novel experience.

My friend Ethan manages a band called The Rum Circus and they had an all singing and dancing spectacular launch party on the 23^rd for their first single ' 'Four Points on a Compass' which came out on the 29^th. Check it out, it's the best song I have heard them do. I love it.

 Ethan put his heart and soul into this party, and I was gutted to miss out, but I did feel very rough. So I tuned in online, it was really odd watching this heaving room from the quiet sanctity of my study, but uber cool at the same time. This set was great, and I was thrilled to see Jo Quail take to the stage and join them halfway through it. She told me she had been working with them but I hadn't known she would be there, so that was a lovely surprise. I texted her and Ethan to tell them I was watching, it's a wonderful, virtual world when you can see stuff happening live and be in touch with the very folk you can see on your screen. Surreal but all very cool at the same time.

Thinking about it, the only gig I have been too all month was the Rock'n'Roll Cinema gig in collaboration with Hungamunga back in early January. It was a shindig that kicked off on Sunday afternoon at 93 Feet East. I've always wanted to go along to a Hungamunga creative session of painting, art and knitting but also felt shy of going. Hush The Many were playing too and there were also going to be short films on, so the whole thing sounded great. When I got there the place was packed. I went in to say hello and saw Jo and Alex from Hush catching up. What was funny was hearing Nima soundchecking with Paperdoll while I was in the Ladies loo!  That was a unique experience!! For the record it sounded loud and echoey.

I told Lloyd I'd always wanted to learn how to knit and he put me next to this utter sweetheart called Alex who had the patience of a saint. Despite the dim light, he used a radioactively coloured ball of orange wool to show me the basics and after much intense concentration he got me knitting. It was so cool. I was well chuffed with myself. As long as someone casts on and finishes the  thing off I am cool with the middle bit. A friend of mine has given me a whole bunch of wool and needles and a book to keep me on track so I am sorted. I even bought some purple and yellow wool myself to make a magic scarf. My orange masterpiece sits snugly in my wallet. It's about the size of a thimble stretched out! I might even frame the damn thing!  Next thing to conquer is learning to ride a bike.

I went over to the music part of the venue and caught up with Jo and Agatina. Later I spotted Stephen and Kath from Revere who had also came along to see Hush The Many. The movie shorts were a cool idea, there were some weird and wonderful clips. The one of Ken Livingstone vs the buses made me chuckle. But I have to say this was the roughest audience I have ever seen Hush The Many play to. I got very grumpy. They'd decided to go with a chilled out set and were for most parts very drowned out.

Nima was sat cross legged on the stage behind a monitor,  so for most parts if you were seated like many were you could not see him. Ruban arrived with a fabulous Dawn of the Dead t-shirt on and a beanie hat minutes beforehand. Al hadn't been able to make it, so there was another drummer on, but we did have a violinist accompanying Jo on her acoustic cello. It just wound me up to be honest, but it wasn't a Hush audience. It was people there to chill out, chat and have a band on in the background.  If the set had been one of the louder songs it probably would have shut them up, actually they did shut up for Paper Doll. Nima asked for everything to be turned out loud, good move dude : )

Must admit that the shouty crowd put me in such a strop that I left soon afterwards. I was cheered a bit when Stephen bought me a ChupaChup lolly. I've never done that, leave knowing other bands will be playing. I got home and later listened to the other bands who had followed and was a bit gutted to hear how good Pete and The Pirates were. Ah well!

I've not been out to any other gigs as I said, but the MySpace music discovering thing has been growing. I went upto a thousand on the friends thing but have been pruning. The thousandth add was this band from Birmingham called The Mexicolas who dropped me a note first which is how it should be. I was very pleasantly surprised at the demo track 'Times Infinity' on their page, it's gorgeous. It was on my player right away, not often a brand new song by a band I have never seen or heard before makes that hallowed spot. 

Me and Jamie -  the lead singer bantered back and forth; as I said it was about time someone other than Duran Duran put his city on the map. He immediately came back at me with a list as long as his arm of performers from his beloved city which cracked me up including Pato Banton.  I was pleased they were the thousandth, since then I did a major cull, and have decided if a band I haven't met cannot be bothered to say hello before hitting the 'Add Friend' button why should they expect me to take the time to listen to them? Surely those few minutes are just as important to the both of us?

I do now make a point of writing to someone before I do that. It's a manners thing. Do I sound like a stroppy old cow now? Lol. I am extremely sweet actually unless you put my back up, and then ooh who am I to say eh?

The Mexicolas have a gig on Friday in London, and it looks like it has sold out already - fee and damnation!  - and all that kind of thing. I would have liked to have met them if only to say hello to Birmingham's answer to Chris Cornell!

TV wise – Celebrity Big Brother made sometimes painful viewing with the bullying of Shilpa Shetty, but I was impressed at the way she handled herself but disappointed at the cowardly sitting on the fence of her fellow housemates. But Jermaine Jackson rocks, what a sweetheart! ' Ugly Betty' is fabulous viewing, though she's a million miles from ugly so the title kind of gets on my nerves a bit, but I can see what the point is.  Paul Mckenna's ' I can make you thin' on SKY Three should be renamed ' Hallaleujah I can make you THIN! Praise the Lord!' as that's the vibe the set up gives off, but I found myself addicted to it, and was startled but in a nice way to see Kat Flint turn up in the filming reaching for donuts. Like Spiderman, TV production is her day job. Hang on, Peter Parker was a photographer?! You know what I mean…

 I've simply been ultra absorbed in other things and also focussing on fixing up my mind and body. I have needlemarks in both arms, gave some blood for some tests today,  had a trip to the dentist, my wisdom teeth are due out soon which I am quite terrified about. My dentist explained what was going to happen as I've never had any teeth pulled out ever and had visions of blood, gore and strands of flesh dripping down my chin. I'm serious. I am quite scared, but if women can give birth I should technically be able to cope with this, shouldn't I? Why am I more frightened of this right now? Does this make me a great big Jessie??

Moving on, because my nerves are starting to jump just thinking about it. I've been giving things away which actually feels really, really, really good. It's good to give and see how happy your giving makes other people. Freecycle is such a great idea. I would recommend it hugely. I've been given some amazing stuff for free. I now own a tent and it's so damn sexy! I am well chuffed. It's big and green and large enough to home four people apparently. Me and my friend Steve spread the tent out in my lounge. I think its been used a couple of times at most.

I was thinking how nice it would be to take to small music festivals should I go to a few others this year. I also got a record player from the site, as a cheer up present for a friend of mine which was a big surprise for her.  Freecycle means land fills don't get dumped with stuff that can still be off use to someone else. So yep, the tent was cool. We admired it together as we ate a mega tasty, big, dark chocolate Santa.

A lot of January was also spent helping one of my best friends and her man pack up and sort through her possessions and help her move to France. It was physically quite exhausting and also very emotional, especially the last day. I really missed them the evening they left. I remember what it was like packing up my own flat when I went abroad. You just keep finding more and more stuff. It never seems to end!

I never lose my head when someone else is stressed, so it was nice to be able to keep things on track and see it through to the end. I will really miss her house, I used to go there a lot to chill out, lie on the lawn in her garden and smell the flowers. I actually have bin bags on my balcony of peonies and camellias to repot. I carried home a mega bag of potting compost from Homebase specially for them a few days ago. By some miracle of God the cyclamens I am nursing haven't died yet, though when I gave away my stepper to this nice girl I got her bloke to take one of them along with the machine.

 I've now inherited more tealights than I can shake a stick at, and enough bedding to hold a huge slumber party through out my flat. Combined it could be one hell of a fire hazard or the romantic night ever. I could turn my flat into one ginormous bed for a huge love in!!!  I still have to find room for the jars of spices and lovely dining ware. But I am getting there. It's good to revamp once in a while. It's a good  methodology for time demarcation.

Oh and for one day here - it snowed. I woke up one morning to a perfect, silent blanket of it on the ground it was such a nice surprise. First snow I've seen in a couple of years.  I went out into the back yard and made the shape of a huge heart with my footprints for fun and took a photo. There wasn't enough for a snowman but definitely enough for snowballs. Sheer magic.

 
That rightwing, fear mongering piece of poo paper The Daily Mail actually came good a few weeks ago. They seduced me one Saturday with the offer of a free day at a health Spa. When the stressy nastiness was making my head hurt I leapt at the offer. Basically you got to take your sweet self off to a health spa and use their facilities for the whole day. I'd not done this in aeons, possibly the last time I chilled like that was on my cruise and that was only a wee bit as there was so much else to be doing.

 The idea of enforced chilling out sounded like heaven in a cup. I've never done that before. So on Monday I went along to the Amida Spa in Twickenham on Staines Road and had a really lovely day. Probably the most lovely day I'd had all month. It was a tiny bit tricky to find as I sailed past it on the bus and had to back track, but the place has won awards and it's easy to see why.

Along with the standard features like a gym, squash court, pool and bar – what impressed me was the design of the health spa. It had themed rooms for all the treatments and good soundproofing. There was a room called the Deep Relaxation Room which was dimly lit with a tank of water with coloured lights streaming through it, giving you a lightshow of pretty ceiling shadows, and soothing music playing quietly enough to be unobtrusive, but nonetheless ambient and mood enhancing.  Beds and cushions and blankets were laid out so you could lie down and curl up and basically chill. Lose yourself in thoughts. I want one please.

I began and ended my day there with a visit to that room. In between I got changed into my tiger print cossie, donned the robe and slippers and went to town on the swimming pools, Jacuzzis, steam room, sauna, hot beds and (gulp) ice cold plunge pool. It was awesome. I was there for hours.

 There were four fountains that were designed to massage you when you stood in them. It was like being deliciously, vigorously pummelled in all your most tense muscles until they surrendered to relaxation. There were 4 jacuzzis set at different speeds. The pools were great, a lot of fun to swim and float about in. As for the ice cold plunge pool, I watched a bloke use it and go beetroot red and he said it felt wonderful. I told him he was a braver person than me, he suggested I try it after the sauna.

I have got to say that that is the hottest sauna I've ever used - yikes, but that plunge pool once you get over the shock feels bizarrely good. Go for it. I did it twice. It felt very daring as I can't even do cold showers. Definitely a hot bath kind of girl, me

I was told I could go to the bar in my robe. That felt a touch good weird but sweet, walking around in my towelling gown and slippers having a frappe with all these people having post work drinks around me. I liked that. It made me feel as if this place was an extension of home, when you feel that you know you've truly relaxed.

If I had a car and the cash I would join this place. After all that water and sweat detoxing my skin and hair felt amazing. As smooth as silk and as soft as a baby's cheek, if blogs were interactive I would invite you to have a feel, but for now, just take my word for it. I feel really good all over. My limbs feel well used and I've begun as I mean to go on.

So apologies for being incommunicado, sometimes the only way I can get organised and deal with stuff is if I completely detach. Doesn't mean I don't love you or don't care, but I am only going to be any good to myself if I can think straight and I want to think straight, as I know I have the potential to leave a big sweet mark and do myself justice.

I started this month feeling scary and blank as that was the effect I think of having put so much of myself into other people. I don't regret it, because it was the right thing to do at the time, if I care about you and can be supportive, I will be. I get very passionate for others if I admire what they are trying to achieve. That's how and who I am.

So I am going leave you with a poem I wrote at the start of the year and bid you goodbye..

2/1/2007 No:1064              Two thousand and seven

It's a blank sheet

Blank canvas

Laid out for me

Vast and white

Surrounded by sea

There are no clues

There are no rules

No one to come

And show them to me

I'm scared and I'm frightened

And I'm standing at the back

Looking around fearing attack

There are mo edges, furrows or mounds

It's perfectly silent

I can't hear a sound

I'm standing so still

Straining to see

What lies ahead

In front of me

But all I see is perfect white

Not too dim, not too bright

It stretches ahead

No railroad bends

I'm listening for clues

And I'm waiting for you

I'm standing alone

You're not by my side

It's all upto me

I have to decide

What to do

 Hope your canvas now has a dash of colour on it. Take care until next time...

Love Yasmin xxx

Hello again you 2006 is almost over!

I have some mutated cold thing that's now made itself at home in my chest. I'm home with my dad's cough medicine and a whole load of naan, which has just gone in the freezer. And a bath of steamy hot water is half filled, with a generous dose of Eucalyptus oil

This year has been really unusual, and most unlike any other year to date. I've earned very little, but feel like I have made a strange kind of creative progress even though I've not worked much on my novel. But I've written tons,  I think I wrote between 80-100 poems this year?

In my gut, it feels like I've been building upto something personally ground breaking.  Fear can hold me back a while from things I am desperate to try. Is that the case with most people, or just me? I have to spend ages faffing before daring to try. It's a dignity thing, I don't like to make a tit of myself!! But at the same time, its better to know you're really alive rather than merely exisiting.

This year has been jam packed with music, and largely courtesy of MySpace meeting and staying connected with a variety of musicians, artists, activists photographers and lovers of fine things. I sort of see that being set to continue and deepen next year, but also for myself to take a more direct role in things. Time to stop sitting on the fence and put my neck on the line I think, and also complete ' Gunshot Glitter'. My novel is having a fit at the moment through neglect.

My Marketing career though  has bore little fruit this year. Though the time I did work, the perks were amazing. A £20 jar of Clarins Night Cream for £2!!! IPC Media rocks!!! Keeping my sister in law in  more Women's magazines then she could possibly hope to read, very nice indeed : ) And I want to travel more, but need some dough to do that. 

In some ways it's been a tough month, and I'm reminded who my real friends are because of it. You don't have to solve someone's problems for them, but it's the quality of attention, listening and response you mete out that sorts the wheat from the chaff. Basically my dad has been really ill, he seemed to deteriorate rapidly, and it made me realise some home truths about my own feelings -  in a grim, slap in a face, direct kind of way. It was a huge shock and threw things into perspective. It's been emotional.

 We've never had an easy bond. The only good thing that has come out of this, is the realisation that there is still time to forge some kind of relationship, and another estrangement is now showing signs of a promising return to normality. As a-ha once sang ' out of blue, comes green.'

My way of dealing with stuff is talking,writing and a good cry. My only worry when I cry is off upsetting other people! I worry they will be uncomfortable and unable to cope or respond. Little tip, criers cry because they really need to. It's a good thing to cry, it means you need to release emotion.  I mean you don't stop people from laughing too much do you?

 Having said all that, I was at a Hush The Many gig at the Borderline recently and I really wanted to, but I didn't, there was tons going on. I'd had a job interview and desperately wanted the cash, had a great interview but was told hours later I was ' too experienced' GOD!!!!! So I wanted to hold it together and just enjoy myself, besides I had a load of mascara on, but once I was home I got a comforting message from a musical love of mine, God did I go for it! I was like a raccoon by 3am. But after a month of emotional rollercoastering I have a handle on things, and this was the first Xmas I wanted to be at home for in quite a while, so that's where I've been in the last couple of days.

It was cool, mum made some courgette and potato curry, chapattis and halva specially, and I made my dad do some exercises with me and go for a walk, and we watched tons of telly!! I don't watch TV very much at all nowadays, but the coolest thing I saw was a TV adaptation of Nicolas Nickelby on BBC2. I like Dicken's stuff, but have never read this one. I was utterly gripped, and was bemused that the blonde god playing the lead character was the same guy I watched being rimmed during my extremely belated viewing of 'Queer As Folk'! Charlie Hunnam is gorgeous boy!!!

I am going to take that bath and come back to this later…..and I am back… though it's a good three days later I think. New Years Eve is about 45 minutes away and I've just finished watching the excellent ' The Hours' – it's even better than I remember it being first time round. One of those movies, you either get or don't, and if you don't you might dismiss it as slow and self indulgent.

I've put on this compilation CD I made when I went to live in Prague in 2001. It's called ' Chillout Yazz' and I still think it's one of the best I've ever compiled, and I haven't played it in ages but when I put it on it reminds me of getting the trams back from Krizikova to Ladvi and listening on my discman, while watching the tram swallow the roads up in the summer, golden evenings. It's stuff like The Cocteau Twins,  Nick Cave, Bryan Ferry ( Mr Silky String! see Breakfast In Pluto), The Cure, Groove Armada, Moby, The Blue Nile and the best song of Dido's life ' Take My Hand'.

I would be really curious to see where we've all ended up this time next year. Will I still be blogging? Will you still be reading? Or will we have both moved onto something or someone else? Endings always make me philosophical. In the last few days I've written about 6 poems. Covering disillusionment, hope, desire and tenderness

 The weeks leading upto Xmas involved tons of DIY around the homes of one of my best mates. Loads of painting, packing, sorting, adopting possessions and pitching in. It was fun and felt good to give. I now have lots of little things that belonged to her and will never have to buy a mug or a hairband ever again by the looks of things! I have tons of all of them! If you need a hairband, find me at a gig and ask me for one okay?

When she goes abroad, it's going to be odd being here without her, but she's wonderful. She gave me a wee plant as a gift and I am doing my damn best to keep it alive. I must be the only Taurean out there without green fingers I swear! Apparently I over water them. I've killed about 4 Gardenia Jasmine's so far : (

Hush The Many continue to wow London which is brilliant. I saw them play the Spitz again and The Borderline since the last blog. The Borderline gig was a BBC Radio 6 Xmas party attended by Ed Harcourt, Steve Lamacq, Stephen from Revere and MySpacers I got to meet for the first time like Keira ( photographer) and Agatina. It was a manic night to be honest

Trusty pix link here:

http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/yazzselena/my_photos

Hush The Many, I've got to know the band better over the course of the year which has been a genuine pleasure, and not just me being polite. I sang Xmas carols with Jo at her home last week which was lots of fun. Her and Ben have a cool black cat called Magic. Their band SonVer recently played a live session and were interviewed on Resonance FM which I enjoyed while painting  my friend's landing. It was really exciting hearing them over the airwaves.

In November Hush played a gig with Dark Captain, Light Captain which was a very chilled out affair. I'd never seen them play before even though I had been in touch with them here for ages. I was so pleased they got such a good reception from the audience. The Spitz crowd is a pretty respectful one. Support acts can get drowned out but these guys commanded the attention of the crowd. The Hush audience is pretty cool, the Spitz gig had George from GoldSounds there, drunkenly telling Ruban to turn his guitar up so he could hear him better much to his amusement, members of Revere, Lloyd and Vic from Hungamunga – and Ms Citizen Helene whose music and friendship I have enjoyed a lot this year were also in the audience.

Going back to GoldSounds, I've seen them play twice now. The second time was at Bardens Boudoir which though attracting unsigned fantastic acts has to have the worst toilets I've ever seen at a venue!! So grim! My friend Ethan's band 'The Rum Circus' were playing there soonafter and I warned him about them. 

 The chatty Israeli girl I met on the bus was going there to see her friends band The Human Beings play and luckily her mate come out to fetch us to the venue as we were both going frantic having overshot the place. Knowing Nima was first on, I was gutted I had raced across London using buses, tubes, trains to miss most of his short set!! Never mind. The night over ran and though I dug Gold Sounds set – I had to leave before the end, making Alex from Hush promise to pass on my hellos and goodbyes to George and co as I slipped away.

I've been supremely strict on gigs most of the time, restricting myself to one a week. One of them was seeing CitizenHelene play at the Betsy Trotswood in Farringdon on a freezing cold night, but that venue is ultra cute and cosy. I loved it. They had filled it with tea lights, Christmassy decorations, and the entry stamp choice that night was  Lovers or Lawyers. Despite what Mr Ostrove advised me to opt for when I was 16, I selected the lover stamp. Not being biased, but despite suffering a cold and apprehension in filling a lengthy time slot, she  was  really good that night. Her performance got better as she went along, and I took a few pix, but largely just enjoyed her set from the side with the odd teasing heckle thrown in.

It was a really nice crowd, thumbs up to them and merry xmas!  The cool thing was hearing her sing the Ike and Tina Turner song live for the first time, which bizarrely ended with a round of Jingle Bells!  But the uber coolest thing was Helene had bought her percussion kit with her, and the audience were very up for a bit of interaction as was I! I got to play the triangle for the first time since I was 10 I think? It was a great way to end the gig. Her friend Sonny came along to watch and in the future they are going to work together to produce some new material. This is great news, and if you haven't checked out her MySpace page yet, well then shame on you!

There have been so many great gigs I've had to miss out on due to poverty, but one I was determined not to miss out on was the  End of the Road Xmas Shindig. I was well excited about this event, as the line up was excellent and I was gagging to see Ed Harcourt sing, I've had serious withdrawal you know?

I've been in touch with Sofia for a while, so it was really lovely to meet her at Cargo when I arrived, looking radiant in her red dress. Ro came and said hello, and I met Stewart who had taken many snaps at the event too. The line up was fantastic. Bar The Smoke Fairies who Ed has championed, all the acts had played the festival in the summer.

 I loved Sunny Days Sets Fire who immediately had me shaking my ass. I love dancing tis true, but it's not often I find myself  moving to tunes as a virgin listener. But they were great, reminded me off a mix of Interpol and Arcade Fire which is cool as I love both. By the way, I was GUTTED the London gig tickets for the latter sold out in seconds and are now going for insane amounts on E-bay. I would LOVE to see them live and am hoping they might grace the festival circuit.

So I am dancing away enjoying the tunes and then their drummer whose this fine lass from Hong Kong swaps places with the dishy vocalist and completely transforms the vibe to sing a song about wanting a map of the world. Variation is indeed a wonderful thing. See them if you get the chance, I know I will be watching them again. By the end of the set I was a sweaty betty, truly. I had this snug jumper on and unless I wanted to flash my lovely scarlet bra at the fine folk at Cargo I had no choice but to keep it on.

So when Darren Hayman came on with his teeny ukulele I was stood on the sides with a paper menu fanning myself enjoying him. He kept looking over at me, and then stopped pointed me out to the crowd and said he thought I had been playing ' air ukelele' along with him, but then twigged I was trying to cool off. I blushed furiously and cracked up laughing. I can't help that I have good fanning rhythm : )

Clientele followed the man, and it was quite late when Ed Harcourt came on stage. He looked very bemused to see a massive image of him projected behind him. Gita was wearing this lovely frilly back to front white shirt, and I was thrilled to see that Leo Abrahams was  with us, as I haven't seen him since June. Leo's had an amazing year as a solo performer, Ed's much loved and trusted right hand man, a Roxy Music player and working with David Holmes, Ronan Keating and a squillion other folk you can read about in his fantastic blog. His blog is so engaging I once had a dream about him where he burst into a classroom looked wild eyed and told me he hadn't slept in 3 months! Because he'd written he hadn't had a day off in so long! It was hilarious.  He's extremely talented, perceptive and engaging to chat to, and was wearing quite a colourful scarf that night.  By the way as you've probably come to expect there are lots of pix up on Yahoo from the night and from all the gigs I've mentioned in this blog.

Before Ed could thrill us with his music he had to pick winners for the prizes of the raffle tickets, he did this in a very jocular slightly embarrassed fashion.  Which by the power vested in me by You Tube, you too can now witness!

There were CDs galore and then he got cracking. It was really nice seeing Sandy Dillon in the audience and Nima having a quiet moment getting into the songs. Despite Ed feeling overheated and under loud the set just improved as it went along. I embraced it whole heartedly, sometimes even sound gremlins cannot take away the essence and spirit of a great song. Leo's guitar on ' Rain On The Pretty Ones' was amazingly intense and loud, and pushed the song to a new emotional level for me.

I love Ed's voice, it's passionate, fine and emotive. When I hear him sing a song like ' She Fell Into My Arms' at his piano I am reminded why I love him as much as I do. He really is the best.  He rounded off his set past midnight with a rendition of ' Silent Night' and I was shocked to realise I didn't know all the words!! Oh dear. It was really nice post set, to be able to take a couple of young  fans to him to meet him who had hung back to say hello but were feeling shy of approaching him. He's off to Mexico next month for a well earned rest.

 Helene and I went and enjoyed Paris Motel play a secret set in the kitchen with late night revellers and Sofia and co. They had just finished a gig at the Borderline and despite frayed guitar strings snapping, played on until 1am. It was mellow and lovely, and the rocky version of 071 went down especially well with me.

The next day I went and did something completely different. As you've gathered I go to a lot of gigs and I love it. What you might not know about me is that I am also very passionate about recycling, human rights and animals. I got Hillingdon to stick in recycling bins on my streets earlier this year, though they withdrew them due to some doofuses abusing them. And I used to work for Amnesty International who I joined when I was all of 12 years old.

My MySpace buddy Bremley has to be one of the most amazing people I have ever come across using this site. The first time I saw his profile I honestly thought it was made up. I couldn't believe he had achieved all he had done, and met all the folk he had met at his age. It was quite phenemonal. He's a young man from North East India from the mountain state of Meghalaya, completing a PhD in London while also undertaking a mammoth amount of projects and has rubbed shoulders with world leaders like Nelson Mandela, worked with the UN and is currently helping launch a Youth segment of the Earth Charter in the UK. If you've already got an awareness of what they do, well then you're a savvier lass or lad then I.

 I didn't but when I saw his bulletin about attending an introductory meeting over a lunch I thought why not?  It was being held in Islington the night after Ed's gig I was staying with my brother in Stokey so the Hub was a bus ride away, and I really wanted to meet Bremley.

Frankly I was also wanted some sorely needed balance back in my life, I wanted to give more than just praising the efforts of a band that had satisfied the musical loving streak in my psyche. I've been crap this year at doing much for Hillingdon Carers, I ran into one of the organisers when I was out with my trolley stocking up and felt awful that I had done so little. I love kids (except for the Hush set ruining one at the Garden Stage in Dorset!)

So after 3 hours sleep, a bath, breakfast, cuddling Tigs – I scribbled Bremley's directions and set off to find this place called The Hub. I swear there are so many nooks and crannies of our fair capital that are amazingly cool but I have no knowledge off. The Hub is definitely one of them. Except for the 4 rounds of stairs, which actually lets face it will be good for your thighs,  this place is such a fantastic idea I swear.

 Basically it's a converted floor of the Candid Arts building around the back of Angel  tube station made into a work area for social and creative entrepreneurs who can hire out space for blocks of time, and they have facilities for meetings, copying, place to stash stuff, space for food, a library recess with sprawling bed to chill out on facing a window to daydream in. It's awesome! I know I use that word a LOT but it is! There are massive Aga style fires to warm it up and much of the way it is run is done on trust like use of the copier. I am so pleased someone made the Hub happen.

The idea is to have them set up all over the world so that people with dreams and ideas have an affordable place they can go to actualise them. I saw pioneers for change for  promoting workshops for family counselling,  safer labour laws for  clothes manufacturers, fair trade dried fruit suppliers, film and music promoters interested in putting on events with the emphasis on safety and an all inclusive vibe

If you think The Hub might be handy for you in London check out their website on: http://www.the-hub.net/where/london

They also have one in San Paolo, Bristol and Johannesburg.  I would drop a line to Lesley as she's really cool, and can point you in the right direction if the website does not resolve your query

Bremley and Lesley at The Hub

So what's the deal with the Earth's Charter?  As I said I hadn't heard off it, and at a superficial level you could be forgiven for dismissing it as yet another environmental group who have their roots in worthiness, a just cause but are interchangeable with another organisation of a similar ilk. But it's not. The Charter was first suggested years ago by a collective of people who were concerned about the planet as a whole so this was an idea that looked at the environment, human and civil rights, the economy and poverty as a WHOLE.

I've never seen anything like that before, and though it looked simple enough on paper the brains to conceive those themes and ways of resolution would have taken years. It's not a quick fix being suggested, but we do need to start somewhere, so that future generations once we're all dust, dirt and ash will have a better time off it.  If you want a quick general idea take a look at the image below of the kids charter because that poster is fantastic If words are more your thing – read the summary I lifted off the official website:

In the Earth Charter there is a special emphasis on the world's environmental challenges. However, the document's inclusive ethical vision recognizes that environmental protection, human rights, equitable human development, and peace are interdependent and indivisible. It provides a new framework for thinking about and addressing these issues. The result is a fresh, broad conception of what constitutes a sustainable community and sustainable development.

www.earthcharter.org

The Earth Charter poster for kids

  When I arrived Bremley gave me a huge hug, I got my breath back from 4 flights of stairs and I was immediately struck at the variety of young people in the room. There were maybe 15 or so in there but racially and socially the mix was extremely diverse. This become more apparent when we all introduced ourselves to one another. There were students, activists , fashion designers, a pregnant lovely girl called Julia who along with a man called Jeffrey and Bremley were there to tell us more. Challenging questions were mooted and much debate was had, and we all chipped in £3 and ate a load of food prepared by the fair hands of Bremley and co.

It was a really excellent afternoon. I was really inspired by Bremley's presentation on the Charter. I think the seeds of promise were sown in The Hub. There really isn't much awareness of it in the UK as though it has been adopted by other countries, it hasn't been by the UK as we dropped out of UNESCO a while back.

 However I sincerely hope you will drop by the website and think about what the Earth Charter is promoting.  If you have kids then really you could do a wonderful thing in 2007 by getting it into their heads why its important to recycle their rubbish, make good social choices and respect animals and the spaces around them.

Stuff like that stays with kids.  I know it did with me.  And if you're a big kid, read the kids poster and drum that stuff into your head and when you're mates do stuff like drop their paper into the trash, tell them to wise up and use a recycling bin, simple things if done en masse create HUGE changes.

There is still some way to go to make the Earth Charter message more amenable, communicable and clearer to the public, but it's a start, and I plan to get more involved maybe on a youth level in the future. I am indeed brooding on it.

So it has been pretty busy, the night before I sang carols around Jo and Ben's place, though it has to be said Ben abstained from the carol singing and wanted to put on some Frank Zappa if memory serves me well, I went to Brixton to check out the superfine dulcet tones and jazz metal harmonies of Special Benny at the 4^th Kooba Radio birthday party at The Windmill. This meant dragging myself across London and I bussed it. Bussing it means it's cheaper and that I can catch up on my writing enroute and look out of the window. I got a bus from Oxford St with the stroppiest driver ever driving it, but the view upstairs was mighty fine:

I love heading right to the front to look out of the window! My romantic soul is a real sucker for pretty lights and London at Xmas is just magic : ) Special Benny were all chilled out around a table, and there were other bands on who though local had a distinctly American twang thing going on. I hadn't seen them live since they headlined a 2Bob night back in August so was very pleased to be there.

If you go to You Tube you can catch clips off them. Matt was away playing Buttons in panto at Newbury but it was a really cool set. They seem to get better and better each time I see them. In between filming clips I was dancing tons and one of their friends came upto me and said she had never seen anyone get that immersed in music and demanded to dance with me, which immediately made me feel very shy! I don't know why that happens but I do. But it was really sweet.

The crowd loved  them and got a massive surprise during the finale chorus of Hungry when  Tom and Grace started singing ' If you're truly hungry, you can feast upon mince pies, I'll give to you, mince pies I'll give to you!' and the other Matt rushed out with a load of them for the audience. Go on I'll let you see, it's been Xmas and New Years is imminent, enjoy the moment on You Tube

With that I am going to love you and leave you. I was meant to go to a party tonight but I've been ill for the last week or so with some kind of bronchial thing, which I hoped to shake off so I could go and paint the town red in Hackney. Instead I decided to complete this very last labour of love to you.

Thank you hugely for sticking with me through it, I wish you a truly wonderful 2007 and say Eid Mubarak if you're Muslim, say it anyway if you are not, as my family are and I'm going to go home and enjoy my mums fine cooking, and a Happy 40^th birthday to my gorgeous older brother who won't see this as he probably thinks MySpace is a bit evil or sinister and I will see many of you in 2007

Lots of love, hugs, lipstick kisses and tenderness and affection to you all

Yasmin xxxxxx