700

What's amazing about life is that you can be questioning pretty much everything, and feeling a deep sense of solitude and existential angst, and then you can get on a train, meet a friend, sit on a deckchair and drink half a bottle of Cava, head into the Royal Festival Hall and have one of the best musical experiences of your existence. Maybe that proves that my angst isn't that deep-seated. Maybe I'm just really fickle. Or maybe it's that Sufjan Stevens gave me exactly what I needed: a brief sense of belonging.

I'd never seen him live before and knew him only from two albums: Illinoise and some crazy Christmas collection where he plays original festive songs on a bizarre selection of instruments and sings along in his breathy, meandering, wouldn't-hurt-a-fly fashion. If you'd asked me to describe my gig predictions beforehand, I'd have gone for a kind of Ray Lamontagne figure, sleepy and unprepossessing, noodling away on a guitar centre stage, low on personality, high on awkward musicality.

So when the show opened and Sufjan's band arrived, three trombones back right, one drummer front left, another drummer front right, a pianist centre right, some guitarists mid-left, and two great backing vocalist dancers on a raised platform centre back, I was a little surprised. I would have been surprised even if he'd come on wearing a T-shirt and jeans, as I'd expected, but Sufjan was wearing a tight black zootsuit covered in strips of neon tape, with further strips of tape on his face, and a eight-foot diameter pair of homemade fabric wings on his back.

And the mood was one of love. It was all gloriously flawed. His left wing wouldn't stay erect and so right from the start, he looked like a damaged bird fighting with his final breaths. The suit was all tight and wrinkly around his knees but a bit baggy and wrong in other places, coming in tight around the ankles and paired with some bog-standard trainers. The graphics on the huge background screen were clearly a labour of love, most likely hand drawn by Sufjan himself, who's an artist as well as a talented musician. I tell you what he's not, and that's an amazing dancer by conventional standards. And again, this just piled points onto the Charmometer. His blocky arm movements were carried out with conviction but scarce skill - he looked a bit like he was half-heartedly copying a routine from the TV, while drunk. Several times there was more than a hint of Ross Gellar about him - and, having pointed this out to James, we both then screamed during the finale when the girls did the hold-your-left-foot-in-your-left-hand-with-your-right-hand-behind-your-right-ear move that was almost the best bit of The Routine (click here to revisit - move in question is at 01:20 but my favourite bit is Schwimmer's head jerks of victory when it's over).

So it was all a bit clunky. And as a practiced perfectionist, by rights, this should have irritated me. Don't I have high standards for the performances I choose to see? Don't my gig watchwords include slick and/or perfectly-choreographed? Readers: maybe I'm changing. Because it was the flaws that made this for me. Sufjan poured everything into this gig, and in that respect, it was massively emotional. It's rare in life that you see someone trying really fucking hard to do something, and when you do, you feel gratitude for the bravery they had in choosing to expose themselves that way. The first note I wrote down was about halfway through the gig, when a lyric caught my ear: "And when I die, I'll rot. But when I live, I'll give it all I've got." It was that, that unashamed effort, which wore down my London cynicism. The confidence to be publically vulnerable. I tell the truth too - but in the face of so much pressure to be positive, it's often hard to admit my struggles. But this was infectious. At the first possible opportunity, people leapt from their seats and poured down the stairs to be closer to the stage. The ticker tape, the balloons, the beautiful music, the extraordinary rhythms and chords: it was all so strange and magical, and for an hour or two, I forgot I was alone.

On Sunday morning, I made a note of these lines from Woody Allen that I read in an online interview with him. He's answering the question 'What drives you nuts?':
"The human predicament: the fact that we’re living in a nightmare that everyone is making excuses for and having to find ways to sugarcoat. And the fact that life, at its best, is a pretty horrible proposition. But people’s behavior makes it much, much worse than it has to be.... I do think we live in a nightmare and I feel the same way that Blanche Dubois feels: I want magic; I don’t want reality. I want the paper lanterns hung over the bare light bulbs, like she did. And if there is any way to escape reality, I’m all for it. Unfortunately, there isn’t any real way. You can distract yourself. You can go to baseball games and concerts and plays and have sex and get involved in all kinds of endeavours that obsess you, and you can even create problems for yourself, where they don’t exist, to avoid thinking about the bad problems. But, in the end, you’re caught. And reality inevitably disappoints you."

I emailed that quotation to a friend, who replied with one from Alexander Ebert, the guy behind the band Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros:
"I grew up with more shit than most people and with a lack of a certain kind of suffering that, in some people, signifies true living and experience. So I became self-destructive. But that attitude isn't sustainable, so I found my way back to brightness and more constructive ways to live. Both are reactions to the same thing: death. It's like we're confronted with a fucked-up world and the refusal to lose hope is the only way to prevail over the pessimism and sarcasm. And from the refusal to lose hope comes the desire to build something else and the ability to accept that that something else may not be created in your lifetime. But that's irrelevant. The thrust is the intention."

There are a lot of people out there who know the truth, but who still make positive choices. I'm at an earlier stage where I'm just coming to terms with things, accepting life for what it is and making peace with reality, rather than running and hiding in endless nights out, hilarious antics and the fantasy of unconditional love. But it's inspiring to know that it might just be possible to reconcile this struggle and somehow find a happier place. I'll keep trying.

This is my 700th LLFF. Many happy returns to you, Faithful. This is written with love for all of us.

AV, DF, TT and me

First, a public service announcement. Then a review of the gig I went to last night.

It has been announced that the referendum on voting systems in the UK is being held on 5th May 2011. The Faithful will recall that the main reason I voted Lib Dem at last year's General Election was that I believed that was the best shot we had of getting parliamentary reform. The AV system is not flawless, but I still believe that it is substantially fairer than the existing first past the post (FPTP) way of deciding who leads us. Prominent people have been campaigning for an overhaul of this system for years - check out this video of John Cleese fighting for it over two decades ago:



Sorry if this is patronising, but in case you haven't made up your mind:

I passionately believe that, without a fair, representative voting system, we do not really live in a true democracy, and the lack of engagement among young voters in particular will just get worse. At the moment, over two thirds of MPs are elected when most of their constituents have voted against them. The majority of people in this country are represented in parliament by an MP they did not vote for. Is that fair? Is that democratic? No.

Another problem with the existing FPTP set-up is that a lot of constituencies become 'safe seats', and in these areas, MPs simply don't have to work very hard to get your vote. It's only in the swing constituencies that votes really count, so it's only there that MPs put the effort in to attract votes. Is that fair? No.

There are several weeks between now and the AV referendum on 5th May. I don't want to be too boring about it, but I hope that all my Faithful who are eligible to vote in the UK will vote in favour of the referendum. Whether you're right, left or loony, this is a vote that will make politics more representative for all of us. There are Old Guard members of all three major parties who are scared of it - they fear change and are right to be scared: AV will shake things up - and the electorate will benefit. Whatever your affiliations, it is clear for all to see that the current state of affairs is fundamentally, systemically unfair. Vote for a system upgrade - you deserve it.

That concludes the public service announcement. And now, back to our regular programme of whining and tomfoolery.

Last night I went to a gig at the Barbican - Teddy Thompson, supported by David Ford. I've liked David for several years, and had the rare pleasure of walking into the Barbican gift shop last night to help Grania buy one of his CDs in the interval and asking another customer in my crisp private school English, 'Is that the album with Cheer Up, You Miserable Fuck on it?' His gig was fantastic - heavy use of the loop sampler allowed him to show off his talents on acoustic and lead guitar, piano, harmonica, percussion and vocals, and although at times he was a bit cringingly cod-American during his inter-song banter and the removal of his porkpie hat and subsequent angsty head-stroking felt slightly Chris Martin contrived, his performance was energetic, well-balanced and well-rehearsed, the breadth of his musical talent was clear for all to see, and his voice was confident and emotive. He is clearly an intelligent, wry, funny man and I am more of a fan than I was this time yesterday, so he's doing something right.

Then on came Teddy Thompson, stage right. Oh dear. The first and last time I'd seen him previously was also at the Barbican, for the exceptional Nick Drake tribute concert I went to a year ago. He sang on a couple of numbers and I liked his voice. When I saw that David Ford was supporting him, I took that as a positive endorsement of the rest of his oeuvre. Error. What I saw was a set of drab, disappointing country songs with undiscernable vocals, predictable harmonies and a drummer who could have been replaced by a 1980s Fisher Price keyboard. After two thoroughly conventional tracks, both of which left me weeping for Rufus Wainwright, my mind drifted into a favourite bad gig pastime: working out who the band resemble. It turned out we had Michael Stipe on guitar, Danny Boyle on drums, that lady from Episodes and Green Wing on violin and backing vocals, Osama Bin Laden on bass and Ryan Stiles on lead. The girl particularly offended me, but I'm aware I was being very oversensitive yesterday. She was wearing a cropped, fitted black leather jacket, a black pencil skirt, black opaque tights and ankle boots. From Row B of the balcony, she looked like a Foxton's estate agent. Her violin playing was as subtle as a fat kid at ballet, thumpingly behind the beat throughout, reaching a climax in a song that reminded me of a lazy version of Sting's Desert Rose. The loyal audience had remained polite throughout David Ford's set but lapped up every ounce of Teddy's output, whooping, hollering, laughing and taking photos. Grania and I got restless, started chatting and then left before we got too rude - the first time since The Longpigs supported U2 on the Zoo Tour at Wembley Stadium that I have preferred the support to the main event.

Instead of tutting at Teddy, we went and sat outside in the foyer, worked on Grania's CV and took photographs of ourselves gooning in the empty reception space. I looked for all the world like a young lady fully sure of myself and where I'm going in life, so it's odd that a few hours earlier I was wondering what type of lobotomy it might take to make me stop crying. During the morning, I'd seen a photograph of a girlfriend on Facebook - she is tall and gorgeous, and was standing in shallow sea on some sort of Greek island paradise holiday, looking out to the horizon, brown back, brown slim legs, tiny purple bikini bottoms. And there, at my desk, I started to cry with jealousy at how different my life would have been if I'd felt attractive all these years, rather than blighted by cellulite and fat. Then, on the way to therapy, I saw a photo of a beautiful model in an ad on a bus, and I started crying again. And I know it's ridiculous: it's not as though I'm some sort of gargoyle. So I asked my therapist why, if I'm so convinced that I'd be happier if I was thin that I actually cry with envy at others who are lucky enough to be slim, am I not anorexic - or at least on a permanent diet. And she suggested that it's because I know that deep down it wouldn't make any difference if I was thinner, and that I know that I'm not really that ugly - that it's all just a cover for the real shit, a scapegoat. That was interesting. Our whole session was fascinating, actually. In between sobs of PMT-induced self-pity, I unlocked a major truth about the skewed way I see things. God only knows I've felt like I'm en route to a new me for the past few weeks and months, and it's not a great deal of fun reaching what I thought was a summit and realising it was a foothill. But there's no doubt that I'm making progress.

I'd dearly love to be one of those carefree people, like those well-meaning friends of mine who say 'You're over-thinking this, Jane,' not realising that it makes me want to throw my stapler at their head. In the same way that saying 'Calm down' to someone who thinks they've lost their passport at Stansted doesn't do much to lower their blood pressure, telling me to stop thinking so much doesn't tend to elicit the response, "Oh, OK then, thanks." I don't sit here all day, staring into space, deliberately trying to complicate things. It just happens. I know some people just concentrate on the project in front of them until 5 o'clock and then go out and get pissed with their friends. I hope they know how lucky they are. I sit here doing five different things at work, and still, bubbling away underneath, is the feeling that I should be doing something else, or at least doing what I'm doing but differently. The volume of the Greek chorus has definitely quietened over the past few weeks and months, and I don't beat myself up nearly so much as I used to. I know, Big Picture, how lucky I am. But stuff's been so dark and bad recently that I haven't really been able to vocalise it to anyone else, which for a compulsive truth-teller such as myself has been odd. Anyway. Here's hoping I make it through.

In the meantime, I'll distract myself by playing the ukulele, going to gigs and getting worked up about the AV referendum. Bear with me.

I was bored and sang a song

Santa Baby by Lost Looking For Fish

Gagantuan

It's been several years since I walked into a packed concert arena. I'm older now, and possibly wiser, but the impact of the screams, the heat of the humans and the headiness of the adrenaline is still arresting. Breathless and flushed from dancing about like loons in a weird greenscreened white pod for the O2 promotional video we'd just recorded of ourselves in the foyer, Grania and I took our seats and fumbled about trying to fit our plastic cups full of wine and back-up tiny bottles of more wine into our limited cup holders. The fifty year old man on Grania's left was bursting to talk to us.
"Have you seen her before?" he asked. We shook our heads.
"I saw this tour in Birmingham," he said. "You're not going to believe it. It's amazing."
"Are you her biggest fan?" I asked.
"No but I love her. Two of her dancers follow me on Twitter."
Grania shuffled imperceptibly closer to me. The lights went down. The volume of the screams made my ears do that weird vibrating thing that I think is probably not good. A screen came down. Lights went on it. In more than a nod to MJ, Gaga was silhouetted and massive. And so it began.

I've seen some good performances in my time: Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Elton John, the Stones, The Prodigy, Justin Timberlake, Eminem, U2, Blur, Rufus Wainwright - like 'em or not, they all know how to put on a show. At 24 years old, Gaga has comfortably taken her place among those seasoned pros. She is one of those unbearable people who manages to be clever, funny, innovative, self-aware, courageous, talented and really good at dancing without making you want to maim them. Anyone else with that many amazing irons in life's fire and I'd be dreaming up graphic ways of shoving them off their pedestal for good, but with Gaga, I'm fine for her to stay up there and preen. She's a real one-off and not only did her show fill me with admiration, it also made me think that anyone with a passing interest in current culture should go see her live.

She's fucking weird, there's no doubt about that. Throughout the night, she wore a selection of extraordinary outfits - shoebox-sized shoulder pads, a Where The Wild Things Are-inspired costume that made her look like a big tree trunk, a futuristic silicone dress with white pants and plasters on her nips, a glitter catsuit for Poker Face, a black cleavage-revealing bodice which she accentuated with liberal smearings of fake blood, a little girl green frilly number that clashed brilliantly with her American mustard-coloured hair, all vulnerable on the big black stage while the Fame Monster roared and gurned in the background. Gaga is gaga for monsters. Her fans are Little Monsters, and they're encouraged to be as invidual and extraordinary as possible. "Do not, for God's sake, leave here loving me more," she panted. "Leave here loving YOURSELVES more." She has a fairly scary shouting voice, hints of Miss Hannigan. Her fans screamed on demand. "I'm like Tinkerbell," she cooed later, lying back on the stage. "If you don't clap, I'll die. Do you want me TO DIE?" We clapped.


Her self confidence is infectious. It's impossible feel vulnerable when one of the most famous women on the planet is standing in front of you and twenty thousand others, wearing a black leather studded bikini and strutting around stage, happy to let her thighs and buttocks wobble in full view of everyone, her arid hair tangled around her microphone. It'd be inevitable if a fair amount of what she says on stage is scripted, but there's no doubt that she makes an impact - even if her truisms do seem heart-threateningly cheesy in the stark winter light of Friday. "I didn't used to be brave. I didn't used to be this way. I used to be a geek," she said. "But your support has made me brave. You make me brave." We screamed.

Much of her act is spontaneous, though. Every time she ventured down onto the catwalk extension in front of the main stage, she was showered with gifts from her most loyal Little Monsters, and she took a generous amount of time to notice each item and appreciate it. "Does this say 'Born This Way'?" she asked, picking up a desperately proferred T-shirt. Without hesitation or concern for her stage outfit, she pulled it on over her leotard and performed the next section of the show wearing the cropped vest. Can't see Cheryl Cole doing that. Another person gave her a Penguin Classics edition of Warhol's diaries. "Oh, you've highlighted!" she said, charmed. She flicked through the pages briefly and read aloud to us from a passage about beauty:

"When you're in Sweden and you see beautiful person after beautiful person after beautiful person and you finally don't even turn around to look because you know the next person you see will be just as beautiful as the one you didn't bother to turn around to look at — in a place like that you can get so bored that when you see a person who's not beautiful, they look very beautiful to you because they break the beautiful monotony."

Then she nattered about the beauty that comes from variety for a minute or so, not lecturing us, not sounding patronising or naive, just being honest and confident and aware of her position of power and determined to use it for all our benefits. A plush Santa toy landed at her feet. "I do love Christmas," she said, "but for those of you who are lonely or angry, this is for you." She tried to rip off his head with her teeth but St. Nick clung on, until she impaled him with the stiletto heel of her white patent ankle boot, tore him apart and plucked out his kapok.

The only irritant of the evening came from two rows behind us, where there was a ledge surrounded by a barricade. One of the girls on the ledge was making an extraordinary amount of noise, mostly in the "Wooooooooo! I LOVE YOU GAGA!" genre, constantly during the 'Please cheer now' sections and, more vexingly, fairly regularly in the 'Please don't cheer here, she's talking and we want to hear what she's saying' moments. She also sang along, fairly tunelessly but word perfectly, throughout every song, which was fine when it was a deafening upbeat hit but slightly more annoying when it was fully audible over the one slow number, Speechless. "Shut up!" yelled someone further down our row, to no effect. I turned around to see who was making this noise. There was a definite possibility that the ledge area was reserved for wheelchair users but it was hard to see in the dark. "Is she disabled?" I asked Grania. "WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" shouted the girl. "I don't know," said Grania, who turned around and tried to climb over the row behind to take a closer look but ended up almost kissing the man behind her and returned, shocked. "I LOVE YOUUUUUUUU!" wailed the girl. "There's no excuse for this level of noise," I said. "Not even muscular dystrophy." I turned and said, "Please can you shut up?" Another man joined in, "Yeah! I paid for tickets to hear Lady Gaga, not you." The reaction was not ideal: the girl's companion was guppying, gobsmacked in a my-friend-is-disabled-I-cannot-belive-you're-saying-this fashion, but thankfully the volume from their quarters diminished before a very un-PC fight broke out.

That decidedly unbeautiful moment kindly broke up the monotony of the rest of the evening's perfection, so for that I'm grateful. As soon as Bad Romance faded away, we wished the fifty year old uberfan farewell, bought our commemorative T-shirts and ran back to North Greenwich pier to get the final westbound Thames Clipper back to Waterloo. Freezing, we stood on the outside deck giggling and taking thousands of terribly blurred photos. Then we hugged lots and went our separate ways. Music doesn't make the world go round, but love is all you need.

I'm a legal alien

Faithful readers may remember previous trips I've taken into the depths of the countryside to visit my friend Nicole, she of storecupboard fame. What has surprised me is that my visits don't seem to become any more normal the more frequently I make them. In fact, gorgeous though our chats are, I feel less like a friend when I'm in her house and increasingly like a beloved yet curious Martian. She meets me at the station in a four wheel drive. Often, there are child seats in the back, dachshunds at my feet and a Labrador in the boot. On arrival at her home, there are squawks of excitement from her adorable brood who LOVE me because I always bring them a strong assortment of hairclips from London. There is a lot of kissing, giggling, hiding behind legs, cajoling, tickling and eventual clambering. Then we have dinner. This has been prepared in advance in gargantuan batches - dauphinoise potatoes, fish pie, stew, soup - all made and frozen like the truly organised thing she is. In London, I eat home cooked food, no joke, about once or twice a month. Breakfast is cereal at my desk, lunch is bought at Pret or similar, dinner is restaurant or more cereal. It's lovely: we're separated by pretty much everything but friendship.

Occasionally Nicole invites people over to dinner while I'm staying. This weekend I was privy to a few gems including someone describing their prospective new vehicular purchase as, "an Audi probably, nothing flashy, nothing like one of those small Mercedes... nasty hairdressers' cars." And I heard the following (male) response to the question "How are the kids?" which I SWEAR I have transcribed verbatim. You won't struggle to imagine the accent:
"Oh they're fine... Actually, I say they're fine... barely seen them... was out shooting all day, came back, they run towards you shouting Daddy, Daddy!, it's very sweet, and then they go to bed... Ideal!"

The man in question is absolutely charming, handsome and lovely, but freely admits we live on different planets. Weeks go by when he doesn't see anyone who's not white - and when it does happen, he always notices that he's a bit startled, like "Oh! A black man!" I told him that there are times when I'm the only white person on the bus and he looked a bit concerned.

He was also sweetly forthcoming about Muddy Matches, a dating website I discovered this weekend for country singletons: a photo on the homepage shows a man and a woman in matching tweed flatcaps, and if you don't want to post a photo of yourself you can upload a picture of your wellies. I expressed surprise to my dinner companion (married, four kids) about the website, suggesting that it would be of interest to my urban friends as a countryside curio. He was adamant that it's normal that like should be attracted to like, which is of course unarguable. He couldn't see what the problem was - and another dinner guest asked what was the difference between looking for someone who likes hunting on Muddy Matches and going onto Guardian Soulmates and looking for someone who likes going to gigs and the cinema. Gingerly, I suggested that there's a slight difference in accessibility between going shooting and going to the cinema, and that perhaps Muddy Matches and its ilk meant that the lack of demographic variety in the countryside probably wouldn't change any time soon. He happily agreed. In short, they know they're in a bubble, and they're very content there. And honestly, I don't have a problem with it, as long as they treat everyone else as equals.

Then I found out that, of the 12 people at dinner on Saturday night, two were Catholics and nine were on the Alpha course. And here I hit a slight wall. Now, I can totally understand someone wanting to live in the place they've grown up, particularly if they've had a happy childhood. I can easily see how unpleasant city life must seem if you're used to a village existence. And it's clear why the simplicity of village life lends itself to Christian evangelism - no Muslims or gays to mess with the 'logic'. But just because I understand it, doesn't mean I have to like it.

In my ideal world, there'd be no religion: I object on principle to any faith that promotes their path as the right one (which rules out pretty much all of them), as I believe this inevitably creates divisions and thus conflict among followers. I don't like the suggestion that there's one route that's better than any other - and for that reason, I'm annoyingly not able to be a humanist either. I just want us all to be good, kind, generous social citizens, respectful and tolerant of difference. I simply cannot see how that's compatible with evangelical Christian evening classes, which teach that homosexuals and non-followers are destined for hell. Anyway, since my faithlessness prevents me from crusading (as I'm not arrogant enough to think that my way would be better for you than the one you've chosen), this is one battle I'm certain to lose. In the meantime, I'll generously allow people of faith to do just as they please, so long as they're lovers, not fighters. Fighters can go jump.

Despite all the feelings of foreignness (and let's be clear: these people are happy, and I'm not - so who's losing out? I have no illusions), I did enjoy my 48 hours on Planet Rural, with the exception of a couple of altercations with Alice who is fascinated with the fact that my thighs are at least twice the girth of her mother's, and who suggested that I should cut bits off them "with scissors", her small fingers helpfully indicating the strips where I could start my self-mutilation. She and her younger sister also asked to see my bottom about seven hundred times. But it was truly ace to hang out with Nicole, great to walk in the crisp autumnal air, delicious to gorge on her incredible crumble and wonderful to be lain on by her three warm offspring while we watched Stuart Little. I came back to London yesterday evening, studied Take That performing together live on The X Factor results show, felt the familar teenage obsession levels bubble up again, noted Robbie's panicked eyes and refusal to talk to Dermot about the future, worried about Mark's visible need for Rob's presence, saw that Gary, Jay and Howard are still rightly suspicious, and then remained concerned about my own sanity for a bit before it was time to hit the city hay.

Taken

It is earlier this year. Robbie Williams, Gary Barlow and Mark Owen are in a New York recording studio, tentatively laying down some demos for a new project that could possibly see Take That reuniting as a five piece after nearly twenty years apart. Following a successful morning's work, the band's remaining two members, Jason Orange and Howard Donald, arrive at the studio from London. They shake hands with their old bandmate. Robbie is keen to play them what they've achieved that morning.
"Actually, if it's alright, Rob, I'd just like to relax a bit first and wind down before listening to anything," Jason says, smiling thinly, looking around at the rest of the group. Robbie nods. An innocuous enough statement, but if you'd seen me and Lucy watching the footage last night at the IMAX, you'd have thought we were being faced with a scene so horrific that it threatened to bring up our dinner. Jason, Take That's Minister Without Portfolio, felt so threatened by the return of the uber-talented but uber-volatile Robbie that he kicked his old friend's eager exuberance with steel-toed boots. Robbie seemed to shrink in size. My hands were clutching my jumper, my stomach was tense, my neck so tight that my head had gone off at a weird angle. Lucy was wincing as if in excruciating pain and had reached across to grab my arm in a pincer grip.

We were at the premiere of Look Back, Don't Stare, the new Take That documentary, a 100 minute feature that will be shown in a slightly shortened version on iTV this Saturday. Told through face-to-face interviews with the five band members, the black and white film tells the story of the band's rise, fall and rise again, with particular emphasis on the past 18 months since the idea of Robbie rejoining became a serious possibility. Pretty much anyone with a passing interest in music and celebrity culture would enjoy the film, but for two people whose lives revolved around Take That for far longer than it's cool to admit (i.e. more than six seconds), watching this was an exhausting and intense trip. It was a bit like we'd spent our teens going out with five boys, who we thought about all day every day, who infiltrated our entire lives, who we dreamed about, whose radio interviews we recorded and listened to over, and over, and over again, who we occasionally cried over, for heaven's sake. And now, having not seen them together for nearly two decades, here they were all again, hanging out together. We were seeing how our childhood loves had grown up. And it was fascinating.

Having been five very average teenagers, the five of them have grown into pretty exceptional adults - all around their early forties now, they're articulate, thoughtful, philosophical, scarred, honest, and still very funny. There were many huge waves of laughter that blasted through the cinema last night, as well as gulps of pain when we saw what they'd suffered. And yeah, I know, suffering schmuffering, poor them with their millions, my heart bleeds - but these are five men who have gone from the bottom to the top to the bottom to the top again - a more extreme existence than any of us would surely wish for. Alongside the money and the adulation, there's been addiction, adultery, rejection, failure, agoraphobia and clinical depression. They've suffered public ridicule and private shame, and they've dealt with it all admirably. It was an exceptionally entertaining, humbling and thought-provoking film and I recommend it unreservedly. Maybe not to you, Dad. But I'd be staggered if most normal people didn't find it an extremely gripping and raw account of an extraordinarily turbulent time in the lives of five average British men.

What I found most affecting about the film was a) the lads' palpable closeness, the fact that they feel complete when they're together in a way they didn't before. And b) their awareness that, in spite of this connection, they remain completely on their own. They have the most special and unique of bonds, but that still has not been able to prevent them from spinning out, overloading and breaking down through the years. And, exhibiting a remarkable ability to relate absolutely everything back to myself, their experiences cemented a lot of what I've been thinking and feeling of late. We are always alone. We can love, we can parent, we can succeed, but we are the only people living our lives, we are the only people in the world who know what it's like to be us. We live - and die - on our own. That might sound horribly depressing, but I don't think it has to be. I reckon that those facts must be faced up to and accepted before one can be truly let go of one's crutches and be happy. Last night in therapy, I discussed a void that I feel is within me, a huge metaphorical space that I have had for as long as I can remember - a space that needs to be filled, that craves. And through my life, I've tried to fill it with a variety of things: food, friends, Take That, lovers, jobs, celebrities, clothes and hobbies. But no matter what I've consumed, the space has always remained. And now I'm learning to accept that it's there. I'm not trying to fight it or fill it any more. It's a strange kind of passive respect for reality and we'll see what comes of it.

In the meantime, if you're still awake, you can enjoy the fact that you are spinning around the earth's axis at somewhere between 700 and 1000 miles per hour, depending on your distance from the equator, and that in addition, the earth is moving around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour. We're going at a fair lick. Totes amaze.

Cheese alert

Two weeks on and I'm still thinking about Glastonbury. There's something so extraordinary about standing in a field with 80,000 other people, all united by a common purpose, listening to songs that make your hairs stand up on end - that crowd mentality that explains football obsession the world over, but which, I would argue, reaches a higher level when there are musicians onstage rather than players on the pitch, because of the lack of competition - we are all bound by one shared goal, there's only one team playing and we all want them to win. It's an enormously uplifting experience, often literally as you're lifted off your feet by the force of the heaving crowd. "Some people think I'm bonkers, but I just think I'm free, man I'm just living my life, there's nothing crazy 'bout meeeeee." Gotta love Dizzee.

And then there's the other extreme, standing in an empty chapel at 8pm on a Monday night, knackered from the weekend, rehearsing heavenly music by Monteverdi or Pergolesi, hopefully doing it some sort of justice, concentrating properly, no room for thoughts of men or motors while you're reading notes, singing and watching the conductor simultaneously, a meditative space in the maelstrom.

And there's my burgeoning ukulele addiction, my growing opera buffery, Chopin, Elgar, Rachmaninov, West Side Story, some lesser musicals, dancing to blues on Charlotte Street or indie at The Roxy. All are forms of release, all are heady, luxurious and emotional, all are necessary. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to enjoy the full spectrum. Spain just won the World Cup but for us music lovers, well... we're all winners every time a good song comes on the radio.

Ick.

In fringe news: it's actually OK. I wore it back in some sort of makeshift turban thing on Friday (odd decision, I'll admit) and he didn't seem to mind. Since then, I've found that, provided I spend six or seven hours styling it each morning, it actually looks OK. This would be unmanageable except I still have a skin-rippingly annoying cough which wakes me up with agonising frequency every night, so there's plenty of time to do hairstyling. Or read past entries of my own blog. Which is obviously more fun.

A cornucopia of issues

So I'll update you on my existence and then we can cover this heartbreaking academies project and other hellish current affairs developments.

Friday night I went to see the Chemical Brothers (or as my 26 year old companion Chris insists on calling them, 'The Chems') at The Roundhouse. Last time I saw them perform live, I was eighteen and had told my parents I was staying the night at my friend Daisy's house but in fact we went to a Prodigy gig at Brixton Academy and took speed that our druggy friend Nick had put in a bottle of Ribena for us because we didn't want to snort it. The Chems were the support act but we'd drunk our Ribena too early and I was completely mental during that forty minute gig and then basically started aching and being tired during the main set. The next day I felt like my bones were eroding and Daisy and I compared notes about how horrific our comedowns were, but in retrospect I'd taken about half a gram of speed dissolved in a sugary drink, a combo which was about as likely to get me high as a Tracker bar. I think I was just unfit and six hours of dancing had given my body a shock. ANYWAY. Fourteen years on and the Chemical Brothers have a lot less hair and, personally, I think their music is a bit less exciting than it was when I first listened to Exit Planet Dust or whatever it was called. But it was a brilliant gig all the same, even without the alleged benefit of speed or Ribena - lots of dancing, lots of holding arms aloft to interfere with the amazing laser shows, lots of spilled pints and excitement about Bono's back injury that was possibly (at that point) going to exclude U2 from headlining at Glasto. Come on Bowie.

Saturday morning I was my own middle-class nightmare as I was awoken at 7.30am by the delivery man from Ocado, and proceeded to make my own garlic bread for the countryside gathering that lots of us went to and cor was it lovely. Old friends, hay bales to sit on, delicious food, Pimms and champagne in the sun, laughing, chinese lanterns after dark... a magical time and a blast from the past. Hungover and giggling uncontrollably on Sunday, work and choir on Monday, work and work-sponsored wine tasting last night - we tried bottles from Greece, Georgia, Italy and France and it was interesting. Apparently wine is thought to have originated somewhere around Georgia in 6000 or 7000 BC. Amazing. More interesting was the conversation I was having with my colleague before we sat down. I'd pointed out a guy from our floor who was also at the tasting, and indicated that he was thought to be a bit of a player. My colleague, let's call him Mike, said that didn't surprise him at all. Mike is in his early fifties and has been married nearly thirty years, and he told me that having a black-and-white attitude to infidelity is fairly naive. My jaw dropped.
"Do you mean that cheating is the norm?" I asked.
"I have no idea," he answered. "But it can't be a deal-breaker. Men are ruled by their pants. If it's going to be the end of your marriage if he fools around with another woman on a drunken night out, then you're going to find it hard going."
"Hang on," I said. "You're telling me that I have to be prepared to put up with infidelity if I get married?"
"I've never cheated, but I think it's not practical to say you will end a 25 year marriage on the basis of a one night mistake."
"Obviously I know he'll want to shag another woman at some point, possibly hourly," I said, just to show that I'm not too much of a purist. "And I'll meet other guys I find attractive too. But I've always hoped that, if he finds himself wanting to sleep with someone else, he'll come to me and tell me, and either we deal with it or we decide to break up."
"It's a nice idea, but I think your standards are impossibly high," Mike said. "These things are - normally - not premeditated. The guy gets drunk, goes home with the wrong person, wakes up remorseful - and just because of that, you're going to end a 25 year marriage, with three kids involved? It's not justified. No one is perfect."
"But that's just such a bad attitude. If he does it once and gets away with it, what's to stop him doing it again, over and over? I see what you mean, that ruining 25 years for one shag seems over the top, but if you can't trust him, then surely the things that make a marriage fun are mostly destroyed? And that's the worst bit - once you've been lied to once, once you've been made a fool of, your next relationship is affected too. You become paranoid and insecure, and having once been a laid-back cool girl, you move to be a divorcee with three kids who can't trust anyone else. Just because your stupid husband fancied a shag with someone else. The cheating moment itself may only last ten minutes but the effects are long-lasting..." Mike looked at me sadly - he clearly understood my point of view but still thought I was being hopelessly unrealistic. I felt totally powerless. And a bit sad. Really quite sad, actually. My first long term relationship ended because I was sorely tempted to cheat on my boyfriend. I didn't though - I spoke to him about it and we agreed that neither of us were happy, and we broke up. If my husband of 25 years wanted to cheat, I'd hope he would come and talk about it with me. But I guess if it just pops up out of nowhere, he's unlikely to phone me from the cab he's taking back to her house, with her kissing his neck as he explains his predicament. Meh, I dunno. I just hate the whole thought of infidelity. It really makes me feel sick. Desire to sleep with someone else I'm fine with - but actually going through with it, and lying to the person who's been there for you for the past quarter of a century... I just can't see how I should be laid back about that prospect. And that whole argument about men being rule by their pants, it's pathetic. It may be true, but it's pathetic. Women have just as strong a need to be loved and flattered and fancied. Maybe the chemicals are different and men genuinely can't control their urges. But I don't believe that's true of all of them. Some of them are honourable enough to keep it in their pants. I won't get married until I find one like that. And I refuse to be grateful if he is. Fidelity should be a given, not an unexpected bonus. Conversing with Mike was unexpectedly depressing. Glad (in many ways) that I'm not married to him.

In other news... It's my country's economy that's going down the pan, but I did laugh when I read this extract on The Graun's website, detailing some very-much-predicted issues with the Conservatives' budget in yesterday's Queen's Speech:
'Osborne was forced to abolish child trust funds altogether after the Tories overestimated savings that could be made on the basis of advice from the Whitehall efficiency experts, Sir Peter Gershon and Dr Martin Read. Gershon had said that £1bn of the £6bn cuts would come from savings in government IT projects, while up to £1bn would come from a recruitment freeze across the civil service. The Treasury said yesterday that IT had produced savings of £95m, less than 10% of the amount initially identified, while the recruitment freeze would produce savings of £120m, slightly more than 10% of the amount estimated by Gershon in that area.
Labour had lampooned a two-page document produced by Gershon during the election campaign outlining his efficiency savings. Liam Byrne, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said tonight: "We warned the Tories that their plans were wrong. Now they're having to break both parties' manifesto promises and wipe out child trust funds because they wouldn't listen."'
I've no problem with child trust funds falling by the wayside, but it does show that complex descriptions of proposed financial savings made by a party while in opposition should pretty much always be taken with a shedful of salt.

Meh, no energy to carry on typing - suffice to say, this new academies drive by the Tories (and, yes, the LibDems) is exactly what I feared most - schools being run outside the jurisdiction of the local councils, ostensibly to free up teachers from national red tape: a good aim but a terrible solution. Academies are privately funded by businesses or individuals - how can this fail to create a massive disparity between different schools in different areas? It also opens things up for a plethora of faith schools. Agh. It's a disgrace, seriously. I can't even really believe it's happening. The whole thing makes me massively disappointed and LIVID with the LibDems for sanctioning such a lot of bollocks. I'm still glad I voted for them, because the vaguely-hinted-at referendum on AV in 2011 will mean the next election is slightly fairer than it would have been, had the coalition not been formed. But the Labour leadership candidates look pretty uninspiring at the moment so right now I really have no idea who I'll be voting for in 2015. With the education system going down the pan thanks to a 'solution' that will make the existing postcode lottery situation look like a pleasant dream, this country might be so freaking scary that I might not even be here next time around. Grumpy grumpy.

The Final Countdown

Hmmm. No idea what's going on at the moment but I appear to have lost my blogging mojo. I'll tell you what it is, though - it's that I keep not writing it. Like exercise, the less you do it, the more you hate it. And, at this time in particular, I should be writing.

Because - deep breath - I really do believe that this is an extraordinary time for British politics. I'm sorry. I know you want to hear about my dating mishaps and the spots that mysteriously appeared on my left buttock last week. But this is urgent. I am greatly fearful that there will be a Tory government in a day or two - not only fearful because I don't think they are the best party to run the UK in the short term (although I really don't think they are) but because I am convinced that this election presents an opportunity to change the political system to something representative, and alter things for the better in the long term. Even if I were a potential Tory voter, I wouldn't want them to win tomorrow.

Just think of all the benefits a truly engaged electorate could bring to Britain. How different things would be if everyone cared about their society, everyone believed they had a voice and everyone believed their vote would matter and their opinion would be heard. I'm not saying that some form of proportional representation would create that society overnight. But I am saying that a continuation of this deeply-flawed FPTP system will guarantee that the vast majority of the electorate remain distant, unengaged and resentful for the forseeable future.

I live in an 'ultra safe' Labour constituency, which means that, according to the Voter Power Index, my vote is actually worth 0.6 of an actual vote. And that's true for the vast majority of us. Since less than 20% of constituencies are marginal, eight out of ten votes cast tomorrow are pretty much irrelevant. Eight out of ten people in Britain aren't being heard.

Depressed? You're right. It's a disgrace. And this is the only way I can think of for us to make it change. Please - if you can, vote to make a difference. Keep the Tories below the 300-odd seats they need to form a government and let's not miss the best chance our generation has ever had to make a better, fairer system for the whole of the UK.

Yes, you're right, the economy's fucked. Labour made some bad choices, George Osborne is still midway through puberty and the LibDems are very new to this game (although Cable isn't). The economy is going to be fucked whoever comes out on top tomorrow night. Analysts today announced that the UK is going to be in a worse financial state than Greece by the end of this year. The short term is going to be bad. So let's at least do what we can for the long term.

Go on. Do the right thing. Vote tactically and keep the Tories out. And tell everyone else to do the same thing. 40% of the electorate are apparently still wobbling. I know it's much more fun when I write about walking round without realising there's a penis drawn on my face in indelible marker (NB this has not yet happened) but this is a huge opportunity and I feel like I have to do my best.

Right. Best done. Rant over.

What have I been up to... Friday night I went to the ICA with Emily to see Vote Afghanistan!, a documentary about last year's rigged elections, which made me feel simultaneously hopeless and
buoyed, since at least we're not the only deeply misguided country out there. Brothers and sisters of Kabul - big shout out from London town! We'll all be ignored together!

Oh, sorry, I was meant to stop ranting.

Saturday night was excellent - Grania and I went to Islington to see beatboxer-extraordinaire, Beardyman, whose brilliance cannot be overstated. He was funny, politically engaged and supremely good at his job: what more can one ask? I stood there agog, playing my favourite 'identify the sample and cheer knowingly to impress other concert-goers at the speed at which you recognised it' game and trying not to stare too much at the pneumatic drill dance that the young couple were doing to my right, the boy spooning the girl and jacking up and down as if on a miniature and diesel-powered tandem pogo stick. It was a bit rank.

Sunday I took it easy with my parents and chewed the fat (and delicious flapjacks) at Alex and Ben's before trying to get an early night and failing. Monday I was fed and wined to perfection at Sara's. Yesterday I went to see Counted?, which tried its best but didn't manage to elevate itself above an educational schools play. I wish everyone in schools were shown it - it would be brilliant. But as it is, the half-full audience were mostly converted anyway and I felt like they were wasting their breath. And, possibly, our £22. The intellectual zenith for me occured when the main character asked another what his vote was worth, on a scale of one to ten. The guy said it was worth about seven. The main guy asked what was worth more? And I thought about it, and really, democracy - if you can get it - is so important, isn't it? Almost more than anything else in life. It hit home. And then I realised I was a bit sleepy after my Wagamama's dinner so I had a bit of a snooze.

I'm off shortly for uke fun and must go smother my currently-annoyingly-sensitive-and-slightly-stingy-for-no-clear-reason face in make-up, so I'll have to leave you with love. Vote well, my British amigos. The moment has come. And yeah, obviously we're going to have five years of shit Tory rule come Friday morning - make sure you can live with yourself for the next half decade.

OK. I really will shut up now.

Life needed. Apparently.

So thanks to the bitch formerly known as Tiphane, I am now a housebound invalid, wrapped in a shawl and facing up to a Bank Holiday of fragility and self-pity, rather than the planned long weekend of lurching around behaving like I'm in my early twenties. Liv. Id.

Hours before my overpriced illness truly set in, I was lucky enough to squeeze in a quick trip to the Roundhouse last night to see the Gorillaz. In fact, I think they're just 'Gorillaz', no 'the'. I can't quite get my head round that. I feel like they need an article. Aaaaanyway. Gorillaz at Roundhouse. And, despite fantasizing in my head about cameos from Snoop and De La Soul, and a selection of surely technically impossible holograms, neither of which remotely happened, it was still a brilliant night. Damon seemed happy - but it's not Blur, that's for sure, and I don't think I'll ever see him without desperately wanting him to launch into To The End. It was just a lovely night out, standing in a crowd jumping around to good music, feeling sweat forming on my back and everyone around me smelling of beer and fags - I stood there grinning like a loon, counting the weeks to Glasto and feeling as on top of the world as it's possible to feel when you know you have a second-hand sore throat brewing and your skin doesn't even look that amazing post the facial that caused it.

The only other cloud within the silver lining went as follows. Halfway through the gig, a little over the limit on beer and a tad restless during one of the songs he didn't know, Luke got his phone out of his pocket. After a few seconds, I leaned over his shoulder to see what he was doing. He was checking football scores. It never fails to stagger me that, had that happened when we were going out, I would have felt a flood of 'OH MY GOD that is SO RUDE, he doesn't CARE about the gig we're at, he doesn't CARE about me, all he's interested in is FOOTBALL, he is such a DICK, we have to break up but god I really fancy him and he's quite nice really, what do I DOOOO? How confusing! Let's have a MASSIVE ROW and RUIN THIS OTHERWISE PERFECTLY BRILLIANT EVENING' and now I see him checking the football scores and I'm all like 'Oh, he's checking the football scores.'

Anyway, after he'd checked the football scores, I leaned over and asked him to see what had happened in the third leaders' debate, so he started loading up the news site, and this tall guy in his forties leaned over to me and shouted, "He needs to get a life." I shouted back, "It's my fault, actually - I asked him to check the news," and he said, "Well, you both need to get a life then." And I was, like, GROWL, but in real life I did nothing. And it really gave me a bad taste in my mouth. Don't get me wrong, I do understand, it's amazing when you're at a gig and you feel like everyone around you is as 100% into it as you are, and you lose yourself and it's heavenly. And your parade can definitely feel rained upon when people nearby are talking, or reading Marx, or snogging or constructing flat-pack furniture, because you want everyone to be loving it as much as you are, and a huge part of the beauty of modern music as opposed to classical is that, live, it is such an intensely emotional, shared experience between the band and the crowd. But really. At a concert where the music is deafening and every other person is holding a camera aloft, filming the whole thing for future YouTube infamy, making it easier to watch the proceedings on their tiny screen than twist your head and see the stage itself, one person looking down at their phone screen for five minutes is hardly a deathly buzzkill, is it? And what's sad is that tall-forty-something's comment to me was a bit. I found it hard to get back on my high after I'd been criticised by a complete stranger. So, 20 hours too late, I say to him, "Meh, shuddup." It's not a great put-down, I'll admit. Suggestions welcome.

Right. I'm off for more illness-related moaning and grumpiness. Wishing you all bonne weekend.

Ash decisions

Ohgodohgodohgod, I love blogging, you know I do, but every now and then it feels like homework and I wish I could just employ some hilarious and articulate minion to write it for me so that I could get on with vital things like packing and watching American Idol, and now is definitely one of those times.

So the last you heard, I was rambling on about politics and then this FREAKING volcano started erupting, but obviously I thought it was just quite funny and cool and different, and then I realised that it might actually affect ME and suddenly it became completely unfunny and highly irritating, because I was meant to be flying to the south of France this very day to stay in the Pyrenees for two nights and then on to somewhere else to stay for two nights for Emily's wedding, and it was all going to be brilliant and a magical adventure and then the cocksucking ash started spewing and our flights were cancelled and then we had to start thinking about ferry trips and hire cars and overlong minibus journeys with strangers including other people's mothers and possibly attractive band members, and then the flights were uncancelled and the airports reopened but it was impossible to know whether the volcano was going to carry on slowing down or suddenly speed up again and we STILL DON'T KNOW and the uncertainty is GRADUALLY KILLING ME. However, I am determined to be optimistic and if I don't get on my Sleazyjet flight tomorrow morning I will laugh and be calm and everyone in the airport will be drawn to my relaxed good humour and incredible laissez-faire joie-de-vivre.

Anyway, other than that, since last Friday I have been doing billions of unparalleledly brilliant and uniquely quirky things, including taking incredible photos of London in the sun (admittedly I was poss. not the only person doing this on Saturday) and going on the fourth link of the Capital Ring walk with Kate on Sunday, where we managed to cover twelve miles from Falconwood, via Eltham Palace and... some other AMAZING places that I've completely forgotten, ending up at Crystal Palace, taking in a delicious pub lunch on the way and, critically, getting sunburned shoulders that have basically ruined my look for the wedding this weekend, as I am wearing a halterneck dress but my body clearly states I should wear something that covers my white strap marks. Once again, I live on the edge of the fashion grain and it is perilous up here, I can tell you.

I went to see Rufus Wainwright's opera, Prima Donna, at Sadler's Wells with Grania last Friday - a great evening out but not, perhaps, the best opera I've ever seen. A fantastic effort for a first go, however, and shedloads better than I could ever manage in my wildest dreams, so I am really not criticising. I'm glad I went but I'm also glad I didn't spend more than £10 on my ticket. After the show, we went to Dollar Grills in Exmouth Market, which was a cool venue and recommended, and at the table next to us was a very attractive girl in her mid-twenties, curvy, dark and sensual. I didn't have a clear view of the guy she was with and asked Grania if he was worthy of her. She nodded her assent. They were clearly a glamorous pairing. Then, about thirty minutes later, with her burger unbitten and his frankly terrifying rack of ribs undented, he grabbed his duffle coat and his rucksack and stropped out. We looked at Curvy McBuxom with sympathy. "Nightmare," I said to her, and smiled in what I hoped was a kind, unpatronising fashion. She nodded, and said, "I'm getting a bit bored of it now, though." Apparently this particular argument had been caused because he'd bought her tickets to Prima Donna and she hadn't liked it - the opera, not the gift. He, however, had taken her rejection of the opera as a personal affront. It was the kind of exhausting, pointless row I've had hundreds of times in my life, indicative of absolutely nothing on the surface and, underneath, firm evidence that the relationship is simply not meant to be. After the boy returned, tight-jawed, he sat in virtual silence, wiggling the rack of ribs disconsolately for a few minutes until the girl eventually caved and they got their food to go and stood up. We wished them luck as they left the restaurant and they laughed ruefully, and then I drunkenly told Grania how ecstatic I was to be there in Dollar Grills with her rather than stuck in the wrong relationship, and she agreed and it was lovely.

Monday I had my haircut in my usual imperceptible way, and then last night was Tuesday and Lucy came down to the smoke from t'country, and we went to Camden for a delicious dinner in a Turkish restaurant near Koko, and then to watch the Fuck Buttons (they're a band of sorts, mother. No actual fucking involved.) who were good enough for an hour or so, but we were a bit drunk from dinner, I was spinning out about something unrelated and distracted by trying to coordinate ferry bookings with very kind, very posh man who was being lovely and offering Kate and I a lift to the wedding, and it was all a bit confusing what with the fact that they were playing ridiculously loud dance music but no one was dancing, so we left after an hour and returned back to my flat to safety, cereal, mini Magnums and a last, absurdly unnecessary glass of wine. Today I thought I was leaving for France and then I wasn't, so I spent a long time in bed, threw a few unrelated items into my suitcase and passed a very pleasant two hours bathing in the wonderfully me-sized rectangle of sun that falls bang in the middle of my living room floor for about three hours every bright afternoon. I heave up the venetian blind, open the gigantic window and lie on my carpet, spreadeagled, often starkers as no one can see me but the birds and any particularly fortunate plane passengers looking down with binoculars. Tomorrow I have every hope that I'll be up there myself. A bientot et honh-he-honh.

Rufus et moi

Don't you love the way life turns out sometimes? I bought four tickets for a Rufus Wainwright gig and then decided I wasn't sure if I'd rather go or have the money. I put them on eBay at a 55% markup to see what would happen. I sold a pair, which was fine. Then a single ticket sold, leaving me with one. I hadn't really expected that but I happily went alone last night to sit in the unsold fourth seat at Sadler's Wells, staring at the three eBay buyers to my right. And ultimately, I was very glad indeed that no one had come with me because I would have been very boring and effusive on the tube home. As it is, I have distilled my self-obsessed gig review down to the following (and yes, even I am impressed that I can make a review of a concert about me):

I usually only admire perfection. I don't often respect performers who sing out of tune or mess up their lines, or who appear paranoid, irritating or unfunny. I like people who are the best at what they do. Rufus, however, is insecure, needy, melodramatic and over-emotional. He tells bad jokes and he makes mistakes. Sound familiar? In the pros column, he wears his heart on his sleeve, he's painfully honest about his own failings and he works extremely hard at life. Basically, if I was gay, Canadian, male and a smidgen more talented, I'd be Rufus Wainwright.

Last night's gig was a perfect Rufus showcase, warts and all - the first segment was a song cycle, an uninterrupted gallop through his new album, released last week, performed while he was wearing a diamond necklace and a fantastic black dress with huge feathered shoulders and a twenty foot train. The lyrics, mostly English, a few French, were direct insights into his existence - songs about his sister, about his parents and the cities he loves. Before the performance began, a guy had come onstage and told us that Rufus requested that there be no applause in between the songs - that the whole cycle was to be seen as one performance. We dutifully sat in silence while he hammered out extraordinarily complex piano accompaniments and blasted out his vocals, gloriously pitch perfect throughout. There were mistakes though, all the more glaring because of the formality provided by the costume and the lack of audience support. More frequently it was his playing that slipped, although a couple of times he couldn't remember his lyrics and just la-ed along until he found his jist. Despite the starched atmosphere, there was also a liberating sense of witnessing him as he would practice at home - he'd make an error and, without a moment's pause, return immediately to the beginning of the phrase and try again, sometimes so fast that I am sure many audience members didn't realise there'd been a slip-up.

But then in the second half, the big performance segment over, Rufus was back in jeans and a shirt, playing our old favourites, and still making errors, even in songs like Poses that he must've played thousands of times - but now there was no magical spell so he was free to display his irritation. And show it he did, clearly frustrated when he couldn't remember chords or lyrics, making growling noises or giving up altogether on the more complex sections and singing the piano part to the audience's loving amusement.

He's an amazing performer, a great pianist, and so talented that Elton John has called him our 'greatest living songwriter'. He could have played it safe last night, taken stock between each song, mixed up the old and the new - but instead he pushed himself to his limits, playing a two hour set without a backing band or written music, and (for the first half) without the comfort and support that a burst of applause brings at the end of a number. He also sang an incredibly moving song written by his late mother on one of the rare occasions where she was getting on well with his dad. We were all in tears by the end. The whole show was difficult and brave - and I admire him for not taking the easy road. It gives me strength to keep on ploughing my own furrow. If the ticket had sold on eBay, I wouldn't have gone last night, and I wouldn't have seen him. I wouldn't have known what I missed, and I would have had an early night, so it would have been fine - but like I said at the top, I do love the way life turns out sometimes. I think this is what psychologists call synthetic happiness. It rocks.

Perky Maundy

Oooh I'm in a good mood today. London looked fantastic on my run; I listened to Justice, a French act that Chris described as 'dirty house' and that I found to be exceptionally positive and upbeat; I sweated profusely but my new make-up stayed put: thank you, Max Factor, for being half as expensive yet three times as good as your rivals. After thirty minutes or so I jogged down the ramp into the Tate Modern shop on Level 1, picked up my Richard Tipping sign as agreed with Daisy in customer services, and jogged on to London Bridge. It was all very smooth and well-organised. Isn't it lovely when things just work out?

News: I'm pregnant. It's a boy. We're calling it Nugget.*

Item number 769 on the list of things that are slightly weird about me is as follows: my waste management is utterly moronic. While I am extremely uncautious about the amount of shower gel I use, cavalier when it comes to spending money on gig and theatre tickets and downright evil in terms of leaving lights on and flying places rather than staycationing, I am meanwhile ridiculously over-zealous about waste in other areas. When I eat lunch at my desk, something that happens about four times a week, I have a supply of salt and pepper sachets in my top drawer. I use them fairly sparingly and, at my meal's end, instead of throwing any remaining salt grains or pepper granules into the bin, I fold over the edge of the sachet and replace it in my drawer. I am similarly zealous about recycling paperclips. And Jiffy bags, for some reason - I hoard them like a crazy old lady who's expecting a run on padded envelopes at Ryman's. I can't explain it, but that's how it is. Bon weekend.

*April Fool's. Hoping the shock didn't actually kill my parents. That would be unideal, especially as I need my dad to come round as planned on Saturday and drill holes in my wall. And then I need my mum to cook us the delicious steaks she's told me about. Don't die, parents. I'm not really pregnant. I'm basically celibate. Aaaaaaaaaand stop.

Distraction techniques

So I was sad this afternoon so I did this instead of sitting round feeling sorry for myself. Now I must pack. But first: white wine.

Never forgotten

Today's LLFF is brought to you by escapism. I have spent the past 36 hours in a slight haze, but managed to get through yesterday thanks to a backlog of episodes of American Idol, including a gripping Hollywood Week four-part bonanza. And today, despite mental and physical illness, I battled in to work and found my Amazon order had arrived, containing several exciting books (including our next Book Club book and these letters which I can't WAIT to devour) and a new yoga DVD. But the undoubted highlight was volumes 1 and 2 of the Take That hardbacks.

Take That formed in 1990, but I wouldn't have called myself a fan until 1991, when I was 14. It was a slightly tricky time for me: I wasn't doing that well at school, I didn't feel like I had any talent at sport, I was OK at singing and acting but definitely in the B team... I had minimal identity and, as an only child used to walking around my home with a metaphorical spotlight following me, this lack of Ready Brek glow did not sit comfortably. Pop music and American TV gave me something to obsess over - my unbending love of these unknown purveyors of bad songs and bad acting made me feel different. Of course, I didn't think that Take That would find me special. But at school and back in the pub at home, the level of my obsession did make me stand out. Entire friendships were formed on the basis of love for pop culture, friendships with people I still dearly love today (hi Alex!). Good times.

I won't deny that I was a bit mental though. In October 1991, there was a day trip from our boarding school up to Birmingham for the Clothes Show Live! experience. The idea was, we look around, get free makeovers, watch a live catwalk, and then get back in the minibus and return to Wiltshire. Upon arrival at the NEC, my friend Tina and I noticed that Radio One had a roadshow van there. Far more interested in music than clothes, I stuck around, and was soon gobsmacked to find out that Take That would be performing. Forget the models and Jeff Banks in the main arena - here was someone I'd actually heard of. Best of all, when they came on stage, no one else had a clue who these boys were - so when Tina and I were shouting at Jason and Robbie, they could actually hear us and waved. Buoyed, we ran over the edge of the stage when they'd finished performing, and screamed as they ran by. I wasn't sure what I wanted to happen, but it was unexpected to say the least when Robbie, and then Jason, gave me a wet kiss, with tongues, as they ran off towards their changing room. Extraordinary. Even funnier was that Robbie looked at Tina, who, wanting an autograph more than a snog, uttered the immortal line, 'Do you have a pen?' Strangely, he hadn't gone on stage with a biro.

Buoyed further, Tina and I followed 'the lads' to the lifts, where they went up and started shouting at us over a balcony for us to follow. We weren't allowed up in that lift, but managed to sneak up in another one with a cleaner and then spent 45 minutes with the five of them, sitting on the floor and chatting while they gave us their autographs and Howard admired the red bandana I had tied round my wrist (and consequently didn't remove for approx. the next four years). I'll never forget climbing back into the minibus at the end of the day - the other girls looked at Tina and I with shock, disbelief and scorn oozing from every pore. "You missed the CATWALK to meet TAKE THAT?!" they chorused, gobsmacked. "Yup," I said, without a trace of regret.

Five years later, I was at university when the band broke up, and I remember being late for a lecture as a result - urgent conference calls with Eva had been necessary to discuss the announcement and plan for a Take That-free future. I had seen them live five times, waited outside Capital Radio to photograph them when I should have been revising for my GCSEs, and written them countless letters (unsent) explaining why and how they should come to our school to give a unique performance and allow Howard the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fall for me, the most wonderful, lank-haired, pasty-faced, overly-eyebrowed, awkwardly-curvy, posh-speaking girl he'd never love.

Years after that, in fact, I did finally interview Howard, in a pub in Shepherd's Bush, while he was promoting his DJ career. He was a lovely man, but intensely shy and clearly a lost soul. It's safe to say that we never were, and never will be, a match made in heaven. Still think he's fit though. Funny how life turns out.

Since they reunited, my TT obsession has been more muted. To be honest, I don't like much of their music - although I think Shine is a great track. But I do have a fondness for them that might seem absurd to someone who spent their teenage years grounded in reality. Those boys were, for me, an escape from my life. I wasn't depressed back then, but I wasn't really very happy either, and they gave me a focus and a sense of belonging to something, much as following football has given definition and community to generations of men. I don't need that now, my life is full enough and for that I'm grateful, but I spent a happy hour or two reading those books this afternoon and thinking back to those days when five men in terrible outfits could reduce me to a screaming pulp, and if my Dad forgot to video them on Top of the Pops while I was out at the pub, all hell would break loose. God I was a nightmare.

Nothing is wasted

It is with some trepidation that I start a blog post when I know I must be unrelentingly positive about something. It is soooo much easier to bitch and whinge than praise. But praise I must, in the most emphatic fashion. Last night, Kate and I went to Pure Groove Records opposite Smithfields market, and, for the price of zero pence, watched a screening of the Blur movie, No Distance Left To Run. In the middle of this unendingly cool city, in the middle of a room full of interesting people crowded together on wooden chairs and mismatched sofas, without spending a single penny (except on wine), we were able to see a movie I've desperately wanted to see since I heard it was being made a year ago. And my god it lived up to my expectations.

I think it may have been a perfect film. I laughed out loud. I had goosebumps almost constantly. I felt shocked. I was educated. My prejudices were challenged. There was a narrative arc but it was firmly wedged in real life. There was - of course - seminal music throughout: Blur's hits played at gigs over the course of the past two decades - and then, gorgeously, Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending accompanied the reunion talks, fresh, clear, soaring into the future. The camerawork was truly fantastic throughout. Journalists, pleasingly, came across as dicks. The four men were touchingly honest and managed to love each other without seeming cheesy. I felt proud of having been their fan in the nineties, proud of buying three copies of Country House to ensure they went to number one and beat Oasis, proud to live in London, proud to have been at their gig at Glasto last summer, yelling Tender with the other thousands, feeling part of something both simultaneously fleeting and beautifully timeless. I didn't want it to end, not last June, nor last night. The last time I felt that, oddly, was while watching The September Issue. And the time before that, it was Anvil. And suddenly it seems clear that, for me, truth blows fiction out of the water every time. Reality rocks.

Doesn't matter what the question is, wine is always the answer

So it turns out that when I drink, I am absolutely BRILLIANT at the ukulele. Without prior warning, we bought bottles of red wine at our class last night, rather than our usual glasses, and within moments, I was transformed from tentative to tenacious. My plans to get an early night for maximum beauty sleep were scuppered as I went on to the jam after the lesson, and ended up shouting along to the half-remembered lines I could recall from Where Do You Go To My Lovely. It was an extremely fun night and we have been having a lot of morning-after tomfoolery via email involving hilarious gags about metronomes.

I am clock-watching and doing the Guardian crossword online, unless you are my boss, in which case I am developing cutting edge solutions and pushing ahead on the most recent initiatives for growth.

A list and some links

Ooh, the last 36 hours have been splendid in the most wonderfully mundane way. See here:

1. I had the day off work.
2. I got up just before noon.
3. My bedroom was warm, thanks to my new retro heater.
4. Davina went into the Big Brother house on Wednesday night and all the housemates were dressed up in animal costumes and god it was funny in quite a strange sinister way.
5. Also funny was this.
6. Then there was this which is also amazing.
7. Then I was opening my post and found a letter from the bank which said that the mean bankrupt skiing people had refunded almost all our money! Hooray!
8. Then the Tesco man came and brought me lots of lovely food.
9. He also brought me two bunches of daffodils (I'd ordered them, they weren't an impromptu gift although that would have been great) and now they are sitting in my flat in jam jars, about to pop and it's the best thing ever.
10. I had sardines in tomato on toast for lunch and it was freaking delicious.
11. I listened to lots of new (to me) music. If you are bored of waiting for the new Fleet Foxes album, just buy Person Pitch by Panda Bear. If you don't like Death Cab For Cutie's album on first listen, give it another go. It improves. Although not a huge amount.
12. I tidied my whole gorgeous flat from left to right and put things away and did laundry and bleached my shower curtain and wiped down the fronts of all my kitchen cabinets and hoovered and now it looks like a show home but in a kooky, unique and extremely comfortable way. Not like this (thanks Sara).
13. I watched some of the new series of American Idol and am now comforted that there is reality life after Big Brother finishes.
14. I marinated the lamb that I'm going to cook tomorrow night, and slow roasted some tomatoes and made some raita. Yum.
15. I realised that the amount of money that Grania and I were going to be spending on a skiing holiday was equivalent to the amount of money someone might spend travelling somewhere absolutely extraordinary and having a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, rather than getting drunk in Switzerland and pointing at over-confident Etonians. So maybe we will go somewhere extraordinary instead. We are discussing it over the weekend. More to follow.
16. For dinner I had an absolutely amazing Thai prawn curry and some very nice white wine. And a Nobbly Bobbly. Yes. You heard me. A Nobbly Bobbly. It is an ice lolly.

And now I have been to the gym and done rowing and other cardio, and am off to enjoy my weekend, kicking off with a trip to the BFI for another Ozu masterpiece. But before I do... I am aware that two of my most loyal Faithful have had very sad news this week and my thoughts are with both of you. The death of a parent is something that I am so lucky not to have had to deal with - yet. But the funeral I attended recently showed me that, no matter what wonderful terms you are on with the deceased, no matter how expected it was, no matter much pain they were in nor how much of a blessing in disguise it may be that a long illness is over, the loss of someone dear to you is agonising. The thought of never hearing my dad crack another joke, or not receiving another email from my mum telling me she loves me a propos of nothing, oh, it makes me feel physically sick. I am grateful for every moment and my attempts at levity above are not to suggest that there is nothing more important going on in the world, but merely to highlight my belief that taking this crazy little thing called life too seriously is a terminal disease in itself. Kisses to you all, my pretties. Tell your loved ones you love them. And then look at some daffodils.

Le weekend

I'm so inspired by yesterday's class that I feel I should write everything in alphabetical sentences or useg a complex web of unexpected adjectives, but I only have about six seconds to write this before it's 5 o'clock and perish the thought that I might stay at my desk a microsecond longer than I am contractually obliged to. (Dangling preposition caused me problems there - any suggestions? 'a microsecond longer than that to which I am contractually obliged'? Goodness).

First on the recap list is Friday's Nick Drake tribute concert at the Barbican, which was emotional and wonderful and all sorts of other special things. My £15 restricted view seats weren't remotely restricted and it was one of those rare occasions where you actually feel like you have been undercharged. The orchestra was absolutely superb while the guest singers ranged from odd to seminal - a jazz singer called Krystal something was so extraordinary I felt as though I had witnessed something truly genre-defining. She was followed by the lovely Teddy Thompson, who ambled on stage and said, 'Well, that was good,' and then rolled his eyes, despairing at how to follow such a unique talent. Scott Matthews was really brilliant too, but what the different interpretations really highlighted was how much Drake's breathy, ramshackle voice was part of the recordings' collective soul - plonk another vocalist, however talented, on top of the still-perfect orchestrations and all you're left with is a yearning that it was Nick singing, not the newbie. For that reasons, the songs which were most different from the originals worked best, as the gap between then and now was celebrated rather than mourned. It was an extraordinary gig, and an honour to hear long-time Drake bassist, Danny Thompson. Leaving the building and strolling through the Moorfields Highwalk with Ses in the dark, weaving through that most fantastic complex on our way back to the tube, with those beautiful melodies ringing in our ears... London... you win again.

Argh, six minutes til deadline, the rest must be brief. A lovely weekend, filled with old friends, good food and wine on Saturday night and self-improvement and shopping on Sunday - I can't really concoct a more perfect recipe for a 48 hour period. I did cringe at this depressing symbol of modernity (left), proving that the overheard lyrics to Rihanna's first number one are more powerful than the in-house spellcheck at H&M, Covent Garden. But really, if that's all I can think of to complain about, then I'm doing pretty well. And now Monday's over, I'm off to choir, there's theatre tomorrow, ukulele on Wednesday, rolling with the homies on Thursday, girlie love-in on Friday, retro partying on Saturday and bracing walking on Sunday to come. Plus I am about to go to Boots and buy a new eyeliner which for some reason has given me butterflies. I am a consumerist whore and should be locked up.

No time to talk about the Cameron poster and I'm sure you've all seen it by now but cor blimey some of the efforts have been hilarious. Please enjoy here. God bless the internet. Ooh pants I'm late.

Underground Mafia

At the western extremity of a nondescript dead-end in the heart of London's Soho, there is an unremarkable pub. As you enter, on a Wednesday evening sometime after 7ish, you'll struggle to notice any defining features - just a hazy yellow light and the usual rabble of midweek drinkers losing their inhibitions and forgetting about spreadsheets. But after your ears become accustomed to the chatter, you will perhaps detect a rumbling 'neath your feet, a rowdy stamping and the strains of a chorus emerging from the deep. Intrigued, you turn away from the bar to find the stairs down to the basement, and as the music grows, you turn a corner into a cellar crammed full of smiling people, seemingly aged anywhere between 18 and 80, laughing, drinking and singing with force. The people are in all shapes and sizes but all of them are holding something against their chest, a small stringed instrument shaped like a baby guitar, and they are playing it vigorously, carelessly, with unselfconscious love and abandon. This is the Ukulele Jam, and when I sat down amongst a group of strangers last night and they shared their songbook with me so I could strum along to Like A Prayer by Madonna, I knew I had found my spiritual home. God it is fun. But it's mine, and no, you can't come too. At least not until I've established myself as a core member. Only child? Attention seeking? I'll take down anyone who suggests such blarney. I am merely charming, magnetic and multi-talented - and you love me.

In other news: I look deliberately rough. I have no plans tonight and I am literally so excited I think I might cry if anyone offered me something more fun to do than go home and achieve. Tasks for this evening: one hour of Rodney Yee; don velour; scrape fringe off forehead with ridiculous towelling headband; iron in front of Glee; water and feed houseplants; remove misc. dark matter from leaves of bay tree; upload photos to online photo processing site; eat cereal for dinner; exfoliate; wear face mask; watch Celebrity Big Brother. I know. I am a goddess, a modern day Helen of Troy. And you still love me.