Quick one. I am doing a 5K run with fellow teachers and kids from school today in aid of a local cerebral palsy centre. If you'd like to help out, sponsor us here:
http://www.justgiving.com/Highgate-Wood-School-Runners/

If you happen to be near Hyde Park, I will be the one crawling at the back after a weekend of gigs. I think the Queen Elizabeth Hall acoustics have spoiled me for small venues forever. You practically only have to whisper down the tuba and the notes are gently and soothingly escorted away into the rafters. Just as well, since we had been celebrating a rather decent Carat gig (and our escape from the horrors of Proud on a Friday night) until daft o'clock in Horry's Dalston garden. Jim Rhesus' Pop Quiz will never get old.

GIG TONIGHT

The 18 Carat Love Affair
@ The Wilmington Arms, onstage 8pm, £5/£4

Venue here (Clerkenwell area):
http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs_PF/PF_pub443.html

We are first on, first off, so come before your other festivities!

I am feeling a bit gigged out at the moment after Fosca, 3 nights of school concert, 2 nights of MFMO at the Bloomsbury, with 2 days of rehearsing and gigging still left to go. Playing with Haines, Jeays and Robyn Hitchcock has been well worth it though.

xxx

One of the curses of this job is the involuntary 7am Sunday wake-up. One of the other curses is that your day and night jobs both combine around the festive season to produce 2 weeks of solid rehearsals, weekend workdays and performances. If you ever wondered why you spent the last fortnight of secondary school watching Gremlins on 5th gen VHS, this is why.

Here's where and when:

Saturday 13th - Fosca @ Feeling Gloomy, 10.15pm
http://www.feelinggloomy.com/

Thursday and Friday 18th/19th - Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra @ UCL Bloomsbury (sold out)
http://www.thebloomsbury.com/event/run/1248

Saturday 20th - The 18 Carat Love Affair (acoustic) @ The Wilmington Arms
http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub443.html

Sunday 21st - Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra @ Hammersmith Apollo
http://www.barflyclub.com/theapollo/whatson/event/20822.aspx#Nine+Lessons+and+Carols+for+Godless+People

I hope these will be as enjoyable as the Melting Ice Caps / Soft Close Ups show last night which, oddly, was hosted in a museum. The Shah relaxed into the attentive crowd after a while and was soon breaking things and standing on chairs (albeit in a civilised fashion) and it was a pleasure to hear his voice again. It was quite a cosy affair with the promoters having to run up and down the narrow staircase to the offie for more bottled booze which they then sold at near-cost price in plastic cups. Jamie approved of the fact that they used their address as an entry stamp, complete with postcode. We didn't go to see the display of human bones in the basement but I hear they were spectacular.

There was no music in between bands, and after waiting a fruitless 35 minutes for the headliners we decided to bail and eat some dinner. Leicester Square on a Saturday night is like the centre of Florence in July minus the heat. We ended up finding a late-opening patisserie on Villiers Street where you can sit and eat cake and crepes and drink pots of tea at 11pm. Full of crabby old ladies living the high life, and Meditteranean gaggles who find such things normal. I think spurious late night desserts are going to be my new binge indulgence of choice - all the dietary hand-wringing without the hangover.

Now to plan 2 weeks of crap lessons and knackered band rehearsals in a vain attempt to make it out tonight. No offence is meant by any no-shows "at this difficult time".

My last Scarlet's Well "tour" (1 gig, albeit a festival). We played at PopRevo in ( Aarhus, Denmark )

(Lots of slightly sad cod-philosophising deleted here.)

If you would like to know what we got up to on our holidays you could do worse than here.

The green space therein spoken of looks like this:

( A few more )
My dad drove us up into the hills through lots of remote winding country lanes, then left us on a clifftop to find our way down to civilisation. It felt a bit like one of those tribal rituals where fathers leave their sons in the jungle to kill tigers with their bare hands and navigate their way home to the village to be crowned as men.

In other news, I would like to know any positive or negative thoughts you may have on the "3" mobile network. Orange have finally snapped my patience after 8 years of long-suffering loyalty with their new "Animal" plans. I do not wish to discuss with Orange Corp what type of person I am, nor whether I have more kinship with a racoon or a canary. (OK, fine, it's about money. One is after all now a student. My psychobabble co-operation would easily be given if they weren't also smug pseudo-'cultured' extortionist bastards whose website doesn't even load properly.)

Scott Walker's recent records really do sound exactly like Penderecki don't they?

Having foolhardily watched Inland Empire this afternoon, all 3 hours of it, despite knowing that Jamie's away and I'm stuck at home with horrible Lynch flashbacks in the dark, "Drift" has just come on random play and it may as well have been the soundtrack to the film (75% Penderecki's finest).

I'm wishing I lived closer to Brixton at the moment. Last night I had the honour to play guest keyboards and tambourine with the lovely Cats On Fire at the Windmill; also finally to see Jodie's band Brontosaurus Chorus, who were great fun too, though they could've done with 3 PAs to contain their orchestral lineup. Both bands were full of bounce and energy and noise, and that's what makes them great live. I'm totally sold on the joy of seeing real drums played well, too, these days.

Today to the Ritzy for the first time, for aforementioned Lynch wrongs. Then for jerk chicken and rice and peas and plantain. The cafe was part open-air, empty oil drums for a fence, happy music playing. It's a breath of fresh air after the carefully landscaped mosaic creche atmosphere of the Blue Legume et al in N16, that's for sure.

On the other hand, last night I witnessed members of the public standing in the road in front of a Brixton bus in pique at not being let on, followed by others chasing the bus into the road and pulling the emergency handle while it was moving. The bus driver, who'd had my sympathies up to this point, responded by trapping a girl's hand in the door and threatening that "next time you be dragged along the road". At this point a plain clothes policeman stood up at the back of the bus...

GOOD things about the Rip It Up festival: seeing our Scandi/Nordo friends - Ville, Hanna, Erika, Per, Therese, Kasper, and lots of other friendly faces; a backstage area that was an enormous indoor field of Astroturf; seeing Action Biker, Kissing Mirrors and Cats on Fire in immediate succession; playing to an adoring crowd of drunk young Swedes in fashion wellies who threw Barbie dolls and waved bewigged mannequin heads on sticks at Dickon.

BAD and just plain ODD things included: 23 hour day; accidentally eating moose burgers; Ryanair losing Tom's pedals and his clothes; not washing; not sleeping; and the TVPs "gig"... which was easily the worst performance I ever saw, and culminated in DT's complete transformation into Father Jack as he sat drooling at the Hammond and howled "DRINK!!!!"... it's not like he actually played a SONG at any point. Who the hilariously off-key blonde onstage behind him was, who didn't appear to know any of the TVPs catalogue but who soldiered through their 9,000 hour set, we may never know.

Not forgetting, ( white wine in orange juice cartons )

Dickon and Rachel have already filed their accounts with much photo and video evidence, so I shall contribute my one picture from the festival. I feel it stands alone.

Time taken for me to donate 1 pint of blood on Tuesday:
4 minutes and thirty-three seconds

Lateness accumulated by J's colleagues in latest month:
4 hours and thirty-three minutes

It's clearly a message.
And the message is "come and see the Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra at the 100 Club at 8pm tonight".

Writ in blood no less.

There would be other things here if other other things weren't occuping the time required to give account of other things. Same excuse as ever. 7am flight to Gothenburg, and I haven't packed. Love, etc.

http://www.meiji.co.jp/sweets/biscuit/mcvities/

No wonder there hasn't been a Momus record for a while. He has been collaborating with the New Royal Family making Japanese McVitie's jingles.

You have to wait for the Flash to load. It's strangely compulsive - having spent the last 2 hours purging it with other records we are now back listening to it again...

Swinland stuff to follow. This must rank amongst the finest of Scarlet's Well's jaunts abroad. Here are some antics and gig footage that people have YouTubed already (I've been sleeping personally)...

"But miss, why does she sing 'RSPCC, find out what it means to me'?"

Jamie is asleep and I am sewing big pink curtains, by hand, out of old bedsheets. This is because I find it easier than figuring out where the hell to buy curtains.

This Easter confirmed all my worst fears re: living in a social desert of late. It's not that I didn't have plans; but when it came to it, none of them transpired. This is the joy of the capital. As J pointed out, we live in one of the few areas of London that supposedly fits our lifestyles and interests very well, but we don't actually have friends here. Everyone's elsewhere, and bloody hard to meet up with. In London, people and entertainments are all interchangeable and disposable... so just go for the most conveniently located, hell why not.

Still had ample capital delights to entertain us, though - we raided Spitalfields for cocoa-based edibles, walked on Hampstead Heath, visited Kenwood House where we very nearly bought the Book of Manners for Women accompanied by walnut liqueur, and tubed all the way to South Ken for the Surrealist exhibition at the V&A. Which (cf cappuccino_kid passim) is a bit like eating a whole rabid shoe pavlova all at once.

Also watched Le Feu Follet, which was angst-tastic and had sod all to do with Vichy France, and Le Beau Mariage, which concerns a scary lady who stalks her intended husband after meeting him once for 5 minutes. At one point she invites him to her 25th birthday party, which is held in her mother's house and features young men in yellow dungarees bopping awkwardly to vaguely Kraftwerkesque electro pop. Maybe I should hold such a soiree for my 26th next month. Although I will be spending the day itself on Brighton beach gorging myself with fish and chips and trying not to get run over by the street parade.

So in theory it's all good, but I do feel a bit like I'm living at the bottom of a well at the moment, socially speaking. Furthermore, I am spending the school holidays temping for £6 an hour in an office whilst the other (permanent) members of school staff recline sipping g&ts in greener pastures, which never helps one's mood. The only things that make this job bearable are (a) entertaining Korean company names, as above, and (b) long lunch breaks spent patrolling Borough Market and reading the Alice Toklas cookbook, of which more another time.

I'm quite looking forward to the distraction of moving house, all things considered.

This is me being absolutely NOT bothered by the fact that at the age of 25 years and 10 months, the estate agent does not think I am a reliable enough tenant to move in anywhere without a note from my mum.

* ... *

The only thing that saves this situation is the mental image of little S------- or R----- whingeing their way into class tomorrow going "but Kate Kate Kate I'm allowed to go toilet in English time innit cos I've got a proforma from my guarantor."

Single room available in shared garden flat, Stoke Newington N16. £250 per month plus bills (the council tax contribution is £19 a month). £250 deposit. Has broadband, TV, washing machine, big kitchen, lounge etc, and sole use of garden (the flat, that is, not you personally).

Location is more or less exactly here.

I will be moving out by 14th April, might be slightly earlier but no later as the rent's paid on the 15th.

PASS IT ON PLEASE!!!

"We swap partners in the bedroom of all time"

Who's coming to hear Kevin Rowland DJ on Friday then?

I'm working from my bed today. FROM MY BED. Watching all the free short films on LoveFilm, even the shit ones Planning an orchestral festival, from my bed. Coffee on one side, diary and a pile of books on the other.

Anyway, I'm doing some research on hearing loss, and I found this new search engine:

http://www.magictaxi.co.uk/charities.html?charity=20

Which is exactly like any other search engine, except if you use it, they'll give 50% of the advertising proceeds to the cancer / deafness / mental health / other charity of your choice. I'm no tin-rattler but I'd rather pay the lifeboat association (who may one day be fishing my parents out of the Irish Sea) for searches than Google's official office scooter-rider or whoever.

Worth consideration anyway.

I was chatting to my flatmate (the one who does sound for films) today at breakfast, and he mentioned he'd heard me practising the piano. I apologised, as I'd been playing the same bit of Bach obsessively. "No, no," he said, "I recorded it actually. You can listen if you like." Later the same day I found that Neil had posted the videos from mine and Jamie's Glasgow visit on his journal. We seem to have retreated into a diffident silence when faced with the lens. I felt like shaking video-me and shrieking "DO SOMETHING INTERESTING! THE INTERNET IS WATCHING YOU!"

What both of these incidents made me realise (and no complaint to A or N is intended here) was that being recorded can be terribly unsettling. Videos, band shots, studio, holiday snaps, you name it. If it's bad, it's a shock, and if it's good, it's rarely true. Nothing ever sounds or looks the way you imagine it does. It's horrifying to realise that you have some kind of mid-British, nondescript, strangled-sounding Londoner voice and that you look like a crooked-toothed primate when you smile. Maybe it is better to know. I'm not sure, though.

Everyone has one thing they will pick out negatively if faced with a photograph of themselves. For me it's the teeth, for other people it's the hair or the figure or the skin. If you avoid looking at photographs, you'll probably stop being conscious of the vanity stick you beat yourself with. But it's hard to resist the lure of the lens; if somebody takes pictures of me, I feel a very strong urge to see them. If someone does put photos or videos up from a gig, I'll be compelled to look at them over and over. It's a control thing. It's bad enough to witness the disparity between your self-image and public image, but it's much much worse if there's a simulacrum going around posturing as you and you can't even see it.

I wrote a lot in my MA dissertation about how identity could be selectively transferred to the internet, and how an 'ideal self' could be projected out there into the ether. Maybe that was true 10 years ago when my parents first put me online at home, and HTML was exotic and people worked through their hormonal surges and adolescent crises on IRC, but it certainly isn't now. These days it's more like that flick Bowfinger: even if you decline to be in the film of your life, in dribs and drabs it's being made.

I've tried to avoid putting too much of myself online, because looking at it only brings on the self-loathing. But if it's going to be out there, maybe it is better if people get it first hand.

I don't think that all such excessive awareness is about vanity. People want to be known - recognised as who they think they are in essence - and to know other people, not tokens of people. Without that, it's an even lonelier world than it would be already. Someone once told me they resented the fact there were parts of me they could never relate to. But if you tried - really wanted to be 100% exposed and open to the world, explicable and relateable, could you?