Flight of the Conchords - 'Jenny'

I've been thinking about Edinburgh a lot recently. Partly because it's pretty, partly because I'm going there quite soon and haven't thought enough about it probably.

Last time I was there I discovered the lovely Flight of the Conchords, a duo called Bret and Jermaine. Bret was an elf in Lord of the Rings. Jermaine is in the rather wonderful-looking 'Eagle VS Shark' which is coming out soon. They're both in an HBO series about them which is alright, but they're better live. They also did a radio show with Rob Bryden. It worked about as well as Mitch Benn's solo show (ie, fell as flat as flat can be without being any flatter.)

They write very funny, deadpan folk parodies about David Bowie and racist dragons and rappers called Hiphopapotamus v Rhymenocerous and other such things, and my absolute favourite song of all was one about a horrendous bit of mistaken identity complete with falsettos and rhyming. The internet didn't have it for years, but some excellent geeks at What The Folk have put pretty much all their songs online.

You should listen to Jenny now though. I am. Over and over. Like Hot Chip with a sense of humour and a lack of miniature cymbals. AMAZING.

My idol, my fallen queen

As one of my chief idols and role models, it saddens me greatly that Paris Hilton has lost her inheritance. I mean, is she going to have to get a job now she won't have that $60 million to sit back on?

The man who cut her off is her grandpa, the only one who actually does something in the Hilton clan. He's nearly 80 and is probably jealous of how serene Paris always looks. While the sex tape was embarrassing, apparently her ending up in prison is worse to him. I don't know about that. I can't think of anything worse than something as intimate as that ending up on the web, but then I've watched five seasons of Oz and lady prison can't be that bad.

"He was, and is, extremely embarrassed by how the Hilton name has been sullied by Paris," says some opportunistic mouthpiece who wrote a book about them (and fair enough, the toiletries my housemate brought me back from same were substandard. Arf.)

Poor Paris. What's she going to do? What? How? Why? Wherefore? And whither?

...and how to go "aaaaaah" properly

Waiting for Potter. WTH A DOG.

Ruin Harry Potter for the slow ones

Read the new Harry Potter yet? Well done. Now buy one of these t-shirts and punish the silly bastards who "don't really see what all the fuss is about" and are "taking their time" reading it. No. It doesn't work like that at all. Bwah ha ha ha ha ha!

Electrical Plug Socket

In two weeks, I disappear up to Edinburgh for another two weeks to do a show called Wit at the Edinburgh Festival. I wrote about it here once, but not really much about it, but don't let that put you off because it is a very good play and I don't have many talents so come and see me do well at something.

All this is why I'm going to write about something else instead. WOO!

Of the few non-mental people to have befriended me on MySpace and who I've befriended in return, Bad Film Club are in my top two favourites. Nicko and Joe are a pair of bad-movie obsessed comedians who screen choice cuts of their 1300 strong film library and get a spare comedian in to join them in doing a DVD style commentary. It's very silly, and often very funny (although more so when they do proper old-school bad films).

Robin Ince's choice of Doctor of Evil: The Mutations will live me forever. Tony Law and Top Gun, not so much. Tony's dog, Cartridge Davidson, was the best part of that. Old films work better, they're genuinely worse, and Dr of Evil had ANGRY DWARVES! And CAULIFLOWER HANDS!

Anyway, they're doing Edinburgh this year, with a show pretty much every night from 11pm - 1am in the Pleasance. I've wangled the list out of Nicko, so pick your likely challenger and go along and see them. Be warned - Nicko's become addicted to checking how many they've sold, so she might have gone slightly insane by the time they start.

BUY BAD FILM CLUB TICKETS!


Top Gun - AUG 3rd

VIVA KNIEVAL - Aug 4th - Tony Law

Jaws 4 - Aug 5th (not as bad as I remembered. Shame.)

Road House- Aug 6th - Brendon Burns

Highlander - Aug 9th - Robin Ince (special show at The cameo)

TBA - Aug 10th

Fire Storm- AUG 11

Die Hard 2-Aug 12th - Christian Reilly

Xanadu - Aug 13th - Josie Long (special show at The Cameo)


Highlander II Aug 17th - Andrew Maclelland

PIRANHA II-THE FLYING KILLERS- Aug 18th - Men with Bananas

Basic Instinct 2- Aug 19th - Glenn Wool & Brendon Burns


Jaws 3D - AUG 24th (motherfuckin' YEAH motherfuckers!)

Anaconda - Aug 25th

Can’t stop the music - Aug 26th

Welcome, Princess Tiàaii Price Andre

The wait is over. Jordan's announced the name of her little girl, and by the sounds of it she's either a type of doll, or a long-lost Sailor Moon cast member.

Peter Andre said: "Katie always loved the name Princess, but everyone thought it was a bit over the top. I loved it too but I wanted to name her after both our mums."

"Then I just woke up one morning and thought, I know! We'll just put them together!. If people don't like it, that's up to them."

Bless Peter Andre. But what happens when little Princess Tiàaii - "We've put an accent over the first A to make it more exotic and two Is at the end just to make it look a bit different" - decides she'd rather be called Pam? At least she'll have Geri Halliwell and Lowri Turner's insanely named kiddies to frolic with. Start placing your bets on the kids becoming rocket scientists and Nobel prize winners.

Ill/Trailers

I am very bad at being ill. Or rather, I was very good at being ill when I was at school because after I'd passed my mother's stringent lying-tests I'd get to lie in bed with the black and white portable telly and eat soup and sleep and feel safe and cossetted.

Now of course I'm in the arse end of East London, my mother's in Hampshire and I'm not at school in any case. My head feels like a foetus is fast-forwarding through pregnancy and breaking out of the sides. I've got a bona fide temperature and chills. I had to make my own soup for Christ's sakes. If Helen hadn't sent me home from our Gentlemen Prefer Blondes viewing last night armed with enough books and films to educate a school, I'd probably have started smoking again just for something to do.

I don't do ill. I don't have the time or the inclination. Hangover, certainly, sleepy or cold, absolutely, but genuinely illness doesn't enter my dictionary very often. I spent too long in hospitals and dentists as a teenager to waste my time with it now, and as a result, today is probably the most boring day of my life because I can't even go and do my evening plans because I am dripping with sweat and aching like an old tree.

BORING! Fucking boring. And yes, I know I'm boring for being bored, but I'm ill so shut up.

Anyway, before my body decided to keep me away from human company, I watched an awful lot of trailers this weekend. Watch them too, then tell me about them. Seriously. My housemate won't be home til it's dark and I might have fainted of boredom and fever by then. Do you know any good jokes? Are they over an hour long? Brilliant! Bring them on.

The Ten - 10 stories inspired by the commandments. I heart Paul Rudd.

Talk To Me - Don Cheadle and his hair get parole and end up wowing the nation on 60s radio.

Arctic Tale - the greatest thing you will ever see. I cried. Twice. And screamed. More.

The Golden Compass - CGI is rubbish (the bear is almost as bad as post-BBC Aslan) but the books are stunning.

King of Kong - housemate's choice. I didn't believe him. I am a stupid girl. Documentary about two obsessive Kong players battling for the Guinness world record.

The Jane Austen Book Club - reassuringly lovely girl flick. Not for boys. It has Hugh Dancy in it. I once cornered him at a premiere to get his autograph for my old flatmate. He was not best pleased. I think this might have had something to do with the fact I towered over him by a good foot.

December Boys - Daniel Radcliffe's breakway from Potter role. Four orphan boys, the seaside, precocious girls, men with motorcycles. I cried in this as well. It's probably that time of the month or something. Looks utterly ravishing.

August Rush - Lovely lovely Freddie Highmore plays an orphan who becomes a musical genius guided by Robin Williams in an assortment of odd hats. Jonathan Rhys Meyers turns up to be Irish, Keri Russell turns up to play cello and be divine. Obviously I shed a tear in the trailer to this too. Definitely that time.

...and not so much

Rocket Science
Margot at the Wedding

Yawn. How much more sub-Wes Anderson po-faced indies about bored American families do we have to sit through? They're not funny anymore. Squid in the Whale was a warning to us all. Bloody Baumbach. The casts are great though, so maybe ones for DVD and a bottle of gin next time round.

30 Days of Night
Reading this at the moment thanks to Helen's educational Kew bag. It's still vampires though, isn't it, and there's a bit of a dearth of imagination going on with vampires at the moment so it had better try hard otherwise it's just going to be Insomnia with teeth. On that note, I heard a fantastic vampire story on BBC7 last night: Schalken The Painter. Listen to that instead. Never have I been so transfixed while cooking lasagne.

Lions For Lambs
Just actually the worst-looking thing ever. Robert Redford should have his directing hand cut off.

Right, that's about it really. I'm going to go back to being bored and ill now. Never have I wished I were at work more.

ShoHo Sho Shit

I went to Shoreditch House last night. I can quite honestly say that I haven't looked forward to nosing around somewhere this much since I went to the Soho house library and got lost, and I haven't been so disappointed by something since I saw the clown at my brother's 5th birthday party taking his make-up off.

For a members club that's been launched in a veritable powder puff of fanfare it looked unfinished, unpolished, and un worth it. The lifts are still covered in wood and look like the beginnings of an Ikea sauna. The lift girls had the glazed expressions of sweatshop workers on 36 hour shifts. The female bar staff weren't pretty enough to be this charmless, most of the male staff looked browbeaten and half asleep.

The front desk was littered with people who didn't seem to be doing anything other than get in everyone's way. The large white room our party was in had a bowling alley behind which was probably the only humanising aspect. The white tiled loos were covered in five-year grime, unlike the ones at Soho House which are so sleek they're almost feline. We couldn't be arsed to work hard enough to sneak up onto the roof to see the pool, but given the state of what we saw it was probably still surrounded in builders.

I know there were four other floors than the ones we were on but seriously - £500 a year for this building site? I've heard wonderful, awe-struck things about the rest of it, but given that parties like these are when tipsy non-members start thinking about opening their wallets to join up, it was about as aspirational as stomach cramp. It's £350 to join Hospital, £300 for Milk & Honey and its nice cocktails and elegant house rules. Maybe ShoHo will be worth it in six months when it's actually ready, but not now ta.

Harry Potter and the inevitable internet download

It's only Thursday and already there's a Harry Potter book torrent on the internet! Seeing as I'm entirely against spoilers where HP is concerned and am paying full whack for it at midnight on Friday, I'm not going to read it or even look at it, and therefore don't know if it's true. It's definitely illegal though, so don't look at it.

If you tell me who dies/lives/etc, I will hunt you down and kick you in the shins VERY VERY HARD. Although not as hard as the pious twat going on about JK Rowling's literary pretensions in the Guardian today.

Mercury

So, the shortlist for this year's Mercury Music Prize (sod off Nationwide, you don't roll of the tongue fast enough) consists of actually good bands and albums that deserve it. Be still my beating disappointment. Oh hang on, Basquiat Strings have been nominated whoever they are. I hope they have beards.

Bat for Lashes - Fur and Gold
Fionn Regan - The End of History
New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom
Klaxons - Myths of the Near Future
The Young Knives - Voices of Animals and Men
Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare
Maps - We Can Create
The View - Hats Off to the Buskers
Dizzee Rascal - Maths + English
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
Jamie T - Panic Prevention
Basquiat Strings - Basquiat Strings with Seb Rochford

Bat For Lashes - My favourite album of last year and one of the best I've heard in my entire life. Weird enough to win, those Bjork/Kate Bush comparisons should come in well here.

Fionn Regan - Didn't hear it. Is it any good?

New Young Pony Club - Despite the fact Ice Cream's been bothering the radio since early last year, nobody seemed to notice until they suddenly started being picked up by the TopShop trash as something that might sound cool on the school bus. Not new rave, NYPC are fucking fantastic and straddle enough genres to be cutting edge without boring anybody.

Klaxons - Indie. Good indie mind, but nothing more. Haven't we had enough of indie yet?

The Young Knives - Such jollity and cheeriness in ones so be-spectacled. Graham Coxon has a lot to answer for.

Arctic Monkeys - See Fionn. Sounds exactly the same as the first one, surely.

Maps - No

The View - Christ no.

Dizzee Rascal - Had his awards allowance plus he's already changed the landscape once and it's someone else's turn.

Amy Winehouse - Much as I adore the Winehouse, Back To Black isn't actually great all the way through. If she had a less amazing voice, we'd all be a bit bored.

Jamie T - FUCK NO. He's from Wimbledon, and for some reason this annoys me more than that fucking Stella song.

Basquiat Strings - See Fionn. Sounds like it should be a lingerie ad.


I'm going to put money on Bat For Lashes, partly because I've been wittering on about the album and keep getting told to shut up for looking like a converted Christian, and partly because I think she has a Helen Mirren/Oscar chance of winning. IE: they don't let her win, they're entirely blind. Go Bat!

Lowri Turner - Mommy Dearest, the racist version

I was at Latitude all weekend and thus missed out on the pleasures of Holy Moly, which is getting less rubbish with every week.

In case you hadn't already had the pleasure of reading the cretinous ramblings of Aryan crone Lowri Turner in the Mail (obviously), here she is wailing about how difficult it is that the baby she's just had with her British-Indian husband looks nothing like her, the please read on.

(You might also like her searing piece on political issues entitled: "However much I love my gay friends, I don't want them running the country", published in last year's Western Mail)

The article is, at best, an attempt at honesty made with all the finesse of an elephant knitting a scarf. At worst, this is going to seriously fuck that poor kid up when she's older. What's even more horrible is that Turner announced the divorce from her husband only a week before and said she felt "Embarrassed, humiliated, hurt, angry, sad, guilty, confused." Eurgh - horrible thought shudder etc - was this article was a way of getting back at him? For fuck's sake woman, boil a rabbit.

Lowri on her third child:

"Into this positively Scandinavian next generation, I have now injected a tiny, dark-skinned, dark-haired girl. To say she stands out is an understatement."

"Don't get me wrong, I love her...But when I turn to the mirror in my bedroom to admire us together, I am shocked. She seems so alien. With her long, dark eyelashes and shiny, dark brown hair, she doesn't look anything like me. "

"No more Brady Bunch kids for me."

"My love may not be colour blind, but hers is, and that is truly humbling."

THE WOMAN IS UTTERLY INSANE.

I've got red hair, my mum is fair. I'm transparently white, she's got a permanent gardening tan. We look nothing like each other but share enough neuroses and vocal mannerisms to make it patently obvious that we're related. It's a child, not a bloody handbag.

Even the Daily Mail comments looked askance after the inevitable openers: "Searingly honest maybe, possibly commendably so. But in my opinion Lowri needs to 'get a grip', give herself a damn good talking to, pull herself together, get over herself etc and get on with the business of bringing up the three children she knowingly brought into this world, blonde, brown, black or whatever colour they may be."

Start placing bets on the date when baby Turner mum-divorces the hand-wringing idiot woman.

I read this and was furious. Then I read the comments at the bottom and laughed like a demented coffee maker. Bloody ridiculous idea: yes, English is an illogical and irrationally spelled language but when you've got the hang of it it's the most beautiful thing around. I love the way we have a "eau" which in no way follows the French. Or even itself. Or indeed any kind of rational thought pattern. I love the fact you can mix round all the letters in it and still read it. I just adore its words: vexed, coruscating, flim-flammery, favourite, amazing, blazing, lashes, enzymes, mitochondria. Luscious. Germany apparently tried to rejig their spelling a few years ago and ended up with excess f's. Bleurgh.

The greatest party invitation ever.

In raging fury and ffs-ness at the sheer inability of a functioning website to hire enough people to make it run, I've started up a new blog chronicling my attempts to give up smoking. Read it, let me know what you think. If you read this blog regularly you will be doubtless thrilled to know that I've already updated the other one with more fervour and dedication than I've ever bothered here. New skills.

http://nobodylikesaquitter.blogspot.com

Also, to anyone else wondering if I got paralysed/killed/bored on the Central line this morning, I was saved from taking my usual train by deciding to get up later and have a shower instead. Cleanliness is next to undeadliness.

So live music is slowly swilling down the plughole of closing venues and crap soundsystems (Spitz! Astoria! Glastonbury Pyramid Stage!). A while ago a petition was started up to express disapproval at "burdensome licensing regulations" that were inappropriate for live music and dance, and were not promoting these activities.

Well, ye-es, but then having your hearing buggered to death by cheap soundsystems turned up way past full isn't promoting them in a positive manner either. There should surely be some compromise between people wanting to have music at a volume that really shows it off to its best, and between pissing off the neighbours and people whose good will is relied on for live shows to exist in the first place. Although seriously: if Glastonbury could just make up their minds whether it was a crap soundsystem, an accidental blip by the sound desk or a request from the local council that resulted in The Killers's awful Sunday picnic sound, that'd be just dandy.

Here's the petition and the recent response from the Goverment.



2 July 2007

We received a petition asking:

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to recognise that music and dance should not be restricted by burdensome licensing regulations."

Details of Petition:

"The recently introduced changes in licensing law have produced an environment where music and dance, activities which should be valued and promoted in a civilised society, are instead damaged by inappropriate regulation. We call on the Prime Minister to recognise this situation and take steps to correct it."


Read the Government's response

"Thank you for signing the epetition expressing concerns that the new licensing act is restricting music and dance.

"The Government recognises the vital role that live music and dance play in our national life and wants to see it expanded not reduced. So there is absolutely no intention of restricting performances through unnecessary licensing regulations. But it is also the case, of course, that some live performances can impact on the wider community, not least through noise, public safety or nuisance to local residents.

"So the aim of the Licensing Act was to streamline the system which had grown up over many years, reducing unnecessary burdens but giving local communities a greater say in the licensing decisions that affect them. The Act, for example, has removed the need to apply for several different permits to put on events and enabled more venues to put on performances.

"Overall the evidence so far does not suggest that the Licensing Act has had a negative impact on the amount of live music. Research for the Department for Culture, Music and Sport (new window) into the impact of the new rules on smaller venues found that twice as many found the licensing process easy as difficult. It also highlighted the fact that bureaucracy and expense were only rarely mentioned as reasons for not applying licences.

"But the Government does accept that some venues feel unnecessarily constrained by restrictive conditions. While those that have stopped hosting live music have generally been balanced by the emergence of new venues, we do recognise that the loss of an established venue can have an impact on individual musicians and music fans.

"It is in response to these concerns that DCMS has already set out areas where it thinks changes might be made to reduce further administrative burdens. The Government also set up the Live Music Forum in 2004 to monitor the impact of the Licensing Act and to recommend how government might better promote live performances. We expect to receive the Forum's findings and recommendations in the Summer and will look closely to see if action is needed."

'It is with great regret that we announce the closure of Fopp.

Our store chain is profitable, well regarded and loved by our loyal customers
and staff. However we have failed to gain the necessary support from major
stakeholders, suppliers and their credit insurers to generate sufficient working
capital to run our expanding business.

We would like to thank staff and customers for their support over the past 25
years'

ENDS

A fopp spokesperson


*****PLEASE NOTE*****

PRESS COUNSEL HAVE NO FURTHER COMMENT TO MAKE AND AS IT STANDS ARE NO LONGER IN
COMMUNICATION WITH FOPP

___________________________
Well that rather chuffs the idea of Bearded getting a distribution deal there. Where am I going to buy my mid-price books and similar when I can't be arsed to go on Amazon now? Also, what's going on with that Press Counsel statement? Either Fopp's totally disappeared off the radar or they haven't paid their PR bills. Crivens.

I am going to Glastonbury in less than four hours. Despite the fact I spent the entirety of last summer sleeping in fields accumulating a new and interesting collection of bruises, I am still not remotely prepared. I have to go and buy a tent at lunchtime. I texted my old housemate at midnight last night to ask if he could bring in my old sleeping bag (he is). My dad brought me my ancient wellies in exchange for tax forms and my mum smuggled me in some socks, which my dad then smuggled back on discovering they were his cherished sailing socks. I didn't say it was understandable or, y'know, fair.

Rather like illness or small yappy dogs, Glastonbury has always seemed to me like something that happens to other people. It's big, so obscenely big I can't even imagine. People put such emphasis on having life-changing experiences there that it's actually rather off-putting. It has a huge ethos with it. I know lots of people who are going, all of whom are scattered over 100 acres, which amounts to none. I can't remember what to take. I haven't got any binliners (shit – go and get bin liners). I was in shops buying sunglasses and belts this morning and a very exciting t-shirt and a very exciting short skirt for when I have to start using mud as leggings. I went to my friend Guy's end of year exhibition at St Martin's last night (moment for Guy – he's TOTALLY in Vogue) and after a couple of drinks went home to bake cake and make disappointingly unhippie fudge to share with the people sharing my camping bit.

I STILL DON'T HAVE A TENT.

Oh God, I don't have a tent. How much do they cost? There's a tent shop about 10 minutes from work. It shouldn't cost a load because I'll leave it for the charity appeal at the end of the weekend, but it shouldn't be shit because then the kids eventually using it will have to sleep in a fibrous sieve.

The tent still doesn't exist.

Trousers. Shall I wear my nice black trousers and get them fucked anyway, or just wear my least-favourite eBay purchase all weekend until it's destroyed (coffee-coloured ball dress, too long, deserves to die in a gasping flood of soil). Either way my tent will inevitably drown in a flood.

I almost forgot there was actual music until Olly emailed me for my number to make snap decisions on bands to see. Good grief. Bjork should be very good at least, and I am actually wetting myself at the prospect of seeing Burly Chassey roll those r's around Diamonds Are Forever.

Whinge whinge whinge. Glastonbury happens to other people. It had better happen to me when I get there. Whinge whinge ungrateful ingrate grating whinge. Bloody hell it's like being a toddler again. I'm going to two other festivals this summer which will be fine. Why this one? Nobody (touch wood) is going to rape me. Or steal from me. Or drown me in a vat of good feelings.

I will most likely come back going "Oh my God it was AMAZING." However. If I come back talking about ethics and hemp, please shoot me and scatter my ashes on AA Gill's doorstep.

*Inappropriate insertion of Emily Big Brother-esque joke about leaving job in Soho here*

I've been commissioned to write a blog about giving up smoking. This is obviously brilliant, as I am going to be paid to rant about the pointless minutiae of my life, but terrible in that I really like smoking and don't particularly want to stop.

Also, I've never tried giving up before unless I've had a really horrible hangover or been too ill to even consider the idea of putting anything other than Vicks near my lungs, so I don't really know what to do. I've joined my quitters' group at work (dreadful: I feel like I'm signing up to Pariahs Weekly) and I expect there will be patches and motivational talks, but other than that I'm a bit stumped as to how to behave in the pub, at gigs, drinking cocktails, at parties etc.

I don't smoke during the day but have an almost magnetic fixation to cigarettes when drinking/in pub/at gig/after screening/at friends' houses etc and I'm not stopping doing any of that thank you very much.

The ban, which this blog is in aid of, will be a help, but even worse, that means missing out on the gossip and camaraderie that goes on outside. Damn.

Swishblog Chris's lovely girlfriend Helen has talked about her London marching band on and off for a while now and I kept meaning to follow it up in the mindset of someone who won't because they think that potentially Helen is mad. Helen is clearly not mad, because it turns out her band do amazing things like this cover of Gravity's Rainbow by Klaxons. Sadly it doesn't have a video, but Helen has made a proper slide show to go with it and, frankly, if the sound of a marching band with full brass and the like rocking out to the UK's premier indie-not-dance band doesn't inspire you, then you're a bigger fool than I.

Normally I can count the press releases I get and actually care about on the bones of my little finger, so this was a really lovely treat in my inbox: Amiina, four nice young Icelandic girls who make lush and quirky music that sticks freakfolk in a bowl with a load of bass and fumbles it around awkwardly and probably with pom poms.

It doesn't make sense, it doesn't have to because it's LOVELY. I was slightly worried about not having anything to fall in love with this year, but with Lavender Diamond's album and this, I should be ok for the next few weeks at least.

Wibbles...

ohmygodbatmanohmygodbatmanohmygodbatman...




"Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?"

"Why no actually, I turned around and ran away in the opposite direction."

Who'da thunk this was Heath Ledger?

Three confusions: the unexpected fact that the last and very sad Ugly Betty I watched turned out to be the last one I get until the leaves start falling again; whether or not I fell asleep and forget about the little girl in Heroes; and Pirates 3, just in general.

It's released on Thursday, but the big media hoo-ha screening was only last night. Generally studios do this if a) the film is crap and they don't want the press flexing their vitriol much before release or b) the film is going to make squillions anyway and they don't need to care. This was a b moment, as made obvious by the bored-looking men standing around holding screens showing clips from the trilogy.

It was actually really nice to be able to walk into the Empire without having to hand over every electrical item in your bag and thus sharpen your elbows in preparation for the post-credits scrum later on. At the same time, it seemed curiously empty. Nobody was very excited, only a handful of people in the gigantic auditorium were wearing their Pirates bandannas, and expectations in the Empire camp were low to middling. Pirates 2 was smug and safe, in the way a lot of pictures get once the characters have their own action figures. Pirates 3 was...well, it's out in three days, you can see for yourself.

Having experienced the delights of a friend being blitzed by someone on the internet the other weekend, and then been slightly less delighted when I scrolled down to find that a bunch of his friends, me included, had been brought into the middle of it, it's only now that the whole sorry affair has been removed from the internet that I can snigger gleefully at this. Actually that's a flagrant lie, I'd have laughed anyway. Although I love paintball, and if my skin was tougher and I wasn't such a mimsying pansy I'd totally take it up professionally.

"So many memories, shared and archived…

…the day I met him, and I told all of you, “This could be THE one, or the NEXT one.”

…the night he proposed, and the morning he forgot he proposed.

…Great America… Hedonism II… Camping (I still have the scar!)… Meet the Parents (more scars, only on inside! LOL)… Hedonism III…

…the time he cheated on me with my own cousin but I forgave him because she had cancer and he was just making her feel good about herself but then it turned out she never had cancer and I still forgave him, even though a lot of you wrote a lot of thoughtful comments advising me not to."

"If anyone sees Dave, please inform him he owes me 32 thousand dollars."

Mother of god, I don't care that it's not real.

Also, some lessons in how not to make a flaming website. These include:

- Building it, and alternative flamers from your own IP address. If you're going to fork out for it yourself, you could at least sneak off to an internet cafe. Which brings us on to...

- Don't pay for it with your own credit card. Seriously, if you want revenge, at least plot it out properly. However outraged your friends are on your behalf, they need security details.

- Get your facts right. If half of it is going to be an anguished call of love, then putting in lies the (admittedly incredibly stupid) boy in question told one of your friends and calling them fact just makes you libellous.

- Don't put in stuff about their friends. Especially not if one of them is me and you've just written them an incredibly well thought out email explaining why you are not insane. Actions like this rather negate that.

- Spell and punctuate properly. Emotional turmoil is no excuse for abusing the lower case.

The thing that pisses me off most in the world, being wrong about people. Thank god I've got coffee.

I don't really think about withdrawal very much except in connection with a) my horrific overdraft b) nicotine and c) heroin. I don't do heroin. I'm not Socttish enough. I gave up chocolate for Lent when I was 16 and was so upset after two hours of the prospect of 30 days without it that I ate three Snickers.

Nobody likes withdrawal because it reminds us that we need stuff and that's wholly at odds with the idea of being free-thinking and choosing our own path down the yellow brick road. At the moment, I'm stuck slap-bang in the middle of chemical withdrawal and it fucking sucks. Rather than writing Trainspotting via Clapham ("We've run out of organic limes!") I would just like to warn you about something you probably know about already, being more interested in life/medicine/stuff that happens outside of fiction than me.

It's called Seroxat and it fucking sucks. Before I found this out, I thought it was called Paroxetine which it is, to give it its less glamorous Tesco's Value equivalent name. The three evils of job hunting, panicking about losing any grip on writing I'd made in the last two years and whether anyone would ever employ me for longer than 9 months made me even more anxious than usual, and given my brain had a tendency to self-destruct until three years ago, my doctor went all American and thrust pills at me, ones that incidentally have the highest incidence rate and severity of withdrawal of any similar pill. Like, score!

On Friday, after a month of numbness, yawning and general meh, the pills ran out. Yesterday I burst into tears within ten minutes of getting out of bed and didn't stop for 8 hours. I wrote a furious and outraged email to a friend that was way over the top however annoyed I was, and I haven't bothered checking my inbox to find her inevitably furious and outraged reply. My boyfriend thought he'd done something wrong, but nobody had – it was just my brain suddenly realising it wasn't being zapped into numbness by suicide-enhancing anti-anxiety tablets and throwing a massive wobbler in the process.

Today I just feel sick. The sort of sick where you can't see any way of getting through it because you're about to cry anyway. Everything is misted up in a grey veil of panic and upset, about absolutely nothing, about tears and the fact my head is being denied this horrendous drug. I've taken it for a month for fuck's sake, this is utterly absurd. There's a reason people go on this for so long: coming off it is exactly that – coming off. Ironic when none of the myriad tablets I was prescribed when I was actually ill did anything other than give me something to do every morning.

I absconded to BDQ headquarters in Windsor last night and for a blissful 12 hours felt safe and happy. Then I got the train home this morning and hid behind the Style section of the Sunday Times quaking in a hot puddle of saline surrounded by burly men and yummy mummies in Wasps shirts.

Depression isn't my illness anymore and hasn't been for years. I'm no happier or sadder than anyone else in London. What I am is at the mercy of my body, and it absolutely sucks. Screw Seroxat, Paroxetine, and doctors who'll throw drugs at anything that moves because the NHS gives them sod all support to do otherwise. Don't take this drug. Don't let anyone give it to you. Eat coconut and lemon meringue ice creams instead. And smile lovingly at your Pirates 3 screening ticket for tomorrow evening. Aces.

Best Holy Moly Duty Log ever...

(If you don't know what a duty log is, it's where Disgruntled from Lancaster write in to express their concerns with their television stations. Apparently. I'm sure people write in with praise as well, but it's considerably less fun.)

"My favourite programme on TV is and always has been Heartbeat. It's one of the few programmes I allow time for. THAT IS UNTIL NOW! 8.07pm I HAVE JUST SWITCHED OFF (AND WON'T BE SWITCHING BACK ON - I DO KNOW WHERE THE OFF BUTTON IS).

The reason I have switched off is the shooting and killing of the dog. We have two similar dog's and they both had seen the dog on the TV and were barking at it. My family were all laughing 'the dogs like the show too' we said.

Then a gunshot and the dog lay DEAD. My grandchildren who were watching started to cry and I switched the show off - FOREVER. AND IT WAS BEFORE THE 9PM WATERSHED.

Everyone connected with the show is a DISGRACE."

Thirteen pups for Beethoven! It's like 101 Dalmations, only marginally more physically possible. Bless. I want a puppy. Immediately.

Yawn. Patrick Wolf has changed his mind about retiring from music and is celebrating this fact by going on a massive tour just to show how not retiring he is. Good grief. If you want a publicity stunt he could have just slept with someone. Or worn a suit.

"For me to say I was going to quit music is like saying I'm going to commit suicide," he says. "It's the most extreme thing that could happen in my life." Bless the silly chump.

From Ananova via the DJourno:

"A TV worker has been sacked for mocking the French presidential favourite in English subtitles.

"A plea by Nicholas Sarkozy for voters to join his campaign before the Sunday poll was interpreted as "rally my inflated ego".

"The subtitles were broadcast across the United States in the English news bulletins from public broadcaster France 2.

"Channel chiefs blamed it on freelance workers."

Hilarious. I'm waiting to be paid by a firm based in Spain. Apparently Spain works several weeks behind the actual world, so I sympathise with freelancers who are bored out of their wits, and rather admire their ability to crowbar a joke anywhere near the region of Sarkozy, a man who probably had a sense of humour once but decided it was spoiling the lines of his suit.

I admire anyone who has actually managed to hold on to their languages. I had to interview Marion Cotillard from the excellent Edith Piaf biog La Vie En Rose on Monday and having spoken to the PR in French had a mad crazy panic when asked if I wanted to do the interview in French.

Waiting for the next (ludicrously supercilious) PR to get her, I had horrible flashbacks to what happened when I interviewed Daniel Auteuil in French at the Hidden LFF screening. I was so nervous that I not only got my words the wrong way round but made an enormous clanger caused by having missed the only screening that week. There is no scorn like Gallic scorn or worse, pitying scorn.

Technically, I have half a degree in French. It shouldn't be a problem but for the fact that it's a degree I got three years ago, I've spoken French about six times since and mostly in Beaujolais on Litchfield Street asking what wine they'd recommend to cheer up the sad person sitting next to me.

Beaujolais is a happy place, the flipside to Ed's Diner where only bad things seem to happen to the people who end up eating their grotesquely smiley burgers. I took my dad to Beaujolais last night: it's packed full of oddly-shaped tables that don't quite fit, has ties dangling from the ceiling, blues blaring out of the speakers, over-priced bar snacks, a massive cellar, assorted cheery Frenchmen hanging around the bar and an incredibly vivacious manager who waves you off to your seat to "Rrrrrelax!" while he brings your your bill.

We had a bottle of Fleury and chatted over cigarettes and pistachios. I realised a couple of months ago that a half hour phone conversation in February was our first proper chat in about five years. My dad is brilliant and it was lovely to hang out with him, more so now that I am no longer a Vile Teenager and can actually hold a conversation without blaming my parents for something.

I nipped off to the shop to get some Sluts (Silk Cuts rather than Charing X giftshop) and was chatted up by the smooth operator behind the checkout. "Are you drinking next door? Are you drinking with your friends?" he asked.

"No, with my dad," I smiled sweetly, walking out the door. You never saw a face fall so hard.

Great piece on the BBC: French voting turn out is in the 80%s - in the estates as well as nationally, and more and more young people are voting. Depressing to think that's never the same over here, even more depressing to think I've been so focused on France I totally forgot about local elections over here. I have a horrible feeling I'm still registered in Wales...

New Harry Potter in trailer in not looking shit shocker. The Phoenix was such a lumbering dreadful disappointment that it'll be a relief for it to be slashed down into less than three hours. I'm getting excited now: last book, new film. Amazing.

Patrick Wolf's live show at the Astoria was one of my favourite things about the 11th April, but mostly of this year. So it kind of sucks that he doesn't love the press trail that goes along with music and has decided to quit (although he'll still be playing Latitude, hurrah.)

He says...

"I don't think when I was 16 and dreamt of releasing records there would ever be so much crazy speculation about the person I am and what you want me to be.

"I have become so tired of this behaviour, sometimes I wake up and have to do six hours of interviews before doing a show, then go straight to bed to sleep a couple of hours then fly to a new country to be cross-examined in the same way...I don't know what is left of me".

He adds:

"I have made a decision, my final concert will be this November, a retrospective with an orchestra in London.

"I am not sure whether there will be anymore public communications after that, in fact I am pretty sure there will be none.

"Of course, this has nothing to do with my drummer, but a creative clock is ticking and I have many many projects to be creating with my time left on this earth. I hope to share my last shows with you this year".

Hmph.

Why didn't I have a birthday party like this? It was clearly invented just for me.

"Our parties are recommended for children ages 4-13, but emotionally stunted 24-yera-olds are given priority."

I'm going to be in a play on the Edinburgh Fringe this summer.

Blonde Drama Queen texted me a couple of weeks ago to see how much holiday I could feasibly take off without getting fired.

"We're going to do W;t. Come and do it with us." she said. It's a play about a social rockface called Dr Vivian Bearing who analyses her horrific cancer treatment in much the same way as she analyses John Donne poems until it all becomes too much. It's funnier than it sounds, although it clearly doesn't end well. I played her in my last year at Durham and it was amazing.

BDQ made a "serious offer" today, which given my flathunting of late makes me feel like I'm a house. Maybe a maisonette. Or a duplex penthouse apartment overlooking the Spitz.

Other than saying "like, duh" I don't quite know what to say really because I'm actually really nervous. I'm nervous because I've only done two versions of the same play once before, for that time in Edinburgh, and then there was only a three month gap between goes. This one has a totally different cast, a sporadic rehearsal schedule and I'm worried about fucking up, partly because it's very affecting, partly because Vivian doesn't leave the stage, and partly because I'm worried about doing something retarded in front of BDQ's beady-eyed cast from Eton.

"Old Etonians I hope," said Opera Cat, who's singing at the grown-up International Festival around the same time.

"No. Proper little ones." I'm the token old person who's been wheeled in because 50's pushing it for a 16-year-old. Also, technically everyone is little to me.

"This is like your Mrs Robinson moment," she helpfully pointed out. "Only Benjamin's richer than you are."

"Awesome. So if I fuck up that's in front of someone who could buy me in 10 years time?"

"Well look on the bright side. You could end up staying in the castle."