Music Writing For Girls Part Two

Ever since I ranted about music writing for girls, I haven't been able to stop thinking about doing a music blog.

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Plain fact is, I didn't have the time before, and now I'm going to be a proper desk jockey with nice clean shoes and hair that has been brushed I'm pretty sure I'll have even less. I'm not even sure if I'll have the time or energy to continue being this awesome, even. I might  turn into a total wanker and start ignoring you in the street and screening my phone-calls and stuff.

Anyway. I think I'm just going to write about music on here a bit more. Sorry about that. I really want to though. I think about new music all the time, and sometimes I want to burst with needing to tell you all about the things I'm listening to, even though I know you're not that arsed.

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Anyway. I have been listening to this song quite a lot recently, and it makes me want to move my bottom. Are you an 80s electric boogaloo-fetishist? (no I don't know what that means, and I just made it up). OK, well, DO YOU LIKE TO BE FUNKY? Maybe you will like it too.



Check out this hipster with long hair! Doesn't he look a bit like Olly off Made In Chelsea? He's called Kindness (I'm guessing that's not really his name) and I did like him before (even though I sacked off queueing to go and see him at Optimus Primavera because I wanted to get drunk in trendy Portuguese bars) BUT THIS SONG IS THE NUTS.

Click play, then hold on til 1'09". That's when it gets serious.

Are you dancing yet? Are you in an 1980s breakdancing film in your mind?

Good. I think I will like writing a bit more about music on here. Also, I am going to enjoy writing about what I'm going to wear to work as I have taken a sledgehammer to my clothing ban and gone serious sales shopping. Watch me flounder as I spend the next few weeks try to navigate dressing for the office without selling my personality down the river.

I still can't imagine myself in a pencil skirt. Unless it's a tie-dye one.

I (Don't) Love A Man Me In Uniform

 Just two more shifts in the den of hell to go before I start my gainful new employment. So far I have been stunned by the bizarre reactions from my superiors (one started quoting Paul Simon lyrics at me, the other refuses to believe I am leaving and keeps texting me trying to get me to cover my own shifts after my leaving date). I've also already been reduced to tears by comments from the gym members, who seem genuinely really upset that I'm leaving and are all telling me how I've helped them and how much they'll miss me. I had no idea, I am floored and a bit humbled.

I tell you what though, I can't wait to not wear their horrible uniform. looked at my manky pink fleece on Monday and thought "I could stop wearing you now if I wanted. I could go naked! I could sit on this leg press machine with my sweaty naked bottom! What are they going to do, fire me?" and it was probably the most liberating bit of all. I have a whole wardrobe full of logo tops and ill-fitting vests, and they're all going back. Every last one.

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What is it about low-wage employment that they feel the need to dress you like a complete chump? I genuinely think it's deliberately designed to take your self esteem down a peg so you don't fight back when they trim your wages and guilt you into doing overtime. I've "lost" every name tag they've ever given me because I'm convinced other people knowing your name when you don't know theirs means they own your soul.

To be fair, the only really intolerable bit about the gym uniform is the frumpy fleece. It's not a patch on when I used to work at Asda in the uni holidays. Not only did they make us wear a fleece so green it looked positively radioactive, they also had these awful nylon trousers that pinched in at the waist, ballooned out over the hips and stopped an inch short of your ankle. I often wondered who had designed such hideous trews, imagining myself busting into the Asda uniform design HQ to find an army of tiny fashion designers, each with a sixteen inch waist and a disproportionately massive bottom.

Anyway, although everyone keeps saying "oh you've never had to dress before a corporate office before! It'll take some getting used to!" I'm pretty sure I'll still manage to swing a bit of personality in there. No more fleeces for me until I'm at least 52.

Go on then, I bet you've got some corkers -what's been your most hideous work uniform?

Bletherings, Giving Notice And A New Working Wardrobe

Today I have not one but TWO posts coming up elsewhere on the internet, and you should go and read them.

Firstly I'm talking about how sporty is not a swear-word over on Any Other Woman. I wrote this on Sunday whilst watching Andy Murray trounce the smooth Swiss cheese to get gold in the tennis, and I'm pretty sure I missed most of the match because I was getting so het up about my feelings towards sport and people's hang-ups/hidden potential. So you have to go and read it, just to make all that worthwhile.

If these guys can do it....

Secondly, after 2pm my latest music ramblings will be up on Florence Finds which this month was really hard to whittle down to just four because there seems to be so much amazing music around this summer. Lots to get stuck into this month. And on that (musical) note, I will have more soon...

In other news, I am now into my final week of "old life" work, having handed my notice in pretty much everywhere (that's quite a lot of places when you're freelance). People's reactions have varied wildly, I can honestly say that only one person sounded genuinely pleased and excited for me.  Perhaps I should just be pleased that my contributions are valued, even if it's a slightly back-handed compliment.

So! A week tomorrow it all begins.... time to start thinking about my working wardrobe too. My sewing lesson has left me with one very nice and work-appropriate dress but I have little else, and zero experience of dressing for a formal environment. What do you office-workers throw on in the morning? I already have my eye on this Zara bag for starters....

Teaching Pilates To The Yoga-Monsters

I turned up to cover a Pilates class at a new gym the other week. The studio manager welcomed me in warmly before yelling over her shoulder "Good luck - they think it's going to be Yoga!" Then she ran. She knew. She wasn't running from me. She was running from them. Or maybe she was just running to bolt the door so I couldn't make a break for it.

Have you ever been to a Yoga class? Yoga students have their own mats. They have their own spots in the class that they like to sit. They sweep into the room, lay down their special mat, talk to the same people they talk to every week, wait for Panpipe Moods to start playing, at which point they launch into some crazy sequence designed to turn themselves into a human pretzel and completely intimidate everyone around them. Sometimes they even scare the teacher. I know. I've seen it with my own eyes.


Yoga students are.... very particular. And there's nothing wrong with that. Unless you're the one trying to teach them Pilates. I had two people walk out of my class. I have never ever  had anyone leave my class before, and let me tell you it took every ounce of self-control not to flip them the bird on the way out.

Do they think that fitness instructors are really the gung-ho, lycra-clad energiser bunnies with evil cyborg hearts that we pretend to be? Do they think we don't go home and cry?

I didn't go home and cry, just in case you were wondering.

I went home and cemented my highly prejudiced feeling about Yoga students instead. 

(apart from the eight people who stayed and enjoyed my class enough to thank me at the end, anyway. But they're probably just Pilates students waiting to be discovered).

First Dance Friday: Idlewild

Falling in love with your first band. It feels dangerous, euphoric, a little bit like you might throw up. Palms sweat, heart races, pupils dilate.

You write their name on your folder, on your bag in fabric paint, on your arm in French lessons. You write their lyrics in the margins. You try to imagine anything sounding more perfect, and you can't. You buy everything they ever did, even if they've only done two things and both on vinyl only and your record player doesn't have any speakers. You sit cross-legged by the turntable anyway, ear craned down to hear the sound of the needle hitting the wax. It sounds like fizzy heaven.

The first time I heard Chandelier by Idlewild, I fell in love.  When the Captain EP came out it sounded so perfect I could only imagine it had been forged in heaven. I'd always been into music, but I'd never realised that such a gorgeous noise was possible. The clouds parted. Angels sang. It was almost unbearably good. I became obsessed. I told everyone about them. I became a street preacher for this odd, noisy little Scottish band.

When they finally came to play in my hometown (third on the bill on a Midget headline tour) I stood eagerly at the front of a group of roughly ten people and watched Roddy Woomble flinging himself on the floor. "WOW" I thought. "WOW. This man does NOT give a shit. This is the coolest thing I have EVER seen". Then I took it upon myself to write a review of it for a free music paper, in my bid to spread the word about these revolutionaries. I had to post it, IN THE ACTUAL POST, because that's how long ago we're talking.

 The review got printed. "Idlewood At Rock City!" it said. I was furious.

I don't think anything will ever top the feeling of discovery I felt when I found Idlewild during their "flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs" phase. No band has really matched it since.... not even Idlewild themselves (I promptly got bored when they finally got round to releasing their first album, and ever since they've just sounded more and more like REM, shame).

I sometimes wonder if my fascination with all new music is just me chasing the Idlewild dragon. I don't think I'll ever match the buzz of that incendiary first time. But still I always click play on the next Soundcloud clip. Just in case. Just in case.

Sew Sew

I'd like to go on record now and say I was absolutely phenomenal at pretty much every subject at school, pretty much every single one oh yes I was.  I was like Jason Schwartzmann in Rushmore. I watched that film and I was all like "the pain of being brilliant! I totally GET IT! Having to keep up with all your extra-curriculars at that young and tender age...having to maintain positive relationships with peers.... whilst dealing with the fact that everything you touch turns to solid gold..." I was misunderstood at school, as it happens. Misunderstood and extremely annoying. I only had friends because I was in a band.

There was one subject I was terrible at (if you don't count PE and Maths, which I don't).

Home Economics.

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Food Technology was bad enough, but Textiles was my nemesis. What is up with sewing machines? Why hasn't somebody figured out a way to make it easy yet? You have to put the thread up in here, and then wind it down there, and for God's sake, is it all necessary? Can't we just staple that shit together?

I don't think I ever got the thing to work for more than a second before some internal gremlin tied the whole thing into impossible scrunchy-knots and I started screeching bloody murder at it. My best friend (she of the spectacular hen party and wedding cake hat) was useless as well. In the end we just got Lisa Bradley to do all of ours for us. Lisa Bradley's work was immaculate and she did it all three times faster than everybody else, you could see in her FACE she was loving every second, I SWEAR you could, so what was the harm? Everyone wins.

I never learned. The acres of beautifully double-stitched bunting at our wedding? My husband did it all. He's another bloody Lisa Bradley, everything's so neat. I find it infuriating. Mostly because I can't do it. I avoid things I can't do. They make me feel small and humble, like a normal person. Fuck that shit.

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Anyway, in April I took on my six month clothing ban, in the wake of buying Charlene my leather jacket. This has trundled on more or less OK, bar a few covetous looks at other people's pretty things and the one time I strayed into H&M with my guard down. Recently I've started to feel a bit twitchy though, like I might like a new thing to wear. So when my friend Lizzie of awesome hipster clothing line Antiform/fabdabulous studio Remade In Leeds suggested swapping a PT session for a sewing lesson, I punched the air.

Then I remembered that when I sew I am vulnerable. I am weak. Like a tiger with one eye. Or a massive awesome bird of prey with a hurty wing.

So my sewing lesson is today and I am proper bricking myself. I am taking lots of upcycle-able things with me, and an actual sewing machine that Sam bought for five pounds of eBay and is totally shite.

Wonder if Lisa Bradley's busy....

New Job!

I did it!

Finally finally finally.

Three years, two months and one day since I was made redundant from YTV, I finally have a full-time job, a stable salary, a chance at a new and exciting career doing something that makes my brain tick.

I've learned so much and developed my skill-set enormously during the last few years working in the fitness industry. But (aside from a few evenings and the odd weekend) it's time to move on. It's time to be a grown up! Wear proper shoes and trousers that aren't always leggings! Not have to worry about doing a horrible tax return (errr....apart from this year's. and last year's, which I still haven't done.). Time to go and do what I want at the gym, instead of what my clients want.

Thanks to you all who have been lovely and supported me. It's been such a slog to get to this point, and I'm aware I've been quite hard work at times. Thanks to everyone who has given me advice (particularly my guardian angel Vic) and checked my grammar. To my Mum (who will be reading this) and to Sam (who won't) for being unfailingly supportive and picking me up when I was on the floor. I will never take a stable salary for granted again. EVER.

Anyway. Now it's time for some new adventures..... adventures in marketing and communications!

Who's with me?