quick as rainbows

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt

2011-08-16T21:06:00.009+01:00

The books I never read because I thought I had all the time in the world. The empty wardrobe, hangers clanging together like a skeleton. The imprinted pillow. The birthday cards I kept. The phone that never rings. The two last coffee mugs on the dish stand. The un-played guitar. The whisky bottles. A calendar event that will never arrive. The shoes in the hallway. The towel in the bathroom. The posh coffee. The starless sky. The dying alarm clock. The knitted character. A pile of bedtime books. A cork-board of memories. Echoes of laughter. Quiet. Things I'll always regret.

The Hidden Cameras

2011-06-30T18:13:00.007+01:00

I love this poster sent to us by Patrik Svensson for The Hidden Cameras gig at Indietracks. Have a look at some of his other work - it's gorgeous!

The Sunny Street - College

2011-05-01T23:51:00.002+01:00

I made a video of my favourite band.

The Sunny Street - College from Emma Hall on Vimeo.

I'll never leave this

2011-04-20T18:09:00.006+01:00

The happiest night of my life wasn't particularly special. Nothing happened, and it wasn't life-changing. Just an ordinary night out in London, an indiepop club run by friends, in the very first days of summer just like this one.

The previous night, I had been handed a 7 inch single - the very first record released by my band - and taken it home to study carefully. I thought about how this was way beyond my wildest ambitions, and I remembered that one of the things on my mental list of things to do before I die was to audition for a band. I could never have dreamed that I would go through with that, let alone be accepted into a band, and then another, and play some gigs, and release a record on an actual record label. These were all things that other people did, people I kept pictures and articles of and would never dare speak to in real life. It was hard to take in.

That night at the indiepop club, I rambled on for yonks to my friend Stuart who seemed to laugh a lot. That's what I remember most about that night - everyone was smiling or laughing. Faces were beaming and red and sweaty from dancing and drinking. We sang our hearts out and there wasn't a single person in that room that I didn't love so much that I could have cried a million tears over them. Outside afterwards, in the middle of the sticky dirty west end, nobody wanted to go home. It was warm and still and people were buzzing and flirting around the boys from the band of the moment. Records were exchanged and plans were made and the future suddenly looked bright and clear as crystal. I realised at that moment that nothing - not a single thing - was wrong, and I almost threw up at the thought, because it felt terrifying somehow. Instead I just for a moment stood and looked at the scene so I could remember it always. I thought about how I wanted these people to be my friends for the rest of my life, and to be able to do this for the rest of my life. The same words kept running through my head - I'll never leave this, I'll never leave this...

On days like this, early summer days in London with the hum of the traffic and distant sirens and warm air and Cats On Fire playing through my speakers, the memory of that night makes me feel sick with nostalgia and excitement for Indietracks, and although I don't think I'll ever get that feeling again that nothing is wrong, I'm grateful that it happened to me at all.

Party times

2010-12-03T12:59:00.006Z

An art deco pub on a cold night, accessed by cobbled lanes of an area of London I know little of. I would have found and explored this by now if I'd still had my bike. Having tap-danced excitedly on the parquet in my new shoes before leaving the house, my nerves start to get the better of me on the journey out and, although I see lots of people I want to talk to, I keep to myself and sup pints until I'm drunk enough to chat. I love the cosy red-lit room and the general hint of Spiral Scratch to this new night, and I adore the preserved decor of the pub and the Christmassy party feeling going around, but I'm surprised to find that it's in the bathroom where I suddenly feel a wave of nostalgia for something I have never known but always imagined, away from the music and chatter and laughter that now comes alive in my head instead and seems to slow to a stop, like a moment frozen in time to a grainy film still or captured in a brown and peeled photograph that somehow feels familiar, like I'm inside it. I am picking up the frequency of a time gone by, a party that happened here in another era. Ghosts of bright beautiful young things laughing and chinking glasses, never stopping to think that this won't always be their time. I hear a group of people singing in the bar, and at first this is part of the hallucination. Then it stops, echoes for a moment around my head and these walls, and real sounds kick in while I remember where I am. I try to imagine what the people of that time would make of ours, and it dawns heavily on me that this won't last forever either, so I go to dance and appreciate the scene and this room filled with the the laughter of people I hope I will know forever.

Hopes, dreams and the names of the trees

2010-11-01T13:20:00.006Z

Leaving the house on Friday morning was a bit like walking through the wardrobe into Narnia. As I stepped down the stairs, a bright pink Angel Delight sky lit up the acid yellow leaves on the tree in my front yard, drifting down around me like confetti. At one time I would have been astonished by this sort of thing, the stuff that happens in nature, everything that's supposed to be grey drenched in colour, but I was sad that all it made me feel was nostalgia, but for what I wasn't quite sure.

Maybe it was the memory of collecting autumn leaves as a kid, pinning them up on the classroom cork board and arranging them next to the correct tree names, and stretching my tiny hand out next to them, quarter of the size, wishing to be big and grown-up. Back then the future was exciting and far away and unknown, and I didn't yet have memories but only hopes and dreams. And the names of the trees.

So maybe I've come to a point in my life where there are more memories than hopes and dreams, and I've kind of become 'stuck' in them and it suddenly feels vital to me to keep making new ones, to appreciate pretty things and laughter and nice words, and to tell people things they need to know. And also, memories fade and disappear and I don't want to fade and disappear with them.

A leaf was amazing to my five year old self, but the old man upstairs sweeps them up and puts them in a bin bag.

You make my head spin

2010-09-30T09:46:00.004+01:00

It's always weird when you stumble across something written by someone you're really close to, and you are surprised because you never hear them say stuff like that in real life. It's a strange mix of feeling like there's part of them you don't know, and loving them a little bit more.

Born on a blue day

2010-09-23T09:38:00.009+01:00

I was leaning out of my window once, smoking a cigarette with an old friend, around 1996 or so. Jay was the sort of bloke who knew everything about everything. The conversation somehow turned to the development of language and the alphabet, and I wondered aloud why it was that letters and numbers had certain colours which were never really acknowledged in the 'real world', and in fact were represented incorrectly most of the time. I wasn't sure whether or not this was a daft thing to say, nor whether it made any sense, but Jay seemed interested and probed me more on the subject.

"That's called synaesthesia" he said, finally.

I didn't have the internet in those days, so I had to take his word for it. However, I soon realised that not everyone had colours for letters, or shapes, tastes and textures for sounds, or that the days of the week had different 'personalities'. Just me then. Through a later conversation about it with a friend, he discovered that not everyone thinks and dreams in black and white as he does. Revelations all round.

So having found out all I could about synaesthesia and learning that we don't all follow the same pattern but do have other traits in common (difficulty with numbers being my favourite one - I had always been bad at maths but never knew why - now I had an excuse), I suddenly felt all unique and special and I wanted to tell people about it.

The first person I remember telling was my dad, who had struggled with me for many years on the maths thing - he himself was a bit of a maths genius so couldn't understand why my grasp of it was so weak. He appeared to be listening, but then may as well have said "that's nice dear" for all he actually was. I stopped talking, and was left feeling like a bit of a tit. Every time I've tried to talk about it since then it's been pretty much the same. People basically think I'm bonkers, making it up, talking rubbish, or just aren't that interested. I am used to keeping things to myself though - not least because the words I want to say are not the same words I need to use to be understood.

But it doesn't stop me thinking it's a fantastic thing, or researching it, or even sometimes using it to my (I like to think) advantage. Once, I went for a job interview and decided to wear the colour of the name of the company. I felt comfortable, like I fitted in, and it was the best interview I ever gave - I got the job. I've successfully repeated this tactic since. I get annoyed when I see advertisements and companies using the 'wrong' colours on their logos or fonts. But it makes me so happy to see a 'right' one. Channel4 - you have been getting it right since day one - don't ever change! I love how the W of Wednesday is the pivot on which the rest of the week rests like a see-saw, and how Tuesday and Thursday either side of it are paler shades of its own colour. I like how my boyfriend's first name is the same as the strip of his football team. I could tell everyone which team they should support based on the colour of their name (which would mean Everton or Leicester for me, hmm).

Music is another thing entirely. Voices conjure glass or stones or water, instruments can bring sparkly lights against darkness, or metallic forms, or things shattering, or even a sort of trajectory through empty space, like it's the only thing that exists. The sound of a flute brings sweet-tasting pastel coloured puffs of air. Some music fills every available space like smoke in a room. Trying to learn songs that other people have written is a challenge though, as I find myself wanting to do the 'right' thing, and having to train myself to do as the writer intended. I like this challenge though, and when a song all pulls together the wrongs sort of right themselves and it takes on a new form. Writing songs is easy until I try and involve other musicians and find I can't explain in musical terms what it is I want them to do (note: this is not an excuse for never writing songs).

I think a lot of TV food critics might be synesthetes from the way they often describe flavours.

All this that I now know and acknowledge, I took completely for granted until my friend first mentioned synaesthesia. I'm more aware of it all going on now and love looking at the art of synesthetes like Kandinsky and David Hockney and thinking about where they might have been coming from. I would find it immensely hard to put these things into art or music so I admire these artists above all others.

Sometimes it seems strange to me that nobody knows, or that nobody ever celebrates it, or that people like me are reluctant to because it seems so daft. But if everyone thinks like me then how do synesthetes find each other?

I'm one, are you?

September

2010-09-14T09:28:00.019+01:00

You and me, rain and sun making quick rainbows against stormy grey. Occasional bursts of blue refusing to give way to white winter skies, crunchy leaves and dry sticks. An everyday task in a new home, looking for something in a drawer, and the first fireworks pop and crackle somewhere in the distance and I get goosebumps. He hears them too but he doesn't know what it does for me, that I'm trembling as I feel myself cross from summer to autumn and I'm both scared and excited. A little ache in my chest of things past, each year at this time, but it feels okay to keep these things to myself. Songs I can barely listen to and others I can't get through the day without, all more important and beautiful and heartbreaking than the endless sickly summer soundtrack. Things I've put off 'til tomorrow all year - tomorrow's here now. Decisions to be made and faced, and items to be ticked off lists torn from notebooks and scattered around the flat in places they're most likely to be seen and actioned. The urgent need for plans, things to fill the days scribbled on calendars, the threatening chasm a decision might leave in my life, but nothing lasts forever and sometimes you just have to let things go and watch them take on new shapes. My head filled with all these things I want to do and the still-new excitement of sharing them with someone, then with the worry that I don't have enough time, why didn't I think of this when I was young and bored? What if my time comes early and I haven't finished what I'm supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? Maybe I don't want to know really.

We dance and snake around each other and hold hands and you tease and let go but you catch me, and you lead me safely over the season edge and plonk me down somewhere new, and with a cheeky wink and a nod in the right direction you're gone again and it's cold and crisp and all a little too clear. And for the rest of the winter, every time I smell a bonfire or hear a firework or see a bright star or a pink sunrise, or the wind blows the leaves around my ankles, I like to think of you and everything feels okay.

It's just stuff.

2010-07-05T21:20:00.021+01:00

In October last year it was a bit of a struggle to pack up my things to move flat. I was a moody drunk, and I didn't care enough not to just throw things haphazardly into boxes. I threw a lot of practical stuff away, because I couldn't be bothered to own it or move it. I kept all the sentimental stuff though - poems, diaries, drawings, old newspapers with historical headlines. It all went under my bed in my new place where it's been for the last 10 months, untouched.

Now I'm getting ready to move again, only this time I'm well excited about it. I pulled the now dusty boxes out from under the bed tonight and looked through the stuff I had deemed worthy of hanging on to. Then I binned the lot.

It's a new start. It feels right not to drag the past around with me any more. I never look at that stuff and actually I cringed big-time just now when I saw it. Some recycling collector might get a laugh out of my 1998 diary I suppose, and the book I started to write when I was 22 in which I'd said everything I'd wanted to say by the end of chapter 3 but still printed it out from my antique Atari computer with the green screen. I remember the bits I want to remember and filter out the rest; or at least I have friends to fill in the blanks.

Except I couldn't bring myself to throw one particularly amusing 'poem' away, which I wrote in my early twenties about leaving yet another flat in Brixton whose bathroom was infested with cockroaches. It was a two bedroom place I shared with a friend for six months when neither of us had any other friends, but by the time we left it (to move to the slightly more picturesque Finsbury Park), the place had become the hub of the after-hours Brixton club scene.

Goodbye Roach Flat

by Emma Hall (a long long time ago)

Goodbye roach flat.

I shall never forget

all that became

inside your walls, sliding on your

burst-pipe water

smelling your blocked-drain fumes

Goodbye roach flat.

We came, us two, unbeknown

that we would leave as six, seven, eight.

It was worth the wait.

Will our kitchen look so stylish

in a new place as it does, in such a mess, in you?

Good bye roach flat.

For all the creatures we disposed of

in your bathroom

none of it matters

next to the friendships

that blossomed inside of you.

Roach flat, your rooms echoing the sounds

of stomping dog upstairs.

It was all worth it.

You gave us territory, sanctuary,

to find our remaining brain cells,

and our best times, ever.

Dear oh dear - I was never a poet, and I do know it.

Just when I thought I was lost

2010-06-04T09:00:00.009+01:00

Oh, I know I haven't posted here for a while. Partly because I've been one of those VERY BUSY people that I used to admire but now only wonder why they don't want to sit in front of the telly or in the pub every night as I want to do; partly because everything I had to write about kind of got covered everywhere else (I'm so second class post), and partly because most of what's been going on in my silly little head was too personal for you internets to read. Keep your nebby out.

I am happy to report that I now have some time (remember that?) to sit down and write a blog post. Sadly though some of my favourite readers have given up on me and buggered off to read about someone else's far more interesting life, so I'm back talking to nobody again. So I could say anything really. YOU ALL SMELL OF POO.

Well okay, only some of you.

Indietracks has kept me well busy and admittedly it has driven me a bit mad. Having next year off to just enjoy the thing is looking like an increasingly attractive option. I keep myself going by thinking of the reasons why we do it - the bands, the happy faces, steam trains running past bright blue skies, and the ale and the drunken antics and the dancing and the things that go wrong which turn into 'part of the atmosphere'. The fact that someone chose it as their wedding venue this year brings a little tear to my eye (and makes my eyeliner run). The whole thing is a brilliant brilliant pain in the arse that I can't seem to give up. ~~See you next year~~.

Pocketbooks have been learning and rehearsing brand new songs and started playing gigs again after a six month break. This has taken up a fair bit of time and now we have several more gigs to look forward to - Nottingham, Leicester, Berlin, probably some others that I have forgotten about but need to book train tickets for. Also, I am going on tour with The Sunny Street next week in Sweden! Ah Sweden, finally we meet again. Meatballs, salty liquorice, hot dogs, Plopp bars, and maybe some non-food related fun too. I'm been crazy dying to go to Scandinavia this summer ever since we didn't get to Copenhagen Popfest (I'm looking at YOU, Eyjafjallajokull).

Also, dare I say it but I'm genuinely happy at the moment, which is something I've not really felt for a while. And probably why I haven't written for ages - there's nothing much to moan about when you're feeling this contented. I'd been winding myself up good and proper the last few months, but when I finally opened my mouth and talked about it all, I was surprised to find that only good stuff came back. Lovely, wonderful, exciting stuff that makes my stomach do that thing that happens when the bus goes over an unexpected hump in the road. You know the one. I'll shut up now.

Come back people, I miss you.

Copenhagen Popfest

2010-03-18T08:17:00.010Z

Wow! Just look at this little lot.

Having spent the last few weeks in a state of indiepop confusion that is booking bands for our very own Indietracks, it's nice to see a complete line-up on a well laid out poster that someone else has organised. Oh I'm not saying I don't love Indietracks, I just love to remember what it's like simply being a spectator.

Uh, what's that you say? Pocketbooks are playing this? Doh!

Paris Je T'aime

2010-03-01T14:33:00.014Z

My new favourite train journey is from London St Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord, two of the prettiest stations I've set foot in. My first journey on the Eurostar was followed by a short walk to our hotel, where the amusingly mardy staff refused to let us check in a minute earlier than 3pm. They allowed us to leave our bags though, and we strolled around the Sacre Couer and drank endless coffees, vowing never again to be tired enough to get ripped off for €4.90 a pop.

We had both done the sights before, so the weekend was planned and spent as an eating, drinking and shopping one. Our hotel, just on the edge of Montmartre, was basic but our room (top floor, no lift!) gave us views of the Sacre Couer and some famous tower I hear they have in Paris. I saw it twinkling on the first night while out there smoking a cigarette in my going-out clothes, but when I called the boy to come see, it had stopped. My own private twinkle-moment.

Most of our walks started off in the wrong direction thanks to a combination of my 'hunches' and the shit map the boy had picked up at the hotel, which he insisted on unfolding and turning upside down like a proper tourist until we figured out where the hell we were, but hey, you don't mind that when you're on holiday in the prettiest city in Europe, and we discovered lots of funny little things and places this way.

Planete Mars is a lively and drunken sci-fi themed bar playing spacey 50s & 60s pop, soul and psych, and a very good place to prop up the bar and drink pints and not feel so conspicuously touristy. Bar Dix, a proper little Left Bank dive bar serving pitchers of sangria to the hip kids in the know, is less welcoming, but you get the feeling you're in proper Paris as opposed to guidebook territory here. Just two of the bars we visited, but deffo the best two. Over the course of the weekend we mentally opened our own bar back in London, picking up things along the way from the Paris bars which shaped our fictional one into something pretty ace.

Oh wow, the shops of Le Marais! Vintage stores on every corner, although it's hard to actually get in the door and customers think nothing of trampling all over you, pushing you out the way, or just snatching an item of clothing out of your very hands. It's carnage, but worth a good rummage. It's never been so much fun to try on ridiculous jackets in a cramped basement. We bought hats from a proper hat shop, where the staff won't let you try on anything they don't believe will suit you, and tell you off for not wearing them properly, and push hats around on your head until you look just-so. I was seduced by a 1930s style felt one, and €40 slipped easily out of my hand for the pleasure of owning it. The boy wore his all day and looked not at all out of place, but hasn't dared wear it in London yet. We could be whoever we wanted.

On the last night we went all out to eat EVERYTHING. The largest amount of cheese ever consumed, followed by Nutella and banana pancakes and a stagger back to the hotel, full of sugar and fat and booze and cigarettes, which somehow feels okay when you're on holiday.

I lay awake for a long time on the last night, partly because the room next to us were having a fucking loud shouty party, but mostly because everything felt so bloody lovely and I didn't want to miss it. Here I was in the most gorgeous city, with the person I want to spend all my time with, and excuse-moi if I'm getting all sentimental here, but I felt pretty damn smug.

In what seemed like a flash (despite the hour delay, for which we were offered another free Eurostar ticket - Paris, we'll be back!) we were back in early morning rush hour London and saying a quick 'see ya later' before the boy disappeared into the underground, late for work, thus returning life to normal with a short sharp shock.

I took the bus home in the rain and hoped I hadn't dreamt it all.

Timewarp

2010-01-25T12:39:00.006Z

Coffee in a brilliant little café in a new part of London for me, where an inquisitive cat sat at our table and ate the flowers from the vase and jazz played in the background. Then treasure chests and racks and racks full of the clothes of our dreams and oh the hats hats hats! Like two big kids, playing dress-up in the 1930s. I wish it was another time.

Midsummer (A Play With Songs)

2010-01-13T07:59:00.008Z

You know when you leave the theatre after seeing a really excellent performance and you can't stop talking about it with your companion, and you want to ring everybody you know and tell them they'd be mad not to go, and you feel completely inspired by what you've just seen? That hardly ever happens to me.

Last night I attended the first night of Midsummer (A Play With Songs) at the Soho Theatre and that changed. It's a collaboration between playwright David Grieg and Gordon McIntyre of Ballboy, which alone should make you want to go, but you still never know how these things are going to be staged and performed. A musical play could so not work, and there's a high risk of cheese here, but try to imagine Midsummer without the music and it would lose a huge chunk of its charm. This isn't a musical, it's a play with songs. Great, sweet, sad gentle songs which form an important part of the story.

Set in Edinburgh and staged in a bedroom, the cast of two narrate, act multiple characters AND perform the songs. No pressure, then. Between them they create scenes outside of the set so convincingly that you forget they are bouncing around a bed and really believe they are racing around the streets in a car, tied up in a bondage club, and bathed in the golden Edinburgh sunset.

The interaction between the two actors had me wondering whether they were a real life couple and if not, why not? The play takes you by surprise, which is also kind of what it is about. How you think you have a type and you think you really shouldn't be with someone, but how you can take yourself by surprise when you give yourself half a chance. Love will break your heart, but none of us can resist letting ourselves fall into it anyway. Awww.

Go see it, let yourself fall in love, then tell all your friends.

Rooftops and chimney pots

2009-12-28T21:40:00.011Z

Ah, the family Christmas. Five years is long enough to forget why I don't do them, and five days is long enough to remember again.

Perhaps it's the initial warm welcome and my parents' happy faces giving way to bickering, nagging and fussing. Or the fact that 'home' is no longer my home, not my childhood one anyway, but someone else's that I am a stranger to. Or maybe it's the still present echoes from my childhood of the drunken laughter of aunts, uncles, and cousins, pulling crackers at the dinner table and opening pressies under the massive tree, now given way to ticking clocks, a small fibre optic ornament in a dark corner, and old people nodding off in front of the telly. Or the memory of my sister and I staggering in from Gullies at 3am, falling out of bed and waking the whole house up with our fits of laughter, now replaced by early nights, snoring and the occasional owl outside. Everything got so old and slow.

I hate the countryside. Especially the flat, endless, barren countryside of Lincolnshire. So when a long Boxing Day walk may sound appealing to some, in reality it is walking in a flat straight line against bitterly cold winds with nothing to look forward to except turning back.

Don't get me wrong; I love my family and I love spending time with them. But this Christmas made me realise how little I belong to that old world. I remembered why I moved to London, and when I got back here this afternoon I wasted no time taking to my balcony and appreciating the rooftops and chimney pots, the life going on behind windows, the noises, the smells, the sound of people, the traffic, the variety of stuff on offer. I could feel everything around me.

I texted my mum to enquire what they'd been up to this afternoon after I left. They'd been for a long walk and seen a dead sheep.

Time flies

2009-11-09T22:00:00.010Z

This weekend in Bristol was ace, and there were moments when I remember trying to work out when last I laughed that much. It helps if you're with people who make situations funny and memorable, instead of moaning when things go against them. It was nice to unexpectedly bump into friends from other towns. It rained, but it made the Sunday afternoon pub crawl even more cosy. Bristol is the deadest place on earth on a Sunday and we were hard pressed to even find a shop open let alone a pub, but when you have a warm hand to hold on to and someone's stories to listen to and exciting plans to make, it really doesn't matter how far you have to walk in the cold to find signs of life.

On the train, halfway back to London, I said something along the lines of enjoying this journey and wanting to prolong it. It was nice just to have so many things to talk about, and it seemed a shame to get off the train and go home. I sort of got my wish, because minutes later the train stopped and didn't move for another two hours while they cleared the suicide off the track. Despite the gloomy reason for the delay, it was the most entertaining train journey ever. Somehow it still didn't seem that long a journey, even when I fell into bed at 2am knowing I had to get up again in four hours. And instead of sleeping, I had another laughing fit.

In the deep end

2009-11-01T22:25:00.018Z

It's taken a lot getting to this point, and it's been a massively confusing time. I've not really been able to talk about it, and nerves were getting in the way. But if you want something badly enough, you just have to go for it right?

I doubt things are going to be that easy, but after waiting this long I'm ready to face them rather than try to stop it happening like before, which just made me unhappy.

I'm officially un-single and pretty chuffed about that thankyouverymuch.

She called me Betty

2009-10-22T22:10:00.005+01:00

I made a new friend recently. She came into my life like a whirlwind, sat at the desk next to mine, and seemed to know exactly what I was thinking at all times. It's nice to have such an easy friendship where you don't have to explain or apologise for anything. We were going through all the same stuff at the time, and it's like she was sent to me. Suddenly I started looking forward to going to work. It was lovely, and we made fun of the bad times.

Then one morning she announced she'd got a job in Argentina and was leaving at the end of the week. We went out for dinner twice and the day she left I took the afternoon off so I didn't have to say goodbye. The following Monday I came in and her desk was cleared, but she'd left flowers on my desk with a post-it note that read "For Betty". I had a lump in my throat.

It's funny how you can know someone years and never really know them, but meet another person for a few weeks and totally get each other.

I miss you Sim.

Journeys and destinations

2009-10-17T15:35:00.007+01:00

It's funny how you can forget a whole evening out but remember one important moment from it, something someone said and the way it made you feel, a telling look in someone's eye, a secret shared, a great plan that was formulated and the music that was playing at the time. The brain edits out all the unimportant stuff about how you got to that point and what happened afterwards. It decides which bits will become your memories, the bits you would stick in a photo album, the bits that guide you and move you to the next place in your life.

But it's the journeys from place to place where you (or I, anyway) do a lot of thinking and processing and decision-making. These are the times when your feet are carrying you along and they know where to take you, so your mind is free to wander. I guess that must be why I've been walking everywhere lately - I must have had a hell of a lot on my mind! I've been underestimating the power of walking and cold air and being alone with my thoughts. When you try to work things through by talking to people, they often get warped by questions and watering down of information and wrong advice, and some of the time the people you talk to are only trying to extract gossip.

Thinking while walking puts things right into perspective. Once you've made a decision on your own and you have the confidence to go with it and you don't listen to anyone else, you can make anything happen. It's been that sort of week. And today I breezed into town and walked myself into a few places I would never have gone until recently, but I needn't have worried at all, and my life is much better off for it.

Never mind therapy, just follow your feet.

And when the sun comes up...

2009-10-12T13:13:00.014+01:00

I love the fact that my bedroom window is just over the head of my bed. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I can look at the stars. On Monday morning I woke up to a mauve and golden sky pierced with the brightest star (or planet?) I'd ever seen. I can almost see Hornsey Road Baths from my window, one of the loveliest buildings in London, and at night I can see the purple glow from its neon sign.

For the first time in ages, and after all the tears of Saturday night, I woke up on Monday morning with a feeling of having pulled my way through something and shed old skin, ready to face anything. The tightness had gone from my chest and I took a really deep breath. The night before, I had gone to my new local with my new flatmate and the conversation flowed so easily and naturally and it was a laugh. It makes all the difference once you know you are going to get along (and to have such a brilliant pub in close proximity).

And last night, my first outing as a proper single person, I felt so full of energy that I walked from my house to The Wilmington Arms. That's 3½ miles, 1 hour 10 mins, 261 calories, 5000 steps. I love the streets of Islington with their tall smart terraces and chocolate-box glimpses of warm lively rooms, and I realised I'd missed them more than I knew. It wasn't awkward or uncomfortable to be out on my own, it was just lovely to see friends and watch bands and to hang out with the most genuine people I know. It's gonna be OK.

Remember this feeling

2009-10-10T20:31:00.016+01:00

You've thought about it for ages, and it's niggled at you, and you have times when you feel lucky just to have someone nice, and others when you feel like you're just kidding yourself. You convince yourself that you just need to make more effort and try harder, but pretty soon you realise you're lying to yourself, them, and everyone around you, and finally you make a decision. Then you worry that you're not strong enough to go through with it, so you tell a friend and seek their support and once you've poured your heart out and your friend tells you you're doing the right thing, you've forced yourself into it and can't go back, because they would know you were living a lie. You tell your friend your plans, and they offer a comfy sofa should you need one.

You know you still love them, but you know it's not that kind of love. You never want to hurt the people you love though, so this is the hardest thing of all to get your head around.

The day comes, and you still haven't worked out what to say, so you just wait for a moment together and come straight out with it. It could go two ways - they're really upset, or they've been thinking the same thing and you've beat them to it, but that doesn't make any difference to how you'll feel later.

The first few days you will laugh and cry and reminisce and joke about dividing up your stuff. You tell your friends and relatives, and you get messages from people you haven't spoken to for years. You assure everyone you're OK because you think you are, and you don't want to bother them.

You start wanting to go out and see people and start your new life before you've even moved out, so you go out with people you really shouldn't be with, to places you wouldn't normally go, because you want to get out of the house and forget and show everyone how okay you are. But most of all, you want to be the one who is moving on the quickest. But then, all you'll want to do is go and tell them about it, because they've now become your best friend, but you can't because it's too weird. Your friends tell you to get someone to fuck as soon as possible. You are now able to do whatever and whoever you want, but the only one you actually want is probably not a good idea.

You drink. A lot. You stop eating, and when you do eat you can't swallow and you feel sick. You lose weight and people comment and you like it because it's one positive thing to come out of it all. You're drinking on an empty stomach and you can't get anything practical done because you're always pissed. You're useless at work. You say stupid things to people and act like a right twat, all the time thinking you're fooling people that you're fine. But they've been there too, remember?

You move out. The new place is empty and quiet and smells funny and you don't know where the strange noises are coming from. You weren't ready for being alone tonight. You sack off unpacking and go out for a walk. You buy wine and take it home and head straight for facebook to tell everyone how ace everything is. You avoid your bed because it's not yours, and it's empty. You feel excited one minute and think about the possibilities now ahead of you, and the next minute you have your head in your hands. All the songs that come on are sad ones and they ALL apply to you. The Field Mice are a fucking nightmare. You go out for another walk and wish you could bump into someone you know. You have places you could go but you look and feel a mess. You wish you weren't alone. You wish you could feel something, anything, but this. You put up posters to make the place your own, but it still feels like an intrusion on someone else's property. It seems like EVERYONE is out tonight having fun and you are going to be forgotten. It's Saturday night, and you are desperate to find someone else who is at home on a computer, but there's nobody.

You know you've done this to yourself. You're responsible for all of it. It won't sink in. You have gone. You're on your own now. You want a hug and to cry in someone's arms, but you also know you have to do this on your own. And you don't feel like you deserve it anyway because you are the one who finished it. Then the tears come, and they won't stop and it feels like you'll cry forever. You can't breathe and you're shaking and you want to run away but where? You catch sight of your reflection and you look like Gene Simmons and it makes you laugh and then you cry even more because you have nobody to laugh with. You are terrified of nobody ever wanting you. You want to know you can make someone feel good, but not just anyone.

You're on your own now, and it feels most horrible late at night.

Just click send.

2009-10-05T18:46:00.009+01:00

Sometimes you have to put an end to stuff before you get in too deep. I found my conscience today. I guess I realised what felt right for me in the moment isn't right for the people I care about, and some things you have to let go. Or maybe it's just a case of right place, wrong time. Well, whatever, it's done now.

The London nobody knows

2009-10-02T12:41:00.004+01:00

I went to a dark place last night. It was Bronze, and it was Lost Highway, it was a bad neighbourhood of Los Angeles and the dirty depths of London, it was filthy jazz and seedy surf, it was flickers of light and strobes and moments here and moments there and silhouettes and secrets. It was warm and sticky and abstract and anything could happen and anything probably did happen and time didn't matter, so much so that I forgot to check it and went home late. It felt like a dream, but this place exists alright.

Back here in the normal world, where work must be done, my colleague and I counsel each other through our extreme tiredness and explode into tears of laughter over absolutely nothing.

Maybe things really come in threes

2009-09-30T22:27:00.008+01:00

There's nothing more nerve-wracking than waiting for news. This morning, having been told that my potential new flatmate had a few people still to see before making a decision, I had gmail open permanently, my heart doing a little skip every time an email came through. I think I've reported more spam today than ever before.

An hour before I left work, the email came through with the words that I wanted to hear. This kind of luck doesn't usually happen to me. I did a little squeal and made my colleagues jump.

In a couple of weeks I move in to my new flat with a piano and a balcony and a big bed and desk, and out of my four year dust-fest. A fresh new start.

The list is shrinking. But there are still more things to tick off, starting tomorrow when I will say some careless words and hope for the best. Eek!

A new chapter

2009-09-29T21:08:00.009+01:00

I found myself giving advice to a friend the other day, and really getting quite carried away with it. It was good advice, and I realised as I wrote it in the email that I really believed in what I was saying. As well as (hopefully) helping my friend, it also gave me some perspective on things, so I guess it helped us both.

The main jist of it was not to get bogged down by a long list of things you need to do in your life - deal with one thing at a time, take small steps, and don't put pressure on yourself. So on Sunday I took the first step towards getting myself back on the right track, and it is such a relief.

So now I am a single girl again, and it's a great relief to know that whatever I do with my life from this point on will be my own doing, my responsibility.

I'm now faced with the unavoidable stress of divvying stuff up, sorting out finances and finding somewhere to live, but it's kind of exciting. And it seems to be a good time to be going through this, what with all the single friends in my life at the moment who offer gin and great advice, and the general feeling of change in the air.

I stood on the steps of the pub last night blowing smoke into the cool air, and suddenly felt like I could do anything I wanted.

And the list doesn't seem so intimidating now.

I write the songs that make the whole world run away

2009-09-23T22:27:00.005+01:00

Ah bollocks. Every time a new song starts forming in my head, usually late at night while lying in bed (often drunk) or first thing in the morning on the bus (often hungover), and I start thinking I'm onto something, some song comes along and craps all over it.

I'll never be a great songwriter. For one, I can only write anything half-decent when I'm either deliriously happy or utterley miserable.

Right now my emotions are such a fucking rollercoaster that I can't stay in one headspace long enough to write anything. The music I love the most doesn't inspire me to write, it just tells me that nothing I do can ever be this good. What's the point if it can't be that good? I don't want to write anything half-arsed.

When I get a song in my head, I don't get melodies or notes or basslines. I get the whole fucking thing. I don't have the ability to pick it apart and hear individual bits. I get the way it looks and feels, but how can I explain that to a guitarist or a bass player? Maybe I should draw it.

I want to do something new outside of Pocketbooks, with a new set of people, but they will just think I'm bonkers.

Someone invent an internal dictaphone?

These records will save me

2009-09-21T09:42:00.001+01:00

In fact at the moment I am kind of clinging to them like a cubby. They've rescued me on more than one occasion, and no matter what happens and how crappy life becomes, I know they will always be there when I need them.

These are the records that I never ever get tired of, that give me the same thrill every time I play them. On days when I don't feel like listening to anything (yes, I have those) but I also don't want to listen to the guy behind me on the bus snorting into his Financial Times, I put one of these on, and I find I did want to listen to something after all. In fact, I've not felt like listening to anything but all week.

These records entirely fill my head with music and push everything else out of the way. Nothing else exists. And like fortune cookies, they always mean what you want them to at the time.

There's this ancient knot inside my chest, it works its way into my throat / will not let these stories out / refusal works, it always wins / too much thought, too few grins

If these records were the only things I had left in the world, it wouldn't be so bad.

The internet

2009-09-20T19:26:00.003+01:00

It's a funny thing, isn't it? Brilliant, but also really horrible.

A conversation in the pub with Marianthi last week got me thinking. She has never had a Facebook or a Myspace or anything like that, so doesn't miss it. I kind of envy her, as she's not obssessed about how many people are online, and where the fuck has that person gone, and why hasn't this person answered my email even though I can see them playing Farmville. She takes life as it comes, and that's nice.

My friend C has recently deleted her Facebook account, and says she feels liberated. She, like me, was constantly on it, posting and feeling like you have to let everyone know you've just eaten some toast. What the fuck? It seems so stupid. I'm beginning to realise I don't want everyone to know every fucking thing I'm doing or where I'm going to be at 8.30pm on a Thursday. No wonder I have nothing to say to people, I've said it all online already. I'd like to surprise people by turning up to something, and be surprised to see them. A bit of spontaneity. Remember that?

And remember before we had mobile phones when you made arrangements to meet someone, and you just trusted each other to be there? And if they didn't turn up, you might've stood like an idiot for a few minutes checking your watch in a rainy pub doorway, but then you'd go home and think 'oh well' and move on. Nowadays, you'd send them a billion text messages demanding an ETA, and you'd probably be pissed off.

I heard on Friday that my employers are monitoring Facebook use and thinking about banning it. There are a lot of us on there when we should be working, commenting on each other's pages about how, huhuh, we're on there not working.

Wouldn't it be nice if, instead of doing that, we walked over to each other's desks instead and hung out for a while, or went for a cigarette break together, or had a chat in the kitchen over coffee, and perhaps, maybe, even arrange to go out for a drink! But I don't, because I already know that they can't make it, because I already know where they'll be at 5.30pm on a Wednesday, don't I.

So maybe it's a good thing if my work ban it. But will I ever delete my account? I dunno, probably not, but it's a nice thought.

Brighton rocks

2009-09-20T18:48:00.003+01:00

Brighton is officially good for your health. C is the one person in the world I feel I can tell everything to, and probably knows me better than anyone on earth. We've known each other so long that she's seen me at my very best and worst moments. I miss her terribly, although she's only really down the road. It's also nice to talk to someone outside the indie coccoon. I have some amazing friends here, but I always feel like I don't let it all out.

In fact, I was reluctant to come back to London, and as the train came closer to it, the feeling of dread started returning. For the hours I was in Brighton, I was safe and happy. That's not to say I would want to leave London - we all need a refuge, and Brighton is one of mine. I just came back knowing that I have to sort my head out and I have to do it now. It scares the bejesus out of me.

DJed at How Does It Feel last night. It was an amazing night, but I just felt like I was on a different planet to everyone else, and it upset me that I couldn't force myself to enjoy it as much as I should have. I don't think endless gins on an empty stomach helped though, nor the lack of sleep. I couldn't coordinate myself to dance properly, couldn't hold a conversation, and probably looked massively awkward too. Oh and someone told me something I really didn't wanna know.

I'll be back to normal tomorrow, I promise.

I do like to be beside the seaside

2009-09-18T12:47:00.001+01:00

I constantly have that feeling of wanting or lacking something, but I'm not sure what it is. I'm currently tearing strips off my own mind to get to the root of it.

Off to Brighton in a few hours, so I get both thinking (and staring) time on the train journey, plus seeing my awesome friend and have a good catch-up. Been feeling like girl time more than ever. Actually, never had this many girl friends before. They rock.

There's something about the sea that clears my mind, so hopefully a combination of all these things will mean I come back to London all focused and stuff. Either that, or severely hungover.

Anew

2009-09-10T13:53:00.002+01:00

It seems like a good time to start a fresh blog. Autumn always brings a certain creativity and a wish to do new things and change parts of my life.

I'll probably write here sporadically, but don't hold yer breath, like.