Haworth

Last week I went on a family trip to Charlotte Bronte's house in Haworth, Yorkshire.

Edie!

Inspired by the post below, Edie Sedgwick. Ever since I saw the movie my hemlines have been getting shorter and shorter.

Inspiration and Suffocation

There's an almost constant pain just above my right eye. I have an overwhelming desire to be creative, almost to the point of where I want to start destroying things in the hope it will be vaguely artistic.

For months now I've been suffering from 'zine block'. This is much the same as writers block except I can still write, it's just that nothing seems to be coherent or inspiring enough to form something solid, printable. There's no zine, just pages and pages of words that bare no relation to those before or after. It's a literary case of pasta jewellery.

As I dotted the full stop on the final sentence of University (available at all good distros), I was opening the first sentence to the follow-up. In my head at least. Many ideas have swam solar-plexus-like around my head, in and out of my nose, mouth and ears for the past six months, almost relentlessly. Mostly these do not come to fruition. I've hit an idea I thought genius, researched it, created art with it, written a few pages - clicked it to the recycle bin. There's not enough scope for a sizable zine. I've often thought of turning all these useless ideas into a compilation zine of sorts. The thing is, I'm not a fan of this kind of zine. There hasn't been one I've read with the genius to move me. I like novels, I like a concept. I'm a Cursive fan for heavens sake. A concept makes something whole. A tiny package of feelings and hope with two staples piercing its soul.

Yesterday I photocopied what will quite possibly be the last batch of University. I've thought of a follow-up, a sequel of sorts. There's not much else I can write; I only dearly love those people and miss then to madness. I have many more tales and frantic journal entries but neither they nor I would want some of those stories priced at two bucks on zine symposium tables across the world. Not that they have any idea I've immortalised them on photocopied A4 sheets, currently on shelves from Tokyo to Toronto. I try not to imagine the confused looks of horror that would take over their faces.

Inspire me. I'm putting the kettle on.

Ciao, Manhattan

You know you're back in Scotland when, after 5 minutes (okay, three days...) you spy with hungry eyes, Sir Bob of Fairfoull. Oddly however, it wasn't in Edinburgh but Glasgow where I bumped into my favourite Bob smoking outside Topshop on Buchanan Street. He discarded his cigarette and scurried inside where, looking so bored he might throw himself through the window, he followed an unimaginitive looking girl around the t-shirt section for what must have seemed like an eternity.

I haven't updated this blog in a while. I've been super busy (read: super lazy). Here are some things...

After two days of wandering around Edinburgh trying to find a cinema showing the film we wanted to see (because buying a paper would be far too easy!), I went to the 'movies' for the first time since Harry Potter and the (film based on a couple of pages from the novel) Goblet of Fire and saw the much (unneccessarily) hyped Factory Girl. Granted, I was slightly pre-occupied with eating my large tub of ice cream before it melted all over Becky's beloved Balenciaga, but I walked out of the cinema after two rather uneventful hours wondering why I didn't get the point, what the point was, or whether there was even a point at all. My out of date student card got me a 70p discount on a film I should never have paid to see.
I love Edie. As women go, she's at the top of my list for just about every redeeming feature posessed my human-kind. Plus the thigh-high hemlines, ecentric dangly earrings and overall wild insanity - three of my favourite things, all single-handedly invented by pixie-faced-loon Edith Minturn Sedgwick. So I went to the cinema full of expectation and left disappointed. The most obvious culprit? Sienna Miller. She was an actress in a film, I get it... but film is art and they say art imitates life, and Sienna isn't a convincing Edie. Painted eyebrows and brown contact lenses just could not turn the tanned, blue eyed, pointy nosed and freckled blonde Sienna into the pale, large brown eyed and button nosed, natural brunette Edie. Surely someone like Natalie Portman would have been a better choice. Even Winona.
Secondly, the plot. The sub-title The Idiots Guide to Edie Sedgwick would have been appropriate. I guess if you happened to be turning up to this film with no prior knowledge then hey, what a story... but if you've read any of the biographies of Edie published over the past 20 years (I like Jean Stein's Edie: American Girl) you'll notice the gaping holes and lack of explanation make Factory Girl some kind of deformed and incompleted jigsaw. Her story is so much more than nice, innocent girl moves to New York and befriends Andy Warhol, has been apparently sexually abused by her father, cuts off hair, shags Bob Dylan, falls out with Andy, becomes depraved drug addict, returns home to California, dies - I deplore you to discover it.
Still, it was nice to see Edie get some long-overdue credit and I enjoyed the music and cinematography. The ice cream was delicious too.

So, there you have it. - an on the spot and unfathomable review of Factory Girl. And now I've completely forgotten what else I had to write about.

Tea in the garden

The First and Last Make-up Post

I like music more than(almost) anything else, especially if it plays on old-fashioned formats. I also like make-up (yes, really) because it makes me look less like Wednesday Addams and more like the elfin-featured beauty I've always threatened to be- allegedly.
Two of my favourite cosmetics companies have, in their respective laboratories, that look I imagine like the house Hansel and Gretel found - all covered in candy and cake (minus the evil witch), concocted the above products.

Hard Candy's Mix-Tape compacts have three eye shadows and three lip glosses; and come in three different mixes - Workout, Break-up and Party. And in case you're like me and have no idea how to match make-up shades, the colours coordinate so there's no ending up looking like Boy George. Unfortunately, the lure of dressing up like a 80s pop star is all too much for me and I won't be buying one. Well, honestly, there's nothing I like more than dressing as Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan, but Hard Candy's claim that their compact is "a lot less effort" than making a real mix tape (effort? I ask you...) has me refusing to buy one on principle (not even to empty out the make-up and use to store mints.)

And with money still safely in my purse, there's no excuse not to invest in Benefit's Some Kind-a Gorgeous foundation which, rather excitingly for someone with vinyl-lust, has a record on the lid! It's slightly expensive to be buying just for the packaging, but does claim to be "perfection for your complexion". Whether this is true remains to be seen. I'll let you know.

"Soap"

In a week that saw 15-year-old Amy give birth on the kitchen floor and sexually confused John-Paul and his dysfunctional family visit their first gay bar, Hollyoaks finally got a new opening sequence.
We've reluctantly said goodbye to the days when Kurt Benson charmed the women with his police-chase motorbike antics and the schoolboy Max Cunningham was played by an actor with an abnormally fat face. After 10 years, the blue filmstrip opening featuring many dead and/or date rapist characters has been replaced, and by what?
For perhaps the next decade our week-daily fix of Hollyoakes will begin with a remixed theme tune (quite possibly produced by Kermit the Frog) and selected shots of semi-naked cast members touching themselves provocatively in front of a wind machine. I felt dirty just watching it.
Yet another example of the declining morals of 21st century society.

Monday, Monday...

A sunny everlasting Monday. I'm thinking I got up too early.

The sunshine has forced the daffodils from their leafy cases. The sight of their new yellow petals always gives me a 'first day of the rest of my life' feeling. The newness of spring can be quite inspiring if you're not too busy grumbling to notice it. I get the feeling changes are about to happen.

Monday is a day for thinking and I'm already on my third cup of tea. In keeping with the theme of re-birth, the thought for the day is Idlewild.

Next Monday (I believe) is new album day. I could just direct you here, but that would be cheating and my mind has changed significantly since the last record. It truly is a love/hate affair. Anyway, I haven't heard the album yet. The single, I heard it and I was surprised. Safe to say nothing like I expected but it made me want to twirl around in my very short dress and send the Royal Doulton crashing to the floor. Last time around I was obsessed with the days of 2000 when windows were broken and there were road trips to Orkney. Channel 4 filmed this and made me want to marry Woomble and grow neeps and sip whisky in front of a roaring fire. Now someone else is doing just that and I'm courting a life of spinsterhood. This time I'll be optimistic. He has his solo record to thank for that.

I look forward to hearing the album in its entirety. I might even go as far as ordering it from Amazon because I know I wont get a free copy - the only bands I ever seem to get for review are American groups I've never heard of (and one else ever should.) On a more romantic note, I have an eccentricity about holding the records of those I love in my hands and feeling the grain of the paper inlay on my fingertips. Ritual.

We'll see.

Liebe Nadiah

Sometimes the postman can restore your faith in humanity. Or rather he gets to take the credit for gifts collected and mailed two seasons and thousands of miles away that restore your faith in humanity. We do little to appreciate our worldwide postal service.
I just wanted to say thank you for my mail, Miss Nadiah.

North West Zine Works

University now has a review by the lovely Caroline Tigeress at North West Zine Works. Click here to read and vote till your hearts desire. (You can do this once every 24 hours!)

Distros

University is now available at Parcell Press and Brass Buttons. Give them your money because both are run by beautiful, lovely, dedicated boys.

One hell of a week

One week ago I was at a Propagandi gig in Derby. The building was somewhere I spent a considerable amount of time when I was younger. Around me were all the people I spent that time with. My heart still feels like it's encased in bubble wrap.

When I turned the laptop on this morning, there was nothing. No pictures, no documents, no iTunes and most importantly, no un-submitted yet finished 2006 review article. You know, the one I spent the last two weeks obsessing over. I had an almost uncontrollable urge to leap out of the nearest window. Instead I wandered to the train station and joined the Christmas shoppers on an expedition into the big city. Here I met my oldest friend Nicola for lunch. It's a bit like Sex and the City, I suppose. Except with a few minor alterations. Firstly, you would have to replace New York with a middle-English shit-city, then the trendy Manhattan eatery with our dingy local Starbucks and of course, the four stylish, successful thirty-something women with two unsuccessful twenty-somethings who look like they got dressed in the dark. So, not much like Sex and the City at all really... As for the laptop, a conversation with the man on the helpline two years ago and my obsession with notebooks proved quite useful once I managed to calm down.

New things

Dark red tights from Topshop.

Grey and black top from UO worn as a dress because it's long and I'm short.