Girls Get Busy!

I also got a chance to take a photo of mine and Lydia's matching tattoos!

I love having a matching tattoo with such an awesome lady!

Goldsmiths Ladyfest

On Thursday it was the annual Ladyfest week at Goldsmiths and me and Lydia were invited along to the band night to dj, something neither of us could pass up on!

Being the dj is equal parts terrifying and exciting, you get to be in control of what everyone is listening (and hopefully) dancing too, so it's always fun to slip in a few things they might not be expecting and it's a great way to get loads of people to listen to unheard of bands that you love! When I dj at Girl Germs I'm always pretty sure people are going to like the stuff I play, so Kathleen Hanna screaming or Kat Bjelland yelping always go down well. But when your in a room full of people at someone else's event, you're not always so sure what's going to go down well, and it didn't help that it was at Goldsmiths where everyone is far too cool...and that seems to be how it went down, there was a lot of foot tapping and smiles but no one broke out any crazy moves, even to Deceptacon!

Even for the lack of dancing it did seem like people enjoyed our set and we got lots of people asking what the songs were.

But, on to more important things, the bands! First on were the bracelettes who played super fast but were just as cute, kind of like a Japanese Ramones!

 

Then it was Pens who I'd heard a lot about, not all good...but that was definitely proved wrong. They looked cute as a button, like the cast of Sweet Valley High, and they sounded bratty and like they just didn't care in the best way possible. I think the thing I liked most was that they looked like they were having an awesome time and that just made them sound great even though they didn't have the best instruments...I think that's my favourite thing about what seems to be a mini grrrl band revival, it's so inspiring seeing girls forming bands cos they can and want to and not taking themselves too seriously like the endless poser-indie-boy-bands you always see. 

                      

Next up it was Wet Dog. If you don't already, you need to have this band in your life. They were just so amazingly cool, like really blasé and confident, but really bouncy and excited at the same time! By the end of their set I had declared my love for the drummer! They had a really unique sound, jangly and angular, but also fluid with the three vocals and all the in instruments rolling off each other. They are way too heard to describe, I guess you could say they sounded like the Au Pairs, Raincoats and Slits... but just go just listen to them!

 

The last band were Veronica Falls who I think sound like the perfect jangly apocalyptic pop band. Some of the guitar riffs are just absolute perfection. But even though I think they sound wonderful, they just seem to fit the night, either they've taken the aloof hipster thing too far, or they were just bored. They didn't seem to have a clue what Ladyfest was about, or really care. Maybe it was all the boys they have in the band (ha!). Either way, their attitude made me like them a little bit less.  

                      

It was really inspiring to be in a room filled with so many different and awesome ladies (and gents!). I just wished every gig I went to was as good and lady-friendly.

Saved by Zines

 

image by moirabot 

Just lately it's felt like my life has been crumbling away from around me.

January is never a great month, it's cold, it's grey and the thought of a whole new year ahead of me tends to terrify me rather than inspire me (at least in January anyway, all January makes me want to do is sleep). I usually just try and see it through until the 27th which my birthday and then it's February. For me it feels that when I've had my birthday the year begins, I always make a new years resolution list on 1st February.


But this year, by the second week of January I had been evicted and I no longer had a room to hibernate in. I was given a weeks notice by my landlord to move out, so by the time I had realised what was happening I was unpacking my bag of things in Dan's room.

I don't really know why, but where I live, and having somewhere I like living and feel comfortable has been a really important thing for me my whole life. I've always felt if I have a place I can feel safe and have my things around me I can use it as a base to do anything I want to do. And when it all gets too much I can hide myself away in there.

I really enjoy living with Dan and being able to see him everyday, and I am really grateful to Les and Crissi (who own the house) to let me stay there. But that's the thing, I'm staying there rather than living there. And I guess it makes me sound a bit precious, but not having somewhere that I can call my own really started to get to me. Mixed in with what feels like the utter hopelessness of trying to find a new place, I felt like the year was never going to really get started for me.

On the 13th of February it was the alternative press fair and I went along and picked up a few zines from Tukru. When I got home I devoured them all in minutes, just reading words that echoed my own feelings and thoughts written by girls just like me made me feel so much better. It made me so much happier to know that other people were feeling the way I was, and were managing to do something productive and creative with it.

I've been working on the second issue of Pillow Talk for about three years. Yeah, three years. I've finished it about 10 times, but everytime just ripped it up. But suddenly after reading all these amazing zines I was finally inspired enough to finish and feel I had said something worthwhile. And my sudden need for anything zine related has spurred on a few other things, like me and Lydia are making a women and tattoo contribution zine and I travelled down to Brighton to go to the Zine fest there.

So this year will be the year of the zine!

image by sarah mcneil

Home

My parents think I should leave London and move to Cambridge. Get myself a nice job and a nicer little house. When I was walking around Cambridge yesterday the idea seemed so tempting, there were hundreds of people on bikes, cobbled paths, lovely shops and beautiful parks. It would be cheap(er) and I would be near my family.

Sometimes I wonder what I am actually staying in London for. Slowly, I think I am beginning to realise that London isn’t paved with as much gold as I thought it was. I love that there is so much to do here, but surely things happen outside of London.

At the moment I am living in my boyfriends room and will probably end up lodging somewhere, and I work as a temp. I am completely on the fringe. No real home, no real job, and no real money…so I can’t even really afford to do the things London can offer me.

But I can’t leave, I can’t give up that dream that got me out of my smalltown. I can’t leave Dan. As sad as that sounds, but I just can’t. As much as I don’t want to rely on someone else, I want him around. I would be so lonely, so surely that would take away the fun of moving somewhere else.

I want somewhere to feel like home, I’ve moved boroughs just about every year I have been in London so I have never really got to know one. And I left the town I grew up in when I was 8 to an even smaller town, so neither of them felt like home.

I don’t know what I really want or where I want to belong.

Rubbish.

I was forwarded and email today from my landlord, he wants another £600 from us, which I really don't think he's entitled to. So looks like it's going to end up in court or something equally horrific. I'm going to have to go to Citizen's Advice on Monday, which I'm really not looking forward too. Last time they were extremely unhelpful. I imagine I will be leaving there in tears not knowing where esle to turn. If it ends up that I have to pay all of this (on top of the bills and cancellation charges we got for moving out early) I will have spent all of my savings which was meant to be for a deposit. So I'll be back to square one and have to start saving another £1000, I'm only earning £270 a week so that's going to take a while.

And in other happy news, the awesome couple Dan lives with (and I am staying with at the moment) have decided to split up after around 20 years together, so it looks like Dan will have to move as well. It's just so sad, for the longest time I have help them up as my ideal relationship, but even that couldn't last.

Vivian Girls

image from last.fm 

 I went to see Vivian Girls last night, and it was sooo good! It was at the Hoxton Bar and Grill (where it was £5.20 for a rum and coke!) The support band was Veronica Falls and they were ace! It was a 2 girl and 2 boy combo with lots of harmonies and jangly guitars. Perfect!

Vivian Girls were amazing, it's a shame they only come to England about once a year. They are my absolute favourite band, everything about them is perfect, and they were so good last night. They played lots of b-sides and a new song, and they even played my favourite song which I think they've only played once before! It was so inspiring seeing a group of slightly awkward girls with tattoos playing cheap guitars that they taught themselves how to play as they went along. I really want to be in a band!

Birthday!

illustration by circlesquaretriangle

This week is my birthday week! For the longest time I have always insited that the whole week that my birthday happens to be on has to be full of  fun things. So I have an exciting week planned, today, well won't be so exciting, but will be lovely as I'm going to the library for a few hours then curling up in bed with some strawberry shortbread.

Tuesday I am going to see Vivian Girls. I can't explain how excited I am about this!! Then on Wednesday, my actual birthday I am going to see The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus at the Prince Charles cinema. I really wanted to see it when it first came out but for some reason I missed it, so it was a nicr coincidence that it's on again on my birthday! Then on Thursday I am going to see the free-jazz saxophonist Peter Brotzmann and then on Friday I am going home to see my family and eat a big chocolate cake my mum has baked for me.

I wish every week was this good!

Moving

image by katie shelton

As I was just settling into the new year and new routines my whole world gets thrown upside down. I got evicted. Long story, but basically it was leave now or go through months of court orders and losing money. We both had somewhere we could stay for the short term so we left. Right now I am writing this sitting on my boyfriend's bed. Being the super lovely person he is he's let me stay with him until  find somewhere else. So, some good's come out of it already, I'm really looking forward to living with him again, I just hope we don't annoy each other after getting used to our own space and company.

So now I have to find somewhere else to live. A huge part of me just wants to curl up in a ball underneath Dan's bed, I don't want to move again. I was just getting comfortable in my old flat and starting to make it feel like a home but now yet again I am moving. In the last ten years I have lived in 11 houses. I just don't know any more what it is like to have a home, everywhere I've lived has just been somewhere I'll have to move out of in a few months.

Also, I'm going to have to move into a flatshare cos I can't afford to get somewhere by myself. I don't want to live with strangers. I did it before and it was shit. I hate the fact that I had a lovely flat in a great part of London and now I have nothing and I'm going to have to crawl around London selling myself to strangers whose house I'm going to move into. I'm scared. What if I move in and they turn out to be horrible and ignore me like the last flatshare I lived in?

Girl Germs

I did some drawing today for the next Girl Germs clubnight. I really need to get a new cable for the scanner, so I don't have to keeping posting these terrible photos.

We're making a website for the night, which will hopefully also turn into a distro as well. When this picture is coloured (I appear to have lost my coloured pencils) and if Lydia and Mel like it, it will be the front page of the website:

need to sort the girl germs bit out.

And this is going to be the flyer for the next Girl Germs (I'll make a proper post about the night soon):

 

Poor

image by flamenconut

Another week of having no bloody money. Cos I work for a temp agency I have to build my holiday up week by week, so for every week I work I earn a half a day of holiday. They sure are generous. But because their holiday year starts in October there hadn't been enough weeks for me to build up enough holiday to even cover the days the office was shut over Christmas. So this week I got paid less than half what I usually do. Sigh.

It's just so frustrating, there are so many things I want to do, but they all involve money! Even things that would eventually be free and a good way to spend my time not spending money are going to cost a lost to get started with. I really want to start regularly drawing, but I don't have any decent paper or pencils. I want to start crafting but I can't afford any materials. I can't even photocopy my zine. I feel so stuck, I just can't see any way out of it.

Hopefully my chest infection will be better by next week and I can start cycling to work, that will save me a whopping £16 a week. I guess it's a good thing I've got a lot of reading to catch up on.