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Saturday just about to hit a.m.
So this is the bit where I detail my daily life for one week. Well I'll inevitably prove to be a dullard with appalling English. And a self indulgent one at that. Oh and I'll probably lie about all the famous people I meet. I might do that actually. Yes. Lies. Spot the lies.

So Friday out of the office with that Friday urgency in uncomfortable lady boots ready to feel the weekend. Nowt major planned. Largely due to the fact I haven't had a drink for three weeks and tax bill time looms, so it's bolt the door and get the heating-on-ville at the moment.

I plan on not drinking until Christmas - but as always you dictate to yourself when Christmas actually begins, having done the majority of my Christmas shopping already (I.....am....turning....into my mother), it would appear mine is coming a little early this year. I may just have one nip of sherry on Christmas day and then get high on masses of caffeine and olbus oil instead. Woooooooo! Rock and mo fo roll!

Get in, change out of my evil boots of doom and unfasten my jeans in a post meal eatentoomuch style and sit on the sofa to watch Simpsons through to Corrie. Big man arrives home and proudly shows me his payday purchase. It's 24 series 4.

I have lost my man to '24' again.

He admitted to me today that he loved Keifer Sutherland, in the same way as he loves Damon Albarn. He then asked me if I would want to be intimate with Jack Bauer.

Yes I would love to be intimate with a man who doesn't even have chance to have a p*ss let alone SAVE THE WORLD!

I replied with the correct answer, "I love only you my darling".

I don't like 24, it's high tension to the max full on head pummelling bravado tough guy pumpetty pump grrrrrrrrr psycho madness. I don't watch it, I read my book but the surround sound physically assaults me almost constantly. But I'll sit with him and be abused.

Began a new book on Thursday and have just finished it. It's undoubtedly the best book I've read for a long time. I love biographies. The grittier the better. I have a signed Richie Benaud biog waiting in the wings, but I doubt
that features tales of him and Dicky Bird getting hammered in a Hungarian brothel...it might reveal if he does wear a wig though. Worth a flick.

'A million tiny pieces' by James Frey was so so good. I feel all squishy and satisfied like I've just eaten a Yorkshire pud with gravy. It's the story of James an american lad who at the age of 23 has completely screwed himself over. He's done every substance possible and is slowly killing himself, until he's checked into a rehab clinic...and oddly it's very dark but very funny where you least expect it. 10/10

Lined up next is 'The World according to Jeremy Clarkson'. The sole reason I bought this book was that it was £3.36 in Asda. It's going to be bad. More like eating a huge bowl of Pork Pie jelly.

Saturday
Managed to get fella out of bed for 10 which is pretty good considering he stayed up till 2am licking Keifer Sutherland's pixelated face. We went to the grand union canal again. We did about 10 miles interjected with a good pub lunch and a brew and conker collecting for no reason. Got home about 8. Finished book, felt nice and warm, and then wrote this in my big knicks. The weaving on the computer chair is getting uncomfortable on my apple catching covered buttocks. Bed is calling, I bet's it's half one. Bugger. In bed late again.

Tomorrow I'm off rambling tastic again with a friend from Blackpool around the Grand Union canal. We're going to do 15 miles, pub lunch of course and generally be two hard chicks solely setting out to change the face of rambling for the under 30's females!

I promise to do something exciting this week. It may possibly involve eating some fudge and a clown. 

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Today was the first ace Monday ever...

Regardless of us encountering a few technical cock ups we played a track by Ben who's 6. I wanted to play the whole song, but evil Jahina and Zo both said "Nooooooooooo! People will switch over, it's rubbish, you can't play it." In unison as well. Evil Siamese twins of satan!

They always rein me in, and they're most often right. They poo-pooed my idea to play 'lethal lucky dip' on air, which would have involved a guest sifting through polystyrene shapes to place their hand on a saw, a knife or broken bottle, you just didn't know which one. Oh the suspense...thrilling.

My theory was, that people will not turn the radio over when there's a six year old creating some abstract beats and pouring out his additive overloaded mind like Tom Waits on bourbon. The bleeding song lasted in total 48 seconds (a record surely - TRIVIA FANS?! Must check Cope's back catalogue, though I fear I will go insane). I was allowed to play 20 seconds, when we went on air I stretched it to about 30. Dina repeatedly poked me with her witch like talon (she almost drew blood!) but I resisted with my buff lean Dolph Lundgren-esque upper arm, and we compromised (ahem) on 35 seconds.

You don't turn off the radio to a 6 year old music maverick?! I am going to champion a 6 year old Irish boy. I'll give him 10 years and he'll be huge! He needs to be saved from that evil Mister Louis Walsh who circumnavigates Ireland on a horse drawn cart rounding up the twinkly eyed boys from the Irish villages like an evil pied Piper. Ben needs saving. 6 music can save him. (cue website plug AGAIN) www.shabbyroad.com/ben

Today's classic email exchange with the big man today was once again focused on '24'.

He wrote, "Do you know that you have to be a U.S. citizen to join CTU or the Secret Service. Shame. You only need 3 years of law enforcement to get in and they train you for 11 weeks."

He wants to be Jack Bauer. He even confessed to heading to the 24 website and seriously pondered on buying a CTU bullet proof vest. Good god.

Reading festival began today and once again I felt drawn to the power of Waterstone's. Ended up buying 'The diary of Anne Frank', and 'Electro boy' - which is about an addict who receives electric shock treatment. Just writing that makes me think it's hideously distasteful. Sorry. I am a sicko. And 'Belle De Jour' - the intimate Adventures of a London call girl. A bit of filth does you good. And the 'Collins book of Religion'.

What I really want is the new condensed bible, which you can read in a hundred hours. Or is it a hundred minutes? Either way as long as it misses out the intro where 'Cathius was the daughter of Isrica and Isrica was the daughter of Hibanacus who was the husband of Persanda.........'for about a million hours I'm not fussed. I have read the bible, well very small bits, and I'm familiar with the prodigal son and Mary and Jospeh and the crucifiction and erm, curing lepers and Judas. And I was sent to church for a good ten years. I should be ashamed, especially as the majority of my time was spent getting to know the other younger male members of the congregation intimately.

Basically I wanted to read the bible in an objective fashion and that introduction was a certified sleep inducer. Hence why I never got past it.
But the condensed version is experiencing publishing difficulties Apparently. Ooooh sounds very suspect...The Vatican's not getting their cut I bet you! Spread it...

Tomorrow my friend Charlotte's fella's band is playing in Piccadilly Circus so I'll be avoiding the booze = potential boredom. I might even have a dusty bottle of Kaliber tomorrow. That's if any bars actually sell it anymore?! Well that's my mission tomorrow, to find a bar and pretend to get drunk on musty scented water. Oh and meet a clown and have some fudge obviously. 

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Tuesday Night - Popcorn Hell
Today I woke up on the right side of bed.

I must have done, I bought the big Issue AND spoke to a Jehovah's witness. Now I'm sure even Jehovah's witnesses all know we take the mick out of them, but I tell you what they don't half crack the whip at rounding interested parties up, AND AND check this out! You can go to a bible study group and there's no collection! They specify on their reading matter FREE No collection FREE.

The Methodists apparently give out free cake at their coffee mornings! Ruuuuun!

Anyway I'm being sly. They were both lovely and smiley. And they stopped me to see if I'd be interested in going to one of their services. Well aside from being blunt and just shrieking "Noooooooooooo" at them, I devised a blag immediately. "Well actually I'm currently studying Taoism...."

Silence.

"......Terrorism?"

"No, Taoism"

Cue much laughter as the blood in their faces returns.

(Damn, obliged to stay now due to bonding moment over terrorism mixup 'hilarity')

"Ah so what is the holy book?"

(Balls, that was obviously coming and I haven't managed to look it up yet in my Collins religion book to give an answer).

"Er it doesn't have one, well it does, but it's referred to as the holy scriptures, and we don't give it a name due to...everything in life, it should have freedom, be free from the bondages of.....names...."

(Oh dear god what have I just said)

I've been rumbled now, I'm just going to have to plead insanity. So I made my eyes go wild, or basically opened my eyes really wide and thrust a jaw jut in their face, basically so I thought I resembled a weird dog studying their WatchTower leaflets.

"...Yes yes I will come on Sunday, your bible study session sounds good. Thank you so much for your time, it's been lovely talking to you..." And I legged it in a free spirited Taoist fashion to the bus.

I recall my next door neighbour Mel who was a very spiritual believer of tie dye, and went on ghosts hunts. Basically she's a big hippy. (Go hippies, go hippies!) She used to have them on her doorstep for about 2 hours. The poor sods are probably thinking, 'I've got to get a positive off someone today and this witch won't stop arguing the toss. She's not going to come and to be quite frank, if she did, she'd probably be a royal pain in the arse'.

I won't go on Sunday. I'm scared. But I might have a chat next time they visit, and give them a proper reason for not going when I've studied Zoroastrianism. Yes it does exist.

FACT FANS

The holy book of Taoism is the Tao Te Ching.

Received a CD off a listener today. Hello Martin Evans! For some odd reason I was feeling sinister last week, and happened to exchange a couple of emails with him and somehow it turned out he would send me a shady CDR collection of all the variations of Jean Michael Jarre's 'Popcorn' he could find. I for some bizarre reason listened to it all prior to the show, and by the end I felt I'd just drunk several litres of organic straw filtered scrumpy - which by the way tastes of sh*t. High on crap. It's the way forwards Kids.

Oh for the record they were all awful even the Aphex Twin interpretation, which was oddly quite conventional, and yep you've guessed it. Crap.

I decided not to play it. Wisely I think for once. Otherwise we could have a repeat of my wedding DJing stint in February with my possible genius-in-theory tune choice. Black Lace - Superman . Tumbleweed moment of shame. DJ Spanner.

Thank you Martin, I'll send you something equally horrendous soon.

Hey I've just found something mental. Check this mother load out.

*************
Even if YOU don't know what faith you are, Belief-O-MaticTM knows. Answer 20 questions about your concept of God, the afterlife, human nature, and more, and Belief-O-MaticTM will tell you what religion (if any) you practice...or ought to consider practicing.

Warning: Belief-O-MaticTM assumes no legal liability for the ultimate fate of your soul.

*************

Nice disclaimer.

I'll have a look at that tomorrow, it's late, it's been a long day, I saw my friend Adam's band (The Reflections), didn't find any Kaliber, and felt self conscious all night, knowing I shouldn't have put on 3 inch heels as I reached 6ft 2 and felt like a butch lady boy.

Midweek feeling, bring that on...

Laters sweet cheeks V x 

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Wednesday
Late night doing blog, did gig and watched a little bit of Ronnie Barker's tribute. Was up till half one last night, so a bit knackered this morning and joined the flock on auto pilot to work. Today may have to be lie day. Or random tangent day.

I've been doing a bit of yoga before work. But not this morning. It's ten minutes a morning and it's done by some Rosemary Conley type character called Barbara Curren, and she's there on the screen looking about 40 when you know she's about 80, and looks amazing in her white gloss unitard looking like an flexible angel who's has come from on high to rescue you with her ease and peace. She also appears to be quite two dimensional so I'm trying not to like her that much. Bloody hell it's hard work. I will beat her though! Oh yes; watch your ass Curren ...

The bus driver went a bit too fast this morning. It's quite exciting riding what appears to be an out of control double decker. The worst is overpacking the buses. One driver must have had a bet with himself to fit 200 people onto one bus. He screwed my leg over in the door and I didn't even have the balls to scream blue murder (as is permitted uniquely on EVERY bus in London ). I just cried my eyes out on the bus. And blushed tomato red. Ah the blushing infliction of faux gingerism has given me the ginger reds. Nobody gets angry like a ginger. It's unique and very scary.

The reading and writing campaign is going well. Saw it this morning on a promo on the TV. Though I have been trying to avoid the box in a bid to actually witness life as it passes me by. But something draws me to the vacuous personality of Natasha Kaplinsky. Miss Perfect is the added sweetener to my porridge and morning liquorice tea.

TV is so evil, I wish it had never been invented. I narrowly missed out on 'How clean is your house? ' - Thank god, though I do oddly like Kim (The big bouffant one) very much, she's just hard as nails. And there is a certain appeal of seeing a nasty dog being corrected by that Bonnie Langford wannabee in "it's the me or the dog". It's merely survival interests obviously, should nuclear fallout come, I'm sure the skill of animal whispering may be helpful within a small community of survivors.

My Dad had a dog called Don. He was an English bull terrier. He never had the snip and thus spent many hours humping any limb he could find. He was a lovely affectionate dog fed on curry which made him a little unsocial able, but he never bit a human... However he did kill about 3 dogs and injured a few more. Of course these 'fights' came about by accident, when Don escaped or one of my dads regulars (he had a pub) let him out of his pen. He didn't directly kill them, more manslaughter. He went for easy pickings, yappy rat type dogs who have no point whatsoever.

Don should have been put down in fairness, but my Dad was 6ft 7 and weighing in at 20 stone. He was also a former policeman and boxer so no one said a word... I was walking a neighbour's dog 'Fergie' - an ace mongrel who was salt and pepper with a ginger goatee and Don got out and attacked her one day. Well, it was divided affections and I ran promptly to grab a broom stick and beat him as hard as I could. It worked thank god. Fergie wasn't too badly injured and Don as ever skipped a merry retreat blowing off Rogan Josh in every direction.

National Peel day is coming on the 13th October. Someone on the message boards has geniously come up with the idea of letting the presenters play their own choices all day. In theory I think this is a great idea, but the reality would be taking the p*ss a bit. I'd probably end up airing my Popcorn compilation, and driving poor Keith in Monmouth insane.

I think it should be a day to encourage people to go out and see new music or weird and wonderfully bad music. I remember listening to John when I was about 14 and getting into alternative music in quite a big way. I used to make notes about tracks he played and plan to buy them one day when my paper round afforded it and I wasn't too busy spending it on Kiwi and Apple 20/20, but then I made the switch to commercial radio as I was working in it and had to adopt a smooth cheese infused feel to my voice so I began to listen to local stations in the North West and recite to perfection such classic phrases as "Blackpool's Tower of Power - the Wave 96.5".

But back to John, last year was weird. I'd never seen so many emails come in to the studio. Some of them in celebration, some people genuinely upset that he had gone so quickly and some of them made me cry. It was a hard day, it broke in my show and I wasn't prepared at all. Yes we led out of the news with Teenage Kicks, but then that's one strikingly obvious cliche we had to go with. I didn't know how to react to the overwhelming sense of loss from listeners. When in doubt stick to the 'shut up and play the songs' rule. So this year I think it's time to party. I just don't know what I want to do yet...any ideas? Let me know what you're doing for it. It may cajole my hibernated mind into action.

Oh the belief-o-matic note, I have been advised that my thoughts and theories on life make me a Neo Pagan. Ha. I knew as much. Bloody hippy.

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Thursday
So the final day of the blog and in evaluation I'm quite glad it's over, then I don't have to see how dull my life is in front of my eyes. For those of you who expected it to be rock n roll orgies down Primrose Hill (-Kate) then I apologise, and especially for that cheap Kate gag.

And it's all since I gave up the booze. Why are the only tee total presenters writing blogs? (Hello brother Collins!) Does anyone really give a monkey's? No. But hell, I've probably done more writing since my last minute 3am pro plus infused bit of GCSE coursework. And that's the nature of the Reading Festival week, so that'll do me...I hope you've enjoyed it, and I hope literally 10s of baby blogs are born from this moment on...and I hope my annoying bastardisation of the English language hasn't made you want to punch me in the face.

Work was good today, but then Thursday's are generally good. The weekend is coming, I get to play a bit more, dance in celebration, oh and go rambling of course. Apparently Janet Street Porter is a big fan of long distance trekking, which isn't really a name you want to drop in the credibility stakes, Oh and Jean Claude Van Damme is as well. That's a moderately better fabrication.

We had Andrew Harrison in from Word magazine who gave some great advice on writing album reviews and getting stuff published. I also spoke to Marc Riley in his 'moment', which is always something to look forward to, a bit too much it would seem, as I also had an aircheck or a snoop, where you and 'T' Boss go over a show and examine it. That went well. Apart from a deserved criticism which was Marc's moment. I have a huge amount of respect for Marc, as I was a Mark n Lard fan, and to be honest I'm still a bit "...it's a radio hero of mine on the phone...?!!!!!"

I wrote to them when I was 17 I think asking if I could help out on the show. They replied with an autograph. I wanted a job, but it softened the blow I guess. So I've got to play it cool. But that will progress naturally I'm sure as we start to interact more, and he invites us up for Christmas and we become great mates and we ask him and his lovely wife to be godparents to our beautiful baby, so that he can never leave...ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ha. I approached Mark n' Marc in the Lomax in Liverpool in about 2001 at a tiny Strokes gig. Telling them I loved them, as is of course necessary in any celebrity introduction, and asked them both for a kiss (not necessary, slightly frightening). Now Mr Radcliffe was very forthcoming, but Mr Riley's face took on a contorted feel of "Urgh! urgh! get away from me you mad witch." Of course his response was completely valid. That same night I also sniffed Julian Casablanca's armpit. It was Liverpool , crazy bad ass stuff goes on up there...

Julian smelt sweeeeeeeeet.

"You can tell 'em, I'll be glad when you get off the computer so I can do my coursework." That was him, '24' blond afroed 6ft 4'er putting his beta male stamp about the house. We've hardly seen each other this week, well we have but certainly not actually spoken due to our conflicting computer schedules. He's accused me of having an affair with the man in the study cabinet.

Must have hedonistic fun soon though. And you can bet you won't be hearing about it when I do. Coming up I've got a few gigs, Superthriller, Sufjan Stevens, Who made Who, I might try and see the Fall and I'll try and get to Louis XIV, a chicks only trip to Amsterdam, and a camping trip in The New Forest in early November for some sadistic reason. I might also start running next week as I pick up on my health kick.

Here's how the blog could have been in 2001 when I lived in the mighty 'pool.

I was 22 and just out of a rubbish relationship, I decided not to eat an awful lot, but drink a hell of a lot. 5 nights out of 7 I'd be bladdered. I am just a statistic in the female binge drinkers' phenomenon, of which of course I've well earnt a laydee beer belly. My how proud I am. I resemble a Nordic farmer's wife at the age of 27.

Put it this way within 2 years, a man had wet himself on my couch, I'd had my heart broken by a Jeff Buckley loving wise crackin scouser who scarpered from my china town flat twice and had to scale an 8ft wall to escape from me. We lived for days with no heating or hot water due to no-one having any money to spend on the meter. My sister had to sleep in the same double bed as me and my 'date' - (I have been forgiven). I shared a flat with a doorman who had a severe addiction to steroids; a girl who was afraid of bananas and a landlord who wouldn't let me leave his house because he was so lonely.

You see that makes for a good read. If I'd have thrown in an addiction and a few groupie encounters (well more than there were), and an affair with a PM I'd be laughing, a book deal, sorted. Ah well, my 5 pages of blog will suffice...thanks for reading, all 4 of you...

Now get writing and make EastEnders good again, someone?! No infact don't. I've got War and Peace to read. 

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