I Go To A Fenland Literary Festival, Drink Ale I Don't Like And Converse Briefly With Renowned Documentary-Maker And Humorous Journalist: A Report

Level of conviction in own genius: 7
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: arranging: 1; poems: 1
Reading / Listening: ‘The Corrections’ by Jonathan Franzen / ‘Pink Cigarette’ by Mr Bungle, my new favourite song
Hair Day: bedecked with turquoise-green flower to match scarf and slightly lurid eyeliner

Bestowed my artistic largesse on the provinces last weekend by attending Cambridge Wordfest , part-organised by my finger-in-several-bookish-pies love. The first day involved much rain filling a wide puddle between an early morning slot with Lavinia Greenlaw and a very late-night one with some Open Mic slam poetry. Greenlaw was discussing her recent book, ‘The Importance of Music To Girls’, a pithily-titled book I read with not a small amount of (envy-tinged) irritation, seeing as it’s very little about music other than some overheatedly-rhapsodic poeticisms on a 70s disco track or two, and mostly about her angsty growing up. It may be snootiness but I’m not convinced how much she really knows about music; I really wanted to ask her who she preferred these days: Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong or Does It Offend You, Yeah? The evening slam was a bit stilted and crusty but I was inspired enough to pen some poems in the delightful Cambridge Blue pub on my unerringly optimistic willingness to taste Andy’s ales though unfailingly finding them rank. Here is one:

VALE BLACK BEAUTY PORTER
the candlelight plumbs
for rubies, lodged low
in this gothic, opaque,
sweet scum-covered
fairytale dark bog

it tastes like
an unwanted golden shower

Sunday saw us do a bit general brain spit ‘n’ polishing, a high-minded literary marathon that took in a talk by charming economist (not as paradoxical as you’d think! Economics is everywhere you see, in crime, dating, dieting!) Tim Harford, hard-bitten media debate with Adrian Monck and Allison Pearson and the-world-is-overconsuming rants by John Naish and ‘Shoreditch Twat’ founder and burner of brands Neil Boorman. Andy had introduced them all so I was eyeing him up rather a lot of the time but really, it was very inspiring. The perky, lemony icing on this rather wholemeal cake was a giggly hour with Jon Ronson, he of brilliantly deadpan documentaries about extremists who believe that human-lizard hybrids secretly rule the world on the one hand, and witty Guardo Weekend columns on the mortifyingly excruciating minutiae of life on the other. He was game, self-deprecating and wrigglingly funny.

We bumped straight into him at the station and he said a cheery hello, miraculously having recognised us from the back of the theatre. I beamingly gushed how much I’d enjoyed his most entertaining talk, which he seemed marvellously over-pleased about, before I skipped away to M&S on light feet as I always do having come into contact with a Real-Life Celebrity who is nice to me. We of course knew that he would be on the same train as us returning to civilisation, but resolved to stay well back; being a popular humorous journo, he would want some time alone rather than having to converse with us mere simpering minions. Respectfully then, we studiously avoided him on the platform but turned to find him at our shoulders. We headed purposefully away down the train carriage but he ended up sitting right next to us, and giving us a studiedly awkward grin and a wave. I started to worry that actually he would really like some company (we are an arty, magnetic couple after all) and that it appeared we didn’t have the slightest interest in talking to him further. Unsure which way to swing, I squinted inquisitively at his book which he held up: Nick Hornby. I showed him Neil Boorman’s tome (I had borrowed Andy’s copy to get it signed: NB was so chuffed that someone had come up to the unattended author’s table that I didn’t dare admit I hadn’t bought it and spent the next half an hour determinedly ignoring Andy in case he saw us together and was crushed) and gave him the gist, whilst inwardly cursing my incredible rudeness at shoving a book by another of the day’s authors in his face rather than holding one of HIS. Collectively, we briefly tried to remember the name of the artist who also burnt all his possessions on Oxford Street. We failed, and JR said, ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it’, which is SURELY the wrong way round! WE should have been the ones leaving HIM to it! He must have wanted train buddies. I’d gone about it totally badly, when I could have made a new urbane celebrity friend. Desperately hoping to make amends, I spent the rest of the journey looking as arty as possible (manuscript out, editing poems with a pen-chewing frown, talking loudly to Andy about his economics books), hoping he would engage us in conversation again, whilst of course studiously avoiding his occasional glances up. He gestured to me: my last chance to spark off a potentially lifelong friendship! ‘Michael Landy. That was the artist’, he said. ‘Oh yes’ I smiled, non-committal, and went back to my book. Rubbish. I’d reverted back to my achingly pathetic non-flirting teenage self, when I was in love with a long-haired boy for four years but could only hide behind my hair and whimper when he looked over, except now it was in a non-sexual celebrity-pal-wanting way. Self-defeated, I resigned myself to fantasising about JR writing his next column about us and how we’d tried to avoid him; how he’d been happy to talk but that we were far too cool and uninterested to reciprocate. Jon, how wrong you would be! Sigh.

Kerry Andrew, Thespian

Level of conviction in own genius: 8.8
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 3 actorly hours
Hair day: bit flat

It's not everyone who can say that they made their professional acting debut in Wigmore Hall, but that's precisely what I chalked up yesterday. With my only previous experience being one of the minor nuns as a postgrad. in a charity version of 'The Sound of Music' (complete with slightly burlesque swinging crucifixes, ouch), I appeared on the gleam-wooded stage of the WH as the Soldier in a family concert version of Stravinsky's brilliantly quirky 'A Soldier's Tale'. I was originally employed only as a workshop leader, but kept being asked to do a bit more: sing a song written by primary school kids to be slotted into the show (no problemo!); say a couple of lines to help fill out the script (hell, why not?!); say quite a few lines complete with proper costume, props and the rest in authentic actorly way (er, gulp, ok...). But I loved it. I guess the minor drama queen in me was given a run around, and what with being given fab direction by lovely James who narrated and was mostly in charge, and bouncing off Proper Actor Ben, who both hammed it up marvellously and slithered around in blazing-eyed terrifying fashion as the Devil, got by decently. I opted for a boyish, naturalistic method approach, only talking in understated Cockney all week and saluting people in the street, etc. Ahem, not really. I did have to get over the fact that I was not going to look sexy in my boxy army jacket and oversized hat. Once I did that, I channelled my inner Prince Harry and revelled in my extremely temporary spotlight. Hurrah! It was also a step up rubbing shoulders with the Wigmore/Royal Academy animateuring team, who are a cut above. Must do more…

So, one gig of the weekend starred moi. Friday night starred Andy, in – as usual for us two eminent performers – the rather different setting of the disorientatingly dark, ear-assaulting Rhythm Factory, where Step 13 were making a comeback after 6 months away having lost their singer and drummer. They’ve been replaced by an even more blurred-armed, 3,000-bpm stick man and rockier, super-sexy lass with Beyonce-beating legs upfront. Half the time I was rocking out at the front, the other half I was thinking ‘hhm, must go swimming/cycle/stop eating curry soon…’ They were ace, got filmed by website Drum ‘n’ Bass arena and all the boys were resplendent in all-new, all-Andy-created Step 13 t-shirts.

We covered the rest of the weekend’s musical bases by ticking off jazz, hip hop and spoken word at one of motormouth beatboxer Shlomo’s monthly love-ins at the QEH last night. He’d got in jazz-punks Polar Bear, poet Lemn Sissay and a band of his own to collaborate with. Musically, it was pretty successful, but marred somewhat by Shlomo’s embarrassingly giggly, 12-year-old non-musical persona (honestly, one minute he was looping beat after beat after trombone riff after growly trumpet in a kind of vocal calypso epic, the next he was tee-heeing like a kid in a sweetshop). Polar Bear, a motley crew with a guy who looked like Santa’s overweight elf on bass, two square dads on tenor saxes, the ever-ubiquitous, storm-cloud-headed Seb Rochford on drums and enigmatic wood-nypmh Leafcutter John on the laptop, started weakly, with boomingly swampy sound not helping much. They warmed up however, and there were some good ‘Star Wars’-meets-free-noise moments when LJ and Seb faced each other off like jedi knights, complete with the former’s lightsabre bleeps. Shlomo’s own band were nothing to write home about, but his two tunes with soul-prophet Lemn Sissay were. Beatboxing met beat poetry in gloriously enriching style. The second half’s collaboration between Polar Bear and Shlomo was cool, mostly when it was just Leafcutter John sampling the beatboxer’s increasingly avant-garde sounds and near-Arabic wailings and firing them back at him. Honestly, a midi-mandolin? A red balloon played like a banshee and used as percussion? Loops manipulated by a games console? LJ is an electronics High Wizard and I can’t wait to meet him – he’s headlining Gobsmack (the next experimental vocal night that I curate) at Bush Hall next month!

Danger Girls

Level of conviction in own genius: 8.5
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: 20 mins
Watching /Listening: BBC 4's new ace US import, 'Mad Men' / Camille's 1st album
Hair Day: bedhead hair

Last night saw juice's debut at the BFI Southbank, where we performed all-new, live 'n' kicking vocalistics as part of the women filmmakers' festival, marvellously-named Bird's Eye View. They have a series of silent films with live music, this year with the likes of our pals the Elysian Quartet, jazzers like Nikki Yeoh and even, rather exclusively, Imogen Heap doing a solo piano set. Our night was paired with Mercury Music Prize nominee Zoe Rahman, feisty and funky jazz pianist; she was the main feature, playing her rock-and-tumble style to 'I Don't Want To Be A Man!' a fabulous German comedy which involved drag, perky slapstick and men kissing, which seems rather racy for 1919! We had a 20 minute short, 'The Danger Girl' from 1916, starring a young, fierce-eyed Gloria Swanson capering about with a variety of men; cue fast cars, lots of falling off swings and more drag. We'd worked really hard on writing snippets of close-harmony material, supplemented with stylised sound effects, imagined sung dialogue, comedy musical quotes (The Killers' 'Somebody Told Me' and 'Walk on the Wild Side', plus a trumpety 'Superman' fanfare) and had taken pains to really add to as well as complement the film. Zoe Rahman was ridiculously over-complimentary afterwards, which was very cool... We hung about backstage beforehand with 'Smack the Pony' star Sally Phillips, who was introducing the films; initially frosty-seeming, it turned out she felt terrifiedly under-prepared and she relaxed when we started talking about babies: she was enviously astonished that Anna, with wee Molly only 4 weeks old (and hanging out in the BFI with Ed), looked so damned slim.

I have been working hard helping Tower Hamlets tykes write mini-operas based on Hamlet, as well as introducing Stravinsky's 'A Soldier's Tale' to a mixture of cheerily raucous Year 8 girls from a ramshackle Catholic school and long-fringed City Academy students, whose school looked like a humongous airport hangar. Next weekend I make my acting debut in Wigmore Hall no less, playing aforementioned solider! Eek.

In culture news, visited Wimbledon College's ace MA show at Bow Arts Trust, with my mate Harry doing a lovely, near-weepingly beautiful interactive photo/storytelling piece. Saw a very good but as hard-hitting-as-a-baseball-bat-in-the-face Deutsche Borsche prize at the Photographer's Gallery. Saw the awe-inspiring 'There Will Be Blood' at the Barbie - see it now, if only to sink, sighingly, into your seat at the sound of Daniel Day Lewis' mouthful-of-tobacco voice! Have seen two great gigs, Rachel Unthank and the Winterset with acquaintance Stef playing metal-funk piano to the gorgeously busty, ruddy-cheeked Geordie lasses' husky songs; plus nu-jazz double-whammy, Basquiat Strings (two of whom are with the Elysian Qtet and thus played at our wedding!) and the Portico Quartet at Union Chapel. Basquiat were angular and fairly rockin', but definitely need to improve on their flat-tyre stage presence; Portico created a richly glowing aurora borealis of sound with their unusual 'hang', an invented instrument that looks like a posh BBQ with the lid down, in the mix, but were maybe a bit too Fast Show-esque 'nice' for Andy and I. We need our gateway-jazz with a little more grease and muck and, well, Led Bib, frankly.

Soon DOLLYman will shake up the world of post-post-jazz, or whatever it is now: we've just recorded new material which sounds bleedin' ace! Portico, beware...

Jazz, but not as we know it...

Level of conviction in own genius: 7.5
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 3
Reading/Listening: ‘The Piano Tuner’ by Daniel Mason / Seasick Steve’s beat-up album ‘Dog House Blues’
Hair day: Cool! My new man, Barry at local outfit Russo’s has shaped me into much-cooler-for-2008 being, with shorter, spikier and blonder hair...

Forget your ‘contemporary’ music scene, trumpeting its crrrazy innovations and edge-widening when really you’re desperately trying not to cough and counting down the minutes til the interval. It’s all about jazz. Jazz in the loosest sense, but it’s the jazz that is filthying up its image which is the most exciting at the moment. Led Bib at the Vortex last night snatched my breath away, took it for a few stiff whiskies, turned it upside down, stamped on it and returned it unceremoniously to me an hour later. A quintet comprising permanently-gleeful drummer, chord-loving bassist, two lean mean alto saxes and a squelchy acid-eyed Rhodes player crashed into our comfy mist of wine and low-level intellectual chat like the sound of baby wildebeest getting slaughtered by monster trucks. There was everything from steel-jawed rock basslines to crunked-up latino beats, gravity-defying solos and some very avant-garde psychedelia from the nu-rave keys boy who seemed to be about 12. Long live the anarcho-noisecore jazz-punks!

In other news, I’ve finished my carol for OUP so it’s time to start work on the music for juice’s silent film showing at the NFT in March. juice now has a 4th member: Anna gave birth to little Molly Snow this morning – wailing, shrieking and burbling? She’ll fit right in...

Sign O' The Times

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 2
Level of conviction in own genius: 7
Reading / Listening: 'The Piano Tuner' by Daniel Mason / my composition on Sibelius, over and over
Hair day: It's too early in the morning to say

juice had a marvellously successful concert last week in our most prestigious gig yet, as part of the Park Lane Group series at the Purcell Room. Finally, I've made the South Bank! We shared it, rather oddly, with a 'cellist whose programme included Shostakovich, whilst we performed our brazenly contemporary mix with nothing written earlier than 1996, including a piece of mine. We had a sizeable and supportive crowd and delivered almost everything entirely from memory, which means that while I appeared the epitome of easy poise, inside my brain was imploding... Two days later we had our first British national press, with The Guardian finding us too 'joky' but incredible virtuosos and The Times considering us the stars of the first night, with 'big smiles, a delightful manner' (ah, but you didn't know about the brain-melting), fabulous technical skills and we proved, they said, 'as tangy as their moniker'. Ho ho. Knew our name would come in handy for a choice quote eventually....

Now we're taking a wee break as performers so that Anna can sprout forth with child. She hasn't got long, though: in 6 weeks we're performing a live soundtrack to a 1916 silent comedy at the NFT! Hurrah!

I Am Resolute (Scary Deer Girl)

2008 New Year’s Resolutions

1) To subsist on a diet consisting chiefly of rice milk, porridge, cashew nuts and spinach and very little in the way of wine, crisps and curry.
2) To ban TV in order to read more books, paint, compose, listen to new hot pink digital radio.
3) To flourish into hitherto-latent professional musical genius mode by composing again.
4) To stimulate latent, fitness-repelling muscles into life.
5) To dive back into London high-art-life and reinvigorate the cultural part of my soul.

Success so far

1) For three days I have consumed organic muesli and rice milk for breakfast, bananas-cashew-yoghurt concoction for lunch and have drunk only green tea. Three portions in a row of cheesy fish pie for dinner may have undone good work.
2) Andy has shifted the TV to the study where it sits, aerial-less, so that we can only occasionally settle down to watch classy, brain-enriching DVD fare such as ‘The Lives of Others’, ‘Wild Strawberries’ and ‘Legally Blonde 2’.
3) Am working on ‘wine, whisky and songs’ for Pulse and ‘The Contest of the Ivy and the Holly’ for Oxford University Press. When I say ‘working’ I do of course mean mulling over non-commitedly in my brain every, ooo, 6 hours or so. (Have been distracted by thrilling York-set historical novel, which means that at least no. 2 is being fulfilled.)
4) Have discovered that, as a Trinity College staff member, I can get free classes at our twin-centre and dance school, LABAN. So have signed up for hopefully grace-inducing, thigh-tautening contemporary dance classes! Plus plan to squeeze myself into my sporty Speedo two-piece and go swimming once a week, as the local pool can be seen from my window and thus I have no excuse anymore.
5) Andy and I bought ourselves membership of the Tate and visited the fabulous, splurgy, phallic, awkward Louise Bourgeois retrospective. I hope I’m like her when I’m 95…

These NYRs have been particularly spurred on by a few post-Christmas days in Wales with my beloved, as incisively refreshing as a kickback of very cold gin and tonic. Our journey to this most glowering and hidden-away corner of the Black Mountains caused panic attack-esque hyperventilations: driving through squalling weather, the tiny roads narrowed and starkly-regimented hedges hemmed us in; bright car lights blitzed our eyes in wing mirrors from a solitary car behind us. Having grown utterly accustomed to teeming, everything-at-grabbing-distance London, being in the dark in unchartered countryside did everything to fuel my macabre imagination, and my directorial mind was fashioning a imminent real-life remake of ‘Duel’/’Straw Dogs’/’The Wicker Man’/’The Blair Witch Project’/’28 Days Later’. I was astonished that a wasting zombie had not leered out into our path by the time we arrived at Flagstone Cottage. After a fitful first night - given the sound of the wind barrelling furiously down the valley and the rain tumbling down the roof like bags of marbles split open – I opened the curtains the next morning to find a view as special as snow: rust-coloured hills and sheep brightening up the fields, an unabashed blue sky and racing clouds. There was no TV, no radio, and no mobile phone reception. I was soon in my element, making three days whiz by in a blur of pots of tea, books on the sofa, slabs of butter on thick bread, DJ sets on our laptop, DVDs (decided ‘The Shining’ was a bit too much though) and a couple of bracing walks. We used the atmospherically-ruined local priory as the backdrop for a new series of portraits for my future solo album cover: me in my silver parka, seemingly faceless behind dark scarf, holding up two craziedly forked sticks behind my head like a 21st-century hiphop version of Herne, the tree god from ‘Robin of Sherwood’. Believe me, it’s scary.

School's out for the winter

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: does wrapping presents in recycled crepe paper and masking tape count?
Level of conviction in own genius: Waiting to be reawakened.
Watching/Listening: 'Oliver Twist', in rollocking soap-style version - am sucker for glossy period drama / anarcho-jazz-funk from Londoners Porpoise Corpus
Hair day: Visited Mile End hairdressery for entertaining local fun and a half-decent do from Beverly Knight-loving, arch put-down-delivering chap.


It's over. No more shlepping to NW London to be shouty, hair-tearing-out Dr Andrew. Come January I'll be shedding my permanent teacher's skin and wriggling into the glistening, dewy-eyed world of the Freelancer, a world that I'm anticipating being filled with early morning swimming sessions, dreamy composing, wheatgrass shots, more singing, contemporary dance classes, more promotion of self, juice and DOLLYman, experimental soup-making, etc. In truth, I'm doing tons of educational stuff still, but it's the kind with English Pocket Opera, Wigmore Hall and the like, where I get to be called Kerry, wear my jeans, leap about for a couple of hours and then make a swift escape. I can't wait to get back to my real self, put some colour in my cheeks and breathe some zesty creative spirit into my lungs again.

juice have been madly busy, rather brilliantly. Most recently we did a lunchtime concert at St James' Piccadilly largely to oldies and tourists, whilst two nights' previously we were in the Astoria 2 for an eclectic multimedia night involving animation, fashion, live music from great chamber-cabaret-melodramatists The Irrepressibles, dance... and us! We were given a louche Brazilian hair and make-up artist who, with the help of smoky eyeshadow under the eyes, hair extensions, glue and industrial-strength hairspray which made us swoon slightly, fashioned us into part-'Lord of the Rings', part-Japanese horror characters. We stood on separate podiums amongst the audience and did a juice mash-up for 10 minutes, hushing the pinched-face, trilby-wearing art student crowd into awed silence. Groovy.


Much more juice fun to come next year, from working with special needs teenagers in North Yorkshire to uni teaching in Liverpool, performing at the Purcell Rooms, a gig at the Luminaire in a re-imagining of our fashion show installation from last year, devising live music for a silent film in the Bird's Eye film festival hopefully at the ICA... and much more. This is more like it. I'm also curating the return of the experimental vocal night Gobsmack, and planning to write on the one hand: a) pedestrian choral music for Oxford University Press's new carol collection to add to my four already published by them, and b) chamber contempo-songs about wine and whisky for politico-cabaret outfit Pulse. Ah, I feel the genius stirring... but first: chicken soup!

Merry Christmasxxx

Toil and trouble

Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: nil
Level of conviction in own genius: 6.5
Hair day: crrrrrap.

The far and hitherto-unexplored extremes of my musical life were definitely laid bare yesterday...

1) During the day and evening I accompanied the doe-eyed, snotty-nosed Year 1s and 2s of St Saviour's C of E Primary School, Maida Vale, in their newly-purchased George-at-Asda angel dresses as they very slickly performed their Russian-slanted Nativity production of 'Babushka'. This included masterful tambour playing on my part and much frowning at child-distracting flashbulbs from hideously clamouring parents. Thankfully not much more of this stuff, as bidding farewell to school in a week and a half now for those freelancey climes.

2) Andy and I hot-tailed it to our much more culturally-spiritual home back east, scoffed a quick Thai at Yelo on Hoxton Square and then dashed to The Macbeth on Hoxton Street, a scuffed and lovely pub/venue, complete with ceremonial sword and blood-red walls alongside the posters for high-art events. It was one of the monthly nights from cool, avant-garde label and night nonclassical, run by Gabriel Prokofiev, who as well as of course being Sergei's grandson, is a cutting-edge modern composer, producer of grime terrier Lady Sovereign and performs in an art-romantic-punk band to boot. juice had been invited along to do a very quick set as a precursor to hopefully a juice-featured night in the Spring. Before our turn we heard two sets from luscious Italian pianist Genia, featuring her rumbling and athletic playing alongside fizzing electronics. Our three numbers were slightly hair-raising, us all (including now-7-month-plump-as-a-watermelon-pregnant Anna) being utterly knackered, but it went down well, and we were promptly pounced on by two ebullient Resonance FM DJs who immediately signed us up to do at least one of their shows. Hurrah!

(I need) Time Out

Level of conviction in own genius: 5.5
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: Heavens, don’t be ridiculous.
Hair day: awright.

Have been not waving but drowning in an over-buoyant sea of teaching of late, what with the usual stuff being supplemented with teaching snub-nosed little tykes in Tower Hamlets to write songs about Henry VIII and also getting Newcastle University music students to growl/screech/do whistley harmonics with juice. Still, I’m counting down the days til Christmas when I leave my main primary school job behind to enter the head-clearing yet slightly gulp-inducing world of the Intrepid Freelancer. I’ll still be up to my ears but at least it will be in a more groovy, leap-in-for-an-hour-jump-about-madly-then-saunter-home-without-a-care-in-the-world way. And I get to wear my jeans. It will also hopefully complement our recent move up the road to a larger, much less damp 3rd floor mansion block flat with a study in Bethnal Green overlooking a kaleidoscopically-leafed park and the back of the V&A Museum of Childhood.

Had a moment of ego-massaging, career-diverting glory when I had an interview for staff music writer at the London-celebrating weekly bible, Time Out, last month. I applied on the ‘no experience, merely talent’ front, and after writing a gig and album review and snappy critique of their music pages, was one of only 4 out of 400 applicants to miraculously snare a meeting with coolly-rumpled Music Editor Eddy Lawrence. Halfway through I realised that this would be a full-time job and then some, and my music commitments raised their whimpering heads. However much going to 5 gigs a week and listening to albums all day long would be a dream, I’m still a musician at heart and 3 days of doing the listings didn’t appeal to my lofty ambitions. If I’m going to write it has to be on laptops in local Buddhist-leaning cafes whilst drinking loose leaf white tea and gazing langurously out of the window.

Still finding time to do fun London-high-art things, which have included watching Jonathan Pryce in David Mamet’s ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ (say that rapidly 5 times without getting tongue-twisted and you win some kind of special trophy), a fabulously lean play with dialogue like streams of silver bullets in the rather rococo Apollo Theatre. Also took in a partly successful ‘inter-arts social’ night called Rational Rec at the QEH last night which included watching a man play an electric guitar with a scouring pad and a very avant-garde clown called Benny. Hhm. Best of recent gigs has been ‘Plague Songs’ at the Barbican, a follow-up of a huge project in Margate in which artists were commissioned to write 10 songs for each of Exodus’s plagues, with some more recent songs being written on ‘modern plagues’, all accompanied by players who make up most of Tom Waits’ band for his bonkers music-theatre piece ‘The Black Rider’. This produced a gloriously eclectic evening full of mad wonder, including the babbling witch doctor of vocal improvisation, Phil Minton, the previously-unheard-of, maple syrup-toned voice of Daniel Knox, the inventive gossamer funkiness of Imogen Heap in her song about locusts being alright really, a new song from Damon Albarn with kids’ choir, a sort of cheery Blitz ‘we’re all in this together’ song, and perhaps best of all, Heap duetting with Rufus Wainwright on his sandpapered-down country song about the death of the first-born; his melted-Green-and-Black’s chocolate voice warmed me into a puddle of liquid wistfulness.

PS My first CD release, a big choral work called ‘Dusk Songs’ has been released on new wee York label Boreas Music. Choir and Organ call it 'the emergence of a considerable talent'. Hurrah!

bank holiday smasher

Level of conviction in own genius: 7
Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: 7
Hair day: awright. Visited Green's in Hoxton for a very expensive and mildy ok cut. Feel the need to be more edgy, like girl from the Noisettes.

The August bank holiday is always a time to cram in as much rampant activity as possible into 3 days... so we did these things:

Friday

Chanced upon fabulous vegetarian restaurant, The Gate, in Hammersmith, hidden away round the back of a less inviting Jesus of the Seventh Advent of Heaven Messengers or something Christian Meeting Centre. Ate many vegetables served in intricately enchanting ways. Visited the Riverside Studios to see Cabaret du Neant-style outfit Pulse, who delivered darkly silly torch songs wearing feather boas and cheekily-perched hats.

Saturday

Hopped (well, struggled onto, trying to cover lumpen thighs with short skirt) onto my purple chariot of fire and had a lovely sunshiney cycle ride with Andy around the Regent's and Hertford Union Canal, the Lea Navigation and the Limehouse Cut. Got glimpses of old and new: the derelict, creepy backwaters and burly tattooed lads fishing; the legoland-looking new flats being built everywhere; the nice old Hammers fan jogging past; the Cityfied chumps drinking on their balconies. Had a chilled drink on the terrace of old-school pub The Grapes in Limehouse, looking over the Thames. Saw 'The Bourne Identity' at strangely vacuous newish cinema on Bethnal Green, Rich Mix. Liked the film, but thought editing was a little bit too seasick-making, and wondered why Matt Damon never had to carry a bag (where did he keep his toothbrush? and his many passports and various foreign currencies and change of clothes?). Talked film over in vibrant scuffed Moroccan bar Casa Blue at the top of Brick Lane. Had fun drining caipirinhas until there was a fight in our corner and we got showered in beer bottle shards and ice when one of the guys got glassed. Police arrived amazingly quickly and the bar was serving drinks again within seconds. We miraculously escaped unscathed. Calmed our jangled nerves at The Spread Eagle over a Macallan and then scoffed a Brick Lane Beigel on the way home.

Sunday

Got up blearily early to get tube, two trains and a bus to Camber Sands on the East Sussex coast. The beach was so wide, broad, long and deep that even though packed with families we still had tons of room to lounge and sunbathe and picnic. It's a stonking place, with a dune bank riddled with paths at one end, and the tide stretching almost further than you can reach at the other end. Back in London in the evening we popped into Favela Chic for their after-Carnival party and saw ineffectually yowling Brazilian Cibelle play live before she more successfully DJed global party tracks.

Monday

Visited acely absoring 'How We Are: Photographing Britain' at Tate Britain. Loved it all really, especially the quirky 30s photos of musical hall stars and mannish-looking female political fugureheads. Drank at the Morpeth Arms, where once stood Millbank Prison.

All manic here, counting down days of freedom before school and freelancing kicks in next week. Currently working on football book as a small publisher may be interested, and writing reviews in application to be Time Out Music Writer, and writing proper reviews for spnm, and finishing DOLLYman pieces, and doing juice planning, and doing a new vocal tune... gosh, not sure I've ever written '7 hours' creative work done in last 24 hours up there before...

Notre lune de miel

Level of conviction in own genius: 7
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 2
Hair day: Bit shoddy. I did quite classy home-dye job on the underside of my fringe but it glows a little yellow rather than arctic blonde. Needs chopping back into East London-sharpness.

The word ‘honeymoon’, did you know, translates directly into the French. Why ‘honey’, and why ‘moon’, I’m still none the wiser, but hey, it’s more poetic than ‘post-wedding excursion’ or ‘after-nuptial outing’, and there was a lot of swooningly romantic moons and an awful lot of bees’ own gloopy stuff consumed. Little did I know, however, that I’d be spending my first night not just with Andy but with three other men as well. And a woman,

Not as ‘Erotic Review’ as it sounds, quelle dommage. Our honeymoon, like Wedfest, kept up the eco-friendly theme by cutting out the flying (always a bonus for sweaty-palmed moi), so we journeyed to the south of France sur le train. We piled on at Gare d’Austerlitz to find that the first romantic night of our hol would be a 6-in-a-cupboard affair, squeezing on planks just as wide as my thighs (not that is NOT that wide thank you very much), cramped accordion-like in order to accommodate suitcases on said plank, on a train that mostly felt like one of the runaway carts at the end of ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’.

We fell out of the train at the rusting shack of Najac station in deepest Aveyron territory, half-crazed with lack of sleep and food, and started to get used to our surroundings. Najac was just a pinch-perfectly beautiful place, all quirky tumbledown houses, cobbles, shutters and curling vines, with a kick-ass 12th-century castle lording it at the top with its views of richly dark green hills, a gorge and the winding town. Our own place was a converted barn 7km away, next to gregarious Dutch owner Ronald and his dog Cookie, who is now nominated for the Best Dog In The World For Services In Cuteness Award. We lived within thick stone slabs, lit by a gothic candelabrum, nestled under a gossamer mosquito net, eating sweet milkbreads, bricks of butter and local honey and drinking slightly acidic rough red wine.

Life became pared down to the simplest of pleasures: sleeping, eating, reading, swimming, eating, sleeping, reading, eating, swimming, sleeping. A big event would be getting ourselves to Najac for supplies, either by walking or hitching with all manner of brilliant French people, from a slightly surly tattooed local to a lady who was working on her third book about the sociology of women and clothes. There was nothing better than lying prone on our chaise-longes, with the pool outblueing the blue blue sky, looking out over the undulating countryside, drinking mint tea with pungent stuff we picked from the pathside, whilst the plum tree swayed gently in the breeze and fuzzy-felt bees purred and snuffled at the lavender. Andy looked like slickly Bond-esque in his tiny black swimming trunks and colossal shades, and I a much fatter/paler Ursula Andress in my bikini. In more animated style, we discovered, after attempts at windy badminton, snorkelling and falling off the blow-up crocodile, that inflatable water volleyball was the best sport ever. We also played darts, dominoes, the piano and pool in the only drinking establishment within walking distance, a pub run by a brash Liverpudlian. Who needs London…

Well, we got ourselves back to the Big Smoke eventually, or should I say Le Grand Gauloise, as we stopped in Paris in an author’s bijou flat near Montmartre. We ate many croissants and drank many glasses of bierre blanc or rosé, tried our best to avoid the tourist traps and instead hang out louchely in bars still billowing with tobacco clouds: Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud and Oberkampf were essentially East London’s coolest dives all in two streets. We combed the Centre Pompidou and absorbed 6 hours’ worth of brilliant modern art, including a fabulously twisted Annette Messager exhibition (think the Chapman Bros but with more soft toys), and in high-art homage, we visited the graves of Sarte and De Beauvoir, Serge Gainsbourg, Man Ray, Baudelaire and Beckett, for whom we wrote a tributary mini-play which we left on his slab. Parfait!

Back in the real Big Smoke now, nice to be back in my own bijou flat. So far have enjoyed beating my twin-headed fear of flying and heights with by intrepidly gliding over the Yorkshire Wolds for 7 minutes, a juice trip to Bristol to record music for a short film, a brilliant exhibition of Heath Robinson's daftly witty cartoons, and the sight of Antony Gormley, who was showing his folks round or something, looming out of his own fog box (his work Blind Light) on the day we visited his exhibition at the Hayward. Class!

Wedfest07 - simply the Fest

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 0
Level of conviction in own genius: 9
Hair day: alright, paid second and last visit to the too-edgy-even-for-me Kung Fu; drunk Scottish snippers and ear-shreddingly dark punk do not a happy Kerry make.

So, I'm married. Hitched. Wed. Spliced. Legally conjoined to Mr Andrew Simon Furlow Esq. of Bethnal Green, London. Feels much the same to be honest, except with big fuck-off rings.

Wedfest07 was some weekend, made possible by the extreme creative involvement of most of our friends and the extreme financial involvement of parents. What we always planned was one hell of a musical party with a small wedding attached, and that was pretty much what transpired…

Our '15 Minutes Of Fame' night on Thursday at the Dog House in Kennington was a nice pre-wedding gathering, where our pals flexed their DJing muscles over a rather feeble PA for 1/4 of an hour each. Still, we had a nice mix of dub-reggae, Canadian indie rock and 50s jazz so it kicked off the eclectic musical flava suitably.

The prospect of the main event left Andy and I sick as dogs with nerves, which didn't leave even when we arrived, in miraculous sunshine, at the yellow and corn-blue house of South Farm, greeted by glossily regal peacocks and slightly scruffier chickens. I didn't really calm down until I was straightening my hair in the bridal suite and Chief Bridesmaid (I prefer Homie) Christina was chucking some champagne down my throat. Andy slipped on his bespoke suit and Paul Smith shirt (verdict: natty and gorgeous. As long as Tim and Steve approved, it would be alright, although he did come back to complain that Rich D was looking cooler than him) and left us to it. Tried to decide if wrapping ivy round the length of one arm would make me look like I had had a fight with a copse on the way. Put Nan's own wedding ring on my necklace and strapped on my fetching sky-blue garter for some old-new-borrowed-blue action. I found Dad trembling leaflike in the wind and spraying Bach's Rescue Remedy liberally on his tongue, and once errant 2-year-old Eva had been tracked down and re-nappied (and me, for that matter, given nerves), we were off round the back of the Tudor Barn and through the kitchen, greeting everyone we passed. So far, so Goodfellas.

The ceremony passed by in a cheery flash. I strolled beamingly down the aisle (ok, inched down looking at my feet in fear of going ass over tits in my very long swishing ivy-gold skirt), left Dad's arm without even noticing and grinned in front ofAndy. The music, performed quite fantastically by juice vs DOLLYman (minus moi) feat. Ed and Mark, was just heart-steamingly wondrous and I made sure everyone clapped everything. I tried not to pull faces at the musicians and couldn't even look at Andy for fear of laughing like a loon. Paul read 'Wedding' by Alice Oswald - one of my favourite poets - like an Oscar-winning actor and Andy and I repeated our short lines and exchanged our kick-ass rings (silversmithed by friend Abi) without really taking it in. It was utterly surreal and outer-bodily. The singers tried to control themselves during David Breslin's lovely piece which contained the line 'The bridegroom is coming in! He is bigger than a big man!'. Ah, how true that is… Gosh, and then we appeared to be all married up, once Cat and Nick had signed their names next to ours. And we popped out of the door whilst the Dollies did some freak-jazz workout and into more glorious sunshine and a million hugs and kisses. Was most gleeful that everyone loved my outfit so much seeing as it all cost about £100 and my top was just a scarf from Accessorize. Hurrah!

Then we all trooped to the garden for a fantastic selection of stalls, arranged by Best Man (in so many respects) Nick. You could eat a beautifully-adorned fairy cake whilst potato-printing a flag to be stuck on bamboo cane which lined the pond, or make your own badge whilst planning your artwork for the paint-Andy-and-Kerry's-new-tent, or get your hand henna-ed whilst watching friends battle it out on the giant Connect 4, or bash the filled-sock bride and groom whilst waiting in line for the coconut shy, or get sawdust under your nails burrowing around in the bran tub if you got one of Mum's quiz questions right. In true village fête fashion, we all huddled under the yew tree whilst a brief rain shower gatecrashed proceedings, before continuing to drink the most expensive glasses of Pimm's in the whole world and watching people run around the farm on Wendy's fiendish treasure hunt.

Dinner was back in the barn, with everyone at tables named with hilarious mini-music-genres such as Latvian Art Skull Metal and Math-Rock. Was most amusing seeing my Nan, Olive, looking slightly bewildered as she sat down in front of the Gypsy Punk sign. We at the head Noisecore table got to scoff our food first; I unfortunately had regained the vomitous nerve-jangles of earlier as the speeches loomed and could hardly eat any of the (I believe) stonkingly fishy fish pie and rainbow-coloured fruit terrine. Had to slope off with Mum for a brief wailing session before recovering in time for toasts. Dad, who had been fretting about his speech for about 6 months, did a great job, giving my musical life story and saying very nice things about my love and managing to goad Stu about being a Colchester united fan, which is the main thing. Andy was up next, and delivered a brilliant, witty-cool-wordy-oh-yes-THIS-is-why-I-love-him speech, capturing me down to a tee and ending genius-like with a toast to the £10 that he paid to get on the Guardian Soulmate website. Thank GOD he didn't go for the drunken ex-stripper kleptomaniac from Sheffield that he ran away from as she puked on a tube platform after their first date and found me instead!!!!! My speech's success was all down to Harry who, ever on the lookout for a chance to add visuals to everything on the face of the earth, had suggested I use photos. This gave me the chance to make my '8 Reasons Why I Am Happy To Have Andy As My Husband' list a bit more amusing, whack in a few photos of him looking foolish in afro wigs and Up Your Art underpants. Am now slightly regretting not using the photo of him naked on the bed playing his very small ukulele which only just about covered his modesty. Nick (who, even by his standards was on magnificently beaming form the whole day) just had to stand up to inspire cheers and renditions of the cultish 'Land of Castles' song he inspired in his DJ set a few weeks ago, gave an adorable speech and made me well up all over again.

Cat had done the impossible and fulfilled my ambition of having a London landmark wedding cake by creating a four-caked masterpiece with the Globe, the London Eye, the Gherkin AND the Houses of Parliament on it. We had coffee in the conservatory and did some obligatory cake-cutting, then I costumed-changed into evening attire of back-revealing Reiss dress and boots, ready for Andy and my First Song which we'd decided to do instead of a First Dance in the Live Music Yurt. So 'Sweet Child of Mine' was performed in an all-new guitar/melodica/vocals version, though I could hardly play the melodica for lack of breath; hope it rocked a little. It went down marvelously though, which meant we kept the crowd for juice's short but sweet set. Tim, looking like 'a 70s Disco Cop' (Dannie's words), 'Nathan Barley' (one of my friends' words) or 'A Creepy Paedophile' (his sis Emma's words) with his utterly ludicrous moustache, compeered the evening in his own indominitable style (ie shouting more loudly the more high he became), giving some brilliant introductions and starting the way he meant to go on by saying 'Andy and Kerry wanted Bernard Manning to present this but the cunt's dead' in front of all my relatives. Ho ho.

Juice's (www.juicevocalensemble.net) cute set went down very well, and the Elysian Quartet (www.myspace.com/eleysianquartet) followed with a fantastic performance of Gabriel Prokofiev stuff and a long improvised session. The farm animals outside joined in with various snortings and cock-a-doodle-doings and everyone cheered Vince's manic viola scrapings. It was so great to see the faces of some of our friends, who will have never seen a string quartet like this, wide-eyed with amazement and totally loving it. DOLLYman (www.myspace.com/dollyman) were up next, with our usual nutty contempo-jazz thing, the highlight being me singing 'Cheek to Cheek' which I introduced as my ideal First Dance song, but as I was singing Andy would have to dance on his own. Which he duly did until the grinning-from-ear-to-ear Nick joined him. They make a perfect couple… Step 13 (www.myspace.com/step13), most amusingly introduced by Tim as 'a band that some of you know and most of you have been in' delivered a rocking set, Ishu looking brill in his pinstripe suit, Andy rocking away in the corner on his bass and manfully resisting Steve's demand for him to take his shirt off (damn, he paid so much for it he couldn't justify its removal!). The fabulous, My-Perfect-Guest-Band, jazz hipster-hoppers Lazy Habits (www.myspace.com/lazyhabits) finished off the night in enthusiastic fashion, and causing much hilarity for me as I watched my mum and aunt bop away, trying to copy everyone's shape-throwing hand movements. Guttingly cut short by the evil old farm-owner, we retired to the Barn to dance to wedding-friendly soul-funk, groovy indie/kid-bluegrass, party-house and Latino super-grooves from our fabulous DJs Myco, Jim Collins and the Brokeback Mountain Ceilidh Band Soundsystem, Timothy Nuisance and Itchi. Whilst Andy and I fell, exhausted, into our super-comfortable, billowing-in-luxury Bridal Suite, the hardy campers partied on into the night and still all appeared for the marvelous cooked breakfast in the morning. I salute you!

'Three Colours Wed' at the Fleapit on Columbia Road on Sunday night was a small-but-perfectly-formed affair (if you are one of the 13 people who made it to all three Wedfest events, you have our love and extreme admiration). I showed a selection of short films and music vids from some Bjork to the Beasties, some eel-based horror to bizarre erotic animation and more, which was interspersed with Sarah, Sonic Si and my Mum's (in spirit if not in person) fabulous and fiendish Music Quiz. The Bald Britney's Tears team's knowledge of cultish American teen TV themes was not enough for the classical might (and knowledge of Bob Marley's middle name - ask my little bro Daniel if you don't know it) of team Hand Shandy who took away our main event table plants whilst the rest of us commiserated with Mum's leftover bran tub prizes of shoe polish, pastry brushes and strangely small tupperware.

Phew. And it's all, both sadly (because it was the best thing ever having all of our family and friends together under one yurt-tastic roof) and with slight relief (because the weekend called for superhuman levels of organizational strength), over. Now we look forward to honeymooning in a small bikini (me) and very very tight swimming trunks (Andy) as we lounge by our French farmhouse pool and drink copious amounts of rough red wine. Feel really quite back to normal. I get to use my Doctor title for real now, as there's no way I'm being a Mrs. and losing my surname for any man. I'm young, cool and married, you know, like Amy Winehouse or, um… sure there must be someone…

TO ALL MY MAGNIFICENT FRIENDS AND FAMILY: THANK YOU FOR MAKING WEDFEST07 ONE OF THE COOLEST THINGS I'LL EVER DO. YOU EXTREMELY ROCK.
xxx

Photo Finnish!

Amount of creative activity acheived in last 24 hours: music and drama, 2 hours
Level of conviction in own genius: 9
Hair day: needs cutting at ludicrously cool place in Brick Lane pronto

Wow. Juice went to Finland's second city, Tampere, last week for a big vocal festival which goes on there every two years, and namely to take part in the vocal ensemble competition. We flew over stretches of shimmering inky lakes and regimented pines and entered the land of impossibly pale blonde people, all speaking in more eloquent English than I. Our 15-minute performance of mad experimental histronics and spacious bluegrass harmonies went rather well seeing as we'd had about 2 hours sleep, this being the Land of No Darkness and Night-Time Drilling. Once we'd seen the standard of the other groups competing though, we thought we'd more chance of winning Miss World 2007. We had was a real insight into what we're missing - the continent, and Northern Europe particularly, is chock full of incredible a cappella groups, with a lot on the jazz and pop side but at such a high standard it's embarrassing. We watched The Idea of North, an amazing Ozzie group who were Olympic athletes of the voice, and the soothing Finnish group Rajaton, and the sweet German Calmus Ensemble. The winners were revealed the next day in a nail-bitingly drawn-out finale, and we were squealingly joyous to come second. We were I'm sure credited for doing a range of pure spare harmonies and fiendishly difficult yet funky new music that no-one else, frankly, on the planet could do, hurrah! Now that we've conquered that piece, we ar ready for anything, including running small countries and travelling through time. We were absolutely chuffed to bleedin' bits, and the guys that won, Vocaldente from Germany, utterly deserved their prize - no matter how good we are, we couldn't have had a whole room dancing sweatily to sexy five-part a capella salsa in the club night afterwards.

Compliments flowed like wine and our grins stretched wider and wider as people raved to us about how amazing we were, how we could have won, how sexy we were in our black glampuss outfits and lippy... my favourite comments were a) from a Finnish lady who said we looked just like those characters from, oh that American show - I was just hoping it wasn't 'Ugly Betty' - and when she said 'Sex and the City!' I could have hugged her b) from Canadian choral hippie supremo Stephen Hatfield who kept banging on about how we were 'feminine energy at its finest' and drew men into our alluring spell, tee hee hee. We're thinking we will spend our 2000 euros on shoes....

Gosh. So that was damned cool. Recently I've done all sorts, from recording parts of an opera by Jenni Roditi in her stonking penthouse apartment where juice also did a great recent gig, performing with DOLLYman in the Big Chill House, making my DJing debut with a great set at the Fleapit for a new 'Virgin Media' collective, auditioning for English Pocket Opera animateur work... and lots more that I am now forgetting. But I remember one thing: I AM A GENIUS!

York 1 London 0

Current amount of conviction in own genius: 10, but thwarted by workload
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: a juicy 4
Hair day: Lack of hair straighteners at Mum’s house perturbing. But in good shape following discovery of terrifying edgy Brick Lane cutters (eg, grubby, distinct lack of hair mags, owner’s dog lounging around etc).

Juice had an ace gig last night in our collective home town: it’s always so nice to be back in York’s music department, wowing our olds friends with our tuning and ensemble even more than the last time. Our version of ‘Go to sleep you little baby’ was the most electrifying yet, our visuals were slick and my ‘winkblink’ from my big music-theatre piece ‘sedna stories’, was eerie and kick-ass. Orlando Bryars came up to say hi from her dad, who apparently thinks we rock. Gavin Bryars! Nice to hear from my old tutor and composer Roger that our close-mic and closer-harmony things were the most successful, and that we are generally utter genius, hurrah. I have to say that I want to shed a tear now every time I come to York, as I reminisce on my 16-month tenure of bliss when I finished off my PhD up here, living on my own in a mini-palace in Fossgate by the river, doing yoga every morning to Radio 4, schlepping around town buying goat’s cheese and bread from the market, and having that incredibly fortunate freedom to think, wander, feel and create such big pieces. I feel terribly trapped by work and money-making in grubby, cramped London at the moment, and know that my mammoth creative prowess is smouldering deep below the surface of my fraught teacher’s mind, waiting to burst out with some new visual-music-theatre epic extravaganza based on the life of a bunch of mythological tree nymphs or something.

In brief other juice news, we’ve heard that our fight to make the Park Lane Group series at the Purcell Rooms not just about piano trio after piano trio has been successful, meaning we’ll have our South Bank debut in January. We’re going to Tampere in Finland in a month for the a cappella vocal competition (hoping some prize money will pay for our flights….) and our recording debut is now available via aforementioned Roger Marsh’s ‘Pierrot Lunaire’ on NMC, on which we feature fairly heavily. In scant composition news, I’m going to have two pieces published in OUP’s new easy anthem series. Which reminds me, I’d better write the second one…

Last weekend was a bookish one, gracing Cambridge Wordfest in support of Andy’s involvement in it. We heard Nigel Calder waffle on sweatily about his anti-greenhouse gas theory of ‘The Chilling Stars’, the rather vulpine Graham Swift read in part-sonorous, part-sinister tones from his new book ‘Tomorrow’ and the human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith (whom we also took tea with) speak charismatically and entertainingly about the laughable-if-it-wasn’t-so-outrageously-criminal Guantanamo Bay farce. Finally we enjoyed the sandpaperingly dry A.L. Kennedy and my current personal literary heroine, the pixie-ish Sarah Waters chatting about their WWII-set latest novels. We rounded off the weekend with an extremely competitive literary quiz, in which I proved myself surprisingly knowledgeable (reading Time Out’s Books section every week clearly of benefit) about the printed word; we had to dash off before the end but heard that our team missed out on first prize (and in a town full of nerdy nose-in-book types, this is impressive) by a mere half a point. Never again will I forget that ‘Beelzebub’ and not ‘Mephistopheles’ means ‘Lord of the Flies’, dammit.

Gobsmack My Bitch Up

Level of conviction in own genius: 7
Amount of creative activity acheived today: Don't be ridiculous.
Hair day: 3 weeks ago I had a brilliant streak of deep pink in the fringe. Now it has faded to a peculiar peach/blonde. Think I will sue Zoology in Wanstead.

Man, I've been busy. Teaching aside (yawn), I've been talking to the Forestry Commission about being a possible composer-in-residence (they took me traipsing through the mud and wind in their forest in Farnham; I think it was a test. I hope I passed, my boots are ruined...). I've been to three 30th birthday parties (one more year left for me to cling onto my twenties, thank the sweet Lord.). I've been reviewing gigs for spnm like mad, allowing me my free intravenous shot of high culture, to seeing new 'semi-operatic filmspiel' live scores to Chaplin movies at the Coronet, new dance to Scanner (good) and Michael Nyman (very bad) at the QEH, and the Brodsky Quartet and crooner Jacqui Dankworth at LSO St. Luke's. The latter was enojyable but silky smooth and rathr genteel, so we messed it up afterwards by drinking at the Foundry, where the wallswere falling down, there was an unfazed artdog wandering around and a pianist and sax player spewed raucous free jazz in the corner. Proper jazz, baby..... I've checked out the Gilbert & George at Tate Modern, which I was ready to rail against but actually warmed to - they're so damned English! I've learnt how the English saw America in 'The New World' at the British Museum.

Mostly, though, my time's been engulfed with the run-up to Gobsmack, the experimental vocal night put on at one of my favourite venues, the Spitz, in East London. I curated the thing, meaning the last few months have been spent trawling through myspace for innovative vocalists to support juice or be in the open mic session. It was fabulous in the end, with a great crowd, a warm and soulful vibe and some amazing acts. The open mic session included singing to found street sounds from Japan, French singing plus sitar, the esteemed contemporary singer Linda Hirst giving us a blast of Scelsi, the 'cellist Laura Moody banging her bow against her throat and the very funky Bunty making the most of her loop station. The support acts were amazing: singer-songwriter Jenni Roditi was followed by the button-cute Jamie Woon, who frankly should have been at the top of the bill seeing as he's all over the press at the moment having put out a lovely version of 'Wayfarin' Stranger' on a grime label; we also had the earthy and playful Curious Voice Dou from Leeds/Norway and beatboxer WanDan popped up throughout, astonishing everyone. juice had a great time too, performing some of our grooviest stuff (our version of 'In My Room' by the Beach Boys can't be bettered, I say) to visual canteen's visuals and also performing with WanDan. Phew. Went so well we're starting to think about Gobsmack 2...... Rather nicely, the night was something of an Andy-Kerry double, meaning the hardest and most eclectic among us then trotted down the road to the Rhythm Factory and got down and dirty to Step 13's live drum 'n' bass....

It's only January...

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 0
Level of conviction in own genius: 6
Hair day: most poor but am most poorly so fair enough

.. but already I may have seen one of my best gigs of the year and participated in a juice highlight.

First off, juice had their coolest experience to date by performing as part of the London College of Fashion Graduate Show at the Royal Academy of Arts. The LCF's composer-in-residence, Phillip Neil Martin, wrote for us and ace-o-rama beatboxer Beardyman in a 35-min piece made up only of vocal sounds, whether live, sampled or electronically transformed into birdsong, cicadas, whips and much more. We were thoroughly part of the show, being dressed in the first collection and made up in the same way as the models, most hilariously. This meant trying to manoeuvre ourselves into bafflingly-constructed cream cotton trousers with protruding bits, vast sleeves and hoods, as well as being given plaster-white faces (yes, remarkably even I can be made paler than my natural skin tone), a few jet-black hair extensions and heavily-accentuated eyebrows. Anna particularly looked like a terrifying Japanese banshee woman. I was most nervous not about performing on a podium in front of hundreds of industry and press three times over but about having to reveal myself in all my non-modelly glory backstage. But after a few minutes, remembering that I had extreme musical talent if not steely good looks, I didn't really care about mingling with the 7-foot tall, non-breasted boys and girls, and merrily wandered about in my pants wobbling my size 10/12 patchy cellulite-pocked thighs in their knife-cheekboned faces.

The show itself was a barnstormer, the music apparently stealing the show. juice did two of my pieces as well as panpipe impersonations in the version of 'Watermelon Man' and an ethereal piece by PNM. Beardyman was incredible, indefatigable in his renditions of scratchy dark hip hop, kinky hardcore and strutting jazz: string bass, hi-hat, muted trumpet and everything. The hardest thing was standing still on our separate blocks in each corner of the stage for so long and trying to keep our eyes straight ahead rather than on the eye-splitting colours of the outfits, the fetish-inspired gear, the incredibly tight buttocks and tiny breasts.... was very funny seeing models waft past us, still inches taller even though we were on podiums! Ha ha ha. Still, I can now say that Jimmy Choo and Peaches Geldof have heard both my music and the juicettes sing. We rule.

In a more spectatorly fashion, sighed to a glowing Joanna Newsom at the Barbican last night. We first swooned to the incredibly burrrnished burr of Alisdair Roberts' darkly original folk, before she scampered on kittenishly, looking like 70s glam country star Crystal Gale with her long gown and silky mane. She certainly gave us our money's worth, trawling through the whole of her second album with the LSO behind her, before coming back to do a few older solo numbers. She revealed another audacious change of direction with one new song, playing as a trio with percussionist/singer and tambura player, with Kate Bush-esque vocals and a very East European/Arabic slant. Live, her voice is richer and less squeaky, though just as versatile, still veering between coquettish little girl and warmer crooner, and in truth she was at her best as soloist; the orchestra swamped her mad fairytale songs and only stripped down could we really hear all the twisty lyrics and watch her hands comb over the glittering harp strings. Gorgeous.

painting the town blue

Amount of conviction on own genius: freelancing organisational genius: 9; creative genius: 5
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: oh, very very little
Hair day: neatly trimmed in cheap Tooting establishment yesterday

Ah, beautiful Wycombe. All the humdrum years of repeated groanings as the boys in blue kick yet another ball out of the ground are worth it for those sweet few moments of astonishing triumph; in 2001, it was our rip-roaring FA Cup run all the way to the semi-finals against Liverpool, getting within a hair's breadth of European football. And this year, it is our equally searing streak up to the semis of the slightly-less iconic League Cup, but equally impressive given that we've seen off Fulham and Charlton on the way.

On Wednesday we welcomed Chelsea to our humble 10,000-seater ground. Though gracing a few away games, I shockingly hadn’t visited Adams Park for about 3 years, and it was sooo good to be back, having miraculously blagged two much-in-demand tickets for my little bro and I. Strolling down the mile-long factory-lined road, casting a pitying eye to the replica scarf sellers and the 50/50 draw man, queuing for dodgy hot dogs and standing in our traditional corner of the only standing terrace with recognisable faces of old.

And it was such a top game! Happily, HILARIOUSLY, Wycombe, a motley crew of free transfers, on-loans and one £80,000 player, managed to match the glossy-haired SW elite - worth £100m - almost throughout. We fired off well, yapping at the heels of Michael Ballack ('never mind the Ballacks, we're the chairboys!' cheered our fans' site the next day), Ashley Cole, latterly Frank Lampard et al, had a few decent chances, before Chelski got a silkier grasp of proceedings. Wayne Bridge made the most of his upfront role and flicked it over our Portuguese under-21 goalie, silultaneously colliding with him in spectacularly gruesome, Mel Gibson-directed fashion, ending up not even seeing his goal through the veil of blood. Nice. We remained unbowed, manfully hauling ourselves to half-time, and came back with all guns blazing for the second half. Frankly, we had the upper hand for much of the half, with Tommy 'Captain Marvel' Mooney so ragingly passionate he had to eventually be subbed for fear of getting a red card. Kevin 'Heavens to!' Betsy left trails of DiLorean-esque fire down the wing and it was most amusing to be introduced to Wycombe's new cult hero, Sergio Torres, who, although plucked from Basingstoke, is Argentinian, and thus automatically revered for all his style-over-substance fancyfree footwork; he looked visibly chuffed to hear 'SERR-GI-OOOH' roared endlessly around the ground in unwitting canon.

Anyway, we scored. Against Chelsea. Jermaine Easter, crowned man of the tournament so far having scoring in every round (inspiring 'Easter Rising' headlines on almost every back page the next day), popped it in neatly past the keeper and we all leapt up and down in sheer, gleeful astonishment and delight. Had it been a one-off match, we could've swiped it; as it is, I'm sure Chelsea will leave only a few mangled blue limbs on the pitch at Stamford Bridge in two weeks. But I don't care: we, a jumble sale of a team, drew with one of Europe's mightiest teams, got right up Mourinho's sleek nose, and I took the opportunity to laugh gloatingly in the faces of every little Chelsea fan I could track down at school the next day in a most unteacherly fashion.

WYCOMBE WONDERS.

i got da blues

Level of conviction in own genius: 6
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: Nil
Hair day: As to be expected with lack of ANY KIND OF HAIR PRODUCT (faint)

Up in East Yorkshire, I am doing nothing. So far, the day’s activities have totalled: lie-in, shower, liberal application of every toiletry product of my mum’s I could lay my hands on (scrub, toner, eye gel, 3 different moisturisers etc), plundered the fridge (noting the plethora of cheeses to be tucked into later), read three Sunday Telegraph magazines, taken dogs for extremely sloth-paced stroll, read some of VERY BAD book based on blog of girl’s sexcapades (honestly,after the twentieth mention of ‘I really just want to eat some hot throbbing cock, wow I’m such a crazy slut!’ it gets a little yawnworthy) and made several unsuccessful attempts to crack some nuts (no, just the edible kind, the book had no effect). Tis sheer bliss.

Event of the week was undoubtedly the visit to The Valley to watch my plucky beloveds, Wycombe Wanderers, stand up to Premiership’s Charlton in the quarter-finals of the League Cup. So sure, it lacks the natural glamour of the sweet FA (but hell, we’ve done that one already, shrieking to the semis against Liverpool in 2001); however, there was nothing more exciting than joining the throng of blue-scarfed masses as we swept into the South Stand. It’s a lovely ground, and what with teetering terraces, luminous pitch and vast screens, was as exhilarating as a sight for us as the Neu Camp would be for most poxy Arsenal fans. It is so easy to slip back into being a football spectator (I can barely call myself a fan, what with approximately attendance at one live game a season): the £1.50 hot watery mud calling itself tea, worth it just to retain the feeling in your feet, spongy hot dogs, the shouting of abuse to the ref even when you know he’s right, the rituals of ‘shhh’-ing when it’s the opposition’s goal kick….. it sends me back to my season ticket days in an instant. And they were BRILL! Gnash-toothed little attack-dogs in the first half, finally grabbing a goal on 35 mins, then defending like the clappers for the second half, and hanging on just enough. Incredibly, the Wycombe end kept the noise up continuously for the 2nd half, which, while impressive, makes me wish they could come up with something more snappily creative, as chanting ‘CHAIRBOYS! BARMY ARMY!’ for 45 mins gets hilariously tedious. But we won, made all the back pages the next day and will greet either Arsenal/Liverpool, Chelsea or Spurs. Bring it on…

Gosh, it’s the end of the year. 2006, where did you go? I tend to think that this year has been an unhappy consolidation of reluctant teacherdom, but if I think about it, it hasn’t been too bad, seeing as I’ve (deep breath): been viva-d by Gavin Bryars and become a Doctor, had another choral piece published by OUP (1,500 copies sold!), moved to East London in Kerry-grows-up-and-cohabits-with-sexy-man-shocker, gigged with juice in Denmark, at Cargo, with Karl Jenkins, with an orchestra and done our first recording (for NMC), started a new band called DOLLYman, been heard on Radio 3 and Classic FM, been broadcast on Radio 4’s Today programme, BBC News 24 live and all other news stations with my memorial piece for the London bombings, had a massive premiere in York, started freelance roles in curating gigs, reviewing gigs and being a music workshop leader for Wigmore Hall, and, oh yeah, got engaged to my aforementioned sexy man, engaged to be married on a funky farm on 7/7/7.

Well, it is my favourite number. Bodes well, methinks…

club motherschmucker

Current level of conviction in own genius: 7
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 0
Hair day: sporting remnants of pink but still nowhere near as exciting as it should be for professional musician success (see below)

Gosh, haven't written for an AGE. Have been treading water in the usual brew of madcap teaching and creative fun - am just emerging from a week of school Christmas insanity with carol services and several all-singing nativity plays (accidentally-peeing wise men, crying Marys, etc). Thankfully, my kiddiewinkles have transformed, mostly through yelling at them, into crooning angels and my choir's rendition of 'Walking in the Air' leaves not a dry eye in the house. School is slowly appreciating my incredibly genius. On the flipside, I'm playing groovesome promoter-type in my scouting of crazy vocal acts for Music Orbit's gig with juice at The Spitz next spring, preparing for juice's gig at the London College of Fashion Graduate show (in which we perform with ace beatboxer Beardyman and get painted white oh yes!), and have just finished exciting freelance music workshopper role for Wigmore Hall. juice also did another lovely gig at the Redgate Gallery in Brixton, supported by my new band DOLLYman in a Kerry Goes Avant-Garde Not Once But TWICE Extravaganza.

Found time way back half term to hike north to the comfort of Ma's fridge and drinks cabinet. Highlights were the juddering steam train from Pickering up into the whistle-clean North York Moors, the increasingly flaccid penis that is the Spurn Head peninsula, strolls and pool at Bridlington and Whitby's incredibly posh fish restaurant, Green's, followed by a very rough 'n' ready pub quiz (in which the landlady rasped her questions to one side of the bar before rushing to the other to repeat them whilst a fish-eyed old drunk crooned a ditty or two). There was also a gorgeous exhibition called 'echo' by Susie McMurray in a deconsecrated church in York, where the whole middle space had been filled with 10,000 hairnets filled with the discarded strings from violin bows... they looked like trapped prayers, or clouds of jellyfish, or ghosts of candy-floss.

Have been trying to remember that I am an eclectically-cultural being and making the most of London's offerings too. I reviewed a richly luminous gig by Joanna McGregor, who delivered new arrangements of Bach's 'The Art of Fugue' and stuff by New York maverick Moondog with a talbe player, Andy Sheppard on sax, The Britten Sinfonia and a rhythm section including the ubiquitous Seb Rochford on drums. The Moondog half was particularly barnstorming, a raucous riot of street flavours and sounds. More to the point, I clearly need to have outrageously bonkers hair in order to plough musical success, if this was anything to go by: Joanna McG sports trademark dreads that are tossed around her frame like tassles, and Seb R has the most distinctive barnet in London, a sort of colossal dirty charcoal candy floss afro that surrounds his head like a storm cloud.

Also recently checked out Coldcut’s launch of their new DVD at the NFT, watching the specially-commissioned vids to their latest (very good) album. Was a fun mishmash of styles to suit the eclectic nature of the tracks, and it was followed up by the first night of ResFest’s short film festival and finally dancing in the bar to Coldcut themselves DJ-ing. Class.

Last night said it all about the varying quality of London’s cultural life. Andy and I swanned on up to Bardens Boudoir in Stoke Newington for Club Motherfucker, the much-swooned-over (well, by Time Out and various artrock papers, anyway) night of live bands and DJs with names like Simian Mobile Disco and Daughters of the Kaos. The first band was Fake Shark Real Zombie, a bunch of Canadian tykes who were apparently purveyors of nu-rave. Nu-rave, then, appears to be hyperspeedartpunknoise with shouting and not much in way of actual musical content. They were as tight as their wardrobe though (including the guitarist’s t-shirt with its handpainted slogan ‘EAT MY FUCK’, and you couldn’t fail but be won over by the clownish drummer who liked to run around his kit whilst playing. Up next were California’s Hey Willpower, made up a girl DJ with a hoodie but without the jumper bit, a sweet gay frontman and a 7-foot tall Amazonian goddess of a dancer. It was like watching an avant-garde 80s workout video. Last and least was ‘Planning to Rock’, an utterly bizarre banshee-haired woman who occasionally liked to don her homemade faux-tribal masks whilst belting out weird and repetitive soul/blues nonsense, like a kind of zombie Kate Bush without the talent. With a prentending-to-love-it crowd comprising razored hair and sprayed-on jeans nodding along, I truly felt as if we were in a failing New York basement club, circa 1987. Nu-rave my arse.

Thankfully we burst out of there and straight into the Dalston Jazz Café, which is frankly the coolest place in town, open til 6am and slightly off the beaten track, with a shouty, cheery crowd steaming up the windows whilst the queues huddled outside jealously. We drank slightly inept cocktails and grooved to jazz/funk/Latin/hip hop/soul classics until the posturing daftness of Club M was but a distant memory…

Avant-garde report card

Current level of conviction in own genius: 6
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: far too busy for that kind of nonsense
Hair Day: Acceptable.

Two wildly varying gigs caught in the last week. The first was my second live review of the new season, with more Reich at the Barbican. This time it was 'The Cave', his epic visual-theatre piece in collobaration with his video artist wife Beryl Korot. In principal, it ticked all my boxes: experimental non-operatic music-theatre - check; multi-screens - check; forging of roots between religions/cultures - check; incorporation of non-Western musics - check. Unfortunately, all these boxes were then scribbled furiously over in lurid red marker, as the piece was so fantastically dull it made my eyelids put on a stone each. Reich's fatal flaw was to exactly mirror the rhythms and melodic shape of speech uttered by various interviewees (Israelis, Palestinians, Americans, all answering the questions 'Who for you is Abraham?' 'Who for you is Sarah?' etc) in the chamber ensemble. As the video material was cut up and repeated ad nauseam ('ok, ok, we geddit!! Sarah was a ve-ry beau-ti-ful wo-man!'), so the music swayed awkwardly again and again, jerking to another pulse for each new person's phrase. It was infuriating and the relatively engaging subject matter and different persectives lost all context and interest. With my best teacher's flourish, I give him an E. (Though an A for effort: the piece is 3 damn hours long and costs so much to realise all the technical demands it always makes a loss).

At the other end of the scale was Camille, the wildly innovative French singer who is a massive leftfield star in her native country. With a mixture of looped percussive vocal riffs, chanson-style cooing, screeches, animalistic yelps and a sexily offbeat and slightly deranged manner, she went down a storm at the Shepherd's Bush Empire. She was erratically theatrical, toying with the long thread at the front of the stage which mirrored the vocal drone that is sustained throughout her album, getting tangled up in a giant organza sheet and getting some sheepish menfolk up to dance. Dang. She is everything I want to be and so much more! Artpunksexpot Performance Skills Revision starts here. Oh, and I'll give her an A.