So last week, on Wednesday, I went to see a band called Noah and the Whale.
It very nearly didn't happen - I was going to go with some friends from my Guides but it got quite short notice, then I was going to go with someone else who couldn't travel, and then on Sunday when I was talking to myself about how a different show near to us had sold out, my dad offered to go with me, which he does occasionally - he has the live music thing that I do too, but I think he's either learnt to control it or it isn't as important to him. See now I'm being judgemental.

My very first memory of Noah and the Whale music must have been in 2007 - that summer, I was eleven and on the way home from shopping with my mum and my friend when their song "Five Years Time" came on the radio. And I liked it because it made me happy - sometimes music could be that simple then, and I suppose it still can.

I don't remember thinking about their music much, except for singing "And it was fun, fun, fun..." in my head from time to time, up until last year, when because of a friend I listened to "Give A Little Love" and loved it, because of the way the chorus repeated itself in my head and how adaptable it's lyrics were.
And then, at a time that was just right for me personally, I came across "Blue Skies" ... the night I heard it for the first time, it was exactly what I needed.
Their most recent singles have been "L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N" and "Tonight's The Kind of Night", and I love both of them despite the new album, "Last Night On Earth" being so different... not better or worse, just different. I'd say there's a greater variety of instruments, it's also much more cheerful.

On Wednesday night we drove down to their show in Leeds. I had my GCSE French speaking exam the next day and went anyway, because I'm really responsible with my priorities, so I ended up having to revise the whole way. We were almost late for the show.

I won't talk about the support act just now.

The venue was a student union, so I was squished in with a lot of university students in their twenties, all of who I was weirdly taller than. And I love places like that... the way your legs ache from standing and you stop noticing after a while, your shoes are sticky with bear, you're sweating and it's dark and everyone around you feels what you do.

As the band were coming on, a melody called "Paraside Stars" was playing - I didn't know what it was at the time, I only bought "Last Night On Earth" this weekend - but I swear I felt it all of the way through my body, and that's why I love intimate venues.

They played "Give A Little Love" first and in the first few moments of it my thoughts sort of went...
guitarist, keyboard, drummer, violin
HAHA THEIR HAIR IS ALL AWESOME
woah they're playing this song that's so weird i thought it'd be i i i don't know omigod it's all beautifuuuuuulll
woah charlie fink is different in real life
his voice...

The second song I didn't know (I wish I'd bought "Last Night On Earth" before and not just known two songs from it!) but after that they played "Blue Skies".
And I remember these two guys close to me were drunk, singing loudly and dancing together, and usually it would've annoyed the hell out of me but for some silly reason it didn't.
Some audiences make me ashamed to be a part of - because they're too loud or rude, or too quiet and uninviting, but this was just right. It was the most responsive audience I've been a part of - the people around me were singing along with every line of every single song, and I just felt proud.

After this I'm forgetting the order, but I remember some time during the middle they played a song I didn't know called "Wild Thing", but was singing along with quickly as if I did, and it's funny because by now after hearing it more times my conception as to what the lyrics are about is nothing to do with what I thought then...

They played what Charlie called "the quiet romantic part of the set" - the slower songs, like "My Door Is Always Open" in one section of about three or four, and I thought that was an odd way to do things but I liked it.

He then announced, somewhat sarcastically, "Now this is the high energy dance party section of the show." And then opened this with "Roll Away Your Stone", which I was dancing to, and so was everyone around me. This is one of my favourites, and I missed Laura Marling's harmony less than I thought I would, mainly because the audience sang it too.

The only form of live performance I'd seen from them was just Charlie Fink and Laura Marling doing an acoustic set in the back of a cab - I'm tired, but look it up on Youtube - and it was so strange to me that then he seemed more nervous and reserved than in front of an entire crowd. He was probably one of the most charismatic performers I've seen - he would point with his finger whilst singing, as if addressing each of us personally, and constantly throw and catch the mic stand.
And the whole band were so vibrant and together and just excited to be playing, which is always a bonus. Every song they were perfectly in time with one another. It was just so lovely to see how much they looked like they were enjoying it.

"Five Years Time" was instantly recognisable and everyone did that thing when they realise and then cheer. It was one of my favourite moments of the entire show, because everyone in the room was singing along and halfway through "Urby" - the keyboard/ guitarist - was whilstling the refrain and I don't know why but it made me smile.

I love the gradual pace and rise in "Tonight's The Kind Of Night" and the live performance was perfect. They played after that a song called "First Day of Spring" I hadn't heard, because I only have the first album, but it was beautiful. That one was their "last song" and after that they came back on and played "L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N" as an encore, and the only footage I have is a 16 second crappy phone clip of the whole audience singing along, calling out "L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N!" like it was all they believed in.
You can see that one here.

I sort of wanted to wait outside afterwards but didn't, because I had an exam the next day. I honestly think it went okay butif I failed, there's an oppurtunity to retake it in two weeks and I won't regret spending that night away from it all even a tiny bit.

Winning Makes Things Good Again

If I ever, ever start to seem like I'm wanting to write a blog every day in a month or something again, stop me, and remind me how I feel right now. Because this, in some ways, is more physically and definitely more emotionally draining than NaNoWriMo. It's ridiculous.
I'm sick of the sound of that voice, in my head, writing all the time. I'm sick of desperately looking for some interesting story in everything that happens to me. I don't want to try to mean anything to anybody just now, I want to lie in bed and watch How I Met Your Mother.

But instead I'll talk about what I did today, because to me it was exciting.

To start with I'll explain that there are three houses at my school - for those who aren't British or just haven't read Harry Potter, a house is basically a large group of students which you're automatically and also randomly put into in starting high school. Throughout the year, there are inter-house competitions for all sorts of things, sports, arts, performance. And I never did any of these, because although I'd have liked to it always felt like something you do with your friends. The house I used to be in I shared with only one of them, though I wasn't in a form class with her and she was never really interested in doing choir and things.

The head of the house I wanted to move to explained that I'd have to go to the guidance counselleur (sp?) and talk about how lonely I was and cry, and I did though I'm a little ashamed of it. My best friend and I are now in the same form class and in the Inter-House Music contest, which was today, I sang in choir and played in the ensemble and it made me happy. My friends and I have this running joke that I was sorted wrongly into Slytherin, now I'm in Gryffindor (I've actually gone red tie -> green, but thinking about it politically it's true.)

Choir was sort of like hope to me, because since I've drifted over to the kinds of music I love I've realised how powerful a choir can be, and it annoyed me that we had so many voices and people and there was so much you could do, yet all three choirs sang pretty much one part, and with accompiniment, and one even had a backing track. Having said that, ours was fairly creative as my school goes, and everyone felt happy singing it.

One day, before I die, I will sing "Earth" in a choir and it will be magical.

There was this really cliched moment when we won, sat at the front, not in the audience but with everyone else who had performed, when everyone just cheered and hugged and I felt proud and like I belonged, which is stupid because nobody gets so enthusiastic about these things.

___________________________________________________________________

A note

Sorry for no blog yesterday but my internet's been down again - that there was Thursday's. For the time being I'm going to write a day later until we're pretty much caught up, just because it gives me the time to edit that I need, and also so there's always something there to post last minute when my internet fails, which it is doing a lot at the moment.

.Have a nice day. :)

- Lizzie xxx

42!

Welcome to blog post 42!!!!
Sorry. I'm a nerd and I love Hitchhiker's Guide so this is pretty exciting to me. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you could google it or just go outside and look for some life experiences.

Speaking of life experiences.
I do this thing, occasionally, where I sort of write in my head. I did it a long time before I had a blog. Don't think I'm creepy or schizophrenic, it isn't voices, it's me, talking to someone else, and I just don't know who that someone else is. Nowadays, most of the time it's you.
A lot of the time, something's triggered this feeling, because I tell stories here a lot of the time and occasionally, something will have just happened to me it sets me off. It could have made me happy, or sad, or nostalgic or something, but I always know at some point during the process I usually think woah, this is going to make a good post. And I start to hear it in my head, the way that it's written.
It's happened a few times with recent events, one particularly good one today (that's for myself, to remind me of the date), when after a minute I realise I can't write it. Usually it's because I have an inkling it'll offend someone, like something I say accidentally about one of my friends or even that I'd tell these stories about them on the internet. Sometimes it's something that I would have written a while back, considering how private I used to feel this was, and I don't particularly want my friends from school to know, not just yet.
Because in five years time, simply the idea of it being later and us being older will have changed things. Anything I say here can be laughed at and not taken seriously. Because it's the past, and we were young (though in five years, we'll still be young), and I hope nobody will judge me or be mad for what I've said about them, ect.
Having said all of that, I'm hoping Eff-Paf will still be going in five years. And I know it's only been a few months, but I have an inkling it will.
This was short and I'm sorry, but I want to read "The Secret Life of Bees" for a while before I go to sleep.
Goodnight :)

- Lizzie

Why Eleven Year Old Lizzie Modelled Herself on Sarah Parish

There used to be this TV show on the BBC called Mistresses. It was a drama about four thirty-something women, who were best friends, and the various hiccups in their love lives. It was first on three or four years ago, as I was starting high school.
This was also the time I was swiftly turning into the complete BBC nerd which I am today, and Mistresses was one of the first TV shows which I felt that connection to where the characters became real to me, long before Hustle and even before Britannia High (I'll get on to that).
The four main characters were Trudi, (Sharon Small) a cheerful, housewife and 9-11 widow with annoyingly low self-esteem, Siobhan, (Orla Brady) a lawyer whose marriage is unstable due to her husband's apparent infertility and ends up pregnant, the father being another guy she works with, unsure whether to keep lying for the first five or so episodes. Jessica, (Shelly Conn) was a bubbly, promiscuous events planner, who fell in love unexpectedly with a lesbian whose civil ceremony she was playing and Katie, (Sarah Parish) a GP who had an affair with a terminally ill patient and helped in giving him an overdose, and now his son is on the case.
Watch it. It's so good.
The point is, the way that it inspired me. I was desperate to live this glamorously, and also to find a solid and tight group of friends, so I tried hard to match my friends to each of the characters, and so I did so, with a small, fairly tight-knitted group of friends I had through guides (I wasn't too popular at school in those days), which was obviously hard with eleven-thirteen year olds. My friend Beth (but not you, Beth ;) ) assigned me Katie and I was pretty pleased that my friends seemed to think I was mature, but I didn't start wearing tailored suits.

Sometimes with blogging, something seems interesting and like you can talk about it for a long time... and then you can't. It's sad.

Other stuff:
I've had a really awesome day today. I went out for breakfast. I moved a couple of steps towards living on the edge. I pulled a muscle in my stomach and learnt that I can't say "Ibuprofen" (sp?).

My Trip to the Cinema Alone

Today I did something I've been wanting to do for a really long time: I went to see a movie on my own.

The idea of it started a few weeks back, because I was discussing with one of my friends whether or not going to see a movie alone is "cool", and decided that it most probably is (because it shows you're interesting, and interested in what you're doing and it's quiet and nice.)
Then, last weekend, I went to see The Dilemma with all of my teenage girl friends. I'd really wanted to go and see Black Swan, which everyone had decided would be too scary, and so we settled for a romantic comedy type thing which I quite enjoyed, it just didn't fill what I'd left the house hoping for. After the movie ended, I talked to my friends about whether I should go see Black Swan now, alone (it had started ten minutes ago, but adverts). Most were kind of mutual/mildly shocked that I was considering doing this, one in particular discouraged me, "Bleh, you'll look like such a loner, you can't go to the cinema twice in a day, you'll get fat!" (?!)
I didn't go then, but the fact that someone had told me I couldn't go to see a movie alone made me want to do it. It made me want to do it MORE.
I couldn't get the idea out of my head. Today I woke up without much to do, schrumped around until 11:30-ish when I decided something needed to be done. I googled it (using my phone, internet was broken, hence boredom) and Black Swan was starting at 1 o clock. I could make it, just.
I walked briskly into town, feeling excited and almost a little proud of myself for leaving the house using only willpower, and made the bus just in time. I like riding the bus with my friends, but sometimes I like there not being voices around me, and especially when there aren't people my age there who I'm not with. The only people who saw me were old ladies, not watching me disaprovingly because of R&B music blaring from a mobile phone but thinking, "Isn't that nice? A quiet, respectable teenage girl who probably won't rob me. And that book she's reading, "Neverwhere" looks interesting, I'll google Neil Gaiman when I get back to my bungalow."
Anyways.
I got to the cinema and queued up to buy my ticket, I asked for a ticket to Black Swan.
She said, "Black Swan is a fifteen."
"I'm fifteen," I said.
"Do you have ID?"
And this made me angry: not that she was questioning my age, because fair enough, I'm not fifteen for a month and I wasn't wearing very much make-up but because she'd asked if I have ID. Of course not - I don't have a driver's licence, no real fifteen year old's parents would allow them to leave the house with passport, birth certificate ect. There must be a better system. So then I was like "Myeh, fine."
She almost went on to serve some 10 year olds behind me, but I booked a ticket to The King's Speech and then went to the next counter and got my nachos.
I actually liked it a lot. Collin Firth, Timothy Spawl and the actress who played the Queen Mother whose name I don't know were all brilliant, as was the King's speech therapist Lionel. Parts of it made me feel so good, sometimes patriotic and sometimes just happy. It made me laugh and smile, no part of it was too dark, and unlike most historical films, I never felt like I was missing out on anything because my knowledge of the time period is vague. Maybe that's because it didn't rely on it too much, maybe I'm just starting to learn stuff more. Yay for "Rebecca" and GCSE History?
And I liked the experience. I love my friends but sometimes in the cinema I feel quietly embarassed when they talk loudly in the adverts (I probably do so too when I'm with them I think) and adults judge me and I almost want to apologize. It's not us, it's just being in any large group of girls generates a lot of clutter and noise.
My throat started hurting so I got iced tea on the way home.
And to summarize, in self defence, I've done it and going to the cinema alone is cool. You should try it. I may even go back and re-attempt Black Swan next weekend.
I'm kidding.
...

Also I got a cold, felt tips and an idea all within the last few days
If anyone follows me on Twitter, know that Bob is fine now. Another cat bit him and the vet had to cut into his side, which he moaned about a lot and had to have two other vets hold him down, but he's better now and just having to take a lot of antibiotics. He only has a bald patch on his side which I think he's worried will ruin his cool (if kitties can be egocentric, Bob is). Callie and Sandy wander around sympathetically and lick his wound, if he'll let them. It's happy.

Seeing as I've mostly just talked about myself today, here is someone who's music I started to fall for when the song "Fidelity" was on a TV show called Mistresses (which I'm getting to writing about one day soon, I promise). Regina Spektor is so, so awesome. She plays piano, her voice is lovely and her songs are sometimes happy and playful, like "Dance Anthem of the 80s" sometimes and melancholy and nostalgic like "The Call" or sometimes just plain awesome, like "On The Radio" which is one of my favourites (videos for "Fidelity and that one are both brilliant).
"This is how it works,
It feels a little worse,
Than when we drove our hearse,
Right through the scremaing crowd,
While laughing up a storm,
Until we were just bone,
Until it got so warm,
That none of us could sleep."

That's all for today. Have a nice week/few days and stuffs. :) .

- lizzie

How I Made It to the Royal Albert Hall and Back

I was going to have to write a Royal Albert Hall blog someday, and I've been putting it off for a long time because, as Neil Gaiman said in "Neverwhere" the other night, describing my trip to London and those few days would be like "describing the planet Jupiter as bigger than a duck". It's cliched but I feel like it isn't a thing that can be put into words. But I'm going to give it a firetruckin' good try, because I feel energised and Callie's asleep here in one of my hoodies and I have a malteaser hot chocolate latte drink type thing and I want to write something, and right now there's nothing else I have to give.

A prologue: Last year on February 7th, a few months after I fell in love with Imogen Heap's music I saw her live for the first time in Manchester with some of my friends (Poppy and I had been going to get the tickets, until my mum was like "Stop! I already got those for your birthday! - my parents are awesome a lot of the time). It was a Sunday night, and for the two hours of the concert and about twenty four afterwards I was in a completley blown away and stunned. The next day in school, I could completley recall the sense of being there, not just seeing and hearing but the smell and how my feet felt and the people stood around me. It had changed me and I couldn't grow back into everyday life that quickly, not quite, because I couldn't grasp the idea that it was a concert and it was just a few hours of my life I'd spent somewhere, because it wasn't. It was the happiest I'd ever felt, I think, and there was no way I could get it back, because the strength of my memories were fading fast and every maths lesson and walk home from school was a reminder that it wasn't real, not quite.
Every night on Twitter, there were photos and videos from more shows from the tour and childishly, it only made me feel horrible and my stomach twist at the thought of not being there, like when I was a child, I hated watching the TV on New Year's Eve and I cried. I was at home, not in London with the fireworks.
But there was a solution, it was simple. I had to go again.
At that point in time, there were no other UK tour dates announced in the upcoming future (I had no idea a second leg of UK tour was happening) except there was a show in England in November time.
The only problem was that it was at the Royal Albert Hall.
My parents had shaken it off as a "No", and I accepted that for now. I had until November and I could work on it, but by April, as tickets started to sell out, I panicked. The time I chose to ask them again, God knows why, was in a cable car whilst we were skiing.
My mum was quick to tell me that my dad couldn't take me, it was on a Friday and he shouldn't have to spend his limited days off work doing this, and she couldn't take me either. They hated the idea of me taking a bus or train to London because, of course, they're all filled with murderers and rapists and things, or even being alone there because unlike the town we live in it has buildings larger than two stories and also a crime rate.
My dad vaguely understood, he has the same Thing with music, I think but tried to comfort me by telling me that he didn't go to concerts until he was eighteen. It made it worse. I didn't want to wait. Yes, I could do things when I was older too, but if I had the time and money and could get myself there, why should these strangers get to stop me? Why did I have to go on living like this another four years?
I don't ask for a lot from my parents. I wasn't asking for money or even for them to take me there. I was just asking for them to let me go.
And so, with vague hope, I went to my best friend, Poppy. She loves Imogen Heap too and she wanted to go, but I didn't really think her parents would take us. I only knew that, if push came to shove, she'd be willing to get on a train with me and just disappear to London for a night.
I just didn't really think we'd actually do it.
We had a long talk lying on her trampoline one Tueday afternoon, and she suggested asking her mum, who had a friend around there, if we could stay with her.
And then it all happened very quickly, because we actually could. As a birthday present, I bought Poppy the tickets and her mum got us a discount on the train.

On Royal Albert Hall Friday, it was also part of something called Curriculum Enrichment Week at school, where we wear non-uniform and don't do very much. I packed my bag for London and lined everything I needed up ready at the door. I started to walk to school, plugged my earphones in and started to play "Tidal". I got all the way to the end of my street before I realised I'd forgotten to take any bag at all to school, and I laughed out loud at myself right there in the middle of the street because I was so excited and emotional, there was nobody around, and I felt like I was going to melt into a puddle because of all the things I was feeling.
I didn't have a great morning at school; Curriculum Enrichment Week meant pointless lessons doing things like mummifying fish, Period 2 I spilt acid on my thumb and any time I moved my hand all day it stang. My friend told me to tell a teacher or go to the nurse, but I told him he was insane - surely, they'd send me straight to A&E and I'd spend an afternoon there, later and later for the 6:30 doors closing by the minute.
At 1:15 I came into afternoon registration trembling because I was about to do something badass, I've actually never missed school for a dentist appointment, so leaving midday seemed even more shocking. I gave the receptionist my note and was convinced she'd quiz me or would see something in me but she didn't, and as I got closer to and then passed the school gate, my sad, unexperienced heart was actually racing. I turned the corner, and for a few minutes, any passing cars would have seen a flapping flag of curly hair over a blurred high school uniform whiz down the main road. I got home, I got dressed and did my make-up super-fast, and by ten to two I was waiting outside the house with an umbrella and a suitcase.
Poppy was leaving school at 2, to look less suspicious, at about 2:01, I got paranoid because her mum and her weren't there yet. When they actually arrived, it was 2:10-ish I think. All the way to the station I was on edge. Ever two minutes I checked my bag to make sure that the tickets were still there. And they were.
We very almost missed the train: I would have run everywhere anyway, and I did so even more and I think it annoyed Claire no end. We made it in time, waited on the platform for a while and got coffee. Our train carriage was full of Italian football fans which was fun and interesting and annoying. I specifically remembering one large, muscular and rowdy Italian man falling asleep on his friend's shoulder. Poppy jokingly whispered to me, "Aww, gay men are cute.".
He opened one eye and beamed, looking straight at me (who he thought had spoken) and said in broken English, "No... not gay... he is... he is brother."
We laughed and said "Oh, ok,", then exchanged a Look.
The man opposite us on our table looked like the pixie from the TV show adaptation of Enid Blyton's "The Wishing Chair" and both of us noticed.
We played car games.
It was during NaNoWriMo, and I had my laptop and tried to write stuff, but for once I was too caught up in my life than in someone else's. It WON. So Poppy read some, and kept pointing out things that were situations we'd been in, or I had, some of which were more literal and I hadn't noticed. She was surprised because of how much more I'd used the word "fuck" that I do in real life.
The journey took way less than I expected, then we got to a large tube station (embarassingly, I don't know a lot of names of places in London) where there were also shops. Claire went into an Accesorise store to buy a present for Antonia, her friend who we were staying with, and Poppy and I waited outside. It was spacious, there were people passing swiftly with briefcases and suitcases and so we started singing an impromptu, acapella (though less awesome due to lack of numbers) performance of "Let Go" quite loudly to see if anyone stared at us.
They didn't. Because it's LONDON.
We took the tube a few stations, and being from a small town which is sort of in the country side, we offered up our seats to sweaty business men and women, and other strangers, who shoved past each other with elbows and gladly took them each time.
I like the tube a lot. It's strange.
We stopped at Antonia's house, their family friend who we were staying with. It was small and homely, there were books and movies everywhere. Her husband/boyfriend was there too, a Turkish man named Hassan, but his children weren't, for now. Poppy promised I'd like them even though I really hate little kids most of the time. (I actually don't nowadays, It's just babies).
We ate an entire pack of cheese twists on the couch, because we're teenage girls and we have hormones and hadn't eaten for a few hours. Antonia asked about the concert, who we were going to see.
"Imogen Heap!" we blubbered.
"I've never heard of her."
"No," I said. "You won't have done. She's awesome."
"Well, if she can fill the Royal Albert Hall."
We took the tube there and en route, I found a newspaper on the side of the fairly empty carriage. On one of the pages, I found a small piece about the Albert Hall show and tore it out and placed it in the envelope where my tickets were.
There was panic when we got to the tube station: we were late, there was a certain time in the first half of the show our tickets wouldn't be let into. And although half of the people I was with I didn't know that well, I wanted to yell at them because they weren't running, but I reigned it in and we got there, just in time. On the way through side streets, we got lost and I ran up to some strangers asking if they were going to see Immi. They were. I was so glad I laughed.
Note anything over-confident I did in this episode was because the whole night I was overemotional and crazy. It was everything I'd been waiting for for the last seven months.
I wish I'd walked up to the Royal Albert Hall slowly taking it in, like a kid on the run-up to the big pink Disneyland Paris castle, but I didn't, we ran. At the same time Poppy was having a fight with her mum, who was planning on asking the maitre d what time the show ended (it would be about 11, we'd told her to come for us at 1 so we could hang around and meet some awesome people). We ended up settling for 11:30, though later on bumped it up to 12.
They went off to a restaurant and this was it, we were on our way in and a woman was taking our tickets and we were in the lift with a couple in their mid-fifties. They were smiley and glamorous, and I squee'd at the idea that they were Immi fans and, so rarely, all of the people around me were.
We got to the top floor, ran to a way in which was the wrong one and to a second. Poppy laughed at me because I was sprinting everywhere.
And then we found the door and walked in to the Royal Albert Hall.
I wasn't sure what I'd imagined, but this was more. Mainly it was just much, much bigger. Did you know that there are around 140 billion galaxies, which is the number of frozen peas you can fit outside the Royal Albert Hall. The Royal Albert Hall is really, really, big.
There were big, pink mushrooms on the ceiling and the stage was tiny fron where we were sat. At the previous two Imogen Heap shows I'd been to were in university academy halls and there was one, big tree in the middle. Today we had the big tree and, around where the orchestra would be sat, smaller trees. I counted. There were ten in total.
And then, much quicker than I expected, Imogen walked on to the stage, dressed in sparkly conductor's attire, and Love The Earth film began.
She directed the crowd and for the first part, the whole of the top section was supposed to breathe outwards in a sort of Mexican wave and nobody close to us did except for Poppy and I, of course.
During Love The Earth I cried twice, and I don't know why. Two years ago, I wouldn't have listened to a piece of classical music all the way through, let alone been moved to tears.
A moment during in it, there was a clip of some sparkly water, just for a second, and I'm still not sure whether it was my clip I or not - I've no idea if they'd have contacted me or not, seeing as so many people's videos were included, and maybe I'll never find out, but I think that it could have been.
There was an interlude before the second half, which she'd said would be the "normal, Imogen Heap singer-songwriter part". Here's the time-lapse between the two.
And so, I gave Poppy the explanation that I owed her and she told me something which was a big deal to and I do hate talking like this here, but I sort of think of it as the closest to a heart-to-heart conversation that I've had, because right in the Royal Albert Hall, the moment we said it'd be for weeks, with two middle-aged men either side of us we blubbered away about relationships and sex and and love and stuff and didn't realise until afterwards just how many people had possibly been listening, and not out of choice.
I thought about all of the people I was in the same room as, a strange combination like my best friend and my favourite musician and Thomas Ermacora and people like my awesome friend Emily from Twitter. And there are others I know now were there and I didn't at the time, like Guy Sigsworth (we found out later in the show he'd been playing in the orchestra at the beginning!). Similar too, Immi's mum had been singing in the choir and this makes me smile.
When Imogen came on, I almost wasn't ready.
The first song she played was "The Walk", you hear the beginning and the time lapse. The second song was "Swoon", during which me and Poppy smiled and laughed, that day she'd learnt that the lyrics in a part in the middle of the song are nowhere near as meaningful or complex as she'd thought,
"This is where I was going to sing your name over and over again,
But I chickened out at the final minute, cause I thought you probably wouldn't like it."
Imogen was wonderful and lively and clever and talked about the songs and stories behind them a lot more than usual, she'd done the same the last time I saw her in Liverpool. During "Come Here Boy" she talked about a teacher she liked at music school, after this she played "Wait It Out", and talked about Zach Braff and Hawaii, and during the song both of us cried. The next song was "First Train Home", which as usual, got off to a bad start and then came out beautifully, and it sounded different to any other time I'd heard it. "Little Bird" was lovely, as was "Canvas" (in which I think she played a little of "The Fire") and I was glad she played "Aha!" - the second show I went to, she didn't. "Earth" was amazing, the first time I'd heard it, done all with voices and a brilliant beatboxer I didn't realise until after the show was Schlomo. I cried during "Speeding Cars" because of how appropriate it was at the time, "Let Go" was incredible, and special because we sang along and rocked out a little even though the people around us were sat still in their seats and listening, "Let Go" I think is the song that led me in.
I love "Just For Now", but I was a little disappointed in the Royal Albert Hall performace, not Immi's fault at all, it was just that the two shows I've been to audiences have sung along enthusiastically. I know that we were sat up and far away, but I almost wanted to say something to the peoples at around me for their disappointingly little amount of spirit.
I started filming a little of "Between Sheets" and I'll post it if I ever find it back, as with "Goodnight and Go" which is one of my favourite songs - Immi said that she didn't realise so many people liked it, and this shocked me no end. I may remember crying during this song as well.
I love "Headlock" live because it's so different and so much more drums and bass and piano than the album version, more a combination of strings and electronica, both are excellent for different reasons. Then she announced she was playing "Tidal", the last song with the band and I knew that it was coming to an end, it's always the fake last song before encores, but I didn't mind because I wanted afterwards to take how happy I felt out into the world. It's my favourite live, I think, and it didn't fail to disappoint, the keytar solo kicked ass.
She walked off then came back and played "The Moment I Said It" with just piano and drums, and it was beautiful, and then "Hide and Seek". Poppy was crying, because it was the last song, and I usually do at this point but I just sat and sort of absorbed it and I was in a trance the whole time we were walking out.
I don't remember the order the next few things happened, but I remember it going a bit like this.
We got to the door and I realised I'd left my umbrella inside, so we tried to go back and get it but they wouldn't let us in and instead we were directed the the stage door. We were waiting out there a long time and laughed about how accidentally lucky this was, imagining Imogen Heap emerging with the umbrella and saying "Is this yours?" but that didn't happen, instead a security guard thought we were creepy and made us leave, so we tried another desk and they didn't have it.
We gave up on my umbrella so started walking all away around the edge, from outside. It was pouring with rain, and on the way I stopped and bought a shirt. I think we'd agreed it wasn't likely we'd meet Imogen Heap tonight, and so as we passed the tour bus (I recognised it from outside the Liverpool show) Poppy decided to be badass and touch the tourbus.
And I know it isn't that awesome, but it seemed like a good think to do at the time and so I ran in the rain and touched the side and kept running and tried to feel adreneline like someone was chasing me.
And there's my claim to fame. I've touched Imogen Heap's tour bus.
After that we found a door where people were queuing outside, I asked a guy if they were waiting to meet Immi and he said yeah. He was American.
We waited there for a while, talked about all the stuff from before a little more, but it got to 12 and we had to leave before we turned into pumpkins or just before the last tube left, and so we ran to our friend.
Poppy said, "If she comes, tell her that Poppy and Lizzie give their love."
And he said, "Lizzie and who?"
"Poppy."
He smiled. "Ok. I will do."
And I high-fived him because I wanted to and we ran for the train and just made it.
We went home and Hassan talked to us about the show and gave us Turkish delight and I showed him my shirt.
Then all of them went to bed, Poppy and I settled on the couch and on the floor. I got out my laptop and I wrote to reach my target for NaNo that day and then we went to sleep.

The next morning their children were there, Adam and Marcus, and they were seriously lively considering one of them had been throwing up all night and watched TV with them. Poppy was right, I did like them. We went for a walk in the park, I accidentally flipped over a swing and hit my head (I didn't tell the kids that - they just saw me do a trick and thought I was awesome). Then I had my first ever lunch at Nando's and we got the train home.

That took two hours and fourteen minutes to write and I feel good now but I want to go to bed.
Goodnight.

- Lizzie

Hocus Pocus

Ôi orôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi ohrorô poPÔYôi orôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi ohrorô,
BoumPÔ,
Aaaah aaah aaah aaahUuuh oooh oooh ooooooooh


"Hocus Pocus" - Focus





Yes, yes I did just google those lyrics, and copy and paste them, because I feel like I should always use song lyrics at the top of my blog entries nowadays.


I also saw someone on songmeanings.net comment on the meaning of the song.


They said; "I think this song holds the secret as to the real meaning of life. "





Last Tuesday morning, my dad came into my room and told me that the night before that he'd been to a Focus show in Wolverhampton, the night before. After the show, Thijs van Leer, the lead singer, had been walking round the small club the gig was held at afterwards.


I've known some of Focus' music since I was very young: I have a distinct memory of being in my dad's car at around eight years old, listening to the song Hocus Pocus. There's a part where the frontman introduces all of the band, they're Dutch and I misheard all of their names. "On the bass guitar, Bobby Chelcoms... And on the drums, Betchy Smark. Peter Yann-Doo-May." But


I never misheard, "On organ, and flute, Thijs van Leer".


I imagined this flute playing, yodelling organ-ist (That's a word?) to look like a wizard.





I hadn't thought about them for a long time until Tuesday when my dad told me the story; he'd met Thijs van Leer, now frail and old, about sheet music for Le Cathedral de Strausberg. And he'd said that he had it in his hotel room, and my dad went back with him and talked about Jan Akkerman and music and my dad seemed fairly mind-blown. He gave him his personal email address and he'd said he'd remember him, because his name was Robin, also the name of the club he'd performed at. I get excited over small claims to fame, yes.





On Thursday, we went to their gig in Manchester, with my dad's friend he'd seen them with on the Monday. I haven't seen Stuart or his daughter Nicole for a long time, but we went skiing with them when I was about nine. Since then, Stuart split up with his wife. His current girlfriend, Rachel, came with us too.


We were mostly silent in the car. It's always strange when you see someone you were really close too as a kid. I recently saw my parents' friends' son for the first time in a long time, and he is eighteen now and going to university. I spent an entire night with when I was eight thinking he was awesome because he introduced me to Runescape, and typed "penis" into Google Images.


Nicole is two years younger than me, and I think we were pretty good friends when we went skiing. I don't remember much about her, so I don't know if she's changed a lot except that she was Older. She wore hoop earrings and looked bored, was constantly texting and wore a pouty bored expression. One of the things that made me laugh a lot was listening to her talking to her dad about walking home from school and having to go through an alley which, she declared in a matter-of-fact tone, "I can't go through, because it's haunted."





I could go on to further describe all of the other people there, but I won't because it isn't going to matter.


The support act were pretty good. Band On The Wall is a small club, and we went into the basement and met two of my dad's friends from high school. He hadn't seem them for twenty years until a week ago, and they seemed oddly comfortable around each other and I'm not sure how I feel about that, or how I'd feel if I met my friends from school after twenty years apart. I was amazed because they were a whole new breed of person I haven't come across before in the real world: the kind that go to gigs all of the time, one of them had seen Sting three times a week recently. And knew who Imogen Heap was.
The stereotypical audience member was a man, 45-ish, slightly long hair and a baggy black t-shirt. Perhaps he was alone.




Thijs van Leer came on stage, stood aside and the rest of the band led on.


He looked like a wizard.


I liked the concert a lot more than I thought; I was skeptical and maybe thought I couldn't enjoy music as much simply because it was instrumental, I was very wrong. They played the song my dad requested: Le Cathedral de Strausberg and it was pretty and sounded like bells. Another highlight was Focus III (I think) was the first song they played, I didn't know it but it was brilliant, and my favourites were the ones I knew, Sylvia and Hocus Pocus. Thijs van Leer held his arms wide open and the audience sang.



"Yodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyo-bab-baaaaa

Ahhhhhh-aaahhhh-aaaaaa-aaaaAAA!Ohhhhhh-ooohhh-oooooo-oooOOO!"

does not seem to describe the beauty and epicness of it, but there is sometimes no way to write music down.



Pocus was the last song they did and afterwards, we hung out at the merch table. My dad bought a shirt and we met all of the band and it was surreal because I wasn't ready to translate what I'd seen on the stage to actual human beings yet. Maybe instead, they were some of the first famous people, if you can call them that, people I've met and I was surprised at how human everyone was acting.

On the way home there was a bit of a fight with Stuart and his girlfriend, because he wanted to stop for kebabs and he was tired, and I went home and ate a slice of bread and it tasted like the best food in the world.

Lizzie

An Invitation

Hello...

... it's October 1st today. This means things which are special.
- It's four weeks/twenty eight days until I go see Imogen Heap for the second of three times this year.
- It's one month until NaNoWriMo starts again.

Maybe you know that I'm a huge fan of the Office of Letters and Light events. This time last year, I thought of myself as a writer but hadn't done much outside of fanfiction.net; NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy got me writing.
NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month - is a challenge to write fifty thousand words of a novel in thirty days, every November and I can't urge you to partake enough.
Through both events I've met some amazing people through the internet, particularly Script Frenzy, people from all over the world. They helped me a lot during Script Frenzy, one of the reasons I enjoyed it more than NaNo, I think, was those last few days when one by one, we would pass the finish line. After a while, our group of writers grew too big for instant messaging conversations, and we decided to create a forum.
Scrends was born. It's small and friendly and we're hoping this NaNo will bring in a lot more traffic during November and onwards. My friend Bob is the admin and it's wonderful over there.
I want you to write books this November and I want you to join us.
'Kay? :)