My, but we've been having fun in Karen's comments today:I think I'm in danger of winning my own competition. (See below.)

A friend of ours in London has easily the most glamorous job of anyone we know. Basically, he organises A-list "events" (or "parties" to you and me) in one of the city's most prestigious museums, in order to raise funds for said museum. (Well, it's not just a museum, but I'm not giving out any more clues.) And when I say "A-list", I actually mean "A-list" for once; because he really does have actual lists. ("We B-listed Joan Collins last month", he told us the other day. Imagine wielding such power!)

Anyway, said friend is about to jump ship, in order to organise A-list parties for an even more prestigious organisation. (Clue: there are four of it, but only two in London.) He is therefore holding a farewell do at the museum in a fortnight's time, in the "Armani event space", no less (he did that big Armani party the other week; oh, you know the one). Frankly, wild horses wouldn't keep us away.

While staying with us recently, this friend asked me for some help with the music for his leaving do. There won't be anything so vulgar as dancing (we're saving ourselves for the Two Sewers later on), so what's needed is interesting background music. Not the sort of bog-standard light-jazzy stuff that everyone puts on in restaurants, and not the sort of bog-standard "lounge-tronica" stuff that everyone puts on in trendy bars, either (I blame the Hotel Costes.) No - something with a bit more variety and personality, that will generate a lively atmosphere without swamping the venue with banging dance beats.

So, I've put this CD together - the first of two, or maybe three - and I'm dead chuffed with the results. Although eclectic, there's a nice mid-tempo chugginess which runs through most of the selection, and there's a good balance of old and new, obvious and obscure, classic and cool. Hey, maybe Donatella will hire me. (You want to know my dream job? Putting together compilation CDs for A-list parties, that's what. I never said I was deep.)

Here's the track listing. Keep reading for a chance to WIN an EXCLUSIVE copy!OK, so would you like to win a copy? Well, here's how.

As the more observant amongst you would have spotted, Our Zena was writing about the w@nkers in her life. At some length, I grant you - but then there were an awful lot of w@nkers. Meanwhile, Karen has been collecting stories about the w@nkers in your lives. Which is great - but, in the interests of journalistic balance, I think it's time we turned the tables.

The challenge is this, then. I'd like you to tell me the story of a relationship in which you were the w@nker. A true story, if you please -although admittedly, there's no way of checking. But I think we can all trust each other, right? I will then award the CD to the person who I think has been the biggest w@nker. Because sometimes, even w@nkers need a little love.

Yes! I'm trading public humiliation for a free CD! Fair exchange? Of course it is!

You can submit your entry in one of two ways:

1. Leave the story as a comment in the comments box below this post. Note that there's a maximum word limit, so please: save the text before posting, and split it into two parts if you have to. (However, this doesn't need to be a novella - a paragraph or two will suffice.)

2. Post the story on your own site, and link to it via the comments box below this post.

Note 1: You are welcome to post the story anonymously. Of course, the winner will eventually have to supply me with a postal address - but it's OK, I won't blab. Promise.

Note 2: Overseas applicants are every bit as welcome as UK applicants.

The closing date is a week today: Friday November 28th. Just think; in a couple of week's time, you could be throwing your very own A-list party in the comfort of your own home, and all thanks to Troubled Diva! Hurrah! Lychee and nashi pear martinis all round!

To recap, then: who's the w@nker? Get set - go.

Overheard in Waterstones: three teenage girls are clustered round the Schott's Original Miscellany (*) display stand.

Girl 1: "It's just like... lists? Y'know, like really random stuff?"

Girl 2: "Yeah, that could be a good thing to get."

Girl 3: "I dunno. It's just that my mother bought about ten of them for Christmas last year, and gave them to all her friends, and they're all like really Christian?" [makes air-quotation-marks with fingers] "It just like really puts me off?"

Insert think-piece about Socio-cultural Context here - with additional reference to the embarassment felt when buying the new Kylie album in the local uber-hipster independent record store, instead of in the comfortably anonymous surroundings of the Virgin Megastore round the corner (two quid more expensive, but a small price to pay for the saved blushes).

Alternatively, please submit a contribution to Stuart's collaborative workshop on the Sociology Of Queuing. (I've suggested a Viable Coping Strategy for the Parallel Queuer.)

Oh, and by the way: Return Of Zena, everybody! Because she asked nicely, and because I knew she had more to say. Much, much more. Please make her feel welcome.

(*) In any case, I'm more of a Brewer's Unoriginal Miscellany man myself.

(posted by Zena)

Remember me? The one who wrote the tale of angst-and-woe with an upbeat ending? My so-called-friend had me strung out on hash cakes blah blah blah? Do you ever feel that the internet is so full of words it's hardly worth finishing a se-.

Anway. Sunday, long story, but I ran into him at my cousin's wedding. No surprise, he's a musician, often at these kinda dos. But what was a surprise was that when I saw him, I utterly freaked out. Shaking, panic-stricken, the whole works. I was also sitting next to a woman who was doing my head in (tell you about her in a minute, if you want), which didn't help. When D walked towards me across the dance floor, my only thought was of escape. I associate him almost exclusively with death, fear and loathing, and realised at that moment that no amount of space (between us, time, whatever) would change that.

I very tersley told him I didn't want to talk to him, and he looked angry. But then I couldn't get into the party spirit at all. Not least because Mary-Jane or whoever she was was sqawking in my ear:

Her: (as she sweeps all the wedding-paraphenalia of the table, replacing it with nappies, teletubbies and brightly coloured baby food packages) Don't I know you?
Me: (knowing quite a lot of people), er, maybe?
Her: Yes, yes, I came to your party, five years ago, when I was single (glancing over at her rent-a-husband and two kids). I hated being single. Don't you?
Me: Well, y'know, there are -
Her: I mean I was a secretary, and I hated it, and I just wanted to get married. Have kids. There was nothing else to do. I was so miserable. All those bad dates. Awful. Aren't they awful?
Me: I guess some are, but -
Her: I mean, once, I went out with this guy, and he picked me up, and took me to a restaurant, but didn't help me cross the road, a busy road, y'know. Just left me there. To cross the road alone. Honestly. And I thought, should I go home, or should I get the most expensive thing on the menu?
Me: Er (trying to escape this conversation-from-hell), I don't know -
Her: And I went to so many singles dos. Lousy. All of them. So expensive. I remember your party, lots of people. You must know everyone. Still single? How old are you?
Me: (lop a couple of years off)
Her: oh, older than me (glancing victoriously at hubby and two kids). Oh, well, I suppose there's still time.
Me: I -
Her: Y'know, me and my Husband, we often laugh. All that money we spent on singles dos, and then we met each other on a charity committee. For free! Imagine that. Oh, we do laugh.

Then her six-month old filled his nappy, with it wafting over the lunch table.

Her: sorry! (saccharine smile)
- and she left him in his dirty nappy for ages.

I wasn't happy, had to get out of there. Went round to a friend's house, hung out a little while, and then decided the only thing that would give me closure (because I am an eighties therapist in disguise) would be to go round and see D. We're on the edge of the same social circle, and I don't want to be petrified every time I see him.

He's not home. M, his wife - who I've also not seen since March - was a little shocked to see me, but apologetic. I was still shaking, and went home.

In an effort to regain whatever equilibrium I had, I called some friends, and went out. Take your mind off it. Denial therapy, that's where I'm at. Got home late on Sunday, tired, somewhat emotional...

Woke up Monday morning barking. Petrified. Exactly like the bad trip. Same hallucinations. Same Aztecs. Same unabridged, core-of-your-soul fear. Shit. As I so eloquently wrote in my diary at the time: "There are balloons of my skin everywhere. Inside out balloons. They are taller than I expected, but want me to go with them."

A couple of friends came over and hung out and I tried to be normal, whatever that is. Lunchtime, I decided to call D because the only way I'd ever feel it was over was if I looked him in the eye and wasn't frightened. He was his usual self-defensive self:

Me: I'd like to meet you and talk
Him: Well, that's OK if you're interested in taking our friendship forward, but not if you want to just tell me what you think of me. I'm not cool for that. I have lots of friends, and I don't have "this" with anyone else. I mean, refusing to speak to me!
Me: Well, (fudging) till we meet, I don't know what we'll say...

Met him in a North London un-Starbucks. He looked more scared than me, and that's saying something. My supra-low expectations were set at telling him how I felt and leaving. But he was genuinely apologetic, learned his lesson, blah blah blah.

He said one thing, though: "we've always had a real connection, can we still be friends?"

I was a little incredulous. But I said, "D, my friends are people who have good judgement, and people I trust."

Then I left my two pound coin on the table, as I didn't want him buying me coffee, and left.

Over, allegedly.

OK, so you all discovered it days ago, but just in case you didn't...

Chasing Bush. George W Bush thinks he can escape an angry public... He's wrong.

(It's a collaborative blog which has been set up to track Bush's visit to the UK.)

Meanwhile, I like what Orbyn has to say about last night's state banquet (also links to the menu & seating plan).

Cleaning out a whole year's worth of texts from my mobile over the weekend, I came across a couple from K which I had long forgotten about. These were sent from the Princess Diana Memorial Garden late one Saturday night in the summer, while I was at a party in Nottingham, playing adolescent drinking games.

In the first message (now deleted), he explained that he was sitting out in the garden, pissed, and gazing at Mars, which he said looked particularly beautiful that night. (You might recall that Mars has been unusually clear in the night sky this year.) Nearest thing to heaven for an atheist! he quipped.

In the second message, sent half an hour later, his mood had shifted:

Bugger, when you get your eye into the Milky Way Mars is too crude. And the Owls are nice!

Yes - even the Solar System is no longer good enough for him.

By the way: the Big (if somewhat delayed) News is that K has left the company which he founded seven years ago, and is now in the process of putting together a brand new venture. Which, in a skewed and not altogether accurate sort of way, makes me the Bread Winner and him the Home Maker. Yes - while I'm selflessly slogging my bollocks off round Europe, Madam is slumped on the sofa in a semi-catatonic state, scoffing chocolate marshmallows and fingering himself to Hungarian pr0n vids. This is what we call Role Reversal.

I don't think I've yet plugged The Naked Maja, Marcello Carlin's sequel blog to the much-praised The Church Of Me. The writing is still predominantly music-based, but with a subtle shift of emphasis; it's more strictly review-based, and less intricately tied up with the circumstances of the writer's personal/emotional life. Meanwhile, the writing remains as exemplary and compelling as ever. These are long, multi-part pieces, which are generally published weekly. My only regret is that - as with so many of the more intelligently written music blogs - there's no comments facility.

Incidentally, word has it that The Church Of Me will be appearing in book form next year, making it the second blog that I know of to make the transition from computer screen to printed page. (The first being Where Is Raed?, of course.)

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Recent postings which have caught my fancy:

• From londonmark: C is for Confusion. Oh, how I relate. If Mark will insist on continuing to write superb postings like this one, then I will have no choice but to continue linking to them. Or maybe you could all just pledge to read his blog regularly from this point on. Oh, you read him already? Well, good. Carry on.
• From kitchentable: Stuart finds himself at a mashed-up post-club "back to mine". Made me chuckle in horrified recognition.
• From little.red.boat: Anna and D have a Heated Debate about Dilbert: sinister instrument of capitalist oppression, or soothing satirical balm for the intellectually and creatively stifled white-collar serfdom? You decide!

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Two new blogs from two established and popular UK bloggers: skin and the highrise. If you were reading them in their old incarnations, then you'll very quickly work out who and where they used to be.

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Good to see Mo Morgan back after a year's break, with one of the rare "web pundit" blogs which actually holds and sustains my interest/attention (the only other one I read regularly being Tom Coates' agenda-setting plasticbag.org). In particular, I've been enjoying his thoughts on trying to find new ways of defining relationships between individual weblog posts.

With this in mind, I've implemented an exciting new feature on Troubled Diva: namely, the addition of "see also..." links at the end of each new post. (I've actually back-dated these to the end of Guest Month.)

The idea works similarly to those "If you like this album, then you might enjoy these" thingies which a lot of music magazines seem to be appending to their album reviews these days. Hopefully - and provided I don't get bored with the idea - you'll eventually be able to follow an alternative path through the archives, very loosely linked by theme. However, I won't be telling you where these paths are leading - you'll just have to click and see. Sometimes, the thematic link will be obvious; sometimes, it will be a bit more obscure. It's a Troubled Diva Magical Mystery Tour! (Also, it's yet another way to Flog The Archives; something which I'm always keen to do.)

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Admin: It grieves me beyond measure to tell you that I'm not going to be able to make it to the UK Bloggers Xmas Party on Saturday November 29th. This is because I'll be seeing Radiohead at Nottingham Arena that night, before moving on for some intensive Podium Action with Buni dahn NG1. I trust that you'll all be able to struggle on without me.

That Mariza concert review has elicited a couple of further recommendations. Firstly, Meg tipped me off to Amália Rodrigues: "...the true queen of Fado. Like Mariza, but more. Much, much more." Since my Amazon music recommendations have been telling me the same thing for months, I took the plunge and made a purchase: The Art Of Amália. Crikey, but it's good stuff; and what's more, the vocal resemblance to Mariza is uncannily similar. Since the recordings on this CD were mostly made in the 1950s and 1960s, it is tempting to go further and suggest that Mariza has nicked Amália's entire vocal style - delivery, range, phrasing, the lot - making her little more than a particularly talented tribute artist. Except... except... that what we witnessed on stage last month was so undeniably wonderful, that nothing can quite detract from it. Nevertheless: if Portugese fado intrigues you, then I can only suggest that you head for the true originator rather than the currently fashionable imitator.

Secondly, qB recommended Cesaria Evora, whom we had heard (and commented upon) on Radio 3's excellent World Routes programme last Saturday, in a duet with the late Compay Segundo. I suspect that Cesaria will be my next purchase; but which of her albums should it be? Guidance, please...

I am, of course, well aware of the rich irony inherent in posting another "poor little me and my back-breaking life of drudgery" piece, directly following a nine-part "cultural review" which managed to encompass London, Paris and Barcelona (and, er, Derby). Hey, at least I managed to restrain myself from talking about the additional stress of flitting about between two homes, and settling in neither. There; I think that's the last of the sympathy evaporated. Thank goodness for that!

However, the awful, inescapable truth is that, having ordered my emotions enough to set them down in words, I almost immediately started to feel better. Therapeutic Blogging on Troubled Diva? A worrying precedent. May the Lord save us all!

Alan left a particularly pertinent and resonant comment, which I'm going to bowdlerise by changing two pronouns...Precisely.

There's this dull weight in my brain right now; crowding out creative thought, and turning the ordering of words on a screen into a chore rather than a pleasure. I have retreated into myself far too much over the past couple of days, losing the ability to engage fully with the world around me - as if there was a layer of invisible cotton wool wrapped around the inside of my head, muffling external reality. Inside the cotton wool, I'm over-thinking everything; in a lurching, scattershot fashion, flitting between random neurotic impulses with little rhyme or reason. Bashing against the soft walls which hem them in, these impulses have no choice but to bounce back inwards, bumping into each other along the way like so many multiple pinballs. Eventually, this dull perpetual motion generates a kind of low-level feedback hum, steadily rising to a buzzing throb, before jagged shockwaves of snippy ill-temper, or panicky over-reaction, send them scattering off once again. In this precarious state of mind, the slightest challenge, the mildest annoyance, can knock me off-balance.

I know full well what this is: an after-reaction to the cumulative stresses of travelling and working abroad for the past six weeks (mercifully, I have a "week off" this week). However, this realisation neither consoles nor cheers me; I should be stronger than this, and K deserves better than the scrag end of my personality.

He's no stranger to these kinds of stresses himself, having spent roughly one week in three working abroad over a seven year period in the late 80s/early 90s. We can both hear the echoes; sometimes, it's uncanny. His empathetic tolerance has therefore been remarkable, but I have no wish to put it to the test any further; we all have our limits, and sharing living space with me has been no picnic of late.

I dearly want to "snap out" of this, but I doubt whether such a thing is achievable. Meanwhile, I'm pandering to all my worst indulgences.

This will pass. I'm congenitally programmed to bounce back smiling sooner or later. That innate shallow streak of mine can be a godsend at times. (I'm seeing David Bowie at Birmingham NEC on Wednesday - woo! Kylie's new album is GREAT - double woo!) Blogging the bleakness? No - I'll stick with the usual persona, thanks. It serves me well.

I've been meaning to do a cultural round-up for about a fortnight now, but The Great Tiredness got in the way, and now it's hanging over my head like a piece of overdue coursework. (18 years since I graduated, and I still get nightmares about unfinished essays, missed lectures, and stern memos flooding out my pigeon-hole.)

So, let's get the backlog cleared with a lightening quick catch-up session typically long-winded piece, which has been hanging around in draft form for the past few days.

It might be stuck in the middle of a grim shopping centre, but Derby Playhouse has been punching way above its weight for the last few years, showing up its larger Nottingham equivalent something rotten by comparison. A superb, imaginatively staged production which stuck closely to Bram Stoker's original story, freed from all its cheesy Hammer Horror baggage. Like the Gary Oldman/Keanu Reeves movie version from about 10 years ago, only with a decent script and proper acting.

Derby's current production is Joe Orton's Loot, directed by Cal McCrystal, which has been picking up favourable mentions in the press. We have to go. We've been. Keep reading.

The fado goddess had K in tears right from the very first song, and all the way through the rest of the concert; afterwards, he needed wringing out like a soggy dishcloth. Indeed, K was so emotionally tuned into Mariza's performance that he was even moved to clap along during the happy songs. I never thought I'd live to see the day.

His reaction was entirely justified, though; for rarely have I seen such pure emotion - powerful yet always controlled - so effectively transmitted from the stage. Mariza's largely melodramatic laments for lost love connected with the whole audience, vaulting straight over any language barrier; you didn't need any knowledge of Portugese to understand the nature of the feelings she was channelling. Paticularly effective were the mid-song pauses, where she would silence her musicians with a raised hand, then visibly search with her fingers for the next emotion, before bursting forth again with a shuddering wail. She looked stunning, as well: a platinum blonde Amazonian force majeure and diva incarnate.

Beautiful creatures in their underwear mingled with an inanely grinning and waving podgy bloke ("I only got this part because I'm fat! I'm worried that if I lose any weight, I'll be out of work!") and a powerfully built, startlingly athletic dancer with no legs, in a series of wonderfully inventive and superbly executed vignettes which nevertheless failed to form a suitably cohesive thematic whole. Which isn't to say that I didn't love it whole-heartedly - particularly the ludicrously gimpy dancing to Cher's Believe. Nice to see my own chosen idiom of dance (perfected after many years of practice) represented so accurately on the stage. The show plays in Madrid from November 20-22, and in Leeds from November 27th 29th, and comes highly recommended.

The permanent collection didn't float my boat one little bit - too dry, rarified, up its own arse - but the building itself turned out to be the real stunner, the breathtaking drama of its cavernous stark white spaces easily outstripping its contents. I didn't like the Piper exhibition one little bit - by turns wilfully obscure and annoyingly preachy - except for one two-part installation piece, which left me reeling.

A plain white cubic structure stood in the middle of the floor, with an open doorway leading to a darkened interior within. On the right hand wall as I entered, a quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn: "You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power -- he's free again." Turning left, I found a darkened booth, with a single chair facing a smallish screen on the wall opposite. On one side of the chair, a box of tissues; on the other side, a waste paper basket. On the wall above the back of the chair: an image of a smiling George Bush senior, shaking hands with three or four police officers. As I sat down, feeling like I was etering a pr0n booth (what else could the tissues be for?), I turned my gaze towards the film which was silently playing on the screen in front of me; it was the famous video footage of Rodney King's beating by members of the Los Angeles Police Department in the early 1990s. The video was looped, giving the impression that the beating never stopped. I had never watched this footage in full before, and sat there open-mouthed, mesmerised by the brutality. Perhaps the tissues were there to dry my bleeding heart liberal tears; or maybe their presence suggested that on some level, I was secretly getting off on my self-righteous outrage. Three or four loop repetitions in, I got up and left King to his fate.

Further down the same gallery, an identically proportioned cube, this time in plain black. In the entrance, the same Solzhenitsyn quote, this time in white lettering on a black background. Round the corner to the left, the same little booth, chair, tissues and waste paper bin, its black walls leaving the area in almost total darkness. No film was playing this time, although I thought I could vaguely make out the image of a black face on the wall in front of me. I sat down; immediately I had done so, a bright light flashed on in front of me, illuminating the booth and revealing the screen opposite to be...a mirror. Rooted to the spot in shock, I found myself staring into my own eyes, my expression frozen. Behind me, and also visible in the mirror: the same image of Bush congratulating the cops. I had joined the group. A few seconds later, the light flicked off and the screen lit up, replacing my reflection with an illuminated monochrome photo of a badly beaten black man. Maybe it was Rodney King himself; I didn't know. A voiceover started up, relaying a message of mournful defiance - I have completely forgotten what it said. As the tape finished, the light flicked back on again, leaving me staring at my own reflection once more, my fixed expression registering even more stunned shock than before. The message seemed to be: you are complicit in this, whether you like it or not. Take a good look at your reaction.

As I stumbled out of the black cube, feeling like I had been hit over the head with a sledgehammer, I caught sight of one of Piper's large photo-montages on the wall opposite. A photograph of the hanging victim of a lynch mob was (as far as I recall) juxtaposed with a photograph of Martin Luther King speaking at a rally. Superimposed on these images was some text, which said something like: This may not be your fault, but it is your responsibility.

A pity, then, that the power of these pieces was so badly undercut by the knee-jerk, white-liberal-baiting, self-righteous, one-dimensional, overly literal preachiness of much of the rest of the exhibition.

Poncey furniture ahoy! K and I took the day off work to surround ourselves with three floors of Ligne Roset sofas, Seventies retro bedroom storage solutions, innovative glassware, simply sumptuous sideboards, and various sundry gorgeous little bits and pieces for the home, spread out over maybe a couple of hundred exhibition stands. In an adjacent lecture theatre, Kevin McCloud from Channel 4's "Grand Designs" programme, accompanied by the show's executive producer, talked for nearly an hour about the making of the show. By the end of the talk, we wanted to be his friend even more badly than before (as, I think, did the majority of the largely thirty- and forty-something female audience around us). With his relaxed, smiling, twinkly-eyed charm, off-the-cuff wit (he had us rolling in the aisles), razor-sharp mental agility (the entire talk was improvised on the spot) and his infectiously self-evident enthusiasm and passion for the subjects of his programme (both the building projects themselves, and the people behind them), we were completely won over by the man, and left the lecture wanting to be his friend even more badly than before.

Incidentally: if you remember the recent programme featuring the increasingly red-faced and hopelessly accident-prone guy with the house that stubbornly refused to be built (the one with the huge butterfly-wing roof that got ruined in the rain), then you'll be pleased to know that a sequel programme will be airing next year. All that Kevin McCloud would reveal is that in the second programme, the building graduates from stubborn refusal to an active aggression against being built. We can't wait.

We've been visiting the Turner prize show almost every year for the past decade, and left in no doubt that, after an extended ropey patch, this is the strongest collection of finalists for years. While Willie Doherty's video installation ("Re-Run") admittedly felt a little bit under par, we would be perfectly happy for any of the other three finalists to win the prize next month. If we're considering the cumulative impact of all their work to date, then in many ways the prize should rightfully go to Jake & Dinos Chapman - particularly on the strength of last year's "Chapman Family Collection" White Cube show. However, purely based on the work on display, our favourite (and, judging by the hundreds of pieces of paper stuck to the walls of the concluding "comments room", the clear favourite of a good 75% of the viewing public) had to be Grayson Perry, the transvestite potter from Essex. What particularly came across this year was the high level of skilled craftmanship involved in most of the exhibits; definitely one in the eye for the "my five year old could have done that" brigade.

Positioning yourself as an Internet writer and artist, and going on to build a successful academic career from it, is all very well - but, as my similarly underwhelmed friend pointed out at the end of this interminably tedious lecture, it does generally help if you have at least some vague semblance of a literary background. In its absence, all we were left with was a clunking, shallow pseudo-profundity ("nomadic gurus of the electrosphere", indeed!) wrapped up in layers of supposedly "innovative" and "experimental" technique, which wouldn't even have made the grade on a late night Channel 4 show from ten years ago (back in those happy far-off days when Channel 4 still showed experimental artsy-fartsy videos instead of feral tit-and-bum-fests). This supposedly cutting-edge wow-iness was also badly undercut by the way that Mark Amerika displayed his various websites to us, opening each one in a titchy little window and then having to scroll left/right/up/down to show us all the content. (It was all I could do not to stand up and shout "Maximise! And press F11! For all our sakes!")

Nevertheless, Mark Amerika's talk did inspire me on one level: if he can get away with calling himself an "online writer", then I most certainly can too. "Oh yes, I'm an online writer. Working with words and images, I deploy a variety of multi-disciplinary techniques to distribute my work in a broadly reverse-chronological format, in a medium which seeks to build overlapping networks of disparate yet interlinked online quasi-communities, whilst simultaneously encouraging active participation from community members in which the boundaries of "provider" and "consumer" are gradually broken down by means of an iterative process of... Well, you get the picture.

With most of Nottingham's indie-gig-going demographic packing out Rock City for the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, this poorly publicised gig (i.e. I only found about it two days earlier) attracted barely seventy punters (I counted). Undaunted, the Chicks ploughed gamely on, but the gig steadfastly failed to ignite, either for them or for us. Disappointing? Oh, you don't know the half of it.

Back in late 1999/early 2000, Chicks On Speed were my Official Favourite Band, and I became quite the completist: import vinyl singles, limited edition mail-order releases, the lot. For the past four years, I had therefore been longing to see them live, convinced that any Chicks gig would be an Event to remember - on a par with Le Tigre at The Social last year, or The Scissor Sisters at The Cock Live this year. Almost jumping for joy when I spotted them in the gig listings, I was even preprared to give up my first free night in Nottingham for a week - and my last free night in Nottingham for another week - to make the pilgrimage, despite not having anyone to go with, and despite feeling considerably less than 100% health-wise. Still, the packing for Paris could wait till morning, where there's a will there's a way, etc etc.

I did my best, I really did. I drank (alone), I danced (alone), I whooped and cheered (alone), and I almost succeeded in having a good time - but not quite. Still, it was nice to hear Eurotrash Girl, Mind Your Own Business, Kaltes Klares Wasser and We Don't Play Guitars performed live (even if we didn't get Glamour Girl, or any of their fantastic B-52s/Tom Tom Club covers), and the home-made frocks looked good (lots of netting), and the make-up was cool (lots of day-glo), and Alex, Kiki & Melissa are still Fabulousness Incarnate In Every Way, despite everything, even the empty room and the atrocious sound mix (way too much echo, vocals sounding like they were coming from backstage somewhere) and the fact that I shelled out 10 quid on a "limited edition" CD that turned out to be a radio interview from 2000 which lasted less than five minutes. Oh well, can't win 'em all.

By the way: a big Troubled Diva Hello to Dave with the red hair (he said I had to mention the red hair), a previously unknown reader who came up and introduced himself after the gig. ("Excuse me, are you Troubled Diva? I read your blog regularly!") The brief feeling of mild celebrity that this conferred upon me almost made up for the entire evening. Hello Dave - and Haaaaaa-ppy Reading!

Derby Playhouse does it again, with a sprightly, irreverant production (by Cal McCrystal) which had us bellowing hysterically on the back row, particularly in the liberty-taking second half. (Top tip: the middle of the back row at Derby Playhouse gives an excellent view, plus you get to be first to the bar in the interval, and you get to beat the car park queues at the end of the night). As with Dracula before it, there's some great staging and cute little coups de theatre along the way, and the acting couldn't be faulted. Wonderful to realise that there's still plenty of creative life and fresh thinking in regional theatre - even ones that have been hidden away in shopping centres.