Cheers, darlings.

...that this happened.

And twenty years ago on Thursday, on our first (and arguably only) Proper Date (since we were inseparable from that point forwards), K and I went to see Ivor Cutler in concert at Nottingham Playhouse. An unromantic choice, you might say; but I took the fact that K had even heard of Ivor Cutler - let alone liked him - to be a Very Good Sign Indeed.

It is therefore fitting that we commemorate this auspicious - and frankly astonishing - occasion (my previous record for a relationship was four months, and you could barely even count the fourth month as still being in a relationship) by attending another show. In just under an hour's time, we're heading off for London, in order to see the Cuban/Flamenco duo Bebo and Cigala at the Royal Festival Hall. This will not just be the duo's farewell concert together, but also the last concert anywhere in the world by the veteran Cuban pianist Bebo Valdes.

We shall be spending tomorrow shopping for outfits, looking at pretentious contemporary art, and visiting a friend in hospital, before travelling up to Lincolnshire for a celebratory dinner à deux at the smallest Michelin-starred restaurant in the world (it only has three tables).

If you wish to raise a glass, then please do so after these few short words from our unwitting romantic benefactor, the great Ivor Cutler himself.

I ask you: twenty chuffing years. (That's fifty in Gay Years, of course.) If anybody else says "role model", I'll personally throttle them. But, you know, I'm secretly quite proud.

Our Bloggers' disco has turned into something of a dance marathon, hasn't it? Assuming that we start the dancing with the first megamix at 8pm, and play each mix in sequence, then the sixth and final mix won't even start until 2.40 in the morning. So let's take a look round the room and see who's left standing.

OK, I can see that some of you are flagging a bit. So let's have you all back on the floor for one more massed knees-up, culminating in an old favourite from 1990 which always, always has everyone dancing. (Is there anyone alive who doesn't like this? No, thought not.)

With many of you starting to collect your coats and phone for cabs, the next two sections of the mix are designed to cater for two groups who have been given somewhat short shrift over the past few hours.

Firstly, the saucer-eyed Ravey Davey Graveys finally get a chance to make some interesting shapes with their hands, to a selection of Banging Choons. "What's yer name? Where yer from? What's yer URL? Top one!" Sadly, we couldn't afford any smoke and lasers at our disco - but the three little coloured sound-to-light bulbs on the top of the right hand speaker are flashing away like no-one's business. Cosmic!

Secondly, the group of disgruntled rockers on the plastic stacking chairs in the far corner, who have been moaning about how there hasn't been any "proper" music all night, finally leap to their feet, put their pint glasses on the floor, stick their thumbs through their belt loops, and "bond" (in an entirely non-sexual way) to a selection of rock tracks old and new.

As the bar staff advance, J-cloths in hand, to wipe down the tables and lift up the chairs, the small remaining gaggle of diehards form a big circle, arms around shoulders, and bellow their lungs out to... well, you'll see.

"One more tune! One more tune!"

One more tune it is, then. Even though the house lights are up, and the bar manager is jangling his keys impatiently. A disco classic, to send you off into the early morning (is it 4 o'clock already?) with a smile on your face and a "Best Disco EVAH!" post already drafting itself in your head.

Three links, all to the same file. Once they expire, you're on your own - so check the comments box for offers of help.

Link one.
Link two.
Link three.

Remember that My Week article which I wrote for the business section of the Nottingham Evening Post in February 2004?

Well, it's K's turn this week. Local readers: if you go out and buy a copy of today's paper, you'll find the article somewhere towards the middle, illustrated with a little photo. Our Journalist Friend gets round to all of us eventually.

What a pity that - no doubt for reasons of space - Our Journalist Friend saw fit to excise the final sentence from the following passage:Well, at least he tried.

Post-purchase update: Hmm. It's a nice enough photo in its own way, except that Our Journalist Friend has chosen a "library shot", taken from The Era Of The Tufts. Consequently, you can see these little dollops of hair sticking out from either side of K's neck, giving him the appearance of having Rhodes Boyson-style Victorian Dad mutton-chop whiskers. It's a look, I suppose...

(all is explained in the next post below)

Just one question, though. Where are all the MEN?
Het blokes and lezzers: your coyness does you no favours.

As for the bisexuals, my thanks to Siobhan for this reminder:
"The advantage of bisexuality is that your Kissing Forest is the World".

Update: Finally, a couple of fellas! Thanks to swisstoni (het bloke) and Alibear (lezzer) for bravely sticking their lady-loving heads above the parapet.

Update: I've added a new rule for Bis. (The sexual orientation, not the 1990s indie band.) See the next post down for details.

On a message board which I (very) occasionally frequent, people have recently been discussing attractions which contradict their usual sexual orientation, e.g. heterosexuals having same-sex crushes, and gay people having opposite-sex crushes.

For my own part, I do (very) occasionally experience crushes on women. However, these crushes always stop at least 200 metres short of my actually wanting to place any of my Man Bits on/in/around any of their Lady Bits. I generally just want to sit next to them, and bask in their glow, and pay homage to their general goddess-ness.

During the course of this discussion, someone made the following observation:My question is this. If you could choose one well-known person to encounter in The Kissing Forest, who would it be?

My choice, as attentive regular readers will already be aware, would be the very beautiful Cate Blanchett. And yours would be...?

Update: A new rule. As I have no wish for them to be excluded from the fun, bi-, pan- and omni-sexuals are invited to nominate EITHER a different species OR an inanimate object.

Goodness, I do seem to be outsourcing a lot of my content these days. This time round, I'm taking a part in an extended "round table" discussion over at Silent Words Speak Loudest, in which a number of us chew the fat over matters relating to the forthcoming General Election. Troubled Diva talks politics? Oh, don't laugh. I have my moments.

The series will be continuing over the next five days, so be sure to keep checking back between now and Friday. And do leave comments - there rather than here, that is.

Additional politics links (or "How many MORE ways do you need to be told that you're a Liberal Democrat?"):

Political Survey 2005. "This is the only internet survey of political views based on real opinion poll data. We can tell you not only where your views lie, but how they compare to the views of the rest of the British population."

The Public Whip. "Choose how you feel about each of these issues. We'll tell you how your ex-MP and each party voted on them in parliament over the last 4 years."

Musings From Middle England. Willie Lupin's almost-daily Election Blogs have been excellent little poison darts of tart and pertinent observation. Start at Tuesday April 5th and work up. (To assist identification, there's a helpful "ballot box" graphic at the top of each post.)

Bah. This is what happens when you take your eye off the ball: a long-awaited Major Milestone, and I blinking well missed it.

Anyway. At some point on Friday, Troubled Diva served its 500,000th page view. That's the second of the two figures on the main Site Meter summary page. (I know a lot of people prefer to use the "Visits" figure, but that always strikes me as rather artificial; a count of unique visits would be interesting, but not when it includes multiple visits from the same person on the same day. Besides, the second figure is bigger.)

Half-a-chuffing-million! I feel that a minor TV personality ought to be presenting me with a USB memory stick backup of the whole blog, dipped in gold paint, and mounted in a glass case on a bed of crimson velvet. With silver paint for 250,000 page views and, um, platinum paint for a million. (Hmm, platinum paint. Concept needs more thought.)

In this week's Stylus UK Singles Jukebox, you'll find my thoughts on new releases by Ja Rule, The Bodyrockers, Nine Inch Nails, Hard-Fi and the Chemical Brothers featuring Kele Okereke. With a larger panel now contributing, it therefore follows that fewer of each panelist's reviews are selected for the final cut - which is a drag when you've spent ages preparing them, but less of a drag when you've got a blog to stick them in instead. So with that in mind, here are all ten reviews in full:

Caught Up – Ja Rule ft Lloyd (5)

There’s something of the post-Kanye West about this stab at giving gruff ole Ja Rule a commercial crossover hit, by setting his guttural mutters against some sweet Eighties Groove soul stylings. Unfortunately, no-one seems to have been able to stir up much interest from Ja himself; almost relegated to a guest spot on his own record, he sounds distracted and disinterested. A couple of minutes in, and all the ideas have been used up; the rest is merely crank-it-out repetition. Nevertheless, by the end of the song – with all the vocalists having packed up and knocked off early to beat the traffic – there’s something of a reprieve, as the backing track is given some space to gently unwind, in an almost dub-wise style. It’s the best bit by far. (But shush, no-one tell Ja. He has probably never listened that far. What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.)

Walking With A Ghost – Tegan & Sara (4)

A potentially attractive Police-style loping rhythm is spoilt by a stiff, restrictive execution that begs for some fluidity and development. Meanwhile, several flights upstairs, there’s an aggravatingly strident and disconnected quality to the vocals, which doesn’t bode well for the future.

The Hand That Feeds – Nine Inch Nails (3)

For all of their mock-outraged accusations, Trent Reznor and the boys seem considerably less likely to "bite the hand the feeds you" than they are to seize it in both hands and cover it in a thousand eager smooches, so manifest is their desire to score a fratjock-pleasing MTV2-friendly hit with this piece of witless, desperate froth. Once upon a time, they wanted to be Jim Morrison fronting Ministry. Now they’ll just settle for being Fred Durst fronting Garbage.

Jerk It Out – The Caesars (8)

"The song you’ve heard everywhere", according to the press advert – and indeed, there is something here which makes you feel as if it has been around forever. Every Friday and Saturday night over the next couple of months or so, student DJs across the country will be cueing this up next to The Bees’ Chicken Payback, against which it sits perfectly: there’s the same uncannily accurate 1960s retro feelgood vibe (augmented here with a nagging organ refrain), combined with the same late 1990s Big Beat sensibility (I’m guessing this is particularly big in Brighton). With no supporting album to promote, this looks set to hang around the singles chart for yonks - particularly once the nostalgic Dad download demographic gets hold of it.

I Like The Way – Bodyrockers (6)

Sporting a central rock guitar riff that is doubtless as close to Deep Dish’s Flashdance as highly paid teams of international copyright lawyers will allow, I Like The Way has all of the workmanlike insistence of So Much Love To Give by The Freeloaders, without any of the latter’s redeeming sense of breezy joy. Indeed, its brutal effectiveness as a motivational blunt instrument for those who have been denied the benefits of a broader musical diet suggests to me that the Bodyrockers are nothing less than the Turkey Twizzlers of dance. (It’s no use trying to wean them onto nice, healthy, organic "microhouse" either; there’ll be rioting in the streets before chucking-out time.)

Tied Up Too Tight – Hard-Fi (7)

The latest adherents to the age-old English tradition of disaffected petit-bourgeois youths from the suburbs (in this case, Staines in Middlesex) casting beady, aspirational eyes over at the glamour, grit and grime of the big city, Hard-Fi have – almost inevitably – caused the requisite "buzz" at this year’s SXSW festival, and now stand poised with studied faux-ennui at the threshold of success and excess, veneration and ruin. There’s an anthemic quality to this which puts me in mind of 1993-era Blur in their 1966-era Kinks phase, as well as a tantalising snatch of piano towards the end which would have evoked the glories of Jools Holland on The The’s Uncertain Smile, had it been mixed a little higher and allowed to go on for a little longer. I think everybody should be allowed to say this once, without fear of redress: file under "promising". Ooh, proper rock criticism!

Retreat – The Rakes (3)

WARNING: NME GUITAR BAND MEMORY BUFFER EXCEEDED. PLEASE REMOVE ONE OR MORE FROM DATABASE BEFORE PROCEEDING WITH REVIEW. (OK, so I’ll drag-and-drop The Others and The Subways to the recycling bin; that should clear some space.) ERROR: MAXIMUM NUMBER OF RECYCLING ATTEMPTS EXCEEDED. PLEASE SELECT SOMETHING LESS DERIVATIVE. Bah, got me there. Sorry, readers!

Munich – Editors (6)

My old English teacher always maintained that the best way to form a picture of the cultural pre-occupations of any age was to study its second-rate art – for just as first-rate art transcends its age, predicting movements which are yet to come, so second-rate art remains firmly mired in its own times, mirroring the predominant influences of the day. In which case, might I suggest that space be cleared in the 2005 time capsule for the Editors: a band with such a seemingly foreshortened sense of history that it wouldn’t surprise me if Bloc Party and The Bravery were cited as major formative figures. Having said that, there’s a nice piece of chiming, high-register, almost bouzouki-like guitar work accompanying the choruses, which lifts this marginally above the quotidian. In a disappointingly thin week such as this, such small mercies are to be gratefully seized upon.

Teenage Superstar – Kim Lian (8)

Just as the title of Just Seventeen magazine indicated a readership with an average age of thirteen, so we can infer that any pop song with the word "teenage" in its title is being explicitly marketed to an audience of eleven and under. In this respect, the flame-haired Dutch-Indonesian popstrel and her Swedish production team have done a commendably efficient job; it is easy to imagine Kim Lian being daubed onto the backs of thousands of exercise books in multi-coloured "glitter effect" gel pen lettering between now and mid-July. An intoxicatingly cheerful playground-rebel anthem in the Joan Jett/Go-Go’s tradition, for those who still find The Faders a little too grown-up and threatening.

Believe – Chemical Brothers (9)

Everything else in this week’s list is Product; this alone qualifies as Art. I’m a particular sucker for the agreeably deranged bloops and blarps that sit above the rest of the music: melodically and sonically separate, but oddly complementary, in much the same way as on the comparatively restrained Negotiate With Love. A thundering juggernaut of a track, this plays to the Chemical Brothers’ traditional strengths. It therefore succeeds where the brave-yet-flawed attempt at mould-breaking that was Galvanize fails.