If you haven’t heard Chromatics before and you die tomorrow, your life will have been aurally meaningless and unfulfilled.

The richness of sublime musical intervention will not save your soul.

You will be cast down into the fiery pits of hell where the sweet chimes and cherubic vocals of Chromatic - or any other band for that matter - will be all but a melancholic whisper of a memory.

So after that little diatribe, I’d have a listen if I were you. If only so I’ll stop harping on…

(Particular thumbs up go to the Kate Bush cover.)

Something a bit weird is happening to my voice.

It’s starting to go all husky and cracky on occasion. Especially today. Having had a good old listen, a friend assures me this is a positive asset to the ensemble of odds and ends that is Ms Hush-Hush.

Please God, let this be the voice of Mariella Frostrup and not a throat infection.

Lately, I’ve been all over the shop, behaving like a whirligig on speed.

I went to Madrid on a hen do. Fuck me, what a knees up eh? I drank enough to make my liver implode but there were no penis straws and Madrid is one hell of a wicked city. Oh, and given that 10 women spent three straight days with each other, we all behaved impeccably and there were no murders committed. Give it another day though and who knows what any of us might have done… especially after Tin Pot Airways delayed our flight by about six hours.

Upon return to the UK, The German and I went to the Lake District. Beautiful up there you know, although when you’re approximately 30-years younger than everyone within a 12 mile radius, it makes the view a little more craggy than one would expect.

Day 1: We motored seven miles round Ullswater in two hours and 20 minutes, earning ourselves blisters the size of golf balls and many, many pints. Devoured slabs of Kendal mint cake. Wondered why roof of mouth felt like the inside of Willy Wonka’s Y-fronts.

Day 2: We awoke to wazzing rain and came back home early. Popped blister. Good holiday eh?

Since then I’ve been interviewing for jobs and trying to sort my life out. God, I hate flux. It makes me erratic and prone to the drink. Yes, yes - even more so than normal.

So, amongst the dizzying freneticism of daily fake tanning disasters and laundry (oh, the glamour), my do to list now includes:

1) Land a shit hot and well paid job when London teeters on the brink of recession. Crunch me baby, crunch me.

2) Pack in the fags and stop being a drink-addled tart so my fertility isn’t ruined and I render myself a useless, barren husk of a woman. (Thank you Grazia - I’m starting to deeply regret my subscription after the 100th dull as fuck/frightening as fuck article about infertility in women who go out drinking and smoking, just like me.)

3) Move to the seaside in a vain attempt to suck in air that isn’t riddled with chemicals, exhaust fumes and other people’s body odour 24/7. (Also see point two.)

Good then. I don’t feel overwhelmed in the slightest. Not a heart palpitation in sight.

*impersonates rabbit trapped in headlights*

*thud*

I woke up this morning all golden brown.

The smell of the fake tan also woke up The German, but whatever, get over it man.

I look like a perfectly baked shortbread.

I am hot shit. If you’re a baker or someone’s grandmother…

It’s July now and excepting a disastrous episode in a Dublin hotel room and a can of fake tan spray in mid-June, I have avoided the look of the Tango since the sun first made a tentative appearance in May.

Until now.

I’m going to Madrid on Friday for a three day hen do marathon and I just couldn’t face it looking half dead. Milky white complexions look good in costume dramas and on Nicole Kidman, neither of which represent the average woman’s everyday beauty endeavours.

So then. I have enlisted The German, smothered myself - twice for a head start - in that ‘every day’ holiday skin muck and I fully anticipate to wake up tomorrow smelling like a packet of digestive biscuits with a touch of the Jodie Marshes. Hot stuff.

The beauty motto: if it doesn’t stink/make you howl in pain/make your boyfriend recoil in horror at the instructions, then it just ain’t working.

FACT.

Holy crap, I’m sure there’s just been a earthquake in Tooting.

The floor just went all shakey and the wardrobe wobbled and everything. I expect this breaking news to hit the BBC any minute now. Either that or my crumby flat is finally giving up the ghost after one too many door-slams from the downstairs neighbours.

Of course, I’m moving to Hove in October so irritants like city earthquakes and loathsome neighbours will be a thing of the past. That’s the plan anyway and in the meantime I’m slinging the employment net far and wide to see if anyone needs a contract web editor in Brighton.

God, job hunting is a ball ache and a half. My inner pendulum swings between confident and excited to crippling paranoia that I have zero skills and no sane person will ever employ me. That’s clearly what tinkering around on the internet as a freelancer does for you: obliterates your ability to slot back into a normal working environment.

I’ve got until the beginning of September to sort myself out and I’m convinced I’m royally fucked. There’s an insidious voice in my head that keeps telling me the last 27 years have been building up to one great big fuck-off car crash. My friend Richard says the fear is good, but it’s making me pace the living room like a caged cat.

So, scrap that earlier plug. If anyone anyone needs a contract mentalist in Brighton, just send ‘em my way.

Today in Soho, David Suchet aka Hercule Poirot.

Minus the comedy ‘tache. More’s the pity…

I am all for charity. Hell, I’ve even registered myself as one. But I’m sick to the impacted wisdoms of the clipboard-wielding hippies taking over the streets, imploring me to sign endless reams of direct debit forms for the sake of the poor children/donkeys/amputees/the entire continent of Africa.

It is the same with all these things. The more you are saturated with something, the more it a) irritates the fuck out of you and b) the more you become oblivious for your own sanity. Right now I am more of the ‘A’ persuasion, but I am loitering on the borders of ‘B’.

Perhaps we would all do better to buy The Big Issue from one of the many homeless souls in London. After all, the influx of free papers must be putting the poor bastards slowly but surely out of business.

Charity begins at home but the UK seems to be terminally overrun with the po-faced Nimby Brigade, who would rather lament the state of every other country except our own. This doesn’t apply to America of course, from which such mentalism pours we just shit ourselves instead.

It makes me cranky.

Hello there. I’m back, albeit in a different guise.

I guess you’ll be wanting the skinny on the radio silence. Here it is…

I got blog-spotted and sold www.Ladyshambles.com. I ain’t no millionaire, but it was definitely enough for a new pair of shoes and a 36-hour bender. The new, commercial, all-singing, all-dancing Ladyshambles.com will hit your computer screens later this year. In the meantime, I’ve been whoring myself round the freelance scene of London to find gainful employment. Mission accomplished and I’m back.

So, to clarify: Ladyshambles and Ms Hush-Hush are one and the same. I’ll be continuing where I left off, except this time I won’t be living up to my new name quite so much.

Tootle pip, tally ho, etc.

Hi there,

You may have noticed there’s a new girl in town in the guise of Very Hush Hush, aka Ms Hush-Hush.

I’m sad to say, Ladyshambles has been lured by the bright lights of the city. That small town girl just got her big break somewhere else and she ain’t looking back. So I - Ms Hush-Hush - am here to pick up where she left off.

I’ll be keeping you posted on what happened to Ladyshambles in due course but in the meantime, play nice. I will bite.

Ms Hush-Hush
X

PS And don’t forget to update your bookmarks! You don’t want to miss out…