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Advice is free, right? Let’s hope so, because my buddies/chums/galpals are dishing out dating tips all over the shop... yes I said dating. For the purpose of this post ich bin ein Americaner.

Bear with me.

First off, my flatmate told me I had to be more wholesome. Now, to be fair, she was in the Marathon Bar at the time, and flying high thanks to free JD cocktails down the road, but I think I got the general gist:

a) I should go to church more often.
b) I should only date men I want to marry.

Why she wants to turn me into a shorter and more homosexual version of Cliff Richard I don’t know, but thankfully I’m as wholesome as full-fat milk with a side order of superfoods on a Blue Peter commemorative plate, and haven't yet felt the need to revisit my last trip to church (Harvest Festival ’92, where I wasn’t allowed to give my shoebox in because the beans were out of date. THANKS MUM) or to set foot anywhere holier than the Glastonbury Chapel of Love. Hmm. Maybe that’s what she meant. Roll on Glasto ’10 - hang on a second. We’ve been through this already, here.



Shortly after, said flatmate’s boyfriend informed me that I was too 'matey' and should stop challenging men to do things ‘like pull their eyelids back’. That’s a direct quote by the way. Now let me be quite clear on this. I don’t know where he got this from. Table football, yes. Painful manipulation of fragile body parts, no. Yeowch.



Last but not least, my third self-made Jerry Springer - who’s going to remain nameless but never goes on the internet anyway – dished out a selection of dating tips more shameless than Frank Gallagher on a Tarts ‘n’ Vicars stag do in Ibiza:

1. Give them 'the look'. Sigh. If only I’d had a video camera to record ‘the look’ in all its glory.

2. Button and unbutton their cardigans. What are you meant to do if they’re not wearing a cardigan? Take off their watch?

And my personal favourite:

3. ‘When you're in Pret looking at sandwiches, put the money back in your purse, because that £3.50 could buy a hot guy a drink'.

Smacks of desperation if you ask me but it seems to work. For the record I’m not buying anyone drinks. And if I am, it's time for someone to take my credit card away and send me home.

anyone got a spare £400-700?

Good for you. Seriously. I mean it.

Clearly you know that there are better places to spend your lunchbreak than Topshop. You bring your leftovers to work and eat them. I bring my leftovers to work and go to Pret.

You win, OK? You're the Tupperware Queen and I need a Pret loyalty card. Now will you just stop going on about it and buy me either/both of these Charlotte Olympia heels.

So Beetlejuice...



... so marching band...



... so lovely and clunky AND with a gold spider stamp on the sole. So tall-making. So Tim Burton in drag. Je voudrais. SIGH.



What's not to like? Nothing. ZERO.

But you know what? Right now it's lunch time and I'd settle for a sandwich (in the same price range, mind). I eat pretty much anything. No mayo. Thanks.

dear Michael Eavis

What the hell have you got to look so happy about? Yes, your arms are disproportionately long, and you are showing too much leg for a senior citizen, but you have also put a dent in my wallet to the tune of £185 for the privilege of camping out in your back garden. You have basically stolen my purse and replaced two weeks rent with a small crumpled picture of Bono.

How do I feel about this? No, wait, how do YOU feel about this?



I see. It's like that, is it? You've had your fun now Eavis. Those shorts make me think you're the kind of guy who's up for a laugh. This U2 and Muse thing is a joke, right? RIGHT? A bad joke, which, as bad jokes go, is up there with the one about the nun and the cucumber.

You better be getting your iPhone out of your khaki shorts and tweeting @EmilyEavis YESdavidbowiemickjagzconfirmedgonnabdashityoCANTWAITluvdad right about now, because if you don't, Eavis, you're going to be in trouble.

You better confirm someone better than Bodger and Badger in the next 24 hours or, in the immortal words of Sue Sylvester, 'I will go to the animal shelter and get you a kitty cat. I will let you fall in love with that kitty cat, and then on some dark cold night, I will steal away into your home and punch you in the face.'

Yours sincerely,

Annabel Wigoder

eardrums

For GLASSWERK, right here

Veronica Falls - Found Love In A Graveyard

As songs about graveyards go, this latest single from London-based four piece Veronica Falls ain’t a patch on 60s novelty grave-robbing hit I Want My Baby Back (sample lyric: ‘ohh baby, I diii-iig you so much‘) but hey, perhaps that’s because it landed on my radar too late for Valentine’s Day. Less a paean to necrophilia than the kind of minor-key ditty they’d like you to think they bashed out in ten minutes in cardigans beneath a ripped Pastels poster, singer Roxanne bemoans a Wuthering Heights-esque doomed romance (with a ghost, and you don‘t need to be Oprah to tell her that one wasn‘t gonna work out) over this season’s Crystal-Vivian-Girls-on-Stilts fuzzy lo-fi and the kind of off-key harmonies that would have AutoTune addict Simon Cowell turning in his, erm, bed. So what’s the skinny? Catchy boy-girl goth-pop but a tuning fork in the post might not go amiss.



So So Modern - Dendrons

Calling your band So So Modern is really just asking for trouble, especially when your latest single slots neatly into place between a Test Icicles 7” and a Rapture CD from the mid-Noughties. Either New Zealand hasn’t caught up with us Brits yet, or they’re so up to the minute that three-minute post-rock-punk-funk-rockaaAARRRRGGH tracks are the future of music and I might as well just go and flush my head down the toilet. Dendrons sounds like the Young Knives unwillingly getting their teeth drilled, and will no doubt appeal to anyone who spends their Friday nights snorting Haribo, wearing baseball caps at a jaunty angle, or having MySpace parties. Here’s a fact, fact fans: the band wear white hoods on stage, which is, like, so modern.