UPITUP IS NINE!!!

Last week I made the poster for Upitup's 9th bday/Jacques vinyl launch Liverpool party next week. Normally, Isocore is the go-to man for their amazing posters, but right now he's working on some very exciting video and soundtrack commissions, so I attempted to provide a decent fill-in just this once. I will also be singing in the Union Jacques Choir, and DJing on the night! If you are in the north-west, make sure you make it down for this one!

LOST PROPERTIES!

Gia was playing an improv set with some of our friends tonight at the exhibition we still hadn't gotten out to see. Amazing space, and loads of great work! Tomo and Even continue to be ridiculously good at dry-humoured street-art, with immense painting skill, and Laura Spark's animation has come on tenfold since I last saw it, with a beautiful and skillfully made piece starring some wire-framed rabbit characters in a forest!
The improv sets went amazingly well too. Some very nice moments. I got thrust with a camera and asked to film, so hoping I actuallu managed to press record! ;-)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY!

I'm not exactly sure what she's saying... Or who she is... I really hope she's not a right-wing politician...But with the innocence of the language-barrier, I'm enjoying her swagger!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY today, to my Italo-Stallo Dream Come True! <3 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

WORSHIPPING THE VOLCANO!

Leaving the island today. For our last night, we went for a drink at a sea-edging cocktail bar. These cocktails were ridiculously good! The bar is known as the Island's best vantage point for seeing the neighbouring Island's lava displays! YES! The whole of the nearest island is an active volcano, which erupts every 15 minutes. Always. So we sat and watched it again and again, showering it's distant but unmissable orange-red glow into the blackness. Today I looked at the volcano again, its lava bleached from sight by the bright sun, and I thought about negative space, and light and dark, and what colour is!
And then I had to go and pack!

IL POSTINO!

Ending the holiday on Salina, at a too-swanky hotel! We are still eating the best food ever, and having funny adventures and rambles through rocky dusty terrain! Today we hired a car (littlest one, Alessia, had to sit on a knee so we all fit. Oops!) and all went out to see the mountainside house where the fantastic Italian film "Il Postino" was filmed! I LOVE this film, ever since my Dad bought me it on VHS, so was very star-struck and excited!
Me and Gia walked up the side of a vast, cloud-skimming mountain overlooking the house deciding to head back, only when it got too steep to carry on, and we realised that the two huge screeching birds of prey 30 ft above us were definitely sizing us up, and would probably win in a fight!

BLISS IS THE LIFE!

Holiday is located in heaven! I have turned into the Eliza Doolittle of the party, merely for the fact that literally EVERYTHING around us, and the beauty and luxury we have been living in, excites and enthuses me, and brands me with a permanent silly grin, and a hundred thankyou's! The rest of the family have enjoyed it all, but it has been taken very much more in their stride! Soppy-Enthusiastic-Overexcitable English Girl, anyone?! ;-)

BRAMBLING ROMAN STYLE

I did so much Blackberry picking when I was a kid. Free stuff, doomed to dry out and fall off it's tree-perch, unless you, the hero picks and eats it! And weren't they ALWAYS growing in abundance in some walled off wasteland, or bit of somewhere that you couldn't quite get to?! We went picking in a big wasteground by the American School today, and in Roma they get to pick wild figs too!!! Really! We got a ton, and they were the best fresh figs I have ever tasted! YUM!

AURA-GASM

http://www.upitup.com/mixes/mix.php?mix_id=17

My boyfriend has a blatant man-crush on Rephlex Records homeboy, PP Roy, and has brought him over to play some brilliant DJ sets at Upitup nights here in Liverpool. Mr "PP" is lovely, and emits a Budda-like gentleness, even in full party mode! Now he's released a beautiful and amazing mix for Upitup, which is free to stream or download! We have been listening to it over-and-over-and-over-and-over, and still LOVE it!
GoGetItOrYerMental!!! ;-)