I came across this song by Japanese band Uimiuma about a year ago and ever since I find myself craving it from time to time. Whenever I'm feeling pissed off it makes me feel better. The cocky guitar riff, the fresh-green-leaves-in-springtime vocals, the optimistic snare marching along on the verse...it all adds up to just under a minute and a half of mood enhancing, confidence boosting good times. The lyrics sound like maybe they're about someone being defiant while simultaneously nonchalant but I actually have no idea, which is a bit of a blessing because it means I can pretend she's singing about whatever will make me happiest at that very moment. 

,If you've seen my Show Me video you'll know that I love to make things from paper. I never know what term to use...paper art, paper craft, paper sculpture, quilling...it doesn't matter really. I call mine paper creatures!

I've found some beautiful paper pieces, mostly through instagram (which is a brilliant medium completely wasted on photos of cappuccinos and people in the gym) that I'd love to share with you. The first is Rainniuniu who calls herself a 'book artist' and that's all I know about her! 

​Her human figures are like a cross between clean *Japanese aesthetic and sacred aboriginal art. You get a glimpse of all the inner workings, or imagined inner workings, of her human leaves. 

If you thought my stories were short take a look at these! 

I picked up Lydia Davis's collection of short stories (some of them micro short!) entitled Can't and Won't from the library and I'm really enjoying it.

I'm always drawn to storytellers that use very short sentences, maybe because I tend to think in long run on sentences so the brevity seems exotic or maybe just because I have a twitter generation attention span. 

Last summer I got to see the Emily Portman Trio upstairs in Odessa and they were excellent live. Perfect harmonies, accents to die for and banter between tunes about Harry Potter...what more could you ask for? A lot of their songs were murder ballads (my favourite!) and this one was particularly good and bloody.