Hello boyo. Been back to the motherland today (South Wales) to hang out with the thousands of Welsh people I am related to but don't really know at my grandpa's funeral. I haven't been back to Wales (£4.80 to get in, nothing to cross the border back to England...hmmm) for about 10 years and in that time all the cousins and second cousins I remember being about 6, have all become actual people and have mostly all got married and had about 12 children each even though they are still only 16 or whatever. Anyway, my cousin took great joy in reminding me of the time when she worked with Nicky Wire's wife, Rachel and got me a signed Manic Street Preachers photograph cos I was a massive fan in 1994 or whenever it was. APPARENTLY I wrote back to thank her and included a letter for them which she bloody gave to them and in her words, 'was a bit creepy but mostly ok'! Thanks. Great. Wonderful. I was only like 15 at the time but I'm mighty embarrassed about it now, god - what did it say?! Shudders to think. Apparently, Nicky Wire lives in a mansion now (raised eyebrows all round) just around the corner. I didn't rush round, in case the letter was still fresh in his mind.

If you want to hear something wonderful, hop over to Phill's blog today and check out his 'for one day only' posting of the MC Lars interview 'audio version' which I recorded in the back of my car last summer at Truck. Phill is the one asking the questions, I am the one laughing next to the microphone and simpering a bit in Lars' presence and Squib is the one slagging off Goldrush at their own festival! Lars is such a cool, funny guy - I feel a brand new simper coming on....*simper*, as I kept saying to Phill last summer, 'I don't simply fancy him, I actually love him - what's up with that?!' . Enjoy. MC Lars interview

The best moments summed up are when MC Lars says to me, 'I've just made your car wet' and I say (simpering) 'don't worry about it!' (I am very understanding about these things, happens all the time) and also the part where I am for some reason, emploring him to 'do it, GROW!' right there and then in front of us. Whatever possessed me. And this was after the car wetting experience....

Speaking of Truck and also worth knowing - Biffy Clyro are headlining Truck this year. Wow.

Really, what is the point? Answers on a bottle of vodka and some paracetamol to the usual address, please. 

I'm so tired. Help.

Katie Jane Garside, Queen Adreena Oxford Zodiac 19th March 2005 

I went to see Queen Adreena again last night. Queen Adreena should be provided as part of the NHS mental health service, it's like having your soul excavated and scoured and wrung out and drip dryed and polished and revived. It's like being released. You leave drained but freer than when you went in. I love this band and this woman so much, I can truly understand why people pass out at their gigs and want to rip Katie Jane Garside's clothes off. I also love the way that as her more adoring fans do try to do this, she shakes them angrily away, only to go back for more a few seconds later. I love the way that by the end of the gig she appears to be lost in another world no one can ever reach, standing on a flimsy chair, she lets herself fall into the obsessive throng of love in front of her, lost from view but still screaming and singing perfectly. As security guards drag her back on stage, she collapses back into the mass again, almost in a swoon. We all strain to see if she is ok, but she is not ok and this is the point - this is what she does and how she survives. It's like the most abrasive therapy you can ever experience, a nervous breakdown each night on stage infront of strangers and yet she lives on. I love her courage and her madness which actually doesn't seem like madness really, it seems completely rational to me. Perhaps that's why I'm a follower. I guess we love her cos we'd all like to scream everytime we felt like it and just collapse on the floor when it all gets too much. As she spits wine onto the crowd and a girl in front of us faints, I realise that I am involuntarily dancing - an unheard of thing for me. This is a slightly tribal and primitive experience. I am usually more aware and self conscious. QA awaken the free spirit who wants to dance in me! Truly amazing. I've posted a couple of pics I took from the gig. I would write a proper formal review listing exactly what songs they played and what the support bands were like (Ivy's Itch great as always, but the other one - 3 boys with guitars, I forget their very dull name - why oh why oh why were they on the same line up? They were completely out of place in this context) but I think I've said all I want to say. Phill has some more pics and a review or two on his blog if you're interested. Queen Adreena in Nottingham.

Katie Jane Garside, Queen Adreena Oxford Zodiac 19th March 2005 

Katie Jane Garside, Queen Adreena 

He loves me, he loves me not. Perhaps it's cos he has hayfever and these flowers aren't helping. 

A rather artistic pic my good friend Kathryn, nanny to the stars, took of me in the studio at college. In a slightly, early nineties Manics stylee - she wrote beautiful statements such as 'he loves me not' on my arms.  

Hello everyone. This week I turned 26 and as Phill very kindly pointed out on his blog, I am now officially too old for a Young Person's Railcard. I have never owned a YPRC. Having suffered from crippling agoraphobia for most of my young adult life, this has not really been an issue. Not much of an issue that is, until THE DAY AFTER MY 26TH BIRTHDAY WHEN I OVERCAME ALL MY MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS AND SUDDENLY HAD THE DESIRE TO TRAVEL EVERYWHERE!!!!!! What are the chances?! I couldn't belive my luck. It was typical. Oh well.

Anyway this didn't really happen. I wish it had but I'm lying for comedy (?) effect. But seriously, what am I going to do with my life? Really. My photography course ends in a few months and I seem to know even less about photography than I did when I started, which is impressive considering I knew BUGGER ALL in the first place. this is all down to my tutors who I can't thank (enough). Also I was reading an article abou being a freelance photographer the other day and it was all about the joys of working by yourself adn travelling the world and I suddenly realised that considering these are the two things I have real problems with I win the award for officially being the most ill-suited to a career ever and need to go and sit in a corner and think about what I've done. Plank.

So what do I want to do with my life? I know the answer, but I fear it may already be too late. instead of spelling it out myself, I have left it up to twisted Sister to explain. Enjoy the video. Don't be scared by the hair - it won't jump out of your computer screen and get you.

Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday or sent me an ecard or present - if you didn't do any of these things, I officially hate you. Goodbye.

Hey, something I feel very strongly about is how we transport, treat and house animals farmed for meat in in this country. Lots of people are under the misguided impression that conditions in battery farms etc have improved in recent years - this is sadly not the case. When battery farming conditions started to be brought to our attention many people became vegetarian out of sheer horror at the way animals were abused and inhumanely kept and slaughtered, now - many of these same people have been feeling reassured and converted back to meat-eating because they believe these conditions not to be the case anymore. In this surprisingly spot-on remake of a classic Hollywood block buster - the truth about the situation as it stands now is highlighted. The fact that the spoof is of the The Matrix also brings me neatly to something else that I feel strongly about - that The Matrix was one of the most boring and meaningless films I have ever seen in my life! Only now, in this context does it have meaning. Enter The Meatrix! And discover how you could help to improve the situation.

Wow, what can I say. Life. Who'd have thought it? Recently I have not been going to gigs I was going to go to, doing photoshoots of people's bruises and being shouted at by a German girl who has come to work with us to improve her english. I have taught her everything she needs to know 'goth', 'cheese', 'lesbian' and fuck off'. I was very moved when she managed to incorporate all these things in to telling me how she felt about me leaving her to cope on the tills by herself. But on to more important things. I stood in very close promiximity to ol Thom Yorke last week as he ordered a latte (large) from the sandwich bar opposite my shop. It was a bit embarrassing cos I'd just used the cash point after him (it was like we were touching) and was trying really hard not to look like I was stalking him. In a bid to act cool and not appear like I was looking at him in a 'I know you are a world famous rockstar' kinda way, I looked everywhere but him, infact the minutes I spent trying not to look felt like an eternity (they probably were an eternity, the people in this coffee place are bloody slow) and after what felt like hours I realised I had inadvertantly been staring directly at a disabled person outside for an inpolitically correct amount of time and was very embarrassed. Curse him and his beautiful music. One day I'll say something to him. 'Can you spare any change, please?' maybe....yes, fact fans I'm still poor. Although I did manage to scrounge some money out of my bosses for photography I did for their website.

At the moment I am rocking out to the beautiful punkpop tunes of Juliette and The Licks and reading 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now - My Difficult Student 80s' by Andrew Collins who has had a really boring, unremarkable life considering he has been one half of Radio One's Collins and Mconeys Hit Parade and now reviews films for the Radio Times (ok the last ones not so cool but hey!) my life is more interesting and I haven't done anything yet! WHo hands out these publishing deals anyway?!