2008

Again, same start as before - no posts for such a long while. But now that another year is close to an end I feel the need to document some aspects of it in some ways. Its been a mixture of a time - busy and quiet, exciting and frustrating and personally and work wise there have been a lot of changes.
At the beginning of the year, it seems hard to imagine it was so long ago, we were still writing and recording the CDs. I was busy writing and designing and we were buzzing with excitement that we'd finally have our music available. Well that all happened in April and has been fantastic. People have loved them and its so amazing when words that you've written hoping that they will somehow connect with people have been a real help and inspiration to people. Someone emailed last week after she'd just bought the very own life Cd and said how much she loved it and that she really liked the way that God is never mentioned but at the same time is all the way through the songs. It is just so amazing when someone gets what you have been trying to achieve.
Design wise I have been really busy too - doing the CDs and most recently the new bags which are great.
Confusingly we are dealing with Claire leaving. Which has not been confusing as we believe it to be the right thing and support her in her decision to focus on other things - but I have been feeling that it kind of leaves us in limbo. We cant really throw ourselves into performances as we have to find a stand in for these but it has meant we have finally had space to finally get on with all the jobs which get out aside when busy with out and about work. Applications for salaries have been the new craze and hopefully when we understand whats going on with this we'll be able to get someone else in properly and get back to being a 3 again. It's exciting thinking about that 3rd person out there somewhere - who is she and how will we come across her and will we have a salary for her?? Well thankfully God knows and will bring her crashing into us at the right time.
On a personal note I can not wait for Christmas. Next week I have a week off and we go to Center Parcs which I have never felt that I have needed more. It feels like a glass of water in front of me when consumed with thirst. Also I have been buying my own Christmas presents off ebay. There was a coat I wanted from topshop £70 which I noticed on ebay someone had put one on but with a really bad photo- which I had to pray and trust was a bad picture but a great coat - No other bids - £12 - fab coat! So pleased!

Take your own advice

Well it has been a pretty busy few months - I make no apologies for not writing anything down journals, blogs, perhaps even processing thoughts chatting with people. All that has gone on over the past 3 months is documented in 20,000 TTD lists spread over 4 different randomly but purposefully selected at the time notebooks. My family are different and better. we have a settled sort of chaos that we are used to enough, the EPs are finished, songs writen, recorded, mastered, manufactured, the designs completed, the CDs boxed and selling, the girls course running - and easily, the money coming in and ready in the bank for a few more things on the list, the team - developing- oh what a lot to get into here - I could write for hours on each one of these things!

GoldDigger have just got back from Spring Harvest. We were apprehensive before. Last year we had a tough year - for lots of reasons and mainly for reasons that we cant logically understand we had a horrid time and spent most of the week upset and extremely self critical. We had a fab time this year -good! But without diary ing the whole week I have just been really encouraged and become excited again about what we are called to. We were most worried that our performances would be irrelevant. That was our main fear - and we've had lots of encouragement - loads of people - girls and guys were really postive during the week bt loads have got intouch on different forums to say so... that is great. But actually now I'm kind of surprised that the highlight of the week was the amazing oportunity to do the girls sessions. I know I'm so confident in our material now and especially working with Rachel on them - we can run those sessions without a thought ... we know each others stories and points inside out. I know I was bothered about them as I asked my team small group to pray particularly or those as I knew I wouldnt get a chance to think about them before they happened so I did care that they went well - but they just weren't a horrid worry. But getting emails through this week from girls saying how helpful they had been has been so brilliant. Hearing people say - 'I liked your songs - you were really good' i really nice - but a bit empty - but using lyrics to affirm their identity - that is exciting and getting emails in from girls saying that they have taken all the pictures of models and celebs off their walls and are valuing themselves more is really really really really exciting.

And now I need to work on myself. I found myself this week reading in look magazine that if I didn't already have a pair of wide legged faded jeans then I really must get some. Apparently if you were one of the people who rushed out to get them last season then you did totally the right thing - well I didn't you see - so then I started to feel that I needed to go and get some. The fact that there is not enough money this month for new jeans - or perhaps food for the family - did not bother me at that moment. What an idiot I can be. So remembering the wisdom of the girls who listened in the girs seminars and have taken that advice I NEED to be inspired by them and not be such a forgetful-stupid-head. Why should I EVER feel inferior because a group of manipulators have got together to decide to try to make as many people as possible go out and give them money so that they can feel acceptable as they are wearing a pair of faded wide legged jeans?
Disclaimer: I do actually like wide legged trousers and am not saying that I will never buy a pair but I will never buy a pair as a result of bullying by look magazine- ok?

funny days

Yesterday was one of those...funny sort of days... The way me, claire and Rachel work is normally fairly organised - we do like to plan what we're doing and be on top of who is in charge of saying what and normally spend hours debating a set list of 4 songs...I think I went into shut down this week. Having agreed I would do a gig on my own I then ignored finding out anything about it - knowing that it would be in my old college was enough for me to know probably psychologically that it would be probably be best for me not to find out anything else. I knew the day and that Claire and Rach wouldn't be there and that I wanted to be brave enough to say yes to it - so I did. So this time the set list was thought about in the car on the way there. It was a bizarre day - one where you have lots of little funny and random chats. The rooms filled up around the very edges but definately no more than that with a few college students who normally get together to MC but they we're not going to play today. I spent the first half hour leafleting and remembered how much I actually like talking to young people who are hostile and abusive - actually really - there's such a fantastic honesty and opurity in young people who do not put an polite manners with you and I love knowing that a break through with someone who has started off hostile is a true victory. Philippa did a couple of sets and I did one in the middle. Eventually some guys MC'd. Having spoken to everyone earlier on leafleting I didn't feel at all nervous before or during my set...it didn't go particularly smothly - we missed out the last chorus on the first song, my voice was sore and we'd not sound checked or run though at all. Joel Cana was there to drum for philippa and we asked him to play so he made it up as he went along - though he is an amazing drummer. But they listened, i talked about what the songs were about and they listed to that to - which never happens...and I was thank ful that we have had so much experience of hostile environments- compared to some this one felt friendly!
I haven't blogged in a while but I forget to. Tomorrow we're recording the acoustic tracks for that EP and I'm feeling really positive about what's coming up for us. It feels like an easier chapter - well - a more exciting one anyway!

Tonight there will be music

This evening is the Philippa Hanna album launch. I'm really looking forward to it...though slightly apprehensive. My brother Andy Baker has a support slot and I'm singing some of it with him. I managed to totally forget about one practice, almost had a nervous breakdown in the other I made it to as I had to drag my children out to it and they both had tantrums and screamed and clung on to my legs all the way through and so I got loads of things wrong. Managed a quick run through last night after some pasta but there's a few tricky harmonies to remember. I don't normally get nervous but singing with my brother is different...I'm not unfamiliar with being shouted at whilst on stage if I make a mistake - I don't get that from Claire and Rachel - we laugh at each other...which I can handle!
I am so pleased for Philippa though...she is such an inspirational talent and as an inspirational character to go with that which is a rare and beautiful thing. It's so good that she has such a brilliant album to document some of what she' achieved recently. I really hope tonight is a good one for her. Having chatted with Claire and Rach loads about how difficult it is to get good support to events and to create a consistent following..which I thought was a problem only we had, through talking with my brother who manages Philippa and is involved with lots of artists, it seems that even people who really deserve and amazing following just don't get it. Why does making music have to be so hard. Artists need people to come to their events and support them...it is that support that generates new support.. and that sort of momentum is so hard to create...even if you are good at what you do! I now that I have been guilty of not turning up to gentlemen gigs and philippas gigs even though both are good friends... and because I KNOW how BRILLIANT they are I assume they won't need me to be there for them - but if that is what everyone does then maybe they regularly see the same sea of blank faces that we regularly see too!

Of Course I needent have worried...obviously...and beauty

...and I love knowing that things will be fine because God has it in his agenda...even though logically and practically it will never work. Anyway how exciting to have embarked on the second course and what a lively group we have this time! I was worried that they would all hate each other and refuse to talk - lack of talkingis NOT going to be a feature of this course. This week we were looking at beauty...how the media makes us feel - being faced constantly with airbrushed and rich celebrities. Why oh why do we look at images like this and end up feeling boring and worthless...we all 'know' it in our heads that these images are not reality but the reality is that they can have enormous affect on how beautiful we think that we are. It made me sad recently at the checkout at Sainsburys...my normal magazine buying activity occurs in the supermarket as somehow a magazine cost might get disguised as some brocoli or something we really need and I don't 'feel' I am spending good money on rubbish at least...but as the checkout lady was scanning my copy of happy with a pretty girl on the front with amazingly bright blonde bouncy curls positioned so perfectly like a big sphere around her head the checkout lady sighed with such genuine defeat and expressed that her hair didn't seem to go like that. Well the thing is that NO ones hair happens to go like that without a team of about 20 professional stylists, great photographers, makeup artists, lighting crew and graphics artists ready to make this image look amazing. I am sure that getting up to get to Sainsburys for her morning shift this lady didn't have all that available to her...and neither does this same model everyday of her life either... we ALL look great sometimes and rough as at other times...lets be honest and any single one of us could look stunning if Vogue had us lined up for their front cover...they would make sure of that. So why do we waste SO MUCH time being disatisfied with the way we look but wishing we were like someone else... who is also wishing that they looked like someone else too. Stupid crazy world.

Picture btw is totally unrelated...though it is us performing our Doll Factory song for the first ever time...which i really loved doing! And happens to be about the ridiculousness of media pressure as well.

In worried anticipation...

...this will be brief but I want to document the butterflies that are worrying a bit in my tummy as the next girls course draws very close. I know there is less to do...and I know we have run it before so there is little stress involved this time round but I fear we have the most bizarre mixture of girls and I do not think that the group dynamic will be sucessful. I am hoping that this will be proved rubbish. Joel told me to worry - we've got girls, we've got a room, a great course and we're being paid - then Holly butted in to remind him 'and they've got Jesus' so yes all of those things are right. I just want it to be GREAT. 3 days to go! 4 possibilities for the last 2 spaces... yikes!

What an achievement!

Well done Rachel - she worked SO hard and today the message arrived. GoldDigger are now a REGISTERED CHARITY number 1120689!