Home is where the heart is, and I gave it to you in a paper bag.

Penny Lane sign: c/o Out There Interiors. Two-tone playsuit: £39, Miss Selfridge.

As long time readers of my blog are well aware, I left my university city just over four months ago. The time since (minus the graduation ceremony, of course!) has been spent mainly in Essex, with trips to Paris, the Lake District, Birmingham, and Oxford taking up a fair amount of my time, not to mention the heinous amount of money I've spent getting to London and back. Although it all looks like a lark, the photos I upload don't quite reflect the time I've spent adjusting to life back at home and the inevitable job hunt that undergraduates think is never going to happen, but sneaks up on you before you get your rent deposit back. My main group of university friends are all off doing various things, which I love getting updates on via facebook; one's still in Liverpool (jealous!), one has a placement at a school, one has just started her MA, and the other is working hard in preparation for starting hers next year. I hit them with a bit of a bombshell last week (it means I've had to cancel my trip up there next month!), and it's about time I wrote a blog post about it, as it will have a real impact on how often I'll post, and the location of everything when I do: I'm moving to Germany.

I signed a contract saying that I'll be working with STYLIGHT for sixth months from early November, so I'll be relocating to their Munich offices next month. I've got a lot to sort out before I book my flights, which is more than a little daunting, but I'm sure it'll be worth the stress. If any of you have any tips for moving abroad, particularly München/Germany, then I would be really happy to hear them, but I've been chatting a lot to my friend who lived in Stuttgart on his year abroad and to Kavita who's currently out there and both have been the most reassuring sources of comfort I could hope for. I hope there won't be much of an impact on my blog, but it'll certainly be a change from Essex's fields, and Liverpool's brick walls! I'm more than a little bit excited, if nervous, but I'm sure I'll be back before you know it. Now all I need to do is find somewhere to live...

PS, I picked the above two pieces to highlight "home": my first year accommodation in Liverpool was a five minute walk from Penny Lane of Beatles fame (I picked this sign, kindly sent to me by Out There Interiors who sell everything from amazing lamps like Caroline's to stuff for your garden. I, of course, went for something wholly impractical), and the playsuit has become my go-to night out piece (I'm wearing it tonight!), which is something Essex is pretty well-known for.

Read more

Don't try to hide it.

Denim jacket: £63, NW3 by Hobbs, Vintage Wrangler jeans: c/o Brag Vintage. T-Shirt: free, American Apparel. Leopard print boots: £27, Topshop (similar here). Bally bag: £9, vintage. Belt: 20p, charity shop. Watch: gift, Rotary. Necklaces: elsie belle, vintage, Topshop. Lipstick: Topshop Really Ruby.

Well, if your front garden overlooked this, could you pass up the opportunity to use it for outfit photos? Admittedly, walking along the river felt like we were in the middle of a wind tunnel, but, messy hair aside, it's a nice change to my last set out outfit photos. Making like Charlie, I took my Brag Vintage jeans out for a spin in East London, as we headed a little bit further down the Thames to see Everything Everything at one of Nokia's Lumia Live Sessions. I've seen them before, but ironically the much bigger city hosted the more intimate gig in Trinity Buoy Wharf. Getting there by clipper from London Bridge (certainly not something you do every day), Sabby and I bumped into Lucy and her pals before heading to the front to see EE whack their falsetto out like no other, and making sure to get a few photos on the Lumia 820, which seems to have instagram filters as standard - making for more acceptable selfies, am I right? We were guided back home by the light of the O2 (surely I'm not the only one who still calls it the Millennium Dome?) and a certain pair of golden arches, content with a pretty much perfect evening combination of cocktails, live music, and good company. Nothing can beat a good post-gig buzz, and I've got two weeks till Arctic Monkeys, then another till Knife Party, so not long to wait for my next one!

Read more

Meet The Milk.

Although music festivals make for some pretty damn amazing locations for outfit photos, there is obviously the music part of the weekend to contend with. There were plenty of artists on my "to see" list that I managed to tick off (I'm talking Mark Ronson and Benga), ones that I will see as many times as it is legally possible (erm, hi Fratellis and crème de chèvre, I'm not creepy, promise), and then there's one that I tweeted about six months ago to ask if they'd be playing the festival again. I planned to see locals The Milk for the third time the moment they were added to the line up, and was lucky enough to sneak backstage to have a chat with frontman Rick and lead guitarist Dan before they graced the Brownstock stage on the Saturday afternoon.

I first saw you at Brownstock a few years ago, and you've been back a few times, is it the local crowd you come back for?

We played it twice as an unsigned band, and four years ago, after a promotor saw us at a gig in Chelmsford, we came back with a record contract. It helps that we live locally, of course, and homecoming gigs are always going to have the best crowds. We're friends with Mat [DJ/Promotor] and he really looks after the artists, which is a bit different to V, the bigger local festival. We've played V twice, and the atmosphere is so different; it's amazing to come and play a homecoming gig to a massive crowd with the added credibility of playing a bigger festival, but when it comes to the big versus boutique festival debate, we firmly side with the underdog. It might surprise you to hear that one of the best gigs we ever played was in Hull! Brownstock's great because you get your friends and family hanging around backstage, and it's my nephew's first festival. V's good, we used to rent a flat in central Chelmsford and could hear it from the back garden, but Brownstock is a real contender.

Do you ever change your set for a local crowd?

Not really; we play what we want to perform, which is a mixture of new and old stuff, because the crowd's not going to be interested in listening to something if you're not into playing it to begin with. It's 45 minutes of playing to both fans and people who've never heard of you before, so it's more like a musical experience Telling a story? Nah, more like working your way through a musical piece - ranging from fast tracks to ballads. It's a set, not a story, but there is definitely a beginning, middle, and end.

If you're playing new tracks, will your next album be similar to the first? I love the gapless nature of "Tales from the Thames Delta", which joins tracks with Greater Anglia voiceovers and ring tones, any intentions of doing more of the same?

It's still the same kind of sound, but we're not going gapless again. That first album was a bit like a DJ mix of everything one after another, but now we're making moments. That technique was drawn from the soul music we listened to a lot at the time, and the idea behind it was that you listen and you keep going through the whole album - a bit like a live show, really. It maintains that level of energy throughout. The recording was pretty old school, we did it all in one take rather than play separately. We did it in this medieval barn with stone walls, resulting in a sound that isn't too clinical or sanitised; our producer did say it was full of "happy mistakes" and we loved the little imperfections. It's more a show of being musicians than getting it perfect every time.

And, as musicians, does that mean you don't get the festival experience any more?

We played Glastonbury on the Friday this year, and just said that we weren't going home. After finishing our gig on the Left Field stage we had the rest of the weekend to explore the rest of it - the perfect Glastonbury experience. Billy Bragg had asked us to play, and that's a pretty good start, so we made the most of our weekend.

The Milk's first album is currently available on iTunes (and is one of my most played), and click here for more of my Brownstock coverage.

Read more