My Top Ten tracks of the month!

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Love How It Hurts - Scouting For Girls (2011)

Scouting for Girls, their debut album, came out over ten years ago now. Man, I feel old! I love all their stuff but this one just pips the others to the post as my favourite. It peaked at #17 and was one of the last of their singles to chart.

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Salt Sweat Sugar - Jimmy Eat World (2001)

Nostalgia central! Bleed American remains the only album I have ever gone out and bought solely on the strength of a written magazine review. It was well worth taking that pocket money risk though and Jimmy Eat World went on to do pretty well in the UK during the early 2000s.

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Life Is a Highway - Rascal Flatts (2006)

Rascal Flatts covered this 1992 track by Tom Cochrane for Disney Pixar's Cars soundtrack. Marianna has wanted a YouTube rotation of Disney songs this month and this is definitely one of the better offerings!

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Nancy Mulligan - Ed Sheeran (2017)

One of my favourite Ed Sheeran tracks, Nancy Mulligan peaked at #13 on the UK singles chart in 2017 and #3 in Ireland. This vid has Open Champion Irish Dancer, Hannah Redlich, entertaining some re-enactment WW2 troops.

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Girls Lie Too - Terri Clark (1970)

More country with Terri Clark; this one topped the US country chart back in 2004 and starred Shaun Silva as Captain Jack Sparrow in the video.

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My House - Dr Syntax ft. Tom Caruana (2012)

The song for everyone who has ever lived in shared digs! Dr. Syntax is a UK rapper from rural North Oxfordshire, renowned for his clever lyrics and commentary on middle class problems...

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Das Geht Boom - Harris & Ford ft. Lisah (2013)

I love Austrian dance duo Harris & Ford because cheesy Eurodance is always where it's at for me. This one spent eight weeks in the Austrian singles chart in summer 2013, peaking at #25. Anthony's most hated of their tracks is Tick Tack (Boom Bang) (2014) so I've made sure to play that a few times this month too...

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Hamma! - Culcha Candela (2007)

Speaking of cheese, it don't get much better than Culcha Candela's break through hit. It reached the top spot on the German chart, in addition to #3 in Austria and #13 in Switzerland. In German, generally speaking, something is the hammer (der Hammer) if it's really good. So the song is just a guy telling a girl that she's the best. Especially in that outfit.

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Wildes Ding - Culcha Candela (2011)

This was one of my favourite getting ready to go out songs back in the day. Now it's the background track to doing some laundry... Ah, adulthood.

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House Trained Dog - Lenny Henry & Gina Yashere (2005)

Spoof of Snoop Dogg's 2004 mega hit Drop It Like It's Hot for the second series of The Lenny Henry Show.

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It's been a pretty busy week, all told. I've finally managed to get all the junk cleared from the house, and I've been working throughout the week on the back garden. There is about two meters at the bottom still thick with nettles, but the rest has been done. Hopefully by the end of next week I'll be moving on to the front garden.

I had a doctor's appointment on Monday about my back to confirm I hadn't done anything serious. It's been a lot better this week anyway, and only really hurts when I'm getting up. On Wednesday I had Resources & Business overview and scrutiny committee then, when Anthony was out at Community Council (and the pub...) in the evening, I moved a bunch of bookcases about downstairs. I was very pleased I managed to do it singlehandedly!

On Tuesday I went to Barry Island with Marianna and my family. It was really good fun - we even went on the fair!

We had a meeting of the Northville Underpass steering group on Thursday. It was the one thing I most wanted done way back when I first campaigned for election in 2012, and now movement is finally within sight... After that I went up to the Civic Centre for the first regular meeting of the local Labour Campaign Forum.

Friday saw Dave and I talking with the groundskeeper at Pontnewydd Park. Since the council gave up up on park upkeep beyond the bare minimum parts of it have fallen into disrepair, especially the tennis courts. Terry had some photos of the park in the 1980s when it was beautifully maintained and in constant use. We're going to try and get some volunteers together to start recapturing some of that former glory.

Yesterday was Cwmbran Big Event, so we went to help out on the Labour and Cwmbran Community Council stalls. It was a gorgeous day and we had a good time, even if my feet were killing by the time we got home. We decided to follow the healthy living theme and walk there and back, but obviously it's too far for Marianna so we dug out her pushchair. She has not grown any lighter since last time I had to push her...

Today we're just spending the day at my parents', with Marianna rewatching her favourite Disney films for the 5000th time.

Had a really positive walk around Pontnewydd Park with @David_R_Daniels this morning. Would love to see it recapture some of its former glory! pic.twitter.com/gXQ6hiBM9H

— Jessica Powell (@jess__powell) June 8, 2018

I reviewed the spring fever Japan Candy Box, Jason Starr's new novel 'Gotham: City of Monsters', and wrote about the first letter I ever had printed in a magazine.



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I've been having a massive clear out this week and came across an old issue of Sneak magazine from November 2004. I'd kept it because it represented the one and only time I wrote a letter in to a teen magazine.

That summer Dragostea Din Tei (Ma Ya Hi / Numa Numa) had been a smash hit across Europe and I was desperate for anything I could get on the Moldavian band behind the song, O-Zone. I downloaded all their songs on LimeWire - remember that? - and did postal swaps with girls in Russia and Romania for pictures and posters. I even read all the badly translated fanfic I found on their fan forum.


What I really wanted was some coverage in a homegrown magazine that I could just pick up on the newstand. I wanted every teen girl's favourite weekly Sneak to print me a poster. So, I decided I was going to write in and, in hope of my letter attracting their attention, doodled over a brightly coloured envelope for maximum impact.

This ended up also being my first experience with a tough editor. The letter they printed bore little to no resemblance to anything I had actually written and, worst of all, they didn't even mention O-Zone!

(Or Dan Balan. I'd have settled for a picture of Dan Balan.)


It did win star letter though. But did I get the promised Sneak goody bag? Did I ****

A total washout all around, I think you'll agree!

Still, enjoy a few scanned pages to help you relive 2004... Across town Anthony would have loved this issue; not only was there a poster of Ben McKenzie to pull out and keep, there was also an O.C. wordsearch. (One day I will tire of mocking Anthony's unironic love for and annual rewatching of The O.C. That day is not today.)








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So, on the downside, my back hasn't improved much. On the positive side, I've managed to get a doctor's appointment for Monday afternoon, and my mum gave me a hand to do some of the sorting I had originally planned to do this week. We took six black bags full of stuff to Cash 4 Clothes, and then another load of toys, etc, to the St David's Foundation distribution centre on the Forgehammer Industrial Estate. We rearranged all Marianna's furniture to try and make a bit more space, and started sorting through all the junk in the spare room too.

Anthony wasn't much use as Wednesday morning we ended up having to call emergency because he threw his back out and couldn't move. They just gave him some painkillers and told him to try not to stay in bed...

Yesterday we had our monthy councillor advice surgery in the morning. It was so hot and sunny we sat outside and enjoyed it! I spent the afternoon comping and watching trashy true crime shows. A very productive afternoon, I feel. :)

Pontnewydd councillors, Marianna, and Zai our PCSO at advice surgery yesterday morning.

I reviewed MiniatureVictoriya dollhouse miniatures on Monday and posted an overview of May in Fandom.



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