...news readers/journalists. Look who I’m schmoozing with these days! Honestly it seems like a lifetime ago that I used to hang around after-show parties with rock stars, now I’m milling around the green room with journalists and aristocracy. I bumped into news journo Jon Snow (OK, perhaps I pounced on him) at the Hay literary festival in Wales yesterday.  Ah, I am sure he was following me – kept seeing him around the festival site and then my legs turned to jelly. He’s so tall and he was really warm and friendly. He even remembered to say goodbye to me. And I’m grinning like a stupid fool in the photo too. Still, my mum and dad were very impressed!

I also saw Charles Spencer (come on, Diana’s brother!) and brushed past Michael Buerk. Ooh, and I spotted cartoonist Steve Bell and BBC correspondant Nick Hyam. God, I’m a nerd! Unless you’ve not heard of it before, the annual literary festival goes on for 10 days with various intellectuals talking about their books and themselves (and I don’t mean to sound insulting in any way – if anything, I felt a bit thick surrounded by all these clever clogs). Can you believe Sting and Bob Geldof were at this year’s festival (albeit the night before I went)? Blimey.

I had a great time despite waking up at 5 am, and having to get the train at 6.30am to get to Paddington for the 8 am train to Reading before hitching a ride to Hay-on-Wye. No surprise that I got a numb bum after six hours in the car – and the names of Welsh towns made my eyes go funny too. Sadly I didn’t get to kidnap a lamb…really wanted one as well.

Well today is quite a sad day…because Earth Girl has flown from ol’ Blighty to a year of travelling and working. You remember I revealed she had been accepted to some Camp America thing and jacked in her job a few months ago? That fell through but she decided the omen was a sign and so she packed her bags and will be travelling to America, Canada and finally stopping in Australia for the remainder of her year away.  What can I say? That girl’s got more balls than plenty of men I know. Hopefully it won’t be too long before we hear how she’s getting on, if she fancies being uk-fusion’s intrepid globetrotter.

I suppose I should give a brief mention of what we’ve got coming up in the site, eh? We’ve got an exclusive interview with The Dissociatives – the ‘other’ band Silverchair’s Daniel Johns (or Mr Natalie Imbruglia) belongs to. Ryan popped to Sheffield to interview the band on their tour and he got photos and everything! Daniel’s got his nipples pierced, which is the first thing I noticed from the pictures. Oi, Ryan! What kind of photos were you taking?! Any way, look out for the interview very soon, I’m told it’s a good ‘un. Also, we have reviews coming up on Coldplay (yawn!), White Stripes and erm, a heap of other names that I can’t recall off the top of my head.

I’m going now. I’m still a bit too excited after my confrontation with Mr Snow. And it was so cool when I saw him on the Channel 4 News programme this evening. I was like, “I met him only yesterday and there he is on the telly!” Wow!