1. Wow, I love the Specials. Where has my copy of the first Specials album gone? Has Ju Ju eaten it? It's nowhere to be found. Why haven't I listened to it in ages and ages?

2. Doolittle by the Pixies remind me so much of being 13 and 14 it almost hurts. They played the video for 'Here Comes Your Man' and I had an instant flashback to the summer of '89, watching Superchannel's music programming and praying they'd play that or 'Orange Crush' or 'Trouble Me'.

3. Forever Changes by Love does the same thing re: the summer I spent in Boston.

4. Pills and Thrills and Bellyaches is fucking brilliant. There is a reason that 'Step On' remains my ultimate dancing song.

5. The Libertines are over-rated.

6. Wow, I really used to be obsessed with late '60s alternative culture, wasn't I? This shouldn't be a surprise, considering I basically WROTE MY MASTER'S THESIS ON THE SUBJECT. But there was a stage, especially when I was in college, where I had this ideal of a bohemian sexy artsy life which to a certain extent wasn't enormously far off my actual life at the time, which involved a lot of self-conscious artsiness, vintage '60s minidresses (some of which were purchased in the company of none other than glitzfrau) and angsty/pretentious/lovelorn dope-fuelled intense conversations while listening to Nick Drake and Laura Nyro and the Byrds.

7. Where is my copy of Three Feet High and Rising? I loved that album.

8. I'm sadly more prone to ultra-post-colonial self-hating Irishness than national pride, but I have always, ever since I was about 12, been hugely proud that the Smiths were second-generation Irish. My former workmate grew up next door to Johnny Marr (aka Maher)'s first cousins in Kildare. I love the Smiths and have since leedy was obsessed with them in the mid-80s and I had to admit that I actually liked her music.