Taylor Swift at Abbey Road

I know I have huge amounts of stuff to catch up on blogging about but I just want to share the amazing day I had earlier in the week. If you want to see any of the photos bigger then just click on them and then you should also be given the option to zoom in on them futher

It all started a few weeks ago when I got an email from the BBC audience listings saying that Taylor Swift would be performing an exclusive show for Radio 2 at Abbey Road Studios in London on 23rd March. And they had 200 pairs of tickets to give away. So I decided to enter the draw but didn't think I stood a chance, especially when they started advertising the draw on Radio 2. Three days later I quickly checked my emails before dashing out to a hospital appt and was amazed to see that I'd won a pair of tickets! My mum immediately bagged herself the other ticket and we spent the next couple of weeks getting very excited :D

On Wednesday the day finally arrived. I got up earlier than usual and we arrived at Abbey Road Studios at 12.30pm, 7 hours before the concert would begin. We'd heard that they gave away more tickets than they had seats as not everyone would turn up and they wanted to ensure a full audience, so we were keen to start queuing as early as possible to ensure we got in and got good seats. Me and mum were 7th and 8th in the queue so sat on the pavement leaning against the wall outside Abbey Road Studios and made ourselves comfortable. This is a view of the front of the studios that I took through the railings while we were waiting outside.

I took loads of stuff to amuse me but I didn't use most of it. The 2 girls who joined the queue after us were really nice so I spent a while chatting to them. I also enjoyed watching tourists posing on the level crossing which often caused huge queues of traffic to build up! And we saw a tour group across the other side of the street who were taking photos of Abbey Road and us, so because I was bored I got my camera out and started photographing them.

Lots of people without tickets and paparazzi came to try to get a glimpse of Taylor when she arrived at the studios. We all climbed up onto the wall and hung onto the railings for a while (I'm in the blue jeans and light blue fleece) on a couple of occassions to see over the cars parked inside the wall but she must have sneaked in round the back. I don't blame her with the amount of paparazzi that were there!

We saw her band arrive though.


At one point the 6 people in the queue in front of us decided to shift to queue from the other gate so we ended up much further back in the queue. I was a bit worried that we wouldn't get as good seats as we should, but the 6 people at the front said they'd save space for us in the queue so that all worked out well and when we finally went through the gates and got our tickets numbered we were 9 and 10.


Once we were inside the gates I needed the toilet as I'd not been since we started queuing, so I approached a few scary looking security guards and asked. They didn't seem very happy to let me inside but I didn't want to walk all the way back to the tube station, so eventually they said they'd let me in. I had to be closely escorted right to the toilet door though! Quite a while later they started letting more people in to use the toilet.

After a little while queuing inside the gates we were allowed in and led into quite a big studio in the basement. Because we were so close to the front of the queue we ended up just off centre in the front row! This was the set on stage.


And this was a photo of the microphone stand taken with no zoom, so this is how close we really were!

I was a bit shocked when we walked in to see that there were no seats, but I decided I didn't want to ask for a seat and risk being stuck at the back, so I'd just try my best and stand for as long as I could manage. I sat down when we got in there and then got up when Jo Whiley came on stage to introduce Taylor and remained standing til the end.

When Taylor came on she was less than 2 metres away from me! She just wore one costume for the whole set, played lots of different guitars (and a ukelele) and performed 11 songs - a mix of old hits (Fearless, Fifteen, You Belong With Me and Love Story) and new songs from her Speak Now album (Sparks Fly, Mine, Speak Now, Dear John, The Story of Us, Enchanted and Long Live) . She was very chatty with the audience, telling us the stories behind the songs she performed, and the audience was very enthusiastic (especially the fans either side of us!). She added Enchanted as the audience requested it. Love Story was great as the finale.

I took lots of photos but this was my favourite.

And here are a few more photos I liked.







You can also see a few professional photos on the Radio 2 website here.

At the end one of the guitarists threw a few guitar plectrums into the crowd and although I didn't manage to catch any I then spotted one on the floor between someone's feet, so I grabbed it. As soon as the concert finished the security men were quite rude trying to get people out of the studio.

We slowly walked back to the tube station which took a little while as I was struggling to walk a bit after all that standing. We got the tube and then the train home and arrived back at a reasonable time as the concert hadn't been late.

I was tired and sore following the concert but it was definitely worth it for such an amazing experience that I'll never forget. And my mum loved it too.

The following day we were very excited to hear the concert on BBC Radio 2. You can listen online here til next Wed (30th). Jo Whiley asked for texts from people who had been at the concert, so I text her. She read my text out on air and said she knew who I was from the concert! My text was read out at 45mins 16secs in.

If you're interested in listening to any more of the radio coverage then Jo Whiley talked about Taylor Swift from 1min 25secs in, interviewed her at 7mins 50secs, Taylor's live performances were reviewed briefly at 52mins 50secs and the (edited) concert was on from 57mins 48secs.

You can also watch highlights of the performance online here, which will be up for about a month. I think you can also watch them on TV using the red button if you've got Sky but I'm not sure about that. A friend is going to put the footage onto a DVD for me as I've got it recorded from when it was on the Freeview red button on Wed, but can't put that onto a disc myself and I'd like a more permanent copy and my nan wants to see it too. You should be able to spot me (wearing a light blue fleece) and my mum (with a purple fringe!) in the front row of the audience. We got very excited about seeing ourselves on TV! There's a good bit of film about 5mins 12secs in where me and my mum are the nearest audience members to the camera and you can also see Taylor on stage in the same shot! Here's a screen shot of it. My mum's head is on the far left of the picture and then I'm next to her in blue.


Now I'm getting all excited about seeing Taylor Swift again at the O2 Arena next week! I know I'll be much further away from her but I'm sure there'll be a great atmosphere and I'm going with a friend so it should be good fun. We're already making plans about what we're going to wear, I'll post photos up afterwards.

Quick Update

Sorry for not posting again for a little while. I know I'd just got back into the routine of blogging and was trying to get my blog up to date, but my health hasn't been too good over the last fortnight so I've not managed to keep up the blogging.

As you'll know I went to 2 amazing concerts a couple of weeks ago. I blogged about seeing Marina and the Diamonds here and hope to blog about seeing Eliza Doolittle soon. It seems that a combination of attending 2 concerts close together and then getting a virus (mainly manifesting itself as a bad cough) has knocked my health a bit and this past week or two my energy levels have been lower than they usually are.

I've got a busy week coming up with 2 more concerts, so am really hoping I'll have enough energy to manage those. I hope to get back to blogging soon.

Birmingham and Marina & the Diamonds concert

On Saturday (23rd Oct) me and mum spent the afternoon in Birmingham before seeing Marina & the Diamonds in concert that evening. In the morning we got prepared to go out and mum painted my nails for me.


We set off just after lunch and the drive to Birmingham went smoothly. We got parked and then walked into the city. On our way we spotted 3 or 4 upside down signs!


We walked to the Bullring and had a little wander round there before stopping for drinks in a cafe. While we were there the pendant bit fell off my necklace but luckily I was sitting down so caught it and mum helped me put it back on. I didn't have much luck with my jewellery - a matching necklace and earring set - on Sat. As well as my necklace coming apart, when I took if off at home I discovered the chain was knotted (I have no idea how that happened, maybe it was like that when I bought it), which took dad quite a while to un-knot. And one of my earrings must have fallen out while I was out because when I came to take them out I only had one in!

Then we wandered round an outdoor and indoor market. We both found the markets very interesting because they was so multicultural. I took lots of photos so here are a selection.

These suits said on them from age 1 upwards!

Mum bought a piece of purple material which she wore as a scarf that day and is now planning to use to make a knitting bag.



After that we spent a while in warm Waterstones - mum looked at knitting books and I surfed the Internet from my iPhone on one of their comfy seats :) Then we wandered towards the venue, stopping at a cafe in the train station to eat our packed sandwiches.

We got to the Town Hall quite early. We heard that the support act was called CocknBullKid and were each given a free wristband which would let us have a free download of a CocknBullKid song. We were given Marina & the Diamonds stickers and had a photo taken holding those which I think might be put up on her website or Facebook page at somepoint. There was a stall selling various Marina & the Diamonds merchandise so I bought myself a hoody. Sorry this picture isn't very good quality, it was taken on my iPhone so I could put it up on Facebook then.


Me and mum just sat and relaxed til the doors opened at 7.30pm. We saw this schedule so knew roughly what time everything would be happening.


We found our seats, which were in the middle of the front row of the circle so we had a great view. I tried to take some photos but my camera didn't work very well at that distance in the funny lighting and my iPhone camera isn't very good and has no zoom. I got photos 2 which show the set up quite well. The first was taken on my iPhone, so with no zoom. And the second was taken on my compact camera to try to show the set better.


The venue slowly filled up but I was surprised that there were a few empty seats in the circle. Apparently they'd sold out so it looked like some people hadn't been able to make it. Downstairs was standing only. I saw a very little girl who only looked about 7 in amongst all the people standing downstairs. She was wearing ear defenders for the noise. Personally I think she was a bit young to be at a standing concert. I was seated next to an odd man who was there on his own. I think he may have had OCD as he kept using alcohol hand gel to clean his hands. Next to mum were 2 very drunk women who were very noisy and made the whole row of seats shake with their dancing! Luckily they calmed down a bit after a gay couple sitting the other side of them told them off and then they left. It was quite chilly in the circle to start with but once the doors were closed I got a bit warmer.

Here is mum trying to learn some of the lyrics before Marina came on.


The support act was on from 8pm til 8.30pm. She was called CocknBullKid and was very good, definitely one of the better support acts we've seen. The sound balance wasn't quite right and the music drowned her out at points, which was a shame. If you're interested you can find out more about CocknBullKid and listen to some of her music on her MySpace page here. And you can get a free download of a good song called CocknBullKid here.

After CocknBullKid there was a short break while they set the stage up for Marina & the Diamonds. She was on from 9pm til about 10.15pm.

Marina performed 16 songs in total - all 13 songs from her album The Family Jewels, an iTunes exclusive track called The Family Jewels, Seventeen and a new song called Jealousy. She opened with The Family Jewels which worked really well. All the songs were great but the atmosphere was brilliant with Oh No! because everyone knew it and was singing along, me included. I sang along to all the songs (apart from Jealousy of course because I didn't know it) and had nearly lost my voice by the end! You could tell that the audience was singing along when Marina changed the timings of some songs and caught the audience out! The songs weren't performed hugely differently to the way they sound on the album but there was more emotion in them and they were more performed than just sung, if that makes sense. There were spotlights dancing around the walls for Jealousy. And she sang Happy Birthday to someone in the audience.

The set was very simple but it worked very well because Marina was such a strong performer that she didn't need lots of props to support her performance. Her voice was fantastic, despite her having a chest infection. There was only one song (towards the end) that her voice didn't sound perfect on. The screen on the backdrop was used effectively throughout the concert. Before Marina came on a short film was shown on the screen at the back and after that it was used a few times between songs and a few times for videos or animations to accompany songs.

Marina was very friendly and chatty to the audience between songs. She needs her fans help to beat Enrique in the Europe category of the MTV EMA music awards. And she made a lovely thank you speech to her fans, which was genuine but not cheesy.

Marina wore 4 different costumes throughout the concert. She started off wearing a plain black long dress with a yellow pompom round her neck. Although she changed outfits throughout the performance, the yellow pompom remained throughout. And she had a blonde streak in her hair. She wore an amazing feathery hat for Mowgli's Road, performed Hermit the Frog with 4 red balloons tied to each wrist and held some pink plastic hearts for another song. Marina wore a couple of different pairs of heels (including some plain black ones and some with yellow blocks around the heels) but took them off for some songs so she could jump around. And of course she wore a few different pairs of sunglasses. Most songs were performed standing at the microphone with some dancing around but she performed Obsessions and Numb sat at the keyboard. Her second outfit was a short dress. It was mainly pink and white check but had silvery snake skin like patches. Her third outfit was blue and white striped and glittery and looked like a pair of pyjamas. She only wore that for Numb sitting at the piano. Her final outfit was just used for the finale of Hollywood. She went off before that and it looked like she'd finished, but I knew she'd have to come back as she'd not performed her big hit Hollywood yet. That outfit consisted of a pair of Stars and Stripes trousers (one leg was the stars and one leg was the stripes) and a yellow cheerleader jacket. Marina also held a plastic hamburger for the start of Hollywood.

Afterwards I persuaded mum to let me go round to the stage door to see if could meet Marina as I'd heard she might be coming out after the show to meet her fans. We'd only been waiting a few minutes when someone told us it might be up to an hour til she came out. I really wanted to wait but mum wouldn't let me wait as she was very tired and still needed to do the hour and a half drive home. I understand that but was very disappointed as I'd love to meet Marina. So we walked back to the car and then drove home. We got a bit lost on the way back due to the SatNav not getting signal quickly enough when we set off, but it soon got us back on track.

I've found a good set of photos from the concert posted on Marina's Facebook page, which you can see here. I've been having a look for Youtube videos from that night and most are very poor quality. However if you're interested you can see Jealousy here.

More concert tickets

This morning I bought tickets to see Taylor Swift at the O2 Arena in London next March which I'm really excited about :D I saw her last November at Wembley Arena and had a fantastic time (which I wrote about here), so I'm looking forward to seeing her again. I've got good seats too - if you look at this seating chart we're either in the first or second row of block 111 :) I do need to find someone to go with though. Mum isn't too keen and Claire doesn't know Taylor Swift's music. My plan is to introduce Claire to her music and hope she becomes a fan and if that fails hopefully mum will take me. I'm sure something will work out.

That makes 8 upcoming concerts - loads to look forward to but it's not so good for my bank balance! :P For more about my upcoming concerts please have a look at this post that I wrote last week. And I forgot to mention there that we've got good seats for all of them :) My first concert of this spell, Marina and the Diamonds, is only 2 days away now :D I'll blog after each concert to let you know how they go.

GFR and clinic at Hosp A

Today (18th Oct 2010) I spent most of the day at Hosp A. I'd asked for two appts to be on the same day so we could save ourselves a 60 mile round trip. It made it into quite a long day though. I am aware I've used some medical terminology in this post but I hope I've explained everything ok. If there's anything I need to explain but haven't, just let me know in a comment :)

We set off in plenty of time this morn (which meant me getting up at 7.45am, eek!) and left ourselves an hour and a quarter to travel the 30 miles to Hosp A as that usually works out fine. The hosp is in a city and we have to use a few major roads to get there which is why it takes so long to cover 30 miles. Unfortunately there was a traffic accident on our route this morn which delayed us and then the traffic just seemed very heavy at a couple of other places on our route. So I had to ring the department up and let them know we'd be a little bit late. Think I was about 15/20mins late in the end.

When we got to the hosp we nipped into the main toilets in the concourse and weren't impressed to find that only 2 out of 5 cubicles had toilet roll. When I was there last Thur only 3 out of 5 had. When we returned to the toilets about an hour later we couldn't believe that only 1 of the 5 cubicles had toilet roll so we complained at the reception desk. The lady there said she's already phoned up about it but phoned again. When we called back later there were toilet rolls in all the cubicles :)

I then headed to the nuclear medicine department for my kidney function test, known as a GFR. The antirejection medication I take, Tacrolimus, can damage your kidneys so they have to keep a close eye on mine. I had this test once at Hosp B in the 4 years following my transplant but my consultant at Hosp A suggested I had it 3 monthly. I persuaded him to make it 6 monthly, but if my results from today's test come back fine I'm going to ask him if I can have it annually. The test consisted of an injection of radioactive material into one hand and then blood taken from the other hand (via a cannula) 2, 3 and 4 hours later. So lots of waiting around.

I was a bit nervous about the injection and the cannula because sometimes phlebotomists struggle with my veins. The doctor I had for the injection didn't seem very friendly but she listened to me when I told her which my best veins were and said she'd be fine using veins in my hands (as the ones in my elbows are rubbish, but sometimes phlebs won't accept my word from that and want to try them). So she inserted a butterfly needle into my right hand, flushed it and then gave me the radioactive injection. As she gave me the injection I felt the cold liquid and then felt a bit hot and slightly faint. I didn't think anything of it as I sometimes feel a little bit faint after blood tests, but I took my fleece off and told her how I felt.

Then things got a lot worse and I felt really really ill. I've felt a bit faint after blood tests before, but not like what happened today. I felt like I was boiling up, my heart was pounding, I felt really faint, my hearing went funny (everything went echoey), everything seemed really distant and it was really scary, I was terrified. I'm not entirely sure what happened next but I think I was helped onto a bed and was wheeled to a different part of the department. Mum said it was all over quickly but it felt like a while to me.

I gradually started to feel a bit better and could sit up. Most of the radioactive team were away on a training morning so there weren't many people around, just the doctor who'd given me the injection and two nurses. We spoke to them a bit and apparently there isn't anything in the injection that people can react to and no-one had ever had any problems with it before. They seemed to think that I'd just felt funny after having an injection, but I know it was more than that.

Mum thinks my body has problems with adrenaline because often I seem to get extreme reactions to relatively harmless things. Apparently the radioactive material is seen as a waste product by your body so I think mine reacted to that for some reason. Although I'd had the test at Hosp B once before I don't know if they used the same radioactive material. I felt back to normal within about 20/30mins I think, but I don't really know what length of time it was. I felt light headed and my hearing went funny on a couple of occasions over the next few hours but it wasn't too bad. I don't understand my body! :P

The waiting around between blood tests wasn't as bad as I expected. There is free wireless Internet in the concourse, so I surfed the Internet on my iPhone and listened to some new music I'd downloaded last night. I decided not to have a cannula inserted just after the injection but to have it when I returned for my first blood test after 2 hours. We hadn't been told we had to return to a different reception so were waiting in the wrong place for a little while! I told the doctor which was my best vein on my left hand and she said it wouldn't take a cannula. But it did! :) I thought their way of protecting the cannula was funny, they didn't bandage it like Hosp B used to do, they just put a tubigrip over my hand :P That was much more comfortable once a nurse suggested cutting a thumb hole in it :) The cannula was fine for my first and second blood tests and just lasted for the third one, phew!

As a result of being late for my GFR and then having some of my blood tests a little late we were a bit late to my transplant clinic which had been scheduled after that. But I'd already text S, the transplant co-ordinator, to let her know, so that was fine. Mum attended the clinic appt with me and also in the room were my consultant, Dr W, the transplant co-ordinator, S, and my dietician, C. While we were waiting for Dr W to arrive we chatted to S and C. I'm still not sure about S but I really like C :)

Dr W took my dizziness seriously which I was really pleased with. He took my sitting and standing blood pressure which were both exactly the same and within the normal range so that suggests it's not related to my blood pressure. He thought that lying down when I get dizzy might still help though. He said when I get dizzy he wants me to do a couple of things to get some more information about it. He wants me to monitor my pulse and see if it speeds up or is irregular at all. And he wants someone else to look at my eyes and see if they flicker at all. He's also going to contact my GP about me getting a 24 hour tape (where your heart rhythm is monitored for 24 hours at home) done at my local hospital.

Dr W thought my headaches might be tension headaches as they tend to occur in the evenings and are in my forehead. Apparently there's not really anything that can be done though. Amitriptyline sometimes helps but I'm on that already. So he said just to see how they go and be aware that they might be caused by tension, but apparently there's nothing I do to fix that so I'm not sure why being aware of it will be helpful! S thought some gel pads that you can buy from the supermarket for migraines might help. And Dr W suggested it might be a good idea for me to try drinking more, or at least to spread my drinks out more evenly throughout the day, rather than drinking most of them at night, in case the headaches are caused by dehydration.

I told Dr W how my gynaecology stuff is going and asked him what he thought about me trying the combined pill. I'm currently on a progesterone only pill (POP) as I'd been told because I had liver problems in the past I couldn't have a pill containing oestrogen. But my new liver is healthy and has never had any problems. And I'm having trouble with my periods at the moment, which the POP doesn't control but a combined pill would. He couldn't see any problems with me having a combined pill so suggested I talk to my gynaecologist about that when I see her next (on Dec 23rd). So I'm hoping she'll say yes and that'll sort my periods out, fingers crossed.

I mentioned that my abdominal pains are better at the moment, but I'm not sure if that's due to doubling the dose of my amitriptyline, starting some fibre supplements or varying my diet more. Or maybe a mixture of those things. Dr W was pleased with that but wasn't surprised that I'm still getting some pains because my body is still getting used to what's normal for me.

Everyone was very pleased that my weight is so stable, that I'm finding eating easier at the moment and that I'm being a bit more adventurous with trying new foods.

I told my consultant how I'd corrected my sleep pattern for about 6 weeks but hadn't found that my productive time (11pm onwards) came at any other time of the day, I'd just lost it completely. Then when it slipped I couldn't motivate myself to correct it again. He suggested I tried to correct it again but more gradually this time. I've not decided if I'm going to do that yet - it's so hard fighting my body.

Dr W couldn't offer any help for my frequent coldsores so I guess I'll just have to put up with them. He didn't have any ideas about my eye ache and was as puzzled as everyone else has been about the rash I get under my eyes from the sun, but thought sunglasses might be a good idea, so I'll look into them again next summer.

After I told Dr W about my reaction to the GFR he was very puzzled as he didn't think there was anything in it that I could react to either. I told him I was worried about my next one following my experience today so he said before that he'll arrange for me to have an injection of a small quantity of the radioactive material to see if I react to that.

I asked about the results of the DEXA scan I had about a month ago and I'm glad I did because I don't think Dr W would have told me otherwise. Apparently my bone density was -1.9 which is right at the bottom of the normal range. I asked if that could be due to my steroids but he thought it was more likely to be due to things in my body being a bit delayed due to me being so ill. He said they'd keep a close eye on it but wants to start me on a calcium supplement as a precaution. He gave me a prescription for that to take to the pharmacy there but when we tried that they said we'd have to wait 40mins! That would have meant we'd have had to drive home in the rush hour so we decided against that. We were supposed to go back and ask for a different prescription to take to my GP but I've just emailed my GP the details from that prescription and I'm sure he'll prescribe it for me.

Finally I mentioned to Dr W that I'd volunteered him to talk at the PINNT weekend next year that I'm going to speak at. He didn't seem to mind :)

It was nice to head home after a long day, I think we'd spent about 6 hours at the hosp. I've got a 2 and a half week break before my next hosp appt. I'll next be seeing Dr W when I have my annual scope at Hosp A sometime in Dec and I think I'll see him properly in clinic in Jan or Feb.

I'm just having a quiet evening. Alf had some friends round briefly earlier and mum was chatting to one about knitting because she'd started her off knitting last time she came round! Mum also got chatting to two fellow knitters at the hosp today, she must attract them in some way! :P

I've got a few nice plans for the next few days. Tomorrow aft a friend with ME is coming round and on Wed eve I'm going to the cinema with Claire to see Eat, Pray, Love. Then on Sat I've got my first concert of this spell of them - Marina and the Diamonds! I'm so excited :D And next Mon is my second concert - Eliza Doolittle :)

Upcoming concerts

There are still some things I want to update about from the last few months but I wanted an easy post tonight because I've had a busy day, so I thought I'd tell you about my exciting plans for the next few months. As you'll probably know from reading my past blog posts, I love going to concerts. Lots of artists I like seem to be touring this autumn/winter, so I've bought tickets to a lot of concerts over the next couple of months :)

The first artist I'm seeing live is Marina and the Diamonds. Her concert is a week on Sat :) I'm going to that concert with my mum and we'll be driving there. Marina and the Diamonds sounds like a group, but it's actually just a solo singer, Marina. The Diamonds she refers to in her name are her fans, not her band. She is my second favourite artist after Mika and her debut album, The Family Jewels, is my favourite album of the year. She's half Greek and half Welsh and has an amazing voice. The lyrics to her songs (which she always writes herself) are really clever and I like the way she doesn't always sing about love, like a lot of artists seem to do. Marina came second in the BBC's Sound of 2010 poll but unfortunately she hasn't received the recognition I believe she deserves, so you don't very often hear her songs on the radio or in the charts. You can listen to some of her songs on Youtube - Mowgli's Road, Hollywood, I Am Not A Robot, Oh No! and Shampain are the ones that she's released as singles, so they have music videos too. And you can visit her official website here. I've just heard that Marina will be on Radio 1's Live Lounge on Saturday afternoon somewhere between 1pm and 4pm, so I'll definitely be listening to that. You can listen live on the Radio 1 website here and the audio should be up here afterwards. Or you can listen to a performance and interview she did in April here.

The second artist I'm seeing live is Eliza Doolittle. I'm seeing her just 2 days after I'm seeing Marina and me and Claire will be going to that concert on the train. It's a standing only concert but I should be able to arrange to be seated on the night. Eliza Doolittle is a relative newcomer to the music scene but I love her cheerful music. You can listen to and see the music videos for Skinny Genes, Pack Up and Rollerblades on Youtube. Her debut album is Eliza Doolittle and you can visit her official website here. And she'll be on Radio 1's Live Lounge tomorrow (Fri) somewhere between 10am and 12.45pm. You can listen live on the Radio 1 website here and the audio should be up here afterwards.

In November I've got 3 concerts lined up. The first of those is Paloma Faith. I'll be going to that concert with mum on the train. Mum was a fan of her before I was and I agreed to accompany her to the concert because Eliza Doolittle was the support act and this was before Eliza Doolittle announced her own headline tour. Since then however I have listened to Paloma Faith's debut album, Do You Want The Truth Or Something Beautiful?, a lot and I think I really like it, but I'm not quite sure, hehe. Sometimes when I listen to the album I love it, whereas other times her voice really grates on me. She's such a funny character too, I'd suggest watching an interview with her if you spot one. I hope I enjoy her music on the night, I'm sure she'll put on a spectacular performance. Stone Cold Sober was her first single but New York is probably her best known. Upside Down and Stargazer (which there isn't a video for because it's not been released as a single) are my favourite songs from her album. She was on Radio 1's Live Lounge twice back in 2009, which you can listen to here and here.

Later that week I'm seeing Diana Vickers with my mum and we'll be going on the train to that concert. Again it's standing only but I've emailed the venue and they've arranged for me and mum to sit in the accessibility area. I loved her on the X Factor in 2008 and really enjoyed seeing her on stage in the play Little Voice in the West End last year. In that play she did a brilliant job of mimicking lots of famous female singers. Diana's debut album is called Songs from the Tainted Cherry Tree. She's just released 2 songs from that album - Once and The Boy Who Murdered Love (which I love the video for). Her next single is called My Wicked Heart and she'll soon be re-releasing her song to include that track as well as some more extra tracks. You can hear her Live Lounge session from earlier in the year here.

Later in November me, mum and Claire are seeing Ellie Goulding in concert. We discovered her when she was one of the support acts for Little Boots, who we saw in concert about a year ago. At that point no-one had heard of Ellie Goulding but since then she's come first in the BBC's Sound of 2010 poll and won the Critics' Choice Award at the Brit Awards. Her debut album is called Lights and now we are familiar with her music we're looking forward to seeing her live again. She's released 4 singles so far - Under The Sheets, Starry Eyed, Guns and Horses and The Writer. Her next single will be Lights, which there isn't a video for yet and is only currently available on the iTunes edition of her album. You can hear her Live Lounge session from earlier in the year here.

Then in December me and mum will be seeing Pixie Lott in concert. We'll be going to that on the train. Pixie Lott is just 19 but has had huge amounts of success over the last year or so. Her debut album is called Turn It Up but in a few days she'll be re-releasing it as Turn It Up Louder with lots of extra tracks. Mama Do was her debut single, but since then she has released more singles from her album including Cry Me Out and Turn It Up. I think my favourite song from the album might be Here We Go Again or Band Aid, neither of which have been released as singles. Her new single, Broken Arrow, is out this week. She was on Radio 1's Live Lounge recently which you can listen to here.

And the final concert I've got booked is Alexandra Burke in February. I couldn't stand her when she was on the X Factor in 2008 and didn't like her cover of Hallelujah, but I like the singles she's released since then and enjoy listening to her album, Overcome. She's released Bad Boys, Broken Heels and All Night Long from the album. I also like The Silence (which you can see her performing live if you click on the link) but that hasn't been released as a single. And her latest single is Start Without You.