Rachel London

Sunday, and I'm still recovering from a tequila- and vodka-inspired hangover which I seem to remember also motivated me to sing "These Boots Are Made for Walking" on the karaoke machine in front of thirty people very loudly and very out-of-tunely at 10:30 last night. Ten minutes later, I'm out to Shepherds Bush to rehearse, eat, rehearse. Seven hours later, throat fretting, we get the tube to Holborn to the gorgeous neo-Grecian Bush House on the Strand, home to the BBC World Service and London Live where we are performing, appropriately enough, live on the Entertainment Zone as hosted by Amy Lame.

The corridors are quiet, the assistant takes us to a tiny room, Alex tells me why it's called a green room but I'm so busy drinking water and reading the Sunday Times to assuage my nerves to listen and then someone comes and talks about microphones and chairs and takes us somewhere and...

It's like a job interview--ten minutes to prove that you're good enough, remembering to smile and say thank you, trying not to say the wrong thing. But we prove it. We soar and shimmer, and however strange it is to think of yourself being in someone's home via compact disc, it's even stranger to think of someone twiddling a knob and fortuitously finding us, genie coming out of the radio.

And dead on eight we're out back onto the streets--Amy (as we now think of her) waving at us from the steps--walking up High Holborn back to the tube.

Monday, and I'm late into work, blaming the bus I never get. People flurry work at me, I collapse into my e-mails. I haven't eaten a proper meal since Thursday. I haven't washed since Friday. My bones ache, my head throbs. If this rock n' roll you can take it back.