Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Different for Girls A Girl's Own True-life Adventures in Pop by Louise Wener What I see in the mirror: Louise Wener. I 'm in my 40s now, and when I look in the mirror I notice my face changing every year. I like my big features, which give my face strength, but I can see everything softening, as if my face is losing focus with the emergent creases and the droop. There's nothing I relish about looking older, but I'm happier in my skin than when I was younger. I was an archetypal geek in my teens: spots, frizzy hair and pink, plastic National Health spectacles. On top of that, I had a huge strawberry birthmark in the centre of my chest that took years of laser treatment to remove. I was teased about it as a kid, which made me horribly self- conscious. I lived in high-cut T-shirts and polo-neck jumpers. By the time my band Sleeper were successful and appearing on Top Of The Pops, I'd become something of a pin-up. I had a mixed attitude to being described as a sex symbol. At times it felt as if I was having my Olivia Newton-John moment, where she emerges triumphant at the end of Grease. At others it felt reductive and diminishing. I've always been tragically low maintenance, even more so since I've had children. I'm hoping the rarer the "left-alone" look is, the cooler it's going to be. It shows all your love and adventures. You'd never catch me Googling Botox before and after pictures. I'm probably not doing it right now. Different For Girls: My True-Life Adventures In Pop, by Louise Wener, is published by Ebury Press at £11.99. Different for Girls: A Girl's Own True-life Adventures in Pop by Louise Wener. "Her real transgression against the unwritten rock-hack rulebook was far more serious: she did not have a penis," says Stephen Dalton, as he reviews Different For Girls: My True-Life Adventures In Pop by Sleeper singer Louise Wener. Britpop? What the fuck was that all about then? While previous generations had planet-shaking youthquakes like hippie, punk and acid house, my peers and I saw out our twenties during one of the most wilfully conservative and backward-looking musical movements ever. A moronic inferno. A bonfire of inanity. ( and while we’re using eighties book titles, how about White Noise?- Ed ) Yeah yeah, I know. The march of rock history was never a clean linear narrative, but at least before Britpop it appeared to have a generally forward momentum. For the sake of argument, let’s assume the "indie" ethic once stood for something of genuine cultural worth: oppositional politics, perhaps, or plain creative waywardness. But during the Orwellian rebranding exercise of Cool Britannia, "indie" rock became far too marketable a commodity to be left to the outsider fuck-ups and original thinkers who invented it. Britpop was the skinny-jeaned, union-jacked, mockney-accented epitaph for indie. In the words of the late, great Steven Wells, it became a byword for "unchallenging guitar music played by white suburban males." And, to a lesser extent, white suburban females too. From reading this bittersweet memoir of her brief Britpop career, I discovered the former Sleeper singer Louise Wener and I were born just weeks apart, shared similar suburban upbringings in humdrum towns, and even attended the same 1983 David Bowie concert in Milton Keynes. She became a second-division pop star. I became a third-rate rock journalist. I’m still not sure which of us got the short straw. The lightweight early chapters of Different For Girls slip too easily into generic fortysomething nostalgia mode. Wener skips breezily through the black comedy of losing her virginity on a kibbutz in Israel, and pays brisk tribute to her father’s untimely death from cancer. But nothing too dark is allowed to taint the whimsical flashbacks to uncool suburbia, teenage crushes, classroom bullies and 1970s pop culture. The tone hardens and the insights deepen in the second half, when Wener finds herself perfectly placed to jump aboard the latest bandwagon of British guitar bands with a self-consciously local, conversational, neo-retro accent. Sleeper were always a lesser Britpop act, lacking the fierce ambition or art-school intelligence of Blur or Pulp. To her credit, Wener acknowledges this, rightly predicting her band would go down with the "steerage class" acts when the Britpop Titanic began sinking around 1997. Writing for NME all through the Britpop-bloated ‘90s, I recall Wener was loathed by many of my fellow hacks to an almost pathological degree. Her reputation as Ilford’s answer to Courtney Love seemed faintly absurd then, and feels wholly surreal now. I interviewed her twice, and found her to be a perfectly charming, fairly conventional girl-next-door. If anything, she was disappointingly sweet and inoffensive, but also smarter and funnier than most of her puffed-up boyrock peers. In Different For Girls , Wener deconstructs her "whorish" and "controversial" media image with baffled bemusement. She points out, rightly, that press darlings like the Manics could wish AIDS on Michael Stipe, or hang out with the murderous dictator Fidel Castro, and still dodge the vitriolic press brickbats that she regularly attracted. She also laughs off the Groundhog Day grind of her interviews, forever "discussing masturbation with cross little bald men from the NME". Wener’s cynical line on the hypocrisy of her Britpop peers, frantically tracking their chart positions while affecting to loathe commercial success, has only been proven right by history. "I am dying to sell out," she admits, winningly. Considering the wife-beaters, thugs and homophobes regularly lauded in the music press, the Sleeper singer’s crime of being mildly opinionated barely merits a mention. But, of course, her real transgression against the unwritten rock-hack rulebook was far more serious: she did not have a penis. Wener does not gloss over the decadent side of pop fame, but nor does she revel in it. Sleeper come across as boringly sensible lightweights, indulging in nothing more debauched than the obligatory tour diet of cocaine and booze. Even the band’s central bizarre love triangle, with Wener first dating guitarist Jon Stewart, then drummer Andy Maclure, is handled with minimal melodrama. Fans of rock-filth biographies, be warned: Different For Girls is more Last of the Summer Wine than Hammer of the Gods . Even so, there are some enjoyably dissolute snapshots. Wener fondly recalls the foreskin-bumping antics of Scandi-rockers The Wannadies and their Viking friends, who get wasted by poking vodka-soaked tampons up their arses. Nice. She also paints a less-than-flattering picture of Blur at their snorting-and-shagging imperial peak. The depressingly funny dressing-down Sleeper receive after pilfering from Damon and co’s deluxe cheese selection tells you more than you ever wanted to know about the Spinal Tap reality of rock success. For Britpop’s grandes fromages it seems it was always about the cheese. "Fame," Wener concludes, "is a fiefdom of wank." But Wener does not entirely shatter the romantic pop-star fantasy in Different For Girls . Playing Top of the Pops for the first time, being serenaded on a stadium stage by Michael Stipe ( I don’t remember that - Ed ), having one of her songs covered by Elvis Costello, arriving wasted at the Trainspotting premiere: all these thrilling landmarks are recorded with warm hindsight. Teenage dreams are still hard to beat, even if their appeal soon fades. However minor their achievements, Sleeper really did taste real pop stardom, then gracefully disbanded before the machine chewed them to pieces. They were simply not hungry, lucky or talented enough to outlast the Britpop crash. Almost 15 years after Britpop, the music industry has changed irrevocably, in ways both good and bad. NME has its first female editor, and the whole pop-gender playing field is arguably a little more level. Wener is now a novelist and mother, still living with Maclure, almost certainly in English suburbia somewhere. Success is said to be the best revenge, so it is a shame Sleeper did not leave any immortal jukebox classics behind, just a handful of brittle and unremarkable singles. Different For Girls is an easy read, an amusing insight into the banality of band life, and a cautionary tale about the cost of getting what you always wanted. Reading this book as a fellow Britpop survivor, it struck many familiar chords. Far too many. What happened to the female stars of Britpop? The indie bands that came to dominate Britpop emerged from a healthy alternative culture that was politically involved, progressive in outlook and inclusive of female input, from the alien techno of Björk to the literate blues of PJ Harvey. So it's a shame that now, 25 years after the formation of Elastica, that moment in popular culture is so often reduced to a boorish bunfight between blokes from the north (Oasis) and blokes from the south (Blur), or a testosterone-driven clash of classes. It was all of those things and several more complicated stories too, and nowhere near as male-dominated as it appears in the retelling. Here are seven bands whose contribution should not be overlooked. 1. Elastica. [LISTEN] Justine Frischmann: Why I dropped music for art. Elastica formed in mid-1992, when Justine Frischmann and Justin Welch decided they needed a group to reflect the interests of people like them. They made one album of sharp post-punk with lyrics confidently tackling erectile disfunction, scenesters and making out in cars, and it sold faster than any debut album since Definitely Maybe (a record it held for over 10 years). There followed a messy period, with band members leaving and arriving and a scrappy second album The Menace in 2000, after which the band split up. Guitarist Donna Matthews continues to make music under her own name, and works as a Christian missionary to the homeless. Bass player Annie Holland still lives in Brighton, and keeps in touch with Justin, who has continued to work as a drummer, both as a teacher and with various bands - including a stint helping Suede in 2013 and with the reformed Lush in 2015. Earlier this year, the three of them appeared in a Facebook photo while remastering the band's debut album at Abbey Road. After a short stint presenting BBC TV shows about architecture in 2003, and The South Bank Show in 2004, Justine moved to Colorado in 2005 to study art, and now works as an artist in San Francisco, working with the George Lawson Gallery. In 2012 some of her work was shortlisted for the UK's Marmite Prize for painting. She has stated she has no desire to make music any more, although when discussing the offer of a reunion show for her old friend M.I.A.'s Meltdown festival in London, Justine told the Sunday Times: “I was actually surprised I was even tempted. I’ve never felt tempted before.” 2. Echobelly. [LISTEN] Sonya Madan on getting the band back together. Even more than Elastica, Echobelly - a multiracial, multicultural and multigendered band - destroy the pernicious fib that Britpop was just a bunch of blokes with guitars and Beatle cuts singing about sunshine. Singer Sonya Madan moved to England from Delhi, aged two, while her musical partner, Glenn Johansson, came to London from Sweden, where he met Sonya in 1993. They put a band together, including guitarist Debbie Smith, formerly of Curve, and released their debut album Everybody's Got One in 1994. Madonna was a fan, as was Morrissey. However, during the 1995/6 world tour for second album On, Sonya developed a serious thyroid problem, and the band bickered with their record label and bickered among themselves, losing founder members and grinding to a halt from 1997- 2001. Debbie Smith, who left in 1998, is now a prominent London DJ, and has played with the indie supergroup Snowpony. After two more albums there was another lull, and then, in 2009, Sonya and Glenn started performing acoustic sets as Calm of Zero. The reception was so affectionate they gave in to the inevitable and reformed Echobelly. They released an album, Anarchy and Alchemy, in May 2017. 3. Sleeper. [LISTEN] Louise Wener on her time in Sleeper. Louise Wener met Jon Stewart at Manchester University in 1987, resolving to form a band and do some gigs. But it wasn't until 1993 (after they'd abandoned the name Surrender Dorothy) and moved to Camden that they got signed, starting a run of hit singles that began with the immortal Inbetweener. Their band name also became synonymous with groups who have a star female singer at the front, and three slightly anonymous musicians behind, otherwise known as Sleeperblokes. They decided to call it a day in 1998, after their third album Pleased to Meet You. Louise and Sleeper drummer Andy Maclure started a new project, even getting George Michael to sing harmonies on one of their (sadly unreleased) songs. But it came to nothing, and she started writing fiction instead, becoming a successful novelist and publishing her memoirs Different for Girls: My True-life Adventures in Pop in June 2010. She has also taught the art of writing novels. And in 2017, she rejoined the band onstage for the first Sleeper gigs in nearly 20 years, playing alongside fellow Britpop-era veterans The Bluetones, Dodgy and Space. 4. Kenickie. [LISTEN] Lauren Laverne on John Peel playing Kenickie. Inverting the Sleeperbloke lineup, Kenickie had three stars at the front and one slightly anonymous bloke (Lauren Laverne's brother Pete - known as Johnny X) at the back. They formed in 1994, a bunch of exceedingly sharp teenagers with a knack for buzzsaw pop melodies and bamboozling music journalists with their gang-sharpened wit. Courtney Love was a fan, Alan McGee tried to sign them to Creation Records, they released two albums and then split up in 1998. Lauren Laverne's broadcasting career we know about, but her co-stars Marie Du Santiago and Emmy-Kate Montrose tried their luck with two singles as Rosita, before splitting. Marie (now Nixon) worked for the Arts Council as head of communications, and in 2012 became Chief Executive of the University of Sunderland Students' Union. She also continues to make music in The Cornshed Sisters. Emmy-Kate is also in education, lecturing in sociology at Goldsmiths. Johnny X became Pete X and then J Xaverre, carving a career as a producer and musician and working with Frankie & the Heartstrings. He is the third ex-Kenickie member in education, working at the North East Surrey College of Technology as a music technology teacher. 5. Lush. [LISTEN] Miki Berenyi on the return of Lush. While the band first came to prominence making gauzy indie rock as part of the early '90s shoegaze set, Lush's chart career was definitely a Britpop moment. Formed around the friendship between Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson, the band shifted gear and started writing sharp, hard pop songs about the perils of modern dating, such as Hypocrite, Ladykillers and Single Girl. Having achieved American success and with a potentially bright future ahead, they split in 1996, after the death of drummer Chris Acland. Emma formed a new group, Sing-Sing and released two albums, also working as a manager, PR, booking agent and accountant, while Miki forged a new career as a production editor in magazine publishing. The group reunited for a short time between 2015, releasing the EP Blind Spot and once again touring America, resolved to put their band past away again in 2016. In a strange musical footnote, Lush were involved in the 2007 lawsuit between powerpoppers The Rubinoos and Avril Lavigne over her song Girlfriend. The Rubinoos claimed Avril had plagiarised their hit I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend, which Lush had covered, changing the gender round. This version, which contained the lyric "hey, you, I wanna be your girlfriend" was referred to in their legal papers. 6. Powder. This is a story best told backwards, not so much a Where Are They Now? as a Who Were They Then? The fashion and textiles designer Pearl Lowe, celebrity mother of Daisy Lowe, was once in a band called Powder who released three singles, and appeared on the BBC's celebration of the musical moment, the TV special Britpop Now. They called a halt to their gigging activities in 1995 as Pearl became pregnant with Daisy's half- brother Alfie, and this took sufficient wind out of the band's sails that they called it a day the following year. Pearl went on to front the band Lodger, and has released a solo album under her first name, riding a wave of attention that has never ebbed, including a brief spell as the face of Agent Provocateur. She was designing a signature range of curtains and cushions by 2001, then handmade dresses by 2006. In 2007 she released a harrowing memoir - All That Glitters - detailing her struggles with addiction, and has since taken on the role as ambassador for the charity Action on Addiction. 7. Dubstar. While Elastica, Sleeper and Lush were castigating faintly rubbish blokes and throwing their guitars around, Dubstar were channelling another indie tradition entirely - the English electropop band with guitars in. Sarah Blackwood joined the Newcastle-based band a year after they formed in 1992, lending her poised and reserved tones to the post-rave hits Stars and Not So Manic Now, and giving New Order a run for their money with the international hit album Disgraceful in 1995. They split up in 2000. Sarah joined the band Technique on a tour with Depeche Mode, then went off with Kate Holmes to work in the duo Client. She has also sung with William Orbit, Pete Doherty, Gary Numan, Tim Burgess and Carl Barât, among many others. The band have hinted a few times that new Dubstar material might be in the offing, and in 2010 they recorded a cover of I'm in Love with a German Film Star by The Passions for an Amnesty International project. In 2012 Dubstar reformed on stage to take part in a fundraising concert for Newcastle venue the Riverside. Different for Girls. We won’t be able to verify your ticket today, but it’s great to know for the future.Theater box office or somewhere else It shows him coping with being gay and being with friends. But the first hundred pages are devoted to her antics as an awkward, non-music loving teen in the early 80s and it is DULL. But the first hundred pages are devoted to her antics as an awkward, non-music loving teen in the early 80s and it is DULL. Ludovic is an innocent seven-year-old child who provokes horror in his community when he dresses in girls clothes and insists he's a girl. Different for Girls started with a book. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8513765-different-for-girls. All rights reserved. Directed by Richard Spence. Not only that, but Wener has become a novelist since quitting the music scene & Just For One Day is a well-written, humorous & insightful account of the music business at a time when music fans still bought singles & albums from record stores. Cynical definitely. Sleeper only made three albums & spent just half a decade in the musical spotlight, but I was interested in reading about that time from the lead singer of one of that era's few female-fronted bands. Different for Girls: A Girl's Own True-life Adventures in Pop Paul is fascinated with the attractive Kim. Just sayin.. operated retreat to cure her writer's block, but when an unforeseen software glitch occurs, she gets trapped inside her unit with an unstable android and no communication with the outside world. Lucy meets George in a Florence pensione and the two share a brief romance before Lucy returns home, where she becomes engaged to Cecil. What happens when a man who believes he has retired from MI6 is called back to do one more job to regain his life, only to discover that this job may mean he has no life to go back to. Bite-sized chapters and a light, down-to- earth style make for a quick read, and a love for the band is no pre-requisite for enjoyment (deliberately so, it feels, as it seems a lot more focused on being in A band, rather than THAT band. Fran and Cam, ecstatically reunited after a short break, but Cam faces the consequences of a random act she committed during their split. And that is even more endearing, because I recognize so much of it (although I'm from another country and a few years younger): all the 80s hits, the New Romantics, Bananarama, the lipgloss and the moonboots, Rocky III and Flashdance, dressing up for disco . And it's not whiny or nostalgic. I'm only three years younger than Louise Wener so, as a fan of most Britpop in the 1990s, I knew & liked most of her band Sleeper's singles. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Be the first to ask a question about Different for Girls There are a few chapters about how awful the Britpop scene key players were, particularly Damon and Alex from blur. More from. Prentice, finding the seduction unexpectedly effective, freaks out. 0091936519. I never entirely bought Kim as a woman however. self centered? This and many other things. Fran and Cam, ecstatically reunited after a short break, but Cam faces the consequences of a random act she committed during their split. Just one of the things I learnt from this funny, well-written, admirably frank memoir. by Ebury Her tight, short chapters are not unlike her songs. bouncy, catchy, full of hooks.I had heard that Louise Wener had become a novelist after her life as a pop star ended. | Who. "I am straight, you know,'' Paul tells Kim. Drama, Mama always told me save yourself Take a little time and find the right girl Then again don't end up on the shelf Logical advice gets you in … After his lover rejects him, a young man trapped by the oppressiveness of Edwardian society tries to come to terms with and accept his sexuality. Published Strong melodies, great lyrics and fronted by the gauche, girl next door Louise Wener. | Rating: 3/4 A desperate writer signs up for a fully A.I. Knew. Please click the link below to receive your verification email. A light breezy read that shouldn't take much longer than a day. It is funny; if you read the reviews, the reviewers often say that they want to see the book adapted to the screen or turned into a … KizzTV. As one of Britpop's former queens, her withering and cynical take on the music industry is refreshing, amusing and always entertaining. Returning cast Jennifer Beals, Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey will resume their original roles. Different for Girls first was a book written by Jacquie Lawrence. | Rating: B Just what is it about him that Jude has made it her life's mission to reveal? 2:11. January 1, 2000 Her tight, short chapters are not unlike her songs. bouncy, catchy, full of hooks.Sleeper were very much 2nd division Britpop. Hot on the heels of Caitlin Moran's feminist manifesto-slash-1990's memoir, I scooped this up from my shelf. It was interesting, and a very quick read. Sorry Lou. Sure, Sleeper had a few good singles ('What Do I Do Now', 'Vegas'), but they were always a third-teir band - not nearly as popular as Oasis or Blur, nor as interesting as Pulp or Suede. Different for Girls is the memoir of Louise Wener, the singer of the Britpop band Sleeper, and how she transformed from a geeky music-loving schoolgirl into an international pop star, touring the world and mixing with the A-list. Bland and conventional, despite the sex-change angle, Different for Girls is ultimately not different enough. Different for Girls: A Girl's Own True-life Adventures in Pop by Louise Wener. The city is home to Wener and husband Andy Maclure, Sleeper’s drummer who works at BIMM Brighton. Singer and author Wener tells EDWIN GILSON about coping with fame, Cool Britannia and why now was the right time to return. Sleeper reformed to play a mini tour with other Britpop bands earlier this year. How long did it take to get back into the swing of things? Longer than I thought. I thought we would be able to snap back into it immediately but it took a while. I hadn’t played guitar in years and years but the muscle memory from the older times came back. The most fun thing is just being in a rehearsal room where it is super loud. I realised that I love being in front of an amp more than anything else. You’ve written about life in the 1990s in the novel Just For One Day: Adventures in Britpop. Did you think much about the band in the two decades you were away? A lot happened. We had young kids and life was so busy. Recently there was a little window where it felt like things were calm enough to consider doing it again. This gig [Britpop tour] came up and I had a spur of the moment thought of ‘why not, let’s go and do that’. I thought it would be life- affirming. We’d been asked to do various things over the years but I don’t think anyone was super keen. The offer just happened at a time when everyone was ready to say yes. That was kind of a surprise to all of us, because we all thought that somebody wouldn’t want to do it. Had you noticed renewed interest in Sleeper recently? Are you expecting younger fans to come to the gig? I really don’t know whether that will happen. We haven’t got massive expectations. Back in the 1990s sometimes bands used to say that there were only in it for themselves and often that was a complete lie. But these days that’s true. It’s all about whether it’s enjoyable for ourselves. As front woman of 1990s band Sleeper, Louise Wener was the cool girl we all wanted to be. She tells Anna Pursglove how she went from sex, drugs and rock n' roll to writing books in Brighton. Being a lonely, asthmatic child made me crave fame. I was an ugly, short-sighted kid with chronic asthma, so I spent a lot of time off school and in my own company. I got very good at watching and listening ​ and inventing: I had a big imaginary landscape. People from the part of Essex where I grew up seemed to me to have this incredibly static, slightly claustrophobic existence, and I wanted my life to have colour and magic. I had no rock ​n​ roll credentials. So when I went to Manchester (University, where Wener studied politics and English) and suddenly there was an ad for a singer or a guitarist on every notice board, it was all a bit of a revelation. I​d come from a sleepy little suburb, brought up mostly on pop music. I just wanted to be famous, like Blondie or Bananarama. Of course, once Sleeper got big, I had to pretend to be all indie and earnest but, in truth, everything I learnt about bands was done on the job. There was no camaraderie among the women of Britpop. In fact, the competition was fierce. It definitely felt like there was only room for a few of us, and that made for a very bitchy atmosphere. If there was any sense of shared experience during that era, it was around drugs. You hung out with the ​drunkards​, or the ​cokey​ ones, or the ​heroiney​ ones ​ or all of the above. People still recognise me in the street, which feels bizarre now I​m 44. I also get a few people on Twitter saying, ​Wow, I was in love with you in 1995.​ I​m not sure how to respond to that other than to point out that it​s 2011 and possibly time to move on. I​m very grateful that Andy (Sleeper drummer turned music lecturer and Louise​s partner of 16 years) and I made it through the Britpop years unscathed. Because everything you​ve been told about the moral bankruptcy of that time is sadly true: two men having sex with one groupie on the tour bus, or female fans lining up after gigs offering blow jobs. Some people did lose themselves in it all. Luckily, I'​ve always had a good bullshit detector and I was aware that although fame was exciting, it was also fragile and would end one day. Britpop didn'​t make me rich . We got about £12,000 for a six-album deal! This fact still makes me want to weep. I​'ve heard some great rumours about myself. It​'s true that Graham Coxon [Blur​s guitarist] proposed to me repeatedly when we toured together, although, he proposed to just about everybody. Sadly, it​'s not true that I play one of the ZingZillas on CBeebies. I haven​t countered that myth before because I wish I did. I came to motherhood late. I had Iris (now five) when I was 39 and Frank two years later. Iris​ birth was very traumatic. An inexperienced midwife made some very bad mistakes and it ended up with me having a blood transfusion. Despite that, it never affected my bond with Iris. It felt to me from the start as though it was the two of us versus the rest of the world. Being a parent means a constant sense of incompletion. When you​re with them, there​s always that little bit of the old you, nagging about what you​re missing, and yet, when you​re away from them, you don​t feel whole. It also makes you examine your own childhood. Looking back, I think my dad had a depressive illness, although he would never have described it like that. His lack of fulfilment was certainly the elephant in the room for me and my brother and sister when we were growing up. The sad thing is he finally started studying law ​ his great passion ​ after retiring, but died soon afterwards. I think my willingness to throw myself into things that attract me is probably a reaction to his missed opportunities. Writing my first novel was about regaining some autonomy. While I was in Sleeper, there were always people to please ​ the rest of the band and the record label. Once I was alone with my little electric typewriter, it just felt the right thing to do. I wrote two half-novels and junked them before I started to understand structure, pacing, timing and character. I was about 10 chapters into what would become my first novel, Goodnight Steve McQueen, when I knew it was good enough to send to a publisher. I draw on people I know when I​m writing . But I don​t think friends would recognise themselves in any of my novels. It​s more facets of people I use, rather than faithful copies. The trick is to embellish your own experience to bring a character to life. Sometimes the work/life balance thing doesn'​t work at all. Find me any mum who doesn'​t say that. At the moment, Iris is at school and Frank goes to nursery two days a week. Even without Andy and me having to do massive London commutes, there are days when the jigsaw just will not fit together. I worry about role models for Iris. There is something deeply unsettling about what​s passing for female empowerment at the moment. Don​t get me wrong, there was a lot wrong for women back when I was considered a role model, but, back then, nobody was getting their boobs out ​ not in the music business, anyway. I don​t, for example, get why Cheryl Cole is such an idol for women. We have taken a step backwards as far as feminism is concerned and not many people appear to be questioning that. As the mother of a daughter, that​s worrying. I​'ve suddenly got a yen to get married. Having had no particular inclination for it before ​ I​m not religious and I certainly don​t need the government to approve my relationship ​ I now have a little germ of a fantasy to do it. Maybe in a year or so when the kids are both old enough to join in and to remember it. I​m not interested in the frock or any of that stuff, but the idea of a big old knees-up for my friends and everyone I love is getting more and more attractive. Letting go is good to do. When Sleeper broke up, I felt like I​d been demobbed but, at the same time, knew that I would never start up a solo career. I accepted that that phase of my life was over (my mum helpfully told me that I could ​always go and work in a shop​). If I could go back now and talk to that younger me who was leaving the band, I would tell her, ​Don​t regret it. You​ve done something hardly anybody else gets to do. You'​ve lived the dream, it was fun, and now it​s time to move on. It​s all right and it​s going to get better.​ Just For One Day: Adventures In Britpop , by Louise Wener (Ebury Press, £7.99), is published on June 9th.