Clink 78

Hattie and I met these two punks from Manchester in the bar of Clink 78 the Hostel in Kings Cross where we stayed.
Hattie was already staying there as she lives in Newcastle and I missed my train and she asked me if I wanted to stay there too , I thought why not!  It was great fun and afforded us a lot of laughs, especially trying to get down the ladder if you can call it that the next morning...
We were sharing a 6 bunk room which we told was multi sex, we met our roomies in the morning, 3 military men from the states on a European tour of famous war memorials and museums, they had just been to Normandy and through Paris, he said that armed police were out in force in combat formation everywhere..... They gave us some shower gel and were really nice guys.

After toast and coffee at Clink 78 we set off for day two of MAKING IT HAPPEN Songwriting conference.

Amazing vocal coaching session with Chris Johnson.

Motivation talk by entrepreneur Simon Coulson who is also Martin Sutton's business partner in the Songwriting Academy aqnd a thoroughly lovely man with an extraordinary and inspirational life story.

Then a talk by Jacqueline Norton on how to network authentically and successfully Here is her website.

Then Producing for Today's charts with Mark Hill aka Artful aka Artful Dodger where he showed us how he contructs drum loops and plays with vocal samples and more on how he works which was all so good.

Then Get In The Zone and Get on With It with Martin Sutton which was very motivating.

Then What Makes a Hit Song with Jez Ashurst who is so knowledgeable and so willing share what he knows.

It has been a great weekend and one of the highlights has been seeing so many people that I I've got to know through all the networking I've been doing in the last year, I've met so many lovely new people too!

Like Anthea Prince who I met as I was leaving, we ended up going for dinner, she is a vegan so we went to Vantra in Oxford Street which is brilliant! We bumped into an old friend of mine Sammy whose dinner had just come to an end as we arrived and her 2 friends were leaving so we sat with her, we had such a great conversation, we had (hate to say had) a very dear and wonderful friend Jeb Milne who passed away unexpectedly about 2 years ago. He started SINGERS, a club that made all the difference to me in my 20s where I met so many amazing singers and musicians, I also lived with hiom for a time, he was my friend, my mentor.... so we talked about him a lot and it turned out that Anthea and Samara have lots of fvriends in common, anyway!!! It's been a GREAT day.