right, where to begin. my name is alfie. no that's not right. my name is not feather boa either, but that's the pseudonym i've been going by since, oh, 1997, and i've become rather attached to it.

i'm 23, i'm a girl, i live in london, i'm single and bisexual. you can read my blogger profile if you want. it has some information about things i like. if you're a hott girl you might want to look at my gaydar profile. what can i say, i'm an optimist.

i've been blogging since 2002, which makes this the longest relationship i've ever been in. i luv the interweb.

my other interests include indie music, books, scrabble, hairclips, kittens and pilates (no, really).

i don't have any particular political affiliation, but i tend towards the left/liberal end of things.

my ba was in english literature, and my masters in journalism, i'm trying to get a job at the moment. i promise.

my favourite bands include belle and sebastian, the manic street preachers, the mountain goats and the beach boys but there are lots more, and to name them all would take up days of our time.

i started atsot (or ...stars... as i occasionally call it) because i was on work experience, and was bored. this was during the great sinister blog craze of 2001-2.

i had no greater plans for the blog than an online record of my doings. which is pretty much what it is. but writing it, and getting interested in blogging inspired me to write my masters dissertation about blogging. so huzzah for the weblog phenomenon - it fills up both my free time and my work time.

chris (also known as checkers) is fab. ladybird ladybird would have been nothing without him, and i heart him.  he's just finished his physics degree at york, and he's now on a masters by research at king's college london

stu is one of my best mates from uni (and an ex boyfriend). he took a politics and history degree, and is in the process of finishing a masters in history, also at york.  he plays the guitar, and used to be in my band ladybird ladybird together with chris j, he founded indie society. you can read all about his exciting life on his blog popgun riot. he is going out with the absolutely fantastic louise. yay them.

sarah is probably my other closest friend at uni, and i lived with her (and mike) for the whole of my final year.  she's also staying in york, and take a law conversion course at the college of law.  she's one of the most together people i know - which is why she already has a job lined up for when she leaves college next year! sarah's interests include baking and being georgian (that's the time period, not the nationality). you should go and read her fanzine fnia, it's very funny.

jess and i were never very good friends at school, but since we've left we've become quite close. this was helped by the fact that she came out quite soon after she got to uni. she did biology at leeds, and she's now working as a lab assistant at a school. she's going out with the lovely milena, which entails a lot of time spent in germany.

chris is another unique young man. is it his dress sense? is it the fact that he is really the personification of sinister? it came as something of a surprise when he was elected president of the students' union at york, but he was bluddy grate at it. now he's finished being king of york he's trying to find something else to do with himself. in his spare time, chris collects rare sarah cds and sings and plays the guitar in a twee (and rather marvellous) styleee.

i met gina through sinister, which is how i seem to meet most people. she's extraordinarily clever, and so she's currently studying at durham for a doctorate in string theory, whatever that may be. my personal hope is that it's in some way associated with wool, since gina's also an excellent knitter.

also known as asm, the boy asm, young asm and cuthbert engelbert. he's another former chair of indie soc, as well as having been editor of the *award winning* student paper vision. he graduated from his psychology degree this year, and he plays a mean acoustic guitar (i mean his guitar playing is good by that - not that his instrument tries to bite your hand if you play a barre or anything).

alice has also been an indie soc chair, and she graduated from york with a degree in electronics (but she's not a geek).  she's in a band called the seven inches, she was based in leeds until recently, but she's just succumbed to the draw of the big smoke, and moved down to london village!

another ex-boyfriend. jarvis is, er, unique. a multi-millionaire by the age of 21 (after his dad died), he always wanted to go to film school, but has had to settle for working for the imax instead. he's best mates with glenn and going out with joyce. i haven't seen him since march, which is something that i really regret

jarvis' best mate, i only really got to know him when we were both working at shared experience (it's a physical theatre company) the summer before i went to uni. glenn was diagnosed with cancer in autumn 2002, but he's come through it amazingly well.  he's now beginning to question whether acting is really what he wants to spend his life doing, which seems a shame as he's phenomenally good.

we met acting at the open air theatre in regent's park. i consider tim to be one of my best friends, but the fact that he's been spending a lot of time away from london (he studied musical theatre at birmingham), has meant that i haven't seen him anywhere near as much as i'd like in the last few years. he's one of the few people i know who share my sense of humour.