February 14th isn't the easiest day at the best of times – leaving for work can be difficult when the door’s wedged shut with fuscia coloured pizza ads. But having your relationship status splashed across the pages of a national gossip magazine rates pretty badly on our scale of successful Valentine’s Days.

So, having been rather aggressively described as ‘Bite’s single girls, Amy & Antonya’ in this week’s Heat magazine, allow us to put the record straight: We do, in fact, have a bevy of options this V-Day, some more attractive than others, only the raciest of which involve Haagen Daz and a TV remote. But we do realise not everyone is so lucky, so for those seeking love (or loathing) this week here are our hot tips:

For all the lovers in the house there’s Valentine’s Day; for everyone else there’s ‘The Love Doctors’, AKA Hardcore Romantique. As seen on this week’s ‘Bite’, their dazzling array of pick-up and love advice will deliver you from lonesomeness before you can say “ticket for one, back row please”, with sexy dance moves to match (move over Kerry Katona, this is the celebrity work out video you’ve been waiting for).

If having your love life reduced to rhyming couplets and proposing to strangers isn’t your bag, track The Love Doctors down at their monthly cabaret night, Dr Maglio’s Secrets at St. Aloysius Social Club in Euston. If escapologists, contortionists and human spitfires can’t distract you from the dust gathering in your lingerie drawer, nothing will.

For those who REALLY don’t like V-Day, The Last Tuesday Society are hosting an Evening of Exquisite Misery Valentine’s Special, and no-one does anti-celebration like they do. Expect crying booths, a seminar entitled “How To Deal With a Broken Heart”, and musical performances by bands whose lead singers don’t have dates.

Helpfully, this year’s Valentine’s Day helpfully coincides with London Fashion Week, ensuring wherever you go will also be populated with the beautiful children of St. Valentine himself. Hence a party sponsored by vintage clothing giant Beyond Retro with music by the Broken Hearts descends quickly from dream into nightmare when you realise it’s the after-show party for London-based designer Aganovich (Feb 14th, Queen’s Gate).

Luckily, news just in from the scientific world is that hungry men prefer a rounder woman*, so this might be the week to kill two birds with one stone and bag yourself a chisel jawed hottie and front row tickets to next years’ shows. Alternatively, take a random man to dinner and eat all his food.

Enjoy! Love hearts and kisses,

A&A xx

* It’s true!!! Read and rejoice

Living proof of the cross-generational, cross-cultural, cross-gendered power of ‘Bite’, here is Amy’s dad throwing some shapes after watching Zena’s hot bulge-beating tip in this week’s episode. We aim to inspire.

Watch this space for his leopard print and croc skin handbag range, coming soon.

AA

There was a time when we'd rarely be seen in pubs; two very good reasons for this were that we considered them not lively enough and Antonya’s scandalously low alcohol tolerance meant it was probably best we spent as little time as possible in a place you go to solely - bar the odd quiz - to drink.

Now residents of Little Venice, our outstanding local has changed this. The Bridge House Pub has Früli on tap, delicious food at non-London prices and best of all: the Canal Café Theatre upstairs. We thought blogging on our nearest theatre might throw up a few “best kept secret” clichés, but an evening spent watching the live comedy show NewsRevue and a quick look at their website suggests we were not the first to know about it – shameful as ‘bite’ girls.

Paul McCartney has been, The League of Gentlemen had a residency there and it’s where Amy learnt to ‘flutebox’. The venue itself is full of candle-lit tables and you can sit and have a drink while you watch a show. This place truly is a gem and you can find out what’s on, join the mailing list or book tickets online at: www.canalcafetheatre.com

AA

http://www.petitiononline.com/kenya08/

Not as shocking as it might initially sound, we are nevertheless celebrating news of a new addition to the A-A family. Curra, a goat, is the first kid born to Amy, also a goat, currently residing in the central highlands of Kenya’s Rift Valley.

Amy (the goat) was bought by Amy (the person) from a troupe of herdsmen in the Masaai Mara while both of them were galavanting around Kenya and East Africa last summer (approximately 15 quid, for anyone who was wondering).

After a shaky start during which Amy (the goat) was first dropped on her head then attempted to asphyxiate herself, Amy (the person) insisted that Amy (the goat) be spared the cooking pot, and live on as the embodiment of her memory. She has since been grazing, frolicking and pooping her way around the Kenyan countryside to her heart’s content (the goat, not the person, much is the pity). And now she has a baby, Curra!!!

A word about Curra. ‘Curra’ means elections, and it’s no surprise that our little goat got her name from the now much disputed and controversial elections that took place in Kenya on the same day, the tragic consequences of which couldn’t have been predicted by the Masaai askari, or guardsmen, who named her. It’s now the case that local violence in Kenya’s maize-growing Rift Valley region is affecting the country’s ability to feed itself, and while international bodies debate sanctions on the present government, the humanitarian implications of these events multiply daily.

While realising this might be something of a niche interest, anyone with a passing concern for the future economic, political and social stability of this beautiful region is asked to support attempts to restore peace in any way they can. Simply click on the link below to add your name to an international petition calling for government and opposition leaders to seek a resolution to the current conflict. Curra will thank you for it.

http://www.petitiononline.com/kenya08/

AA

That Ami Carter really does have her finger on the pulse doesn’t she? This week’s episode sees her popping up at one of our favourite London weeklies: ‘Short & Sweet’, a free short film night at Café 1001 in Brick Lane. We were there before Christmas, feasting on burgers and, ahem, champagne, lounging on large leather sofas and delighting in the general ‘Short & Sweet’ ambience. We saw pretty much everything from animations to music videos via deep political kidnap dramas… All of the features were brilliant and the overall experience was impeccable as usual, but in our humble opinion two shorts deserve special mention:

Firstly, the Amy & Antonya Raw Talent Award has to go to Edward Shires and Ian Wharton, two (very) young (and charming) graduates for their animation ‘Solar’. It tells the story of the sun, moon, and two characters who inhabit a planet that relies on day and night perhaps more than it would seem. Words couldn’t do it justice so check it out for yourselves, and find out what makes the world go round.

Secondly, the Amy & Antonya Sheer Entertainment Value Award goes to music video spoof ‘Sticks & Balls’, whose happy union of golf, sex, smut and electro took our breath away in a very different way. Written, directed and conceived by Jacqueline Wilson of Liberty Films and performed by Alice Lowe, this film makes golf sexy in a rather wonderfully unexpected way.

Great minds really do think alike Miss C. Bump into you down there soon maybe? And the rest of you, get down there - it’s free cinema, duh, with hamburgers and champagne.

AA

This was the year we returned from separate travels, moved in together and tested the durability of a hitherto cast iron friendship by spending much time in a considerably more confined space than our very small flat – our beloved Ford car, Lance Percival.

Probably the only perk of abysmal senses of direction, no sat nav and averaging an extra hour to all long and medium haul journeys are the conversations we find ourselves having when not blaming each other for being lost. Last week talk turned to what we’ve loved and loathed in 2007 and what we predict will have more than a bit part in the worlds of A&A in 2008.

It’s always nice to find yourself ahead of the game, nicer to be leading the pack with your best mate and not so nice when everyone else cottons on. Double Dressing, previously every girl’s worst nightmare is being pedalled as the look to rock next year. For four years now, we’ve avoided coming to handbag blows over dressing similarly (at times identically) and have batted off sarcastic jibes from couture challenged chancers bold after several beers.

To suggest we were the originals would be arrogant and untrue (parents of same sex toddlers have been doing it for decades) but we’ve colour coordinated, accessorised and worn identical outfits with pride - long before it was cool. Nor do we claim to be the best at it: that accolade surely goes to Amber and Nisha, aka The Broken Hearts two of London’s hottest DJ’s, a gorgeous girlie pairing who’ve put us to double dressing shame with their theatrical costume creations and hip swinging tunes. They look so good they could play pre-polyphonic ring tones and get away with it.

(Slightly) less aesthetically delightful but no less aurally pleasurable are Justice who AA had the pleasure of seeing last week. Remember Kanye getting in a huff over not winning best vid at last year’s MTV Europe Music Awards? The band he lost to were French ‘sexy boys’ Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay of Justice. This funky electro duo has been tearing it up for over a year now; Grammy nominated for 2008, we’re crossing our Francophile fingers.

Amy is linguistically urbane, Antonya looks the part; they have the name we were going to give ourselves, but they’re too good to resent: Black Kids. Admittedly we’re not indie lovers and until fairly recently thought the revival of garage was just about the best thing to happen musically this year, but then we heard: ‘I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You’. An extra special mention to guitarist/vocalist Reggie Youngblood who Antonya barked drinks orders at last week, long before it dawned on her who she was using as a skivvy.

(Antonya: Reggie, you’re a gentleman and I’m ashamed to admit that the penny only dropped when I spotted you dancing like a king with a bevy of ladies who looked like they’d all got the cream.)

Speaking of which, Beard Papa’s cream puffs have been quite possibly the discovery of the year. The canny Japanese have given the world (and since 2006 the top end of Oxford Street) the most delicious, ambrosial desserts available over the counter.
We’re talking crispy choux pastry shells filled with something halfway between custard and cream, probably not as “fresh n’ natural” as they claim but worth storming through crowds for.

Trust us people: these things are heavenly.
AA x

Dear Santa...

This Christmas our belief in Santa is being officially resurrected, in the hope the kind old gent takes pity on us and sends a shiny new sat-nav rocketing down our chimney and under our tree. London traffic isn’t pretty at the best of times, without the added heartache of self-navigation, and two hours chasing our tail round north-west London in a vain hunt for Brent Cross – 5 miles away as the crow flies – on what should have been a relaxing Sunday afternoon was the final straw.

(Funny to think of sat-nav in its first incarnation, as a paranoia-inducing ‘car-tracker’ marking the descent into an Orwellian future; now we line up like lemmings to take the A-Z-reading-free plunge. Gbangbangbangbang.)

The horror of our outward journey revealed itself as a tame prelude to the cruel reality awaiting us on arrival at our shopping mecca. Brent Cross on a Sunday afternoon five weeks before Christmas is not for the faint hearted. We grabbed our foot-pedal led bin and cylinder hoover and made for the exit, and the long journey home.

An altogether more relaxing day was spent on Saturday while waiting for our new telly to be delivered (Christmas has come early to the A-A household this year). The tardiness of the delivery van gave us ample time to devour a hitherto unappreciated joy: the free magazine samples you get with weekend papers.

Special mention to Space NK apothecary and Space NK Solutions, a veritable feast of luxury treats for the pampering-inclined “because we’re worth it” generation. Its pages now resemble a rather drunken game of noughts (Amy: Eve Lom Rescue Mask, Jurlique Herbal Recovery Gel for the facially red), and crosses (Antonya: Spake NK Mood Candles, Face Boutique Peachy Clean Foaming Facial Wash for the semantically minded).

First in Show, though, to Present Aid – potentially just another drop-in-the-ocean attempt to clean our consciences at a time of gratuitous greed and excess, the imagination and simplicity of the presents featured in their catalogue caught our attention and got our vote.

At the top of the range, a bicycle (£60) or a herd of goats (£55) are luxuries worthy of the Space NK catalogue; mid-range, pigs (£27 for three), ducks (£24 for 16) or hula hoops (£41 for 22) are a bargain by anyone’s standards; and at the bottom end a can of worms (£10 – personal favourite)
or disaster kit (£15) are too good to miss. Hell, we might even send them to friends and family.

So, we’ve ceremoniously (and optimistically) banished the A-Z to the recesses of our new shiny bin, and are dreaming of clean skin and even cleaner consciences this Christmas, from the comfort of our sofa.

Santa, if you’re listening…

AA x

Duncan, Milo, Nick and Jack - aka Portico Quartet - are living the dream: record label, sold-out gigs, hoards of screaming female fans…. But they are a far cry from the ubiquitous skinny-jeans-wearing, Pete Doherty-doting boy band. Instead, Portico Quartet are a 4-piece modern jazz group from London, and after nearly two years playing small gigs and busking outside the National Theatre in London, they recently signed a deal with Babel records; on November 5th released their debut album, ‘Knee-Deep in the North Sea’, to what should be a barrage of critical and popular acclaim.

Young, talented and aesthetically pleasing, their music is made distinctive by the use of the ‘hang’, a 21st century percussion instrument used on all their tracks. By “forging contemporary jazz with modern classical tendencies along with many other genres” (their own words), they have created an inimitable sound that has been compared to the work of Ben Allison, Esbjorn Svennson Trio and The Cinematic Orchestra, among others.

Confused? Don’t be. On behalf of jazz novices everywhere – modern or otherwise – we squeezed into the unlikely but atmospherically apt venue of the St Barnabas Chapel in Soho for their official album launch. Thanks to the most modern of marketing tools – a bit of myspace, a little word of mouth, and friend-of-a-friend recommendations – the venue was packed. Devoted followers jostled for space with first-time fans like ourselves, while late-comers queued outside hoping to replace the fainting girls being carried out on stretchers. (Ok not quite but you get the picture.)

There’s an improvisational quality to their tracks, but their slickness and beat-perfect delivery belie their professionalism and practice, and the water tight set of ethereal, jazzy, percussiony, melodic tracks from the album didn’t disappoint. Such crowd pleasers as ‘Pompidou’, composed while busking outside the Centre of the same name in Paris, had the audience in otherworldly suspense and the encore was almost literally a religious experience.

When they’re not signing record deals, releasing albums, playing to packed crowds and signing autographs for female fans, Portico Quartet mostly spend their time “making music and painting”. Catch them doing the former at the London Jazz Festival in the Purcell Rooms on November 24th, the Ritzy Cinema Café in Brixton on December 16th, or the Brunei Gallery at SOAS on January 9th, and brush up your knowledge before you go. Check out the launch of their album at the Barnabas Chapel a few weeks ago.
Invite us round for breakfast boys…

AA

So proud are we of our masterful talents of recreation, imitation, and death, and so eager are we that those talents be appreciated in full, here are those corpse photos in all their glory.

The inspiration:
‘Grotesque’, by Natsuo Kirino. A seedy Tokyo underworld populated and executed by crazy death masked geishas with an axe to grind.

The models:

Amy wears:
1 cup white self-raising flour
copious black eye shadow in and around eye socket
black eye shadow on lips for that rigour mortis effect
smeared red lipstick around mouth area

Antonya wears:
½ cup white self-raising flour
hint of black eye shadow around eye socket
red lipstick trickles from eye, nose and mouth

The results:

More fun than it should be. Try it yourselves and see.

AA

Purple, in case you hadn’t noticed, is officially the "colour of the season". Promoted from the velour tracksuited dinner ladies of my East End youth it is currently making its way to world domination via pop concerts, the eBay homepage and Chelsea Flower Show. Until two weeks ago, however, it was a colour I associated with Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen and other madmen, not to be forced upon people of sane mind at any time of year. So as high street giants and boutiques alike swelled with this most odious of colours, many an hour was spent prowling through clothes rails scoffing to anyone who’d listen that "the only thing purple is good for is a Prince track", and vowing not to be seen in a single item between pink and crimson all winter.

A little bit about me: every season the Powers that Be dictate a trend so wrong as to tempt me to turn my back on fashion forever; every season you’ll hear me swearing, probably on my mum’s life, that 'x' will never be welcome in my carefully selected wardrobe, and every season I am forced to eat the fashion equivalent of humble pie while apologising profusely to my mum. Shorts? Ate it. Leggings? Delicious. Ankle boots? Double helpings. (Although my nut allergies ruled out boho and my palette proved too refined for nu-rave.) More often than I care to reveal my end of season wardrobe (read: licked plate, full belly and crumby chin) betrays my fall from grace.

And so back to purple. It wasn’t intentional. It came at me by stealth while shopping in American Apparel: a two-tone, skin tight, Whitney Houston- 'I wanna dance with somebody'-video-esque purple and black dress. Standing in the changing room minutes later fist balled into a mic and fulfilling a childhood dream, the penny suddenly dropped, and one half of my heart sank while the other indulged in a little ‘I told you so’. Antonya (who is colour-blind and swore they were pink) emerged from the changing room opposite sporting a pair of lame leggings in a distinctly purple hue and the deal was sealed.

Not a moment too soon: when a chance to see the Sugababes perform at 3 Mobile and Sony Ericsson’s purple Cyberphone party turned up at our door last week I knew it must have been fate. As we gyrated to the purple-clad sounds of Keisha, Heidi and the new one, eating chopped beetroot off silver spoons, I tried to meet eyes with Duncan from Blue from the other side of the room and congratulated ourselves on our excellent outfits and timing. Whether this will turn out to be a season-long love affair or just another one-night-stand remains to be seen, but if it’s good enough for Prince, the Sugababes and Whitney, it’s good enough for me.

LEATHER, on the other hand – I’m not so sure.

Amy.

A photo of my 2nd, 3rd and 4th favourite girls – from where we were standing they looked exactly like this!

Just to clarify, that's not some strange kind of voodoo ritual we're acting out in our living room in the opening shot of this week's show. In fact that's me initiating Antonya into the wonderful world of Egyptian dancing. I've been an avid fan of this new and exciting dance craze since the beginning of summer, when I decided the red, sweaty-faced and flared-nostrils gym look isn’t for me, but a bit of exercise definitely is (needed). So...

I hunted down an Egyptian ('belly') dancing class at Pineapple Studios in Covent Garden, London, and have been a devoted beginner ever since. It's harder than it looks: that simple move I’m demonstrating there (technically known as the ‘out-up-around-down’, with hand movements) has taken months of practice. As you can see I’m nearly there, and it looks...erm...great.

The class is for absolute beginners, so you don't feel like a twit, and every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evening you learn exactly the same routine to make you feel like a pro. It's a great, gentle form of exercise that gets your tummy, side and thigh muscles flexing and a nice, healthy, inoffensive sweat going. It’s a mental work-out as well, as it teaches you to think 'in the way of the Orient' and move your body in an altogether more feminine way. Mmmmm.

Go along with your friends, learn your moves, do your homework (yes, there is homework), and break out a different kind of dance routine on a Friday night. And as Asmahan, the fascinatingly enchanting and kooky instructor assures me, you'll have them eating out of your hand. (If you see me walking down the street with a strained expression and a moist brow, I'm practising my tummy rolls.)

So get down there! Or enrol in a class near you. You have my word, so help me 'bite', it will transform your life - just ask Antonya.

Just wanted to clear that up.

Amy

As shameless sun-worshippers, the onset of cold weather makes us want to hibernate. With no sun in sight, this week we turned to simpler pleasures to keep us happy: Amy got her kicks from warm socks, a comfy sofa and back-to-back episodes of Season 3 of The Wire; Antonya got hers bankrupting herself on a pair of garish suede high-tops.

We braved the cold to attend a mid-week magazine launch party for our weekly exercise fix - left empty-handed, but discovered the joys of the 205 night bus all the way home (as we said, simple pleasures). Arsenal remained at the top of the league and Antonya basked in their glory, while Amy dutifully feigned delight despite a relatively recent defection from Spurs. (Antonya suspects it has more to do with a primary school romance with Ledley King failing to make her a WAG than a boundless love for The Gunners.)

Despite mild panic attacks at the onset of greying winter skin, we’re both determined to see the bright side and are committed to spending the next week in search of and purchasing a new winter wardrobe. Amy flooded her handbag with orange juice and will need to add a new bag and iPod to the shopping list. Antonya chastised her for being so clumsy. Amy apologised and they spent the rest of the week in domestic bliss.