Well folks, I think we've got our November and December dates finalised now as you'll see from the listing.

We're playing a few key venues: The Duchess in York on the 28th Nov, Blues Bar in Harrogate as part of their 21st Birthday celebrations on the 30th Nov, Monto Water Rats in London on Tuesday 2nd Dec, and finally sunny Leeds at the Library on Wed 3rd Dec.

You can download the tour flyer here:

So, we did a live set and interview for Channel M in Manchester last week.

It will be on next Tuesday 7th October at 10pm on Sky channel 203 nationally, Virgin Channel 808 (in some places) or you can watch it via their site www.channelm.co.uk.

We had the 3 Johns along on the brass and we had a top crowd for cheering and singing along. We had blue jackets....

So the photos are literally flooding in. Flooding in so they are. And why? Because everyone wants H&S to pay them a visit to their living room on our Autumn Micro-tour-type-thing of course.

We're going to start putting the submissions up online when I get a minute to set the page up. Here's how our competition works:

• If you'd like H&S play in YOUR Living Room - send us a picture of an item in it, along with a reason why you've chosen that item and why you think we should pay you a visit. Send us a picture of anything from it - even a picture OF your living room if you like. Anything, so long as you tell us why you've taken the picture. Email them in for now to photos@hopeandsocial.com

• We'll then post up all your photos / reasons in a gallery for everyone to see. Should be a really great little collection - - we're hoping to build up a big grand collection of pictures of 'stuff' from peoples' living rooms from across the country...nice.

• We'll decide on 5 or 6 winners, and contact you back to make arrangements.

• We'll also film some stuff for everyone to view.

The drumming-powerhouse (or Angry Metronome as we like to call him), Mr. Mark Ashwell, has decided to hang up his castanets for the last time and leave the band.

His reasons for leaving are to do with family life and the need to earn some money to pay the bills! Plus seek new adventures and challenges which don't involve beating things in time.

He departs on good terms and is still a good friend. It has been a sometimes fabulous, sometimes amazing, sometimes strange, sometimes aggrevating journey we've all taken together over the years and we wish Ash all the best in the future.

For the July dates, we have a Mr. Ian Firth stepping up the rhythm plate. We have known Ian for ages and played together with him in a previous band ages ago (the nature of which I'm not going to go in to here). I don't think he drinks as much Guiness as Ash but is a fine-looking chap nonetheless. We hope you welcome him along for these shows.

The start of the ride. We'll be playing a few dates through June in the UK to preview tracks from our new EP. Very excited about the material and playing live so come along if you can. We've also finally got the myspace up and running so please leave us a comment there as well - www.myspace.com/hopeandsocial. More dates to follow, lots more... but for now...