When Everyone I Love Is Dead

Hello Dear Reader

It’s been a while.

If I was to tell you the truth - the cold, unvarnished truth - about why it’s been a while, it would set off a whole chain of events that I have neither inclination nor bandwith to deal with. A lot of people would be very angry with me and I would never be invited to certain events ever again. Not that I want to go to these events, you understand. I one hundred percent live for not being invited to things, but I do not one hundred percent live for not being invited to things because I’ve been an arsehole.

Sometimes telling the truth makes you an arsehole. I go out of my way to not be an arsehole, although, most of the time, don’t you wish you could just be an arsehole and to hell with it? Every single day the temptation is there. This morning the temptation was there at 8:30am when I made the rookie mistake of starting the day looking at Facebook and seeing someone whom I’m pretty sure is not an arsehole doing a convincing impression of one with a tasteless post about the death of Anne Widdecombe.

That old adage - character is how you behave when nobody is watching - needs a modern update: character is how you behave when everybody is hungry for likes on the socials.

Anyway, long story short - I’ve had a pretty grim six weeks. Not the worst six weeks of my life, but up there with the year my son was in and out of Great Ormond Street, or the time I had to visit a boyfriend in hospital after he had just been sectioned and I had been momentarily handcuffed by LAPD while they figured out what the hell was going on.

They say things come in threes. The last six weeks feels like things have come in threes, but squared. On one muggy Tuesday morning, for example, I took a very difficult phone call (the contents of which I cannot divulge for it involves other people who have a right to privacy), ten minutes after this phone call ended, the puppy collapsed again and had to be rushed back to dog hospital, and as I was leaving the house for the hospital the dishwasher flooded the kitchen floor for the third time in a year.

It was the dishwasher that broke me. I took that one personally.

The truth may set you free, but how much truth is too much? And where do we draw the line when unburdening ourselves implicates others? So many of the writers I admire - like Rachel Cusk or David Sedaris, for example - mine their lives and everybody in them for their own ends, and we may laugh or sigh and relate; but at what cost? I don’t think it’s a cost worth paying, and that’s why if I ever get round to writing my memoir, it will be called When Everyone I Love Is Dead and it will be written after almost everyone I love is dead - please God that I never outlive my son or my husband - when they can’t sue me, or worse, un-invite me from dinner parties that I don’t even want to go to.

Anyway, for the avoidance of doubt, I can tell you the following things: nobody is seriously ill (that I know of) - even SuperClive is on the mend - and my husband and son remain my favourite people in the whole known universe. And that alone is cause for immense joy and gratitude. But it was a tough few weeks, friends, and that is why I have been uncharacteristically absent on the internet super highway.

I haven’t even written to tell you about my Fire Escape Symphonies Tour in the autumn, and already a few of the dates have sold out between the announcement and this newsletter. We are adding another date in Scotland on November 26th and another one in the South East on November 13th and we will get round to correcting the poster which currently has neither of these dates added because they haven’t been announced yet, and which also has the wrong date for the gig in Great Torrington, which is now on October 21st.

You have all done stellar work keeping me incredibly busy with my merch store. I have never had so many orders before in my life, and I don’t know where to begin thanking you. You get it - you really get it: being an independent artist is a tricky road, one that involves being resilient and resourceful at all times. Every time I write you a card and slip whatever it is you have ordered into its packaging, I mouth thank you and savour the visceral feeling of creative work made physical on its way to a new home. I joke about being the merch elf, and the last month has made me wonder if I should employ someone part-time to help me, but there’s something so real and honest about this act, in an industry that so often seeks to strip away the real and honest, that it’s the kind of work that allows me to forget my troubles and put my head down on the pillow when the day is done.

Right. Enough of the long dark tea-time of my soul. I’ll save that for the England v. Argentina game on Wednesday night. Or the England v. France game. Or - maybe, just maybe - it’s coming home… We can dream, right?

I’m OK hun. I hope you are too.

With love as ever,

Nerina xxxx