A Brief History of Time

Hello Dear Reader

It occurred to me earlier this week, while seated in the hairdresser’s comfy chair waiting for the hair dye to develop, that I hadn’t written to you in some time and if ever there was a week to write to you, it was this one.

I can’t think straight, though. I am a ball of anxiety and coffee and ibuprofen and while I know it will all be alright on the night because Denis Norden said so*, right now I feel like a passenger in the runaway car of my nightmares. 

How do neurosurgeons go about their business, day in and day out, I ask myself on an hourly basis. (I am in no way comparing myself to a neurosurgeon.)

It also occurred to me, while engaging in my now familiar habit of flicking through my favourite Instagram memes I have handily archived for these episodes, that I might perform a public service. In offering a glimpse into my rich and unhinged interior life, I might also further enhance your own meme archive for those rainy days of the psyche. In my defence, none of the following involve photographs of a frothy coffee with a heart shaped swirl and the words #blessed and you are safe from anything involving the words live, love and laugh. I mean, please by all means feel free to live, love and laugh, in fact it’s imperative that you do, just try not to do it with MDF lettering you bought in a 3-4-2 at The Range.**

Anyway. I’ve attempted a meme narrative. 

The thought of being a potato is actually surprisingly appealing right now.

But first things first. Tomorrow sees the release of the Fires reissue, on vinyl for the first time and multiple CD offerings. 

Last week I was asked what I thought was a fairly silly question about why I was doing this. Why does anybody do anything? I wanted to say to them. I gave some rubbish, cynical answer and moved swiftly on.

But why am I doing this? I seldom know why I’m doing anything at the time, I just do things. Do any of us really know why we do anything? Still, in the last month I’ve been going back to Fires, re-learning the original versions of songs, not the road-honed entities that have taken on lives of their own, but those fresh, nervous but sparky songs that came out desperate to make their way out into the world, and I love them again like I loved them in the moment they came to me. 

And every day in the run up to this week, one of you has written to me with your story of what these songs are to you and it’s as if time does not exist. 

Music has stopped time. 

Or maybe there is no such thing as time. Ultimately, there isn’t. But our pea brains find this a troubling concept and that is why we have Tipping Point and Gladiators.

But I know that there’s no such thing as time because I started out life liking nothing better than being up in my room with a paintbrush and a piano, and now, fifty years later, I am still up in my room with a paintbrush and a piano.

See? I know how to stop time. Just make a painting. Just write a song.

The day after tomorrow, Saturday, (an arbitrary name for a day that doesn’t really exist), we can stop time, all of us, together in the moment at the London Palladium. My heart already hurts from knowing that I will have to walk off that stage and those few hours will feel like seconds, because as we have already established, time does not exist. It will go by in the blink of an eye. All the fretting and list making and running the sets over and over first in my head and then in a room with other humans; all the checking and double checking that equipment is hired and programmes printed and lyrics learned and stage crew primed - all this will be redundant. The end of every gig is like the day after a wedding, and like Zsa Zsa Gabor*** I do it over and over again.

It has been thrilling, all of this. From that first newsletter I sent you last summer dangling the idea before you, to you outdoing yourselves and making the album reissue and the show a reality - I am terrified as I write but what a thrill to have something in my life that terrifies me.

Thank YOU.

With love as ever,

Nerina xxxx

*If you knew who Denis Norden was without Googling, you are at least as old as I am which means quite old.

**The Range is actually hands down the greatest store on earth during the months of October, November, and December when it transforms itself into a bargain Christmas Wonderland.

***If you knew who Zsa Zsa Gabor was without Googling, please have someone check that you are actually alive.

P.S. If you are coming to the show on Saturday in London, there will be event related items available. These will also be available on my own store at a different price, where I am at not at the mercy of market forces imposed on me by third parties who want to squeeze every last drop out of all of us. It also means that if you can’t make the gig, you can still have a memento.

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