A Cock and Balls Story

Good Evening Wherever You Are, Whatever the Time

When I sat down to write to you today, I did not imagine that I was about to go off on one. I’ve been diligent this last couple of years, you see, restraining myself from going off on one on a daily basis and I thought I’d been doing well in this endeavour. But I’ve been triggered - to steal a word from the youth - and now I’m about to go off on one.

Strap in, sit tight and hold on.

It all started with Piers Morgan, as it so often does, blaming the cult of woke for ruining the Brit Awards. You’re about thirty years too late there, Piers babe - everyone knows Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood ruined the Brits in 1989 and when Jarvis Cocker tried to redeem it a few years later he got arrested. Regardless, in the arid doomscape of nothingness that passes for Morgan’s brain, he has decided that judging an artist on their art, and not whether they have a cock and balls or don’t have a cock and balls, or may not want to reveal if they do or don’t have a cock and balls (I’m quite happy to share with you here that I don’t have a cock and balls, I hope nobody reading has just fainted with surprise) is proof again that the world is going to hell in a handcart.

Now, all sensible people take Morgan for the oversized toddler he is - in fact, he really reminds me of my son when he was five and I took him to London Zoo and he reached the penguins. He started stripping off all his clothes, attempted to climb into their enclosure to go swimming with them and when I tried to reason with him, began yelling “YOU ARE RUINING MY LIFE AND I WILL NEED THERAPY BECAUSE OF THIS”.

All you can do with people like this is nod and ask them to put their trousers back on.

But then Sir Brian of May, honorary saint of hedgerow wildlife, decided to wade in and proclaim the new genderless best artist category ‘frightening’. I’ve always loved Brian May, I still love Brian May; short of him doing a total 180 and going on badger shoots with toffs in plus fours, I will always love Brian May because I am a grown up and can get along quite nicely with people who have very different views from my own.

However, you’re wrong, Sir/Saint Brian of May. Let me tell you why.

As a Gen X-er, I’m not exactly frontline troops of the woke army. Generally, I spend my days taking the splinters out of my backside from sitting on the fence of reason so much. But this isn’t really a ‘woke’ issue, and it certainly isn’t frightening. Perhaps it was predicated on corporate box ticking - in fact, I’m almost certain it was, because women’s equality is so seldom at the forefront of anybody’s mind in industry. But the upshot is that at last women can just be artists. Music isn’t the 100 metres sprint - and the Grammys don’t differentiate between male or female artists.

Some have expressed unease that women will somehow lose out - I notice nobody suggested that men will lose out - but this just patronises us. We’ve been patronised for long enough with the ‘female singer-songwriter’ genre and the creepy Lips, Hips and Tits! magazine covers (it made me feel really uncomfortable even back in the 1990s but I sort of accepted it by thinking I should feel grateful that at least women were on the cover of a rock magazine). We’ve been patronised every time we’ve been asked in an interview how we juggle being a mother with being a musician. Why doesn’t someone ask Mick Jagger how he’s managed to tour all these years with eleventy hundred kids in every continent on earth?

(I did warn you to strap in.)

See this wasn’t even the final straw that broke my little snowflake camel’s back. No. What finally made me renounce opinion purdah was an MP addressing the House of Commons today and telling them that ladies being allowed to play Dr Who or Luke Skywalker makes men commit more crime. While one accepts that the penal system has hardly had a stellar decade under current governance, it’s somewhat of a stretch to blame Jodie Whittaker. She had an awful time in Broadchurch, poor woman. Give her a bloody break.

If you’re still reading, you are quite safe now.

Because all that remains is for me to thank you if you came to one of the shows on the UK tour. You cannot know how good it was for my soul to see your faces and hear you singing along with me. I didn’t realise how low I had been feeling after so long off the road. In fact, one might say it’s all your fault that I’m feeing opinionated again.

Some of you asked me if the Christmas Extravaganza might return this year, but it still feels a little too soon. I want the first one back to be a day of unbridled fun and celebration and it feels like next year might be when we can truly do that. However, I couldn’t let the festive season pass without some kind of shindig, and so please put 8pm on Sunday 19th of December 2021 in your diaries. Tune in to YouTube live for an hour or so of Christmas songs and chat and an end of year round up. In the meantime, send me any requests you might have for seasonal songs and I shall see what I can do.

Unless some divvy removes the green triangles from Quality Street, I promise you this is my one and only rant of 2021.

With much love

Nerina xxx