All Alpacas Go To Heaven

Hello Dear Reader

I was considering making this newsletter a purely pictorial one as it seems we now live in a world for which there are no words.

Make of these what you will.

There is much on which to have an opinion these days. One might even argue we are at peak opinion. But every time I think we are at peak something-or-other - beards, man buns, Crocs, Breton tops, jam jars as drinkware, MAMILs and so on and so forth - we outpeak ourselves. I cannot keep up. Every bone in my anti-establishment body is spent. As such, the only act of rebellion left for me is to have no opinion on anything whatsoever.

Unfortunately, there is a faction of society who have found that while opinions are indeed like arseholes, they also pay the bills. The question is, are those shilling for a living simply performing a public service and reflecting the views of the unvoiced or are they making everything that was already bad, worse?

I couldn’t possibly comment.

I’m told that there was once a halcyon era of human development when if you didn’t know that much about a subject, it was perfectly acceptable to keep your mouth shut, decide whether or not to learn more about it, and then move on. If, perchance, your current affairs amuse-bouche was to reach a wider audience, it might linger for a day or two before it was used to line litter trays across the nation. You might spout shit and it would litterally (see what I did there?) end up where it belonged within a short space of time.

Imagine if Freddie Starr and The Hamster story broke in the age of the retweet. You’d have the RSPCA, Equity, etymologists, celebrity chefs and Owen Jones all converging for an internet pile-on, and an extended edition of This Morning where Phil and Holly take it in turns to cry about unfortunate rodents and Mr Starr’s interesting fashion choices. Ever the mediator, Alison Hammond would be keen to point out how nice his teeth are, which quickly backfires when Phil goes full Madeley and says they must have come in dead handy because he’s heard that hamster meat is ‘quite stringy really, not much fat but ever so good if you’re on the paleo diet like me’. As if on cue, Eamonn Holmes would then feel duty bound to ask if he can stroke Holly’s hamster and make her cry all over again. The Daily Mail runs photos of Starr walking past a pet shop looking furtive. Only when Jamie Oliver unveils his 100 and 1 Ways to Cook the Family Pet: Because Poor People Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Spend Money on Pets While They Feed Their Children Turkey Twizzlers will popular culture have truly reached its nadir.

You may laugh, reader, but I’d like to remind you of the 2009-2011 Sugababes lineup.

Look. What can I tell you? The longer I spend in the studio, the harder I find the world when I poke my head out to look at it. It’s all mad. Nothing makes sense. Not even real life. Only the other day, I was just popping to the loo before leaving the studio in London to drive home to the Shire when I bumped into Liam Payne, who I registered as familiar but couldn’t remember if it was because he was the guy who came to fix our immersion heater or the guy who tried to up-sell me heated seats in a new car. An hour later, I was turning off the motorway and onto a B road when I thought it looked like there was a couple having sex in their car with the boot open in a lay-by. This was because there was a couple having sex in their car with the boot open. All of this, and on a Monday.

It’s all too much!

As it is, I have decided to give up opinions for now. This is what happens when you have an opinion:

You have been warned.

Love,

Nerina x

P.S. Come see me live! This Friday in London I am in a garden, with a Steinway Grand, amazing food and an EXCELLENT weather forecast. The perfect way to see out this let-down of a summer with me:

https://secretgardenconcerts.com/3rd-september/

Then from the end of the month and across the autumn I am on tour in the UK:

https://www.songkick.com/artists/405184-nerina-pallot/calendar

SLEEP TIGHT SWEET GERONIMO X