High Time

Codpieces, Warhammer and my new single

Hello Dear Reader

When I was making the Year of the Wolf album fourteen years ago, I remember asking the producer, Bernard Butler, what he liked reading. He sighed and looked off into the middle distance.

‘History books. Military history books. I turned 40 last year and this is what happens once you are old.’

At that point, I was only a few weeks off giving birth to my first and only child, and forty seemed a far off distant land (it wasn’t). When I’d laid down my pen and handed over my History GCSE paper to the invigilator some time in the summer of 1990, I made it my mission to never lay eyes on a history book again. You’re only ever one history book away from finding yourself in a muddy field somewhere in Staffordshire with grown adults dressed as characters from The Hobbit, I’d say to myself, you put that book down or before you know it you’ll be staying up late to bid on medieval wench costumes and Toby jugs on eBay.

I was haunted by the memory of a couple to whom my parents had rented the annex in our house. Let’s call them Heather and Neil. They moved in some time in the early 80s, around the time I began my full time job of making myself look as revolting as possible, and they very quickly became part of the family. My father walked Heather down the aisle on her wedding day, with me trailing behind in a hideous blue floral affair and a grade 1 buzzcut. My mother - possibly the most feminine creature to have walked this earth, and by her own admission, really quite vain - did all she could not to cry (in her matching hideous blue floral affair) when she heard the whispers and giggles from the pews.

‘Why is that little boy wearing a dress?’

I became fast friends with Neil. Fascinated by his dazzling array of t-shirts, one in particular caught my eye. At first, I presumed it was something to do with a geography field trip taking place in many different cities across the globe, but then he played me September and that was it. Earth, Wind & Fire were my new favourite band and Neil was the legend who had introduced me to them. Really, Neil would have done me a great big favour by gently suggesting that marching into school the following week, proclaiming Earth, Wind & Fire the greatest band on earth, would do me no favours at all. I looked like a boy. I loved train sets, funk and getting my dad to show me how to use power tools. I simply could not engage in the latest convo about who did the best Alice bands - Tammy Girl or Snob - because I had no hair.

My mother quite likely suspected I might be a lesbian at this point, because she kept getting my aunt in the USA to go to J C Penney to buy me Crimplene suits with little bows and permanent pleats. I loathed them. I looked like a cross between Dolly Parton in 9 to 5 and Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver. I just wanted to wear dungarees and band t-shirts and ask Neil to tell me everything he knew about slap bass.

One day, Neil was wearing a t-shirt that said Warhammer. Little did I know, this was the beginning of the end.

Six months later, Heather burst into the kitchen in floods of tears. My mother swiftly shepherded her into the dining room, shutting the door firmly behind her which meant I was not invited to this pow-wow. When they emerged some time later, Heather’s face was blotchy and red and one of her false eyelashes was stuck to her cheek but I didn’t have the heart to tell her because it didn’t seem like the right moment.

Neil did not come home that night. He only returned a week or so later, and I was not allowed to speak to him, but I watched through the dining room window as he removed all his belongings in a succession of dog-eared cardboard boxes and Co-op plastic bags. The last time I saw him, he was carting a box of vinyls and the one on top was No Jacket Required, another stone cold classic.

‘It was someone he met at a jousting festival, darling’ my mother explained. ‘She was in a corset and apparently he was powerless to resist her.’

And so there and then I decided: no good could come of history. One minute you’re happily married with a pretty spectacular record collection, the next minute you’re throwing it all away for a woman in a corset and you can’t get your codpiece off fast enough.

This story has absolutely nothing to do with my new single, ‘High Time’, which is released today across all streaming platforms. It’s just that the whole nature of releasing albums in 2024 is so deathly boring and reductive and if I’m sick of people trying to flog me things, why wouldn’t you feel the same. So I just thought I’d share with you why whenever I hear Earth, Wind & Fire I think of jousting.

I’ve also made you a very limited run of hand illustrated test pressings for the new album. There are only twenty and they are each one unique. But in perhaps the most important news, Darragh Hughes has designed me what is possibly the greatest t-shirt of all time. It’s even better than Neil’s Earth, Wind & Fire tour t-shirt. If you don’t want this t-shirt, then you have no soul.

We all know by now not to fuck with cats. And Dave is here to show you why.

That’s all for now. Tickets are still available for the Fires tour in February and a few for the second night of my one-woman show, I Digress, in London on December 9th.

Have a wonderful weekend!

With love as ever,

Nerina xxx