Learning To Breathe Again

Happy New Year, even to you Birmingham

Hello Dear Reader

I was advised by my advisors (The Husband) that this should be short and straight to the point, and actually do what it says on the tin and be a NEWS letter.

So here’s the newsletter The Husband wants me to write.

A month today I shall be on stage in Bristol playing the first of the Fires tour shows, before moving to Birmingham the following night and Edinburgh and Manchester the following week. Tickets sold very well in Bristol and Manchester, and so I have released some of my guest allocation so we could put a few more nice tickets on sale as we were close to sold out. Edinburgh still has some tickets available, and if you had yet to think of something to do with your beloved on Valentine’s Night, then why not spend it with me, on my 18th wedding anniversary. If you’re not feeling remotely romantic, because, in the immortal words of PJ Harvey you gave someone your heart and they left the thing stinking, then still come to the show but console yourself with the fact that my wedding anniversary night post-show will be spent in a Premier Inn family room with my husband and our teenage son because it’s half term.

Birmingham, though.

Maybe because I’ve been rude about Wolverhampton in the past, Birmingham has taken umbrage with me in solidarity. Look, I was only being rude about the ring roads - come on, even you know they’re bloody awful. You’re a lovely people, some of you are even my relations, don’t deny yourself a wonderful night out just because I was dismissive about your infrastructure projects. I get it though, I really do - I live near Maidenhead which all right-thinking people would call a dump, but it’s our dump and it’s very functional and since they put a Hobbycraft in the retail park, honestly, I want for nothing now.

I’ve also looked at The Trainline, and you can currently buy a super off-peak return to Birmingham from London for £33 so you could in theory see the whole show and make the last train back to Euston and still be in work at a decent hour the following morning.

I’ve thought of everything!

Bristol, Saturday 8th Feb: BUY TICKETS HERE FROM THE VENUE DIRECT

Birmingham, Sunday 9th Feb: BUY TICKETS HERE FROM THE VENUE DIRECT

Edinburgh, Friday 14th Feb: BUY TICKETS HERE FROM THE VENUE DIRECT

Manchester, Saturday 15th Feb: BUY TICKETS HER FROM THE VENUE DIRECT

Or there’s TICKETMASTER.

If you were still undecided, permit me to tempt you with a little moment of nostalgia from EXACTLY 18 years ago today. Thanks to the wonderful Toby Parkin (voluntary curator of the Nerina Pallot is so disorganised she’ll never keep track of her own stuff so I have do it collection) here is the original music video for Learning to Breathe which was released on this day in 2007 and reached the heady heights of #70 on the Official UK Charts. I don’t think of it as my lowest charting child, as it’s competing with a catalogue stuffed full of DNCs (did not chart, for the uninitiated). Really, it’s one of my more wildly successfully singles and it’s time to celebrate it.

LIKE EVERYONE SHOULD CELEBRATE BIRMINGHAM

Before I leave you in peace, I’d like to draw your attention to something I don’t think we talk about enough - today would have been Elvis’s 90th Birthday and…wait for it…David Bowie’s 78th. Now I don’t care that much for Elvis - one or two bangers, I grant you, but any time I see a man with a head slathered in Brylcreem I can’t help but feel sorry for whichever poor sod has to clean his pillowcases - but Bowie? Bowie was God.

Am I alone in greeting every January since 2016 with a keener note of wistful nostalgia than in previous years? His birthday arrives, and then a mere two days later the anniversary of his death, and one casts a glance at the world around us and can’t help but feel that January 10th 2016 marks the start of the Era of Enshittification.

It was around this time of year, in 1999, that I met Bowie for the first and only time. I was a few hours into my first day working at Mute Records and, having been sent to the kitchen to make tea for my colleagues, I was confronted by David Bowie leaning against the mugs cupboard.

I was awestruck. He was charming.

1999 was a magical year for me, and sometimes I look back on that year and wonder if it was something to do with being in the orbit of that extraordinary mortal - like, did he sprinkle fairy dust wherever he went and in that one lucky moment on a freezing London morning a single little particle alighted on my shoulder to keep me company that year? I can’t know for certain, but I wish I hadn’t been so shy. I wish I had held his gaze longer, engaged him in conversation beyond my nervous, perfunctory pleasantries and taken full advantage of the opportunity to have an audience with genius.

But I didn’t. I made the tea, and scampered out of that kitchen as fast as my little legs would carry me.

Maybe if I’d been less of a little mouse and hung around to have a proper conversation with him, I’d have soaked up a few more particles of Bowie magic dust, enough at least to propel a song released on his birthday a little further up the charts - a solid #26 for example, no need to be greedy - and maybe there’d be one lonely particle left to convince the nice people of the Midlands to come out on a Sunday evening in February 2025 instead of staying in to watch Strictly Come Traitors on Ice.

Happy Birthday David Bowie. Happy Birthday Elvis. Happy Birthday Learning to Breathe. I am grateful for you all.

And Happy New Year to all of you, dear readers.

See you in a month!

With love as ever,

Nerina xxxx

P.S. BIRMINGHAM BUY SOME TICKETS YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU REALLY