Into the dark one more time

There is nothing on this earth as poignant as the knobbly spine of an old cat. My old cat is thin for the first time in his life and he’s unsteady on his feet. Two weeks ago  his legs collapsed under him on his way to his food bowl and he looked at me with…

Goodbye Sweet Boy (2)

Even Autumn feels tired today. Most of the leaves have fallen and the last few are tumbling down reluctantly to join their wet and muddy brothers on the slippery brown paths. The skylines are opening up with bare branches. The skies are grey and leaden. There’s no more appropriate time of year to see a life slip…

Archie

  On Sunday my big beautiful ginger boy jumped onto the bed and settled himself down. As he often does, he gave me a hefty shove and made himself comfortable before checking in with a look that, as ever with Arch, was half affection, half (as Tyra would say) ‘fierce’. Archie has always been our Nanny cat.…

Food Inglorious Food

I’m thinking about food. This is not unusual. I think about food a lot because I love it. I love eating it and despite being a random cook I occasionally love cooking it. But today I’ve been thinking about food in a different way. Musing on the social media activity I’ve seen of late, I…

Crazy Talk

I’ve started to become more and more intrigued at why so many of our Facebook statuses are about how mad we are. It’s really coalesced for me around the Minion meme, something I’ve taken a particular loathing to. Don’t get me wrong – Minions are great. I really enjoyed the early days of ‘Despicable Me’…

Piece of Cake?

Last weekend it was my sister Julia’s birthday. I made her a cake. It was ambitious. I am not a baking talent. So I’m going to blog you through what I did, and more importantly, what I did wrong so that should you ever be gripped by a similar urge you can have as much…

Tbilisi

After a protracted farewell to Kiev – one involving a long delay and a cross Ukrainian called Shouty Bob – I was airborne again and heading for Tbilisi. Shouty Bob (for his Facebook fans) boarded last, several sheets to the wind. Terrifyingly, he eyed the empty seat next to me for a few moments before bumping…

Checkin’ Kiev

I love airport names. In Santiago, Cuba, the airport is named after a Cuban revolutionary – Antonio Maceo. For some reason he and his roll call of fellow freedom fighters – Ignacio Agramonte, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, Jose Santamaria, and Jose Marti stick in my mind some 20 years after I left there. Probably, I…

A Year of Nerina

OK so how do you produce an EP for a month over a whole year? Is it possible to maintain top quality song-writing over 60 tracks on 365 days? Keeping up a reputation for strong melodies and taut crafted lyrics at roughly 10 times the rate of output in your back catalogue. That’s the challenge. …

After the Dawn

It was brilliant. It was emotional. It was intense. We knew it would be. And that was just ticket sale day. But now, Bush fans, as I know you’ve been keenly anticipating, here’s my take on the UK’s hottest ticket event this decade. First of all, it wasn’t a journey. It wasn’t a narrative (however much…