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Tracey Thorn is a musician and writer, best known as one half of Everything but the Girl. She writes the fortnightly “Off the Record” column for the New Statesman. Her books include Naked at the Albert Hall, Bedsit Disco Queen and, most recently, Another Planet: A Teenager in Suburbia
This heightened awareness, this sensitivity, this flinching at the world’s cruelties – has it always been here inside me, but covered up by habit and distraction?
They are the first living creatures to have arrived in the pond we dug a week ago.
I double up on the vodka in my cocktail shaker and mute the chaos of my Twitter feed.
“Mum,” I say/think, “you won’t believe what’s happening. There’s a pandemic and we all have to stay indoors. Like, indefinitely. It’s weird. And I’m a bit sad and scared.”
Right now, I am finding more comfort in the natural world than anywhere else.
I embark on the new Hilary Mantel novel, The Mirror and the Light, and immediately find myself lost in it, grateful to be swirled back through the centuries, to 1536.
To my surprise they each return quite speedily with the news that they will meet me in Soho at 7:30pm.
I spent much of Thursday staring at men.
In new Netflix documentary Miss Americana, we watch Swift’s need to please people build up, both motivating and sometimes crushing her.
You don’t go to Madonna for vulnerability: she is all about self-determination, pleasure and defiance.
