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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
I've started venturing out more, but already I hear the warning: we're not done yet.
Our home-made event is short and sweet – with silly wigs, bunny ears, and a Slytherin robe and wizard's hat.
Heaven knows when it will feel safe to be breathing and singing in a crowded space – the thought makes me sad.
I have fallen in love with the new book by Michèle Roberts, which could not be more timely, even though it was written before anyone had heard of Covid-19.
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.
