What do you do if your cat has fleas? What do you do if you think it’s pregnant? What do you do if your cat has fleas AND you think it’s pregnant? And what do you do if the cat has fleas, is pregnant and sort of doesn’t belong to you? Also, do you give it a name if it isn’t really yours? And if it has kittens, do you have the right to name them if the cat doesn’t belong to you in the first place? (The cat in question has too many fleas to go around naming them, so that’s out of the equation.) My family and friends are worried that far from being elevated to the lofty heights of cooldom, my continued hanging about in the murky world of the pop music business is fast turning me into a bloody loony. I can’t help it if I think I can talk to the animals. They seem to like me. Well, OK, just because I buy cat food for cats that don’t belong to me, and give them names like StripeyCat ™, it doesn’t meant that I encourage them. I maintain that I have special powers and they love me back. I have jurisdiction of all the cats within a one mile radius of my home. I am, officially, the Crazy Cat Lady of Brixton, and I have the plastic model to prove it.

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I worry about StripeyCat™ when I am off on my EuroPromo™ travels. I sat in the BA airport lounge last week waiting for my 7.30am flight to Vienna (that should be illegal, having to get up at 4am, it’s not right) and felt concerned that I might have traumatized my little furry friend for life after chucking her out to eat her dinner. She is normally served on finest bone china on a little placemat of all of her own,

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and likes to listen to the gentle strains of Radio 3 and the comforting hum of the fridge freezer, while enjoying her gourmet Whiskas dinner before depositing her flea ridden backside on my once posh, now sadly tattered, Habitat sofa. Knowing that she’s a thoughtful little madam, and would rather complete her bottom business in my garden, than in the bucket full of sand from last year’s Christmas tree that I still haven’t put outside, I plonked her, and her dinner, in the back yard before I left for the airport. She looked well pissed off with me, and it wasn’t until lunchtime in Austria that I was able to erase her pouty little whisker face from my memory.

See now, StripeyCat™ isn’t mine, but she isn’t really anybody’s. She is the neighbourhood kitty love slapper, and I know this because attached to her purple velvet collar is a barrel with a little note in it saying ‘if this cat is yours, please call….’ And a few weeks ago, my pa was wandering my neighbourhood (cause I chucked him out with his dinner too…no, no I jest, friends!) and he saw a poster mentioning a cat that had been found, but that the finders were quite happy looking after her. When I am feeling very devious, I think I might call that number on the purple collar and tell them ‘oh how nice of you, you found my cat – insert name here – but no really, while it’s very nice of you to have looked after her while I was on holiday/incarcerated for stealing people’s cats/ in the convent/ drinking myself into oblivion on cheap Rosé (delete as appropriate) I would like my cat back now. Your well-meaning attempt at dressing my cat has left her slightly traumatized by the indignity of a purple collar. She only wears pink, and it has to have diamonds too. No, I’m not being ungrateful. My cat says she simply can’t go on residing with people who have no taste. She tells me, oh God, this bit is too much, she tells me… that…you have doilies…’

Is that so wrong of me?

OK. Now, a joke. This was told to me when I was 19 by a girl called Emily, who I used to be friends with, fell out with, made up with, and then fell out with again on the phone when she mistakenly called me during Gareth Southgate’s almighty penalty fuck-up during the 1996 European Championship semi-final. If you are a friend of mine, you will know not to bother me when England go to penalties. Alas, poor Emily was unaware of this unwholesome character trait of mine, and is confined to the friendship dustbin of time but for this here joke she told me.

(You have to imagine that I’m about 10 years old and wearing a crash-helmet, and am hanging on to my Dad’s back while we are both riding on a motorbike.)

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‘DAD, CAN YOU GO A BIT FASTER PLEASE?’

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‘DAD, C’MON, CAN YOU GO EVEN FASTER PLEASE.’

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‘NOT THAT FAST, DAD!!!’

That’s a pretty shit joke, and if you laughed you are either a horrible sycophant, or even sadder than I am. And I am a saddo, believe me. I used to be mates with that geezer out of The Kills (in fact, I have a hole in my wardrobe to prove it, but that’s another story) only he’s too cool for school now and refused my friend request on MySpace. Oh well. Fuck it. He’s a vegan, so what can you do? They have problems, don’t they? I mean, one of my cousins was one of those, and I think that turned her into a Goth or something. Which brings me to another thought – can you be a Goth vegan or does the drinking blood bit disqualify you?

Yeah, well, whatevva. If you still read these blogs of mine hoping for some insight into my busy little beehive of creative activity then you could be delusional. But briefly, I’ll try to appease those who crave some insider info. I know that some of you want to know about Sharon O: Lovely lady - very, very pretty in the flesh and whatever plastic work she has had done doesn’t show in a weird way. I also had a whale of a time doing a little duet with Charlotte Church on her telly show. She is great fun, and a top bird to boot. I fear that because I was enjoying myself so much, rather than just looking bouncy and energetic, I emoted far too much and simply ended up looking like someone’s tipsy boho auntie at a wedding. (As opposed to the slapper auntie I resembled on the bad wardrobe day at the V Festival earlier this year.)

David Cameron’s Weblog gave me the willies when I viewed it, and he quite clearly doesn’t know how to load a dishwasher, even though he pretends to. He is not our mate, friends, and it is imperative that we remember he only big-upped Asda because he needs the Walmart gazillions to fund what will be his slow-but-sure dismantling of public services. Tony Blair is very silly also. Still, all these people are nowhere near as bad as the horrid, horrid turncoat, hypocritical weasely little Lib-Dem folks, who gave Charles Kennedy a ‘hero’s welcome’, less than a year after stabbing the poor fucker in the back.

What I mean to say is, the more I look for something to believe in, or support, or vote for, the more hopeless it seems.

So, I listen to beautiful music to drown out the worldly nonsense in the papers, and I read lovely stories to escape into. Right now, I can heartily recommend reading Haruki Murakami’s ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’ while putting Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s ‘The Letting Go’ on the stereo.

OK. I really am going now, but not before I say hello to the Aussie contingent on here. If you have ever read my story ‘Techno and Me’ on my website, you will understand why my ma is so made up right now. For the first time in her life, she is able to mention me and hear the reply ‘the girl who sings the War song?’ Those of you who have been calling in to radio stations and saying you love the song – THANK YOU. From the bottom of my heart. It means the world to me that my parents, who I live so very far away from, are finally getting to hear my song all over the radio.

Love to you all,

Nerina xxx

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you may have noticed a certain reluctance on my part to write anything more than about ten words for the best part of three months. Of course, those of you who are blessed with a tendency to think generously, imagine my blogging absence to be due in no small part to my being very busy with things like gigs, and promotional duties, and swanning about of a general nature. Well, much of that has hampered my previous ability to surf the information super highway during every breathing moment of my existence, but that is only half the truth.

I am afraid I am bored of blogging, friends. I am bored of the internet, and I imagine that many of you, if you are remotely interested in real, physical life, are bored too. Suddenly, every fucker is a blogger. Which was kind of sweet, but now it appears that blogging also means people who can’t write writing for people who can’t read. Which means lots of random shit and everything being, like, soooo random, like, y’know. It’s amusing for about five minutes. Those five minutes are, regrettably, up for me, because until we fast-forward about two years and there is some means of monitoring what is worth reading, and what is simply a waste of moments of your life you will never get back, I can’t be arsed.

I fully understand that what I yearn for is entirely un-democratic in an intellectual sense. Or even in denial of basic human rights of expression. Still, while my stance is quite probably indefensible, here goes. In the words of Zadie Smith:

"I express myself with my friends and my family. In my diary if I had one, that's expressing yourself. Novels are not about expressing yourself, they're about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic. Self-expression ? Go and ring a bell in a yard if you want to express yourself."<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]-->

I suppose the whole notion of blogging strikes me as a collective ringing of bells that jars, no matter how well-intentioned. Every time I write one, my insides churn with embarrassment. I get that everybody has a need, in their own way, to make sense of their lives, and that writing about it and having an internet audience is probably a cathartic experience. That’s very lovely. I’m very pleased for them. It’s like a mass version of an OK! Interview, with a fraction of the circulation, and none of the pay-off. And every now and then, one has the good fortune to stumble upon some truly brilliant, honest writing that will stop you dead in your tracks. There is also, of course, the argument that you don’t have to read it. Really you don’t. Except that there is something strangely compelling about people couching empty prattling in language of authority and gravitas. Look at the last 482 words. See what I mean? Exactly.

                                                ……………………………

Well, I wrote the last part about a week ago, when I was pre-menstrual and in a fug of post-festival come down. Now I’m just menstrual and writing while drinking luke-warm hotel mini bar gin, and eating pretzels and mini Twix bars in one mouthful. Oh if you could see me now in my ladybird boxer shorts and spectacles. I feel like giving all of you who own my album or any artwork comprised of my (photo-shopped) image your money back. I scrub up well. It’s just really fucking frightening how quickly I look like a scrubber.

Tonight, I write from Munich. I am listening to Charlotte Gainsbourg and thinking how much she reminds me of her mother thirty plus years ago on ‘L’Histoire de Melody Nelson’. I suppose that sounds a bit pretentious, but I am, so there. Today, I asked my lovely German record label rep Franz (really, he’s my ‘handler’) to name the most famous German music artists. I had heard of none of them. Not one. If Herbert Grönemeyer walked into my hotel room right now, I wouldn’t know whether to ask him to stock my mini bar or serenade me with his most-successful-German-language-album-of-all-time opus.

Thing is, I don’t know what to write about really. Let me think back to last weekend… V Festival. Oh yes. Yes. At Stafford, I played like an arsehole, and I apologise if you were there; I had dreadful monitoring problems on that stage. Chelmsford was an altogether much more satisfying experience for me, and I should imagine the audience too, plus I think I picked a better outfit. I was going for naughty secretary the day before and just ended up looking like someone’s slapper aunty at a wedding, but on Sunday I picked the same green dress I wore in a Times magazine feature where I looked like I had the world’s most enormous pair of knees, and the second day at V was a chance for the free green dress to redeem itself. (If you were there, did it work?)

Before V I did something else, rehearsal maybe, a trip to the pub, or TopShop, or another foreign country, not sure. I went to lovely Oslo, but I think that was afterwards and before Germany. Oh yes, which reminds me, all you nice people, please go and check out a lovely Norwegian band here on MySpace, myspace.com/allthatandabag They joined me as my backing band for an evening at a very big stadium, where I was higher up the bill than Shayne Ward. (The fact that this is a cause for celebration worries me.)

TRD is busy making a mini-mentary of our trip to Morocco to make the Sophia video. So is Channel 4, I presume, because they sent out a very lovely film crew to record my adventures in the desert with a piano, some pyrotechnics, and gold high heels. You’re beginning to see the fruits of our labours on televisions of our nation, I believe, and if you like the video, you need to see ‘The Proposition’, the extremely wonderful movie by the same director, John Hillcoat. The screenplay is by a certain Nick Cave, of whose work I have always been fond, and who also gets a name check in Mr King…which, in another one of my brilliant segues, leads me to a piece that may well be appearing in Word magazine presently. The very nice people at said publication arranged for a certain Mr. King and I to get suitably sloshed at a West London watering hole and then recorded ensuing events on camera and print. I sort of knew this would happen, as it is almost impossible for me to be in The King’s presence without doing the booze thing as well. I don’t think for a minute that any version of me in this interview will be coherent, as after two glasses of Rosé I love everyone, even Colleen McLouhglin, and I start saying things like ‘but everything  is interrelated, don’t you see’ closely followed by, ‘I think you’re the loveliest person I have ever met. No, really!’ and finally, ‘please can I go to sleep in your lap until the world stops swinging so mush….'

This is a very long blog. And considering I began with what I presumed would be a career defining polemic on the ills of the Weblog, it’s remarkable to think of where we are now, compared to where I thought we would be. (Somewhere up my own backside, contemplating the imminent extinction of culture at the hands of people who read Take-A-Break magazine every week and can name all the contestants who ever went on Big Brother.) I’m quite cheery at the moment, I suppose, and without tempting fate, I might add that I am liking my life a lot right now, and am also very excited about this weekend’s show at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre.

Still, when a friend of mine emailed me to say he was looking forward to catching up with me at the show, and that his boyfriend was dying to hear my tales of drunken revelry with fellow pop stars of the globe, it gave me pause. I don’t know any, geezer. I had my tour bus parked next door to Lily Allen’s all V weekend, and did she come and ask me for cup of sugar? She did not. I smiled at James Morrison in the Tea Tent; did he suggest a duet? He did not. I was half tempted to take my spare bottle of Jagermeister to a sad looking member of Lorraine who sat alone in their dressing room, but he looked as if he might actually bite me. So, if there is some big celeb party going on, no fucker ever invites me. Maybe Mr. King already called and told them what an embarrassing drunk I am…

Never mind, at least Les Dennis and Bill Oddie love me, don’t you know!

Love to you all my little chickadees,

Nerina xxx