Poetry To A Beat

Today Mr Next Door knocked on the door, but I was naked so I quickly put some clothes on and went downstairs but by the time I got there he was at the end of the drive. I shut the door again and hid. He was putting all the bin bags sitting out the front of our house into the bin. He did not look impressed. But at least I didn't have to deal with all the rubbish the bin men refused to take. The hiding reminded me of when I was younger and I had a fear of phones and answering the door. I think it must have been when I was off school with shingles or something, in year 8. A man in a white van knocked on the front door. I was in the office. I hid, crouched down by the filing cabinet and hoped he wouldn't see me. I was pretty sure he had though as he just kept knocking, he wouldn't give up. But I was petrified, and I don't even know why. After a while he went away.

I never used to be a person who cried a lot. When I was really depressed at 14/15 I went so far past the point of tears that I only used to cry at gigs. The first time I wrote to Nerina I signed off as 'the girl in the front row who cries a lot'. Back then it was 'Mr King' and 'Idaho', in the 'Fires' era. There was nothing I could do to stop it, the chords rang out and plunged deep into my chest; the tears came silently. The first time I heard 'Coming Home', Dad was in hospital having heart surgery. It's a song about her Dad, and in that moment it became mine. I wasn't expecting it of a song I hadn't heard before,but the tears came thick and fast. After she sang it at his funeral I couldn't listen to it anymore. It came on in Wilkinson's not long ago, which is unusual but they always seem to play songs of hers that were never released as singles. And when I hear one of her songs playing in a shop, I can't leave until its finished. And my opinion of the shop in question goes up dramatically. Anyway, I didn't cry. I just listened. These days it's 'Grace' that gets me, and 'This Will Be Our Year', and an old classic, 'If I Know You'. And if she plays 'Coming Home', it's okay, it's 3 minutes, 42 seconds in which I can think about my Dad, and I have friends holding my hands, handing me tissues, squeezing my arm and thinking of me. Besides 'Coming Home', which to be honest I usually skip these days, I don't cry while listening to these songs at home. It's just something about hearing them live that brings them even more to life than they already were. Perhaps it's the acoustics, perhaps the unpredictability of a live performance that evokes new meanings in the same words. I'm a bit scared about you seeing me at a Nerina concert, mostly because of the uncontrollable crying. And maybe a little because you'll think I'm a massive geek because I turn up 4 hours early, and talk to James and Ricardo and Dr Mike, Becky, Zoe, Toby and Tom, Daz and Tim, Daniel, Lauren, Kerena, and all the others about Nerina and not much else. But I'd love you to come with me. To squeeze my hand in the sad songs and laugh at me for my geekiness. And I want Nerina to meet the person who makes me happy.

I want to stand with you, glass of wine in hand, and take this all in. And if you hate it, if it's not your kind of music, just humour me. Because her words have contributed to the construction of the person I am today.