Hello!
This latest post on my blog ‘Stop Telling Me I’m Brave’ is called ‘Sinéad’ (as you’ll see right above) and as you might expect it mentions Sinéad O’Connor.
As with all the other posts in this blog, I’m posting this one a year and a bit after it was actually written. So the O’Connor reference, and the fact it comes just a week or so after the singer’s funeral, is purely a (slightly spooky?) coincidence.
In fact, the post describes how my partner Lizzie pulled off a pretty good impression of O’Connor – singing Nothing Compares 2 U – one sunny afternoon in Worcestershire, last year.
The post is really a tribute to Lizzie and her sense of humour in trying times. Because of the timing, though, maybe it can be regarded today as a kind of (wholly unplanned but hopefully still fitting) tribute to Sinéad O’Connor too.
RIP Sinéad – you’ll be missed.
P.D. Clifton August 2023
It’s Sunday afternoon and we’re visiting Lizzie’s sister and her family, in the next county from us.
Lizzie’s sister and her husband live in a very nice village, just twenty-five minutes away. Their house is lovely… all done up tastefully, but in a welcoming homely way. Their back lawn is immaculate, the complete opposite aesthetically of the ‘bomb site with weeds’ look we’ve cultivated behind our own home.
I think Lizzie’s sister’s house (and her home life in general) was one of the reasons moving to the countryside seemed so appealing, before we actually did it. Her lifestyle had always seemed so relaxed and full of bonhomie, compared to our stuffy, smoggy, frantic, full-on London lives. Of course, we soon discovered the frantic, full-on bit would follow us to Warwickshire… and, of course, we’ve spectacularly failed to establish anything approaching a relaxed, easy-going lifestyle in our own household.
So I still feel a little envious of Lizzie’s sister’s and her husband’s carefree-seeming country lives. Oh well. At least our bomb site garden is bigger than their immaculate one. Just. Or actually… maybe theirs is bigger. Bah!
Lizzie’s really enjoying seeing her family. Her sister and her sister’s husband are there, of course, as well as Lizzie’s Mum, Lizzie’s grown-up nephew… and the grown-up nephew’s wife.
Cedric’s come with us and is happily terrorising the family’s two much smaller dogs.
Lizzie’s blooming. The colour has returned to her face. Her eyes are no longer looking sunken. She’s stopped looking like someone who’s seriously ill.
She’s still wearing a beanie, but her family implore her to take it off. She does and her growing pixie cut suits her even more now than it did a week ago. Her sister describes Lizzie’s look as ‘edgy’.
Soon we’re eating a delicious roast dinner around their Valhalla-length kitchen table. After pudding, encouraged by her sister, Lizzie grabs a pepper pot and uses it as a microphone… launching into an impromptu version of Sinéad O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U.
Lizzie’s sister films her on her iPhone in stark close-up (just like in the video). With her crew-cut-look, there’s no denying it… Lizzie is the spitting image of the Irish singer.
Lizzie’s family are lapping it up. I wonder if Lizzie is planning to finish her performance by leaping up on the table and tearing a picture of the Pope in half. But she doesn’t. Which, given that her family are all seriously Catholic, avoids a lot of embarrassment all round.
P. D. Clifton 
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