Newsflash

My gorgeous goddaughter in Canada is pregnant again. She vowed that after her first (who's now two and has been very difficult indeed with her eating and sleeping), following two or three miscarriages and a really tough birth, she would never have another baby and she and hubby were being very careful... but it appears that her daughter really needed a little brother or sister and here she or he is, on the way!

My congrats to the pair of them, and I hope from the bottom of my heart that things go well, with no problems. She's feeling better this time, for a start. Last time she suffered morning sickness throughout the pregnancy, which isn't too clever when you are a news broadcaster (as she was then), plus ghastly back pain. They say every pregnancy feels different. I hope this one continues to be pain-free and trouble-free. It's making me feel broody myself. I wish I were several decades younger!

As for Trollopuss and the Slug... I'm still searching for that piece of paper. I thought I might have typed the lyrics into the Songs file on my computer, but no such luck. My Virgo Ascendant is supposed to modify my wild, creative Pisces sunsign by giving me a nice, tidy, businessy-officey side, but alas, it hath fled and is probably in the dregs of the half bottle of rose I have just finished. Hic, hic, hooray!

Which reminds me, part of my reason for feeling slightly maudlin is that I have just watched most of Jools Holland's tribute to Amy Winehouse which I recorded the other week and am under strict instructions from Mr G to clear from his hard disc recorder, along with a few dozen other progs I haven't got round to watching yet. Seeing her in date order made her deterioration clear. When she was on his show in 2004, she was brilliant. Her singing, her musicianship were superb.

By 2007 when she sang Monkey Man with fixed, glazed eyes, tugging at her horrible, strapless fringed dress and moving legs that didn't seem to belong to her in a jerking, almost obscene dance, I was almost too embarrassed to watch. Her Heard It On The Grapevine was mostly sung by her male co-singer. I couldn't take any more and switched off as it was too painful. She reminded me so much of my friend Barbara, who died five years ago last month. Same petite stature, same drinking and wildness and brilliant, gutsy, bluesy voice. Same sense of a severed talent, a jagged life, a soul so sensitive that the world around chopped at it like broken glass. And I drink a toast - to absinthe friends!

Now, where is that bloody song lyric?