How to clear your parents’ house

I kept the hankies. They were useful.

I keep seeing things about people clearing out their parents’ houses. Well, of course I do. It’s what happens to people my age. I did it seven years ago.

Here are just three of the articles that I've noticed recently. (Yes, they’re all from the Guardian, cos that’s what turns up on my Facebook. Other newspapers are available.)

• My mum has died - and every decision I make about her belongings feels wrong 
• ‘I feel like I’m cancelling out her life’: the wrenching work of clearing out a parent’s home
• ‘Under the stuff I can’t throw out is the stuff my parents couldn’t throw out’: novelist Anne Enright on the agony of clearing her family home

I’m not going to go into that much detail, or write about the emotional aspects of it. At the time it didn't feel like an existential crisis: it felt like a practical one.

Anyway, I’ve already written a blog post, the year my Mum died, called Things I’ve inherited from my mother. 

But I lied (to myself?)  when I said I’d cleared the house. I’d only started. 

It’s a few years now since I had to do it, and I still think about it sometimes. And I wish I’d done it differently. But it’s one of those things that you only do once in your life: no second chances, no chance to learn from your mistakes. I made a lot of them, and they gave me daytime nightmares for a long time. 

I’m not going to write about the emotional stuff.  I’m going to write what I wish someone had told me.

Heatwave: remembering the summer of ’76

I was browsing the “out now” shelf in my local library and I saw a book called Heatwave. Obviously I had to get it. It was 30 degrees outside. 

Also, the book is about 1976 and everyone’s talking about 1976. Some people are talking about the 50th anniversary of punk and some are talking about climate. Whatever the reason, a lot of people are looking back.

And then, “Burnham to drag us back to the 1970s” shouts the front page of a right-wing rag at the weekend. And friends of my generation are going: bring it on.  Great music, strong trade unions, student grants, a working NHS and public services that were still in public hands. What’s not to like?

Well, actually a lot, if you look at the history. Especially if you were female. Or Black. Or Asian. Or gay.

Heatwave, the book, is by John L Williams and it’s just out now in paperback. It’s a social history of that summer, covering music and culture, sport, news (national and international) and of course the weather. It describes that period as a turning point in British history, even while there are parallels to our own time. 

I’ve written a book

I’ve written a book and it’s out on 5th March. It’s called Atypical Girl.  If you’ve enjoyed reading this blog I think you’ll like it.

Here are answers to some things people have asked me about it.

What’s your book about?

The very short answer is: ‘Punk rock, Liverpool and trying to be normal’. That’s the book’s subtitle.

The slightly longer answer is that it’s a memoir starting in 1976 and going up to the 21st century. It’s about coming of age during punk and how that influenced the rest of my life – including my career as a music journalist. A lot of it is about the Liverpool punk scene around Eric’s club and the post-punk scene that followed. There’s also a subplot about growing up with undiagnosed autism, hence the title (which is, of course, a play on Typical Girls by the Slits).

A People's History of Punk: radio review

 

It’s 2026. And apparently it’s the “50th anniversary of punk”. There’s going to be a lot of Media Stuff about it this year.

I’ve got a few problems with this.

1. The timing is London-centric. For most of us in the rest of the country, our year zero was 1977.

2. Punk wasn’t supposed to last 50 years.

I might come back to that another time. But for now, here’s the beginning of the Media Stuff: a Radio 4 series fronted by Chris Packham.

Book review: Maybe I’m Amazed

“Autism illuminates the way all our minds work – not least our relationship with music.”

I’ve got two things in common with author John Harris’s son James. We are both autistic, and music is a big part of our lives. Well, three things if you count the fact that we both dislike Captain Beefheart. As his father says, James has good taste in music.

There is more that we don’t have in common. We are a different gender, and a different generation. I don’t have a learning disability. And I don’t have an amazing musical talent either: James is a musical savant with perfect pitch.

The book is subtitled A Story of Love and Connection in Ten Songs. There’s a lot of love in the book (love between family members, love for music) and a lot of connection (also with family members and music).