Happy Christmas to you all!
I wish December to be everything you need it to be in your life .
For me this season is the whole reason I work seven days a week throughout the year so I can reward myself without guilt and have quiet time with Robert, watching movies, sipping cocktails, spoiling him and seeing friends I haven’t been able to connect with. I never used to like reminiscing, looking back summarising but now it has a greater value than ever before………probably prompted by the vast amount of time between memories and present day!
My Christmas shopping is all done…..but i am still impulse buying Robert socks n chocs!
His pressie sofa is laden with surprises. We are ready to party!
METEORITE has arrived and the feed back is tremendous. So many readers contacting me saying they love the colours, the photos, the insights and the stories. It’s uplifting and revealing. The publishers can get your order to you before Christmas if you haven’t ordered yet.
This week I rehearse the Big Country set with Nat Martin and Peter Rinaldi, I fist met Peter when he was working with Gareth Gates and was super impressed by his guitar and vocals.
Peter is going to be the tour manager, driver, guitarist for TOYAH: SONGS AND STORIES TOUR in 2026. He is a bit of a polymath…..he will be with me on the road and wonderful Mike Goodman too.
For Big Country the touring team needed a set up from me that didn’t move BC’s equipment before their set..
I will be doing a guitar/vocal-led set of all my hits with both Nat and Peter singing, it is very much a warm up for next year’s tour too, as Peter is new to my music.
Both ROBERT and I had a full circle moment on Saturday.
It’s thanks to 6° of separation that I starred in a movie opposite Bill Fellows in 2019. Bill Fellows and the Time Machine guitarist Kevin Armstrong both live in the same town, communications followed that led to Robert Fripp meeting Carlos Alomar for the first time ever last Saturday. What an historic meeting!
We were the guests of Carlos Alomar, David Bowie’s longtime guitarist and musical director through the Berlin period. The Back To Berlin Band were playing at the stunning Beacon Hall in Bristol.
We were made so welcome, treated with warmth and respect by the entire team who were visibly excited to have Robert there and me too. Carlos originally invited Robert to join him on stage and play Heroes, but Robert isn’t quite ready to do that yet even though he’s doing incredibly well since his heart attack in May.
So we sat at the Sounddesk enjoying the band and the set list immensely.
It was wonderful to see Carlos with various members of his family on stage, his son-in-law Axel, his daughter Lea, also there was Kevin Armstrong from Tin Machine, Cunio on vocals, Tal on Drums and brilliant George Murray on bass.
We were taken to the green room afterwards and everyone rushed in to welcome Robert…………. and me! They were very aware of Sunday lunch and hugely informed about it, talking in detail about our japes in the kitchen, but it really was Robert’s evening and I think Robert was taken aback about how loved he is.
There was one point during the show when Carlos, on stage, said that ROBERT was in the audience, the whole audience erupted, including shouts of my name, which was thrilling.
I first saw Carlos on stage at Milton Keynes in 1983 when I was a guest of Bowie and was invited to watch from the side of the stage. It was an amazing performance and a breathtakingly beautiful summer’s day, one of the best summer days of my life.
As I watched I saw Bowie and the band being pranked by their road crew showing them porn magazines from inside the props being rolled around stage. I saw Carlos and Bowie again at the Queen Elizabeth Hall Southbank London around 2002, it was fabulous.
To be in a room with Carlos and having him genuinely interested in me as well as Robert was awesome.
Also there was Hue Padgham, Peter Gabriel‘s engineer who encouraged Robert to move into production.
Nicholas Pegg the author of The Complete David Bowie was standing next to me. I was thrilled to hear that he also moonlights as a Dalek for Doctor Who. Being able to tell him my life long ambition to be in the series he promised he was going straight to the casting directors and telling them to put me in the next series when it starts to go into production.
It was a really happy event, the reaction to us being there from the backstage team, the security and staff was very evident. Our social media success seems to be escalating across all generations.
I have loved filling in for Martin Kemp on GREATEST HITS RADIO: 80s MIX TAPE. It’s an area of work I would love to continue as I have a lot of stories to tell and know 90% of the artists, it’s also great fun to get messages from the listeners. Fingers crossed for more news on this in January.
Dear Butch the wIld bunny has not been around since the freeze three weeks ago, our garden flooded at the same time…..yesterday I searched for him but there is no evidence to lead me to believe he is still alive.
He was a dear little soul, ironically a surviver and if he appears again I will be overjoyed.
Life in our small market town is always linked to nature.
Last week I was in the bath looking out the window, when Pidgy…..our tame wild pigeon came for his daily peanuts, served out of my hand, as I noticed him outside the local sparrow hawk swept in and took him. Jumping out of the bath I ran starkers downstairs and out into the yard…..it was a Saturday so no workmen around.
There in the corner the sparrow hawk had Pidgy pinned down so I shooed him away……as pigdy made his escape the hawk clung to Pidgy’s back and I eventually had to hit him off then the hawk came for my face!
Eventually the bird flew off and I saw Pidgy inside the house walking down our entrance hall and into our snug and I though “Shit! Now I have to get him out before he flies into mirrors!
But Pidgy allowed me to pick him up and examine him, he’d only lost a few feathers from his back. I build him a shelter outside under an olive tree and fed him, he stayed all day and left at dusk.
We didn’t see him for four days, then one morning HE WAS BACK!
I was overjoyed.
Some pleasures in life aren’t always what you expect. I had to take Fripp and Eno to the vet the other day . My past experiences with dear little Willy Fred was that vets don’t look on rabbit as animals of value.
Animal welfare is better these days.
So the joy I felt when I put Fripp on the vet’s table and he picked Fripp up and kissed him, then he did the same with Eno, picking this bundle of fur up and giving him a big kiss, I was over the moon.
The vet told me that he’d given his daughter a ladybird book about a domestic rabbit’s friendship with a wild rabbit and when he was a boy he bred rabbits, he absolutely loves them and knowing that Fripp and Eno have a Vet on hand that will protect them and love them is beautiful.
I wonder if he would look after Robert too.
HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL AND TO YOUR LOVE ONES.
I AM THINKING OF YOU.
MAY 2026 BE THE BEST AND SEE YOU OUT THERE FRO AN EXCITING YEAR.
LOTS OF LOVE
TOYAH
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