January 26, 2016. A Tinker's Cuss – Bella

Around two weeks ago I lost my favourite doggie, Bella. The veterinary surgeons put her to sleep here in New Zealand whilst I was trawling around in the USA. There were cellphone calls backwards and forwards and then Bella was gone. That's how these things happen in the big wide world and I never got to hold Bella for the very last time.

Friends will tell you to let go in these circumstances and then you feel like fire-bombing their house, but instead you say something like "Thanks very much" and hope they go away and never come back.

About a week after Bella died my brother-in-law popped his clogs as well. My brother-in-law was about the epitome of good social skills. He always knew what good and soothing word to insert into a conversation and just when to do it. What you saw was what you got and what he said was what he meant.

I've had a lot of people die around me during these last fifteen years or so. Mostly it comes as a big shock and then it's gone again but for their presence which I feel at the strangest of times.

There is nothing in life that is bigger than loss.

David Bowie died the next week and I did what I could to steel myself against the news.

If it wasn't for David Bowie I just would never have worn half the clothes I ever wore in my life and nor would I have applied woman's makeup to my face in the early 1970s. I was an ugly woman let me tell you that.

We all did make-up stuff and coloured our hair and some of us even had a go at women's high heel shoes and pretended we were gay. We had the earrings and the hand gestures too. At the same time, we had dreadful acne. We'd squeeze each other's pimples.

David Bowie's biggest thing to me was that he had the capability of changing everything about himself in a very quick manner. He never appeared to have acne.

Me and my mates bonded over a very few key recording artists at the end of the 1960s and going through the early 1970s. Probably the two main ones were Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie.

But I try not to look back and I just keep careering into the future and oftentimes that's against the odds.

Bella was a good little girl. She had a remarkably gentle nature and I truly loved her. Animals have taught me a lot about people and oftentimes to just steer away from people.

Bella didn't live in make-up.