Sunday with Paloma Faith: ‘It's not a day of rest'

The singer on her young family, trying to enjoy a lie-in, roasts and missing margaritas

Sunday starts… With peaceful dreams about my past when I’d wake at 10am, before I hear, ‘Mama, Mama’ at 7am and see my daughter’s little face in front of me. I have to tell her how amazing it is she slept all by herself, else the next night she won’t bother.

A day of rest? That’s not a thing with kids under 11. We have to schedule in three meals, time outdoors and usually several arts and crafts activities. I can’t wait until my daughter is a teenager so we can both lie in.

How have you been coping? Lockdown is good for my work-life balance, but now I’m panicked about releasing an album. I feel like my career is about to end every time I let music out for judgment – and right now I’m even more powerless. Plus, there’s all the hormones from being pregnant. I feel vulnerable in a body that doesn’t seem like my own. I miss margaritas.

Sundays growing up? Mum would be dancing to Nina Simone and shouting at us and the neighbours, while I’d be playing out on our Hackney street and chatting to the punk squatters around the corner. Ours is quite an insular family now, but I want that for my daughter as she gets older.

How do you have fun? Knocking on strangers’ doors with my mate Kayvan Novak. On summer evenings we ring the bell at random houses and play all these different characters. I remember struggling to keep a straight face as we told people on their doorsteps that we’d started a new religion and asked them to join us.

And Sunday night? I always make a roast with Jamie Oliver’s potatoes, before covering the living-room floor in cushions to make a cinema with our projector. Once my daughter is in bed, my partner and I watch something weird together. Then I sit and scroll through my boyfriend’s exes’ Instagrams before an early night.

Paloma Faith’s album, Infinite Things, is out now

Contributor

Michael Segalov

The GuardianTramp

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