Every morning Nick Cave jumps in a lake…
“I’m one of those wacky wild swimmers,” he says. “Rain or shine, summer or winter, regardless of what country I’m in, I try and find someplace.” To justify the appeal, he draws on nature writer Roger Deakin’s description, that “you jump in with all your devils and leap out a giggling idiot”. “I highly recommend it,” Cave continues. “If you’re the kind of person that wakes up feeling a little despondent, go and jump into freezing water. It’s so fucking catastrophic to your nervous system that it recalibrates everything. It’s amazing.”
This is not what people expect from Nick Cave. From raw post-punk roots he has grown into an icon of gothic otherworldliness, a modern-day prophet, with songs about love, loss and redemption delivered with a voice that sounds like it holds the wisdom of the world.
In this week’s issue, the 66 year-old legend talks about music, movies, and tragedy – including how the death of his son “fundamentally changed” his worldview. Buy a copy from your local vendor to read more.
How Big Issue righted a reader’s £28,000 wrong
Big Issue stepped in when a disabled woman was left in “disbelief ” after her benefits were stopped and she was wrongly accused of owing £28,000 in overpayments to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). In July, Michelle Burns was told she should never have been granted personal independence payment (PIP), six years after she was awarded it. Her PIP was stopped and the DWP said she would have to return all the money.
In pictures: the stinging reality of the two-child benefit cap
The new Labour government faces growing calls to scrap the two-child limit on benefits, which charities say is “one of the cruellest welfare rules of the past decade”. It means that low-income families are denied extra universal credit and tax credits for their third and subsequent children born after April 2017. Nearly half a million children could be immediately lifted out of poverty if the government scrapped the cap, according to the Resolution Foundation. Our photo article shows the reality on the ground.
