So she's fine. Apparently, she has been living in shelter in California with her son, Angelo, and a pack of pets. Her parenting style evolved like everyone else's. "I tell them, 'Put my son on Zoom! Is it too early to drink a spritzer?'" He tells me: 'I want to be a YouTuber'. I tell him: 'I'm not the right person to help you with that.' The scene is instantly fabulous. At one point, the conversation turns to former Health Minister Matt Hancock, whose office-hours affair with a friend he had hired at public money forced him to resign last summer. In Peggy Mitchell mode, Adele adds: The dirty sod! [British English phrase for someone not very nice]. Then, presumably imagining all the headlines in the English press the next morning, she changes her countenance and freaks out a bit, before shrugging and closing the subject with a simple: Whatever!

So we can all breathe a sigh of relief. Adele is still Adele. TRUE? With the honor of being the first person to ask you questions, I dare to question where the 33-year-old heartbreak queen, who is no longer 19, 21 or 25, is now. "I feel like this album is about self-destruction," answer carefully. "Then it's self-reflection and kind of self-redemption. But I feel prepared. I really want people to hear my side of the story this time." Saying that, she rummages through her bag and hands me a pair of AirPods.

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— Tokoin Global Fri Jul 23 05:03:19 +0000 2021

In the hot sun of tea time, the first chords of a song whose name she still doesn't want to reveal echo in my ears. A slow, meditative arrangement, then - boom! -this voice, the great voice of her. “Be careful with me…” pleads the chorus, displaying verses that recall her tense childhood, her lost marriage, and the lessons learned and unlearned about family, love, and abandonment that she experienced along the way. I'm not sure she's ever had a finer voice. Sitting across from me, she nervously scans the horizon and flashes smiles of such genuine warmth that they catch me completely off guard. For the product of something other than a divorce, I have to say that this is a really moving song.