this is bbc news. the headlines: argentina have beaten australia 2—1 to progress to the quarter finals of the world cup in qatar. the argentine captain, lionel messi, opened the scoring on what was his thousandth professional match. in the next round, they will face the netherlands, who beat the united states three—one earlier in the day. the level of the price cap on russian maritime oil exports will not stop the attacks on ukraine, according to president zelensky. he has called the sixty—dollar a barrel cap �*weak�*, and says it will also not stop moscow's attempts to destabilise the countries imposing the limit. the father of a four—year—old

girl who's critically ill in hospital with strep a has urged parents to be on the lookout for symptons of the infection and seek medical help immediately. five children have died recently from the bacterium in england, and one in wales now on bbc news, the big interviews: nick cave # i am beside you. # look for me. # i try to forget. in your conversations with sean o'hagan for the book, you talk about the album ghosteen as an imagined world

where arthur, your son, could be. was it your desire to create that album for him or actually for you as a family? you never have any concrete reason why you make a record. you go in and pull tiny threads together and hopefully come up with something. you don't have a grand plan. because the whole thing is so difficult and so tenuous, the process of making a record. # i think they're singing to be free. there was something that was going on with that particular record that was different than other records. and it became a kind of parallel mission to me within that record, within the state of mind that i was where i felt that it was a place that arthur could inhabit on some level. # look for me.

# if i could move the night, i would. # and i would turn the world round if i could. # there's nothing wrong with loving something. # you can't hold in your hand. the music is so beautiful. there is nowhere for you to hide it. you are so front and centre. and it is very revealing and exposing, in a way, to be that person that is out there in front of the music, when you are singing about things that are so painful. i think there is a lot of pain in ghosteen but there is a lot of... i think most of the songs just have this lovely upward lift, the trajectory of the songs is, they all seem to move upwards like that and so there was a lot i got from that

in a very positive... there is a weird joyfulness about ghosteen that is often overlooked. # well, the moon won't get a wink of sleep. # if i stay all night and talk. in the conversations, you talk about a very definite difference between being spiritual and being religious. you know, i think religion asks something of us. it asks something of us. and spirituality is a little bit more amorphous, and we can all be spiritual and we are allspiritualand, like, well, of course we are all spiritual. but religion requires... it's spirituality with rigour. it requires something of us.

and that action, i think, is probably what it is all about. so, what does being religious require of you? for me, i am more inclined to do religious things, like go to church, pray, read scripture. i mean, i have always done these things anyway, actually. even in my most chaotic times, i've done those sorts of things. but i feel that when i walk, when i read scripture or when i walk out of church, ifeel less... i feel my scepticism is a little less. it is more distant. you put it at bay. yeah. but that struggle, the struggle is very much where i am, in regard to religion and the ideas of god and christian ideas.

it is a struggle. i have by no means arrived anywhere on that kind of thing. do you think that arthur's death strengthened your faith? yes. i think a lot of things happened. i think the writing of the book, weirdly enough, did that. the book itself starts with a... ..a kind of nervousness around questions of faith, and ends, ends more firm about those sorts of things. when i talk about... when we are talking about faith here, i am also talking about doubt. you know, these two things, for me, go hand—in—hand. and, you know, a deep, ingrained scepticism i have towards these sorts of things. and the faith that i feel is that occasional journeying away from that scepticism

into something else. and i find that really a powerful place to be, especially imaginatively and creatively. in the book, you say that religion can be a shepherding force that holds communities together. there is an argument to say that religion is not always a force for good. that is very true and there are many arguments why religion is not a force for good. but when i walk into a christian church, i walk into something that i feel i belong to. it is my thing, it is something that i was raised in as a child, there is a sense of nostalgia, a sense of safety about that. i don't step into that and deny anyone else their religious beliefs or whatever. itjust feels like it is my place, and i don't say that in any divisive or nationalistic way or anything like that.

ijust never connected to eastern religion, let's say. you know. that was too spiritual, in a sense. so i neverfound the language, the aesthetic, anything about it particularly compelling, for me, personally. and i always found something in the figure of christ that was deeply compelling to me. it always was. even as a child. # i don't believe in an interventionist god. # but i know, darling, that you do. 1997, the song, into my arms, "i don't believe in

an interventionist god." and you have also, as you say, changed your idea about faith and doubt. i mean, that particular song, if you know, that particular song to me feels like a person on the point of conversion. i think that's what that song is saying. # well, not to touch your hair and your head leave you as you are. # he felt he had to direct you and direct you into my arms. but it's a good, serviceable song because it, well, it services the atheist and the believer. and pretty much everyone can kind of play that at a wedding or a funeral or whatever. it's done me very well, that song. because it's kind of a broad church, shall we say, and everyone can collect within that song. but for me, it's essentially a religious song and it's that i don't believe in god, it's that i don't believe

in an interventionist god. # into my arms. # oh, lord. # into my arms. the red hand files, which seem like a kind of act of generosity and i wonder if they came directly out of your son arthur's death. no. well, in the sense that i didn't know how to speak about arthur. i was getting a lot of people writing to me in response to arthur's death, telling me their stories. not so much in sympathy but rather, this is what happened to me, this is what might happen to you. that was, i saw those as these kind of momentary flashes of light that i grabbed hold of and felt... i felt helped by those responses.

and so some, i think a couple of years later, i just started up the red hand files. in a more general kind of way. ask me anything. i'm a musician, ask me anything. but the questions very quickly became about other things. and it wasn't. .. it was both me and the audience pushing pushing the conversation outwards. it seemed like it was a salve for you and a salve for the people that were writing the letters. it was, yeah. when you say it was an act of generosity, i think that works the other way too. i feel that when people write in to the red hand files and spend a lot of care and attention around what they write to me, they are acts of generosity as well. and i mean, you get thousands of requests. it's a difficult decision, isn't it? because you can't answer them all. you can't answer. yeah, no.

i have to balance them and look at... you know, i mean, sometimes there's several in a row that are kind of grim and i try and lighten the mood with another one and so forth. so it is a little bit of a balancing act. and i wonder in that sense if there's anything that's off limits that you would have to answer? yeah, there's a lot of things i won't answer, mostly because i don't think those questions have necessarily come in good faith, i would say. and so i don't... there's too much in there of value to write about. i wonder if the red hand files were a form of ministry. well, i wouldn't. . . that seems a little highfalutin. you know, i never saw it in that way. i think the red hand files for me was a way to learn how to articulate certain things that were going on me with the help of the people who wrote in. so it felt like something

we were doing together and that that's been enormously helpful. and i think it's been helpful to other people, too. and that's. .. ..how to write about something. it's actually quite difficult, quite different than how to speak about something. and i think with sean's book that we wrote together, i learned how to through these conversations, how to speak about these matters as well. issue number 210.

but there was nothing to suggest that i had any particular talent with clay. still, my mother liked them, so i thought it might be fun to make some more. get your act together. and if you do and warren, mardy, jim, and i ever get around to making a new grinderman record, you can come and play on it. grinderman, as a matter of policy, only work with the very old, the out of shape and the extremely foolish. we are the obscene and joyous embodiment of a fool's errand. and we are waiting. there is no time to waste. love, nick. that is a particular act of generosity! well, he can come and play with us. i mean, anyone can come and play with grinderman, this — my other group. but you have to be old and you have to be irrelevant.

chuckles. another question which again, a man wrote to you and talked about a musician that had passed away and the fact that a supreme courtjustice in america who he really despised loved this musician, and he was very annoyed about that, and he was appalled that this musician was liked by thisjudge because it kind of negated, he thought, i think, what he thought of the musician. do you believe that your music is for everyone? i mean, would you ever say, "no, i really i don't "want that audience?" i mean, look, i get a lot of pushback from what i write and i got an enormous amount of pushback with that particular question because it opens with, "i've," you know, "i've cast my mind around and i can't "come up with a single person that i wouldn't want to listen "to my music" and that got — or that didn't deserve on some level to listen to my music. and i got a lot of rage back about that. and people saying, what about this person and what about that person?

but the point i was really trying to make in that particular letter is that music is fundamentally a good thing and it makes people better, in my view. so...um...so... even if there is someone that you might consider deplorable or despicable, i think that they, that — that they might be listening to my music feels that they may be a little bit better by the end of the record. i don't know. that's what i was trying to put forward. i guess it's more that i don't want my music ever to be used as a form of punishment or that i deny my music to — to certain people because of where they stand politically. i mean, where do you even begin with something like that? you know, where do you draw the line anyway? well, i mean, isuppose the whole thing about separating art from the artist

as well as another, the flip side of looking at that and so, you know, isuppose the most recent one of that would be kanye, you know, is accused of anti—semitism, so therefore, you know, should you be listening to his music or should he actually be be shunned? i mean, are you completely open on that? well, on some level, i don't care what kanye has to say on things but i — but i do love kanye�*s music. ifind anti—semitism in particular... . . particularly distasteful. and so, it's very disappointing to hear these remarks and such sort of obvious, boring, kind of reductive tropes that he's actually peddling to be incredibly disappointing. however, it's a personal choice as to whether you can go on and listen to that person's music. i personally can. i love kanye�*s music.

i feel that he's done the best music of anybody in some time. the most interesting, challenging, bold music. and maybe — i mean, this is a complex argument — but maybe there's something to do with a transgressive personality that — that makes a person willing to take certain kind of risks with their music, because kanye does that. and it's — it's exciting. that aspect of what he does is exciting, but no way — you know, what he was saying is obviously disappointing. # cindy is my honey. # the sweetest in the south. # when we kiss, the bees would all swarm around our mouth. # we'll get on home. # cindy, cindy.

as you get older, you're more self reflective, do you think? yeah. well, of course, you wouldn't want to be the other way. some people are. chuckles. but do you think you... do you think you are more open to people? i, i... i don't know if i say this in the book but i think after my son died, i personally think i became an actual person and that before that happened, i was an incomplete or unformed human being. i had a very narrow view of the world, a much more strident view of the world. # i've travelled this world around. # for an answer that refused to be found. # well, i don't know why. # and i don't know how. # but she's nobody�*s baby now.

there seemed to be some correlation between my stridency about things and my lack of understanding about things. in fact, the less i knew, the more opinionated and certain i would become. and there's something that happened when my son died that smashed all that to bits and i could see the world in a much more nuanced way, i think. and a much more empathetic way. because in a way, griefjust becomes part of who we are. yeah, i think so. i think that that's our common bond, is that we all have a — particularly as we grow older, we are all kind of creatures of loss or grief. you said in faith, hope

and carnage, we are, each of us, imperilled insofar as anything can turn catastrophic at any time. do you think that's true? that we're never really equipped to deal with that dreadful loss and shock? you know, it seems to me that grief is notjust one thing. it's notjust how you feel about the loss of one thing. it's a kind of... i find all the griefs tend to kind of collect around the new thing. i mean. that sounds terrible, the way that that came out. but i think we get better at it or we get more used to the state of that state of being. you know, i remember my mother who died. she was 93. and people were just dying all the time around her, herfriends.

it was you know, she would say such—and—such died today and two months later, such—and—such died today, you know, and — and she'sjust grieving everybody. and — which is what the very old do, and it's — i don't think she's plunged back into that same thing again and again. i think you just become... ..these kind of, i don't even say — this is sounding depressing, but it's not meant to be — but i think we just become used to it as a part of living, you know? your wife, susie, says "it takes great courage "to be happier". i read she said that. did she say that? yes. she's clever. she also said she had time to be amused, by the way. that point about, it — it takes courage to be happy.

i think that's a really interesting thing to say. yeah, well, it's, um... it's a defiant position. it's a defiant position, happiness, very often. and it's hard—earned and it's not... it's a deep thing. happiness is a deep thing because — because i don't think there is such a thing as simple happiness. i think you lift the lid and there's all sorts of stuff going on underneath a person's ability to be optimistic about the world. and, you know, so — so to me, happiness is a — is a — i agree with her. i agree with everything she says. but it is a form of defiance, i would say. and you practice that defiant, i would say. and you practice that defiance? i would say, too. i'm basically i'm a happy person, you know. # take a little walk

to the edge of town. # and go across the tracks. # where the viaduct looms like a bird of doom. # as it shifts and cracks. you're also having a moment and a connection with new fans through the theme for peaky blinders. you know, in a way, much like kate bush has with stranger things. yeah. yeah, i mean, that's not recent, that's been going for, for years and that song — which is, to be perfectly honest, not my favourite song, i've got to say. there's a lot of songs that i prefer playing live, let's say. but the response to that song is sort of massive, so we continue to play it and i find different ways to do it. and, you know... but, yeah, that's been following us around like a,

you know, a nasty old dog. chuckles. but doing — but you know, it does — it's good for us. # they call me the wild rose. # but my name was elisa day. # why they call me it, i do not know. # for my name was elisa day. just before i finish, you have personal great friendships that last many years and i was just thinking back to your work with kylie minogue, which was in the �*90s. yeah. i mean, would you do — work again with kylie, would you? yeah, sure. chuckles. you know, i mean, i've worked with a lot of people. i've sung withjohnny cash and, you know? but i really think it was that record i did

with kylie minogue, which i really hold in a very special place in my heart because we both took an enormous risk to do that. she was instructed, i think, i believe, by the people around her, "don't go near this guy. "you just don't want to be associated with nick cave," especially back then. you know, i wasn't in showroom condition, shall we say. and — but it was also people saying, "you're going to do "a record with kylie minogue? "you must be crazy." so there was... jeopardy for both. yeah, there was a potential for disaster for both of us. but she just entered into that in a, you know, with just a whole lot of love and it was really an amazing thing and it worked really well. so, we've remained, even though we don't see each other very often, we've — we love each other, i think,

genuinely and, you know, and it's always a joy to see her. and if she wants to make another record... chuckles. ..then maybe there's a where the wild roses grow apart too, or something like that. maybe she could write to you in the red hand files. put her application in. nick cave, thank you very much. all right. thank you very much. it was a pleasure, thank you. # into my arms, oh, lord. # into my arms. hello again. things are going to turn much colder next week — mind you, it feels cold enough already, especially with the easterly wind picking up on sunday, making it feel chillier and bringing in again more showers and more cloud. but it's cold air that we've got at the moment, so temperatures close to freezing. a risk of a touch of frost.

one or two icy patches as well. a colder start to the day across western scotland — but this could be the place to be, mind you, because with more shelter, there will be some sunshine. more cloud and showers coming off the north sea to eastern scotland. a few showers for eastern parts of northern ireland. and more showers for england and wales, especially for northern england and north wales. fewer showers further south but there will be a lot of cloud. we've all got that easterly wind which could be a bit stronger. temperatures may be a bit lower on sunday, typically five or six degrees. factor in that easterly wind and it will be feel bit colder than that. however, next week, we're going to change the wind direction from that easterly with a strengthening northern wind heading our way from tuesday onward, bringing widespread frost, wintry showers, snow

welcome to bbc news — i'm vishala sri—pathma. our top stories... joy for argentina as lionel messi scores as they reach the quarterfinals of the world cup. president zelensky critcises the price cap on russian oil imposed by the west, claiming it's too weak to cause serious damage. and as temperatures plummet in ukraine, we hearfrom people facing winter without power or adequate shelter. the father of a four—year—old british girl who's seriously ill with a strep a infection warns other parents to be alert to the symptoms. any doubt, if they don't look right or anything, just scoop them up and take them, get them checked out rapid.