Because they’re there for all the key moments in her life these days (ie, all of them), paparazzi photographers captured Amy Winehouse moving into her new flat on Monday night and GASP! photographed a bag of a “suspicious white substance” when she was unloading stuff out of the boot of the cab.

While no one in the British tabloid press wants to actually assert what said “suspicious white substance” might be for legal reasons, there have been copious sentences like this:

Amy Winehouse, who, you know, had a DRUG OVERDOSE in August and has been seen SNIFFING through HER NOSE on a number of occasions over the last few weeks, had a bag of a SUSPICIOUS WHITE SUBSTANCE, which could quite possibly have been POWDERy amongst her belongings

The bag was carrier bag sized and open, and whatever the white thing was, there was a lot of it. If it was powder, it would have been a few kilograms worth; and if it was cocaine as the tabloids seem to want everyone to think, those few kilograms would have a street value in at least six figures. Now I know Amy probably has considerably more money than I do, but if I had some powder that was worth six figures, I wouldn’t leave it in a flimsy open bag in an open car boot while I was moving my stuff around. That baby would have its own ziploc baggie at the very least.

The same stories also fed into the “suspicious” angle by talking about how her spokesperson changed their mind about what was actually in the bag - first they said make-up, then white hand-towels which may have belonged to the taxi driver anyway. Only lying people ever change their mind! The fact that the spokesperson changed to white hand-towels shows how vague the pictures were - if it had been unarguably a powder, they’d probably have gone down the culinary route (flour, sugar etc) or the like but it was just a bright white blob so it could have been anything. But the tabloid assure us it was a “substance”. Technically, they’re correct since everything is but I suspect that wording has been picked to be more leading that just accurately vague.

Anyway, as you can probably tell, we don’t think it’s a particularly suspicious white substance so didn’t even report its existence in the story about her moving in and having Pete Doherty around for some early morning ice pops. Even that isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds: with gigs running late into the evening and everything, they’re probably quite nocturnal people and 4am is the same as 9pm for the rest of us. Pete probably *was* dropping around to work on their song, jam or just be there for his friend while she goes through some bad times, because drug users are people too. And the ice pops? I bet they’d slip down great after a couple of hours of singing/chatting in a smoky room - and there is always the possibility they were just an impulse by at the checkout while she was in there for cigarettes or something. Again, I might not have Amy’s money but it doesn’t bear thinking about the amount of times I’ve bought ice pops, lollies or assorted childhood sweets because I’ve seen them at the till and gone “ooh! hubba bubba! and choc dips!” - and sometimes that happened at 4am too.