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I have spent the last few days tracing my roots. It has been hugely interesting and to be honest very revealing! For instance my new baby niece Julia is a long line of Julia’s that stretch back to the early 1800s. My dad’s gran was a Julia, her mum was a Julia and her mum was also called Julia with the surname Derham. Very unusual name I think, but there we have it. I also discovered that both my great grandparents Annie and James died on the same day in December 1952. That must have shaken the family losing both parents. The funny thing I came across was that the name Gunn was in my family, well we always knew I had guns in the family for a long time! So I have been immersed in the last century for days now and find it really amazing how these people lived and little did they know that one day I would be writing about them. All those poor wee Dutch and French immigrants who made there merry way to Scotland, marrying, breeding and finally settling in Glasgow, never telling much to each generation, only leaving behind Parish records and Marriage certificates, scrawling names that they probably never thought anyone would want to read again and never knowing that I, their great-great-great grand daughter would finally get to run my finger over that weak blue ink. They buried children stricken by the measles and whooping cough, they sent sons of to war, they became weavers and bar tenders, they married and died and I wonder what part of that DNA was left in me. Probably none I suppose, but I do wonder what the women of my past were like. I would love to know how they lived and how they died. My mother died at 47 years and her mother died at 38 years old, but the women before that survived into their 60’s. I traced Ashley dad’s side of the family and they ended up Irish and French on his side, and extremely Scottish on his mother’s, mother’s side. They were highlanders’ through and through but am sure history tells us that no-one is truly British we are all descendants through Scandinavians and Normans. Though Ashley tells me it’s a fact that one in four of the world’s population are descended from China. So if anyone out there knows the name Derham, then we may well be related! |
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I conned husband into dragging the tree up from the downstairs cupboard. I just pushed it onto him, we were passing the cupboard and I said “Can you go in there and pull out my tree and decorations and help me carry them up, I am so small, I can’t lift it” I looked all forlorn and whimsically girlish- well in reality I probably looked like a sad hobbit-like dwarf. “Ok hold the door and I will get it all out” he answered. So he carried the two giant boxes up the stairs and let me get on with it. I managed to rope him in to the tree trimming by saying “Please help me, these branches that need assembled and constructed have tiny wee colour strips to help you sort them out in size and I am colour blind as you know, please help me I love you….” I whined. My tree is a bunch of green branches that are poked into a solid green stalk that comes in tubes that you slot together, it is difficult to build. He sat down beside me and my gigantic mound of green plastic branches; he sorted them all out in size, colour code and in order of assembly. He then started putting it all together with me and before you knew it we were trimming a tree! The very tree that he hated and tried to make me give away rather than build for the holiday season. I finally got it all up and tied on all my lovely sentimental decorations. Husband was fussing and fixing little red velvet bows (this was extremely unusual as husband has a primeval fear of velvet and normally goes foetal rather than touch it) he made such a nice job of the decorations. I am happy- the tree looks amazing and the room is so seasonal….so nice. Now all I have to do get husband to share my love of make up, cleansing balms and Donny Osmond. I then finally sorted out the wee nativity scene, made me think about poor Mary…imagine being pregnant with the Son of God, then being married to a man who never organised the delivery in advance? I mean they had NINE months to get ready for what was going to be the most talked about birth in the history of the WORLD! Yet they left it all to the last minute, then he pulled her onto a fucking asthmatic donkey and dragged her to a town where the whole place was mobbed because of a census….the poor woman must have been dying in pain, knocking on doors begging for a bed in LABOUR! How she kept her patience and accepted their “Sorry no room luv” I would have clutched my heaving belly and screamed “For Fucksake, I am squeezing out God’s son here; you must have a fucking floor near a fire and couple of blankets? Help me or I swear I will get the father of this baby to smite you with locusts….don’t make me do this…you wont like me when I am angry” Poor woman had to finally give birth in a barn, surrounded by animals, then what happens? Men arrive with gifts. No women came …just men. Did they bring hot tea and pain killers? Maybe a warm blanket or some soup? No they brought Frankincense and other strange shit, just what she needed as she chewed her own umbilical cord….one man brought a lamb….there already had wee sheep and donkeys but hey one more lamb is good yes? Poor Mary, I personally would have punched Joseph in the balls, killed a lamb and left the baby on the door step of the inn keeper who ignored her pleas, then fucked off to Syria, took in a beach holiday and divorced Joseph. God could fight over the custody battle; it was his son after all. You see that’s why I would never have been picked to give birth to God’s son and become a religious icon….I hate nuns! “Deck the halls with bows of holly…lalalalalalalalal” |
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My brother is going through chemotherapy; he is facing up to the illness with amazing bravery. He still makes me laugh as he is as mad as a fucking squirrel on smack. Mij has had drug problems for most of his life and lives on Methadone which is supposed to help wean him off heroin, who the fuck can wean him off methadone? No-one, is the answer. My daughter Ashley and I went on the train today to go visit him. He insisted I shave his entire head, giving him a number 1, by God he has a full thick head of grey-ish hair and it was heavy going. He knows all his hair is going to fall out and wants a head start on it! I felt like I was shaving a Shetland pony! “Do you have a hoover to get all this hair?” I asked as the buzzing shaver ran through his scalp and thatches of hair dropped to the floor. “No, see that big crack in the floorboards, just brush it all into that, that is where I brush all the dirt into” he answered me. “What if rats come and use that hair to build a big nest with?” I suggested. “Fucking hell, I never thought about that, lets brush it up and throw it outside in the bins” he quickly added. His flat is less than hygienic to be honest, but he had made a huge effort to clean it for me coming along. His mad jumpy crazy dog Cooper, was trying to shag my leg as I shaved him….I was trying to kick it off and make sure I never cut my brothers head! So then my brother told me that he had to shake the dog off yesterday as it bit his chemotherapy tubes that hang from a Hickman line in his chest! “The dog thinks they are clothes pegs and because he goes out the back and jumps up and bites the clothes pegs off the line, he thinks my chemo tubes are for biting every time I bend over and they dangle” he told me. “Fucking hell, keep them covered, you can’t have your crazy dog biting those tubes out of your flesh” I screamed. “Yes, I know so that’s why I have clothes pegs in my pocket, it gives him something to chew…. look” he said. In his hands were a selection of coloured clothes pins and the dog snapped them off him immediately! He then went onto tell me he was in the street last week and half naked man in bare feet carrying a cup of tea escaped from the local mental hospital approached him and asked my brother if he was in ward 5. “I told the mad bastard to fuck off; I mean he was the one in bare feet carrying a plastic mug of hot tea in the street, why would he think I was in a mental ward?” My brother gasped. “I don’t know why he thought that, what were you wearing?” I asked him as I shaved his wee grey head into what can only be described as a ‘rapist’ hairstyle. “I had on my pyjamas but I had a coat on top and my slippers, but I was only going to the chemist to get my methadone, so I never dress up for that, the pharmacist always laughs at me and we joke about my dress sense” he looked indignant at me. “Well two men meeting in the cold wearing pyjamas seems sensible to me, God knows why anyone thought either of you belonged in a mental ward beats me” I added sarcastically. It makes me sad; he lives alone and yet has all these posters and news cuttings of me on his walls. It is so touching, my daughter gulped when she saw them. Ashley can play guitar and my brother has his guitar in the flat, so she sat with him and played songs and they had a sing-a-long to all his favourite tunes. It was lovely; he cheered her on and was so proud of her guitar playing. My brother is clearly a funny mad character, he never stops making me laugh, he is very ill and I worry for him. He is lonely and too bloody faraway from me to keep a good eye on, so I can only get through once a week. I hope he comes through his chemotherapy with the same sense of humour he has now. |
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I got an email from the New Zealand Comedy Guild; they let me know that I have been nominated ‘Best International Guest’ regarding the show I took over there in May this year! How lovely is that? I find out who wins the award on 17th December. I am up for the award with tow other international comics. Now we all know how crap my record is at winning awards, I am always the bridesmaid and never the bride when it comes to any award schemes! But it is amazing to be nominated. Went into town today to try and find a winter warm coat that doesn’t make me look like a woolly mammoth….you see I am small and when I wear padded heavy coats I look like a fucking wee fat squirrel. So I gave up and decided that the old coat I used to have will have to do. I fly to London tomorrow; I am so looking forward to having a party with the Crown Lawn crew! They have invited me along to enjoy their festivities with them and I am so touched. Been getting through my BAFTA screeners, the industry people send me the DVD’s to watch in advance of the BAFTA awards in February and I am loving the task. I have to say that the best movie I have ever seen is ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ it is just wonderful and so fucking funny, you must go see it. The script is so sharp, the totally character driven screenplay is so awesome it makes the film so damn watch-able and the Grandfather in the film is just the best grandpa you are ever likely to come across in any movie. So I will be off the laptop for two days as I am not taking it with me to London. See you all soon. |
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I had a great night in London at the Crown Lawn party; I was so excited to go to a Christmas Lunch with the lovely Angela and her friends. Angela’s business is property and you have no idea how much I appreciate the accommodation she provides me for me in London…..I kid you not Madonna and Tom Cruise would be hard pressed to find anywhere as chic and so beautifully located as the place Angela gets me. I always feel like a star when I lie in my huge king-size bed in the room with marble under floor heating. I giggle and remind myself how thankful I am as I think back to the times as a child when I lay in my dirty sheets picking fleas off my skin in Glasgow in the 1960s….I would be starving and couldn’t wait to get to school the next day because we got a school lunch, I would get up and my bare feet would cramp on the freezing floor boards and stand in chittering cold bathroom and try to wash with no soap and get dried with a filthy sour smelling towel…..and there I was in a huge en suite bathroom, marble warmed floors, thick white towels, Big Ben chiming dutifully at my bedroom window and winter trees covered in small white lights twinkling in the street. Can you believe this is my life now? How lucky am I? Angela not only gives me Celebrity Accommodation she gave me the most fabulous expensive Christmas gifts I have EVER had… I got a Bottega Veneta leather purse (It is very chic, and there was a waiting list for this recently!). I also got a fur scarf, a set of vintage Lauder perfumes and the most wonderful hand sewn silk Butler and Wilson scarf! How wonderful? I was gob smacked, I have NEVER had such kindness and cannot thank her enough….and to make it worse, as I didn’t know there would be gift giving, I brought a scented candle…YES a fucking scented candle…I wanted to eat my own womb with embarrassment, but Angela has this amazing knack of making you feel wanted and at ease. I am so grateful to her. I had to leave the party as I had an early flight this morning. I also had to go to Groucho Club to meet Monica as I had some paper work for her. I love the Groucho, as I walked in I chatted to my friend Lola who works there and she and I got talking about an event she was at that Roland Gift from Fine Young Cannibals was playing at. They were my favourite band from the 1980s and I was so in love with Roland Gift the lead singer, I mean I had serious sexual fantasies and a HUGE crush on him….I told Lola this and she was laughing at my descriptions of all the dirty things I wanted to do this talented husky voice sexy man…I did go into minute details. So I met Monica, we sat and waited in the Groucho reception for a cab and then Lola came over holding the hand of ……Roland Gift saying “ This is Janey, she really has a huge crush on you” My fantasy sexy singer stood there, staring with incredulity at Lola’s vivid description of my sexual fantasies that involved him, I tried to roll myself up into a small ball and pretend to be a hedgehog, Roland’s sexy eyes bore into mine and he smiled that dirty smile that I had dreamt of, I wanted to die with horror and shame…Monica was pissing herself laughing and Roland took my hand and hugged me tightly and whispered into my red burning embarrassed ear “Thank you, I do like being licked” I meanwhile gabbled 5000 words a second as Lola stood there, finished her ‘Janey wants to fuck Roland Gift since 1983 announcement’ and smiled, threw out her arms and shouted “ I love making dreams come true” Roland kissed me, winked and walked off (the poor man had to be nice to this mental exhausted Scottish woman who was lugging a huge Santa bag and had bright red cheeks and who couldn’t make eye contact). There can be nothing more horrifically awkward than meeting a man you had a huge crush on and someone explaining your sexual fantasies of them TO THEM as you watch on…..I can laugh now, but I actually was going to pretend I had fainted to get out of it all…..poor man! So all in all I had an eventful night, great gifts and Roland Gift! Merry Christmas! |