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Yes, it truly is December. I know this because everywhere I look is fake snow, bright baubles and scented shopping malls. I do love it though. Husband isn’t a big Christmas fan, he has made it clear the tree can go up, but it mustn’t get in the way of the flat screen telly and it better not flash too much, as that exacerbates his Aspergers Syndrome. I told him that him talking about the happy Christmas tree exacerbates my hormones and makes me feel like taking him straight to punchy town, he told me such a place didn’t exist. I said it was a metaphor – he said he didn’t like metaphors – I said “shut up or I will poke your eye with a Christmas bauble” it went on for ages, suffice to say I won and he dragged the tree from the cupboard with an annoyed face. Every year we go through the same crap. I don’t want a gift as I don’t need anything and I can buy stuff myself. He doesn’t want anything as we can never get him what he wants (his own house with padded corners, a butler and a Lazy-ee Boy seat) so we compromise by just buying Ashley stuff. She loves it and has made a list of what she wants. Husband who is great at searching online for cheap deals, ends up buying two things and getting loads of stuff thrown in for free, that’s Aspergers and too much time on your hands as far as I am concerned. He doesn’t have the ‘interesting’ Aspergers Syndrome, just the annoying type. Why can’t he just count cocktail sticks thrown on the floor? That’s a great party trick, yet his Aspergers Syndrome doesn’t accommodate such tomfoolery, he is just good at repeating verbatim all the stuff I say in anger. He would make a great actor if he could just tell his face which emotion his words were displaying. Anyway I must stop saying things about him; he will find out and smile but shout fiercely, which is disconcerting to say the least. I have just realised – that’s why he doesn’t get on well with cats! They also smile and bite you at the same time, or wag their tails and purr. Cats are Aspergic animals and don’t mix well with other Aspergic sufferers. The past week has been busy as hell; I gigged at Edinburgh Stand and got the most awesome review… "The queen of Scottish comedy...A bold, take-no-prisoners type of comic... Comic gold. Brilliantly painted scenarios, uproarious and touching in equal measure.... Intelligent and skilful comedy of the highest order." (Edinburgh Evening News, 2nd December 2009) That is a lovely thing and cheers me up no end. It nice when you get good things said about you, especially when you work hard! I wrote a comedy article for a newspaper this week as well and did warm up at BBC which can be tiring and long, yet fulfilling. Am off out today to get myself a pair of leather gloves, as this is what I am buying myself for Christmas. |
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Wee baby Julia is now three years old and is my great niece, she is small, blonde and the perfect Aryan child that Hitler would have shoved on posters of the propaganda type. Her giant blue eyes that peep at you under the white blonde hair are disarming; she is the wee sister of Abi (famous in her mouse killing video on my YouTube site) and just gorgeous. Luckily Julia hasn’t started killing small mammals; her favourite thing at my house is to pull down the collection of miniature hedgehogs in my hall and make them all kiss each other on my wooden table. A lot of kissing happens and American type chatter, it’s funny that small Scottish kids use a Californian voice when they do ‘play’. American TV has such an effect on children, that annoying nasal voice that inhabit all the cartoon characters eventually come flooding out of the mouths of wee Glaswegians. She asked me to switch on kids TV which I did and I was agog at the adverts for Barbie’s who were wearing what can only be described as prostitute outfits. Crotch skimming glittery skirts, high pony tails and tops that revealed pert plastic boobies, all for wee girls to dress and undress, suddenly the kissing hedgehogs seemed positively dull. It made me think of the dolls I got as a child. We had a Tressy doll, which was a teenage skinny doll that when you pressed her tummy button her hair grew long out of the crown of her head. Long hair/short hair…that was Tressy’s thing and I managed to get ALL her hair pulled out and cut it off at the roots, my big sister Ann nearly battered me to death over that incident. I wasn’t good with dolls, I remember one Christmas morning waking up to a stiff Spanish doll in the corner of the room, it was about 3 foot tall, as tall as me. It had a big bee hive hair do and dirty red slashed lips, it resembled a small Amy Winehouse. I thought it was a dead toddler standing beside the electric fire and screamed myself sick till they took it away. Who gives their child a dead toddler for Christmas? So anyway I had fun with wee Julia, she makes me smile and she has a high pitched squeal of laughter when you chase her with a spatula round the kitchen. She squashed Jaffa cakes into small paper cake cases and then proceeded to hand them out for us to eat. They were all sticky and yucky looking, but she declared “I made these myself” which I loved. Any girl who can learn about baking cheats so young is a friend of mine, good on you Julia, baking is for nutters, just buy a cake. So tomorrow I have to get my hair cut and coloured, I have to buy gifts and get the house Christmas ready. That doesn’t mean anything, it just means that I buy a scented cinnamon candle and burn it. I am working the majority of December and looking forward to having a wee holiday in January. I may got back to LA in January, who knows? |
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I had an awesome wrap party night at the BBC gig, just lovely and my daughter Ashley came along and made me happy. She makes me laugh; she suggested that she buy me a small red duffel coat so that I can run around the river bridges of Glasgow in a ‘Don’t Look Now’ manner. She says I look like a child from behind but have a wee old wrinkly face at the front. What a nice child I gave birth to eh? Last week I met up with my dad who told me to walk him to the bus stop, he then told me “That bus takes me home” and pointed to a big Glasgow bus. I waved him off then ten minutes later he called me shouting “This is the wrong bus you put me on” “Dad, I never put you on a bus, YOU said it was YOUR bus” I laughed loudly on the phone. “No I didn’t its like going to Belsen horror camp on this bus” he muttered. Now before you get all umpity and suggest my dad is anti- Semitic, he isn’t, it’s a generational catchphrase, old Scottish people use the term ‘Belsen’ to describe any type of mildly uncomfortable situation. Scots use exaggeration and shock to display humour. If they see a skinny model on TV they say things like ‘she looks like she walked out of Belsen, she should eat’ I know that it sounds offensive and probably is to some people, but my dad and other elderly relatives do throw the word ‘Belsen’ about at an alarming rate. It’s a generational thing I suppose. I had a neighbour who once described a Butlins holiday camp as Belsen, now that is just wrong, old Scottish people do have a rather savage sense of humour, yet we contemporary comics get our balls kicked for less! So apparently an over crowded bus hurtling through the foggy streets was akin to a horror ride to a death camp in my fathers mind and guess who sent him there? Me…according to him. I do love the crazy old nutter. Today I got up early and went to see wee Abi my great niece in her nativity play. She was the lead part in The Bossy King, and she really did take the stage with gusto. All the other kids were mumbling, stumbling and shuffling with downcast eyes. Abi was belting out her lead role with a performance that Dame Judy Dench would have been proud of. “I am the bossy King, everyone bow down to me NOW!” she yelled and startled all the babies in prams and on knees of the parents sitting in the school hall. I gasped out loud and laughed. Abi winked at me and a huge grin split her face, then she went quickly back to grumpy face of the Bossy King. I am so proud of her! Baby Julia was on my knee silently waving at Abi and getting annoyed she wasn’t getting a wave back “Hi Abi” she finally yelled out in toddler frustration. I giggled and hugged wee Julia close, or almost suffocated her in my bosom…you decide! It was lovely watching the wee school play and Abi is destined to be a top actress, I can see her Oscar acceptance as I write. I have been at Glasgow Jongleurs all week, the Christmas nights can be really hard work, but all in all it’s been fine. The downside was wearing a new bra I bought, honestly it felt like a torture device from the Spanish Inquisition (see my dad’s use of genocidal events to exhibit exaggerated mild discomfort has been passed onto me) and I spent the whole night in pain. How can a bra be that sore? The side bones literally cut into my ribcage, my tits looked great but my lungs were being crushed. So it’s been a good week. Talk soon. |
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Long life energy saving light bulbs are total bollocks. They don’t last ten years and they are so dull you have to buy the highest wattage, which still feels like a flickering candle and end up buying another lamp to brighten the room. How is that ‘energy saving’? I now have two lights running to make up for the ONE light I used to have. Apparently if you use the energy bulbs on the ceiling they don’t last long with heat reflecting from the ceiling and they are only going to last ten years if you only use them for 3 hours a day, and to make matters worse, if you continually switch them off and on, THAT reduces their lifespan as well! On top of all that, the light gives me a dull thudding headache and I end up with a battery lamp beside my laptop! So, basically I am going through these energy saving bulbs at a rate of 2 a year! My old bulbs lasted longer and I don’t know if that’s less energy used, but when you work out the carbon footprint of supplying these bulbs at the store on a bigger demand as they last less time, they might be just as bad as the old bulbs! How am I going to save penguins with that attitude? How can I stop Scotland from breaking off and floating to Norway unless I can stop using so much power? I am worried about my green house-ness. So that’s ONE rant over, second rant is- Why does the big store Marks and Spencer insist on charging me cash for a carrier bag, yet wrap every single piece of food in acres of plastic? Try opening their pate, cheesecake or salad boxes and you will come up against plastic fantastic wrappy ville! So come on M&S make up your own bloody mind about your commitment to less plastic and start using biodegradable cardboard boxes for food- or stop making me feel like a child killing, crack smoking, herpes ridden hooker, when I want to buy a bag to carry home your plastic over-wrapped goods. That’s it, no more rants, its nearly Christmas. |
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Just watching the Nativity scene in my local town square, I was struck by how bare it looked. Having given birth myself once, and I do say once because it was so painful and distressing, I never done it again, I was shocked at how serene Mary always looks. Personally I would be thoroughly gutted, that after giving birth to the most important child in all millennia, the only visitors I received were a trio of Kings bringing totally useless gifts, not one women pops in with a hot mug of tea and a couple of pain killing tinctures. It was bad enough for Mary having to go through a painful labour (She was a virgin as well, that stuff would have hurt) amongst straw and some farmyard animals, but to have to entertain guests without as much as a shower first, must have been horrendous. How does she remain that peaceful and happy looking, I personally couldn’t sit down for a week and don’t even ask me how my boobs felt, as to describe that would involve a flip chart and an over head projector. Now let’s look at the gifts, only men would bring such obscure objects. It seems even back in those days; men still didn’t know the protocol of presents for a new born. Today’s fathers and men friends still turn up to see a new baby bearing flowers, balloon animals and fluffy toys, all of which are useless to the point of stupidity. What every woman needs immediately after any birth, is 1. Big knickers that hug under your boobs. 2. Giant sanitary pads with at least a 10.5 tog rating. 3. Maternity bra with supporting straps that could dock a ship. 4. Clean towels, favourite shower gel and moisturiser 5. Drugs supplied by Keith Richards. Mary (I don’t know her surname, does anyone? Does Jesus have a surname?) anyway Jesus’ mother Mary, must have been made of steely stuff, Joseph (her man) wasn’t that bright to start with, dragging a heavily pregnant woman to what can only be described as Vegas, Bethlehem was at its busiest time. He never booked ahead, he didn’t plan for the birth, and he shoved her onto a donkey during the early stages of her labour, gave her a pat of the rump and headed off into the desert. She calmly agreed and headed off to Bethlehem. At that point, I would have kicked his head and turned up in Bethlehem alone, screaming and demanding a doctor, after all this was no ordinary child that was about to be born. Mary must have literally been an actual Saint. If it were me, there would have been swearing, bitching and at least some Joseph bashing with the local chicks round the waterhole. But not for Mary, she calmly accepted her fate; she serenely smiled through labour pains with a beatific smile. She simply cleaned up behind her, washed her own child, combed her hair, washed her face and pulled the blue scarf around her head and got on with job as being Jesus’ mammy. Then accepted the clumsy gifts from the strange blokes, who came to visit and thus showed up all us women as bleating, screaming whingers who couldn’t handle a contraction, thanks for that Mary! |