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I was in Southampton on Saturday night doing my comedy thing, it was freezing and nice. I got up this morning (Sunday) and my mate John had organised to drive me to Gatwick to catch the flight to Barcelona coz he is awesome and a good mate. We got in the car at 7am (I hate mornings) and drove for about five minutes when his brand new car started making horrible ‘thudaa thudda’ noises which let us know his front tyre was flat. Fucking genius…all I need is to be stood in the freezing cold morning in Southampton with a flat tyre and a plane to catch. We stopped outside a building and I stomped about swearing and getting stressed, I was so tired and it’s nobody’s fault that a flat tyre happened but I was mental. Then I noticed the building we were outside was The Samaritans and a homeless man was curled up asleep in the doorway. My problems seemed insignificant now. So I shut my big privileged mouth and helped John drag out the spare. It was a different tyre altogether, we were astounded…this was a brand new car for fucksake. John called RAC who did come up quickly and the bloke explained that although the tyre looks like it came off a motorcycle, it is the spare and that’s what car dealers do nowadays, to save cash they give you a wee ‘baby’ tyre to get you home till you can replace it. The downside of this is- the big tyre doesn’t fit in the space provided! And you can only drive 50 miles an hour with a baby tyre…? What the fuck is that about? Anyway, we did manage to get to Gatwick on time and I arrived safely in Barcelona. It had been raining but the weather was nice. The comedy bloke who had arranged for me to come over picked me up at the airport and took me to the hotel. I got in and decided to go straight out a walk. I pulled on a pair of flip-flops that I had packed and strolled out. I never took the name or address of the hotel and yes…you got it…I got LOST. My toes started bleeding, as the flip-flops hated me and I wandered round tiny streets taking photographs, and then had to look at the photos to try to work out where I started my journey. I ended up a back alley that leads under a big parapet where homeless people hung out. They shouted stuff at me and I hobbled on, they sneered at me, and I hobbled on and then one man threw a big shoe and it smacked me on the neck. I now have a sore neck and bleeding toes and I am lost in Barcelona. Finally I texted the comedy man who gave me the address and I found my way back to the hotel. So here I sit, I am hoping the gig goes better than they day I have had. |
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Things worry me for no reason. Like the other day as I sat in a café in Barcelona, I was happily listening to my IPod and enjoying my music when I suddenly had an irrational fear that my dad might die soon. My chest went tight and I almost cried! What is wrong with me? My dad is in his mid-70s and doing well. Last year he fell off a ladder trying to put up Christmas decorations and knocked himself out, other than that he is dapper and fine. He does sometimes forget he is old and attempts to lift concrete slabs into his garden, or thinks he can trim the hedges with a big fuck-off electrical gadget and has to be stopped. His favourite game is the when the next door’s cat comes in and he torments it with a laser pen light. The poor cat gets exhausted running up and down the walls, dad laughs his head off as the thing looks insane trying to trap a small red dot. His other favourite thing is to tell me who has recently died in his long list of old pals that I vaguely recall. It usually begins with. “Do you remember old Jack who ran the pub at the end of the street?” Me- “yes, he had a club feet didn’t he?” Dad- “Yes he did …well he is dead” This is a regular phone conversation for dad and after he takes great pains for me to recall some old bloke, he then tells me how and when and why that person died. It’s rather odd, but I suppose when you get old the roll call seems to be getting bigger. He has a wicked sense of humour and when I embark on a big trip abroad I say to him “Dad, don’t die when I go away as it will haunt me forever” He replies “No don’t worry, I will hang on till you get back then die in accordance to your busy comedy schedule, don’t you worry, I won’t screw up your life” Dad has a better social life than me; he is rarely in when I call him. He goes out meeting his mates and often pops into town on the bus and cruises the pound shops for bargains. My wee lovely step mum says he buys bags of tat that he has to hide in his garden shed, as she is fed up with the nonsense he brings home and that makes me laugh. He is addicted to McDonald’s ice creams (which he is NOT allowed and eats them quickly in case he is spotted), he drinks too much coffee and eats chocolate in the middle of the night and stashes his sweets around the house. Mum keeps finding them and gives him hell for it. Dad doesn’t swear around mum as she quite rightly hates it but occasionally on the phone to me he will swear as he is telling me an anecdote and I laugh loudly because I know my step mum is near and she will nip his head off for the language! He is a great story teller. I recall one tale about when he was a little boy during the Second World War. He was evacuated to some place up in the North of Scotland; he was about 6 years old. Apparently the people mis treated him and he was covered in sores. His mum was worried and she instinctively travelled to the farm and found him all skinny and ill. She wrapped him up and bundled him on the train and then onto a tram, she stuffed him under the seat to get back into the Glasgow city centre. It was illegal to bring your kid back into the city during the war but she hid him under her coat as she got off the tram and that saved his life. She was incensed with anger at the farmer and refused to send him away again. Though he was finally settled in the Scottish Highlands with a good family till the end of the war and came home all fattened up and healthy. When I was a kid he told me a scary story about a man with a wee black Scottish terrier who went into a tunnel under my school. Dad even pointed out a drain that led to this tunnel in the middle of the grass sports park so I knew exactly where the frightening place was. He told me that as the man went deeper into the tunnel he heard a noise and went to investigate. A big dark clawing spectre appeared and chased the big man and he dropped dead with fear, but the wee dog came running out and it was now a WHITE haired Scotty dog. I was terrified from white Scotty dogs as a kid, and would scream when I saw one. I couldn’t even bear to go near the grassy sports park at school and I still have nightmares about it. Years later, I told him how scary that tale was. “The story wasn’t set in your school park, it was a tunnel near the dirty burn, and I was trying to stop you going into the filthy water, how the hell did you get that mixed up with your school sports park? Is that why you were rubbish at sport? Did I ruin your chance to win an Olympic medal? You never did listen to me properly” he laughed. Dad is funny. |
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Back in 1977 when I was 16, I was rather poor, scruffy and desperate to be pretty and popular, just like every other sixteen year old that didn’t own boobs or nice clothes, I was dreaming of a better life that never quite came to be realised. Looking back I wish I had the wherewithal to scrape together a few hundred quid and had flown out to New York to hang out with musicians and artists. Imagine how different things would have been! I could have palled it with Debbie Harry, witnessed the beginning of Rap music in the Bronx and maybe even became a famous artist for fifteen minutes. Instead I stayed in Glasgow and managed to buy shoes before the summer was out. Life never works out the way you want it. I really wanted to wear black eyeliner, ripped tee shirts and be a groupie for rock bands. Though I suppose breasts would have helped that issue, unless Gary Glitter was looking for young people to join his gang, then I would have been in with a big shout. Being nearly 50 has made me realise all the ambitions and yearns have passed me by. Debbie Harry now looks haggard and that’s probably how I look as well, but haven’t the guts to admit it to myself yet. But she got to shake her booty in Studio 54 in New York, she watched Bianca Jagger turn up at the famous club on a white horse….a fucking horse….how rock and roll is that? In 1977 I turned up at the community disco in a nylon top with cardboard in my shoes to stop the holes leaking rainwater into them. Mind you I saw Bianca Jagger at an anti-war rally not long ago and she did look a bit old and tired….but she did get to live the life of a glam star, so she has earned the right to wear autumnal layers and ethnic beads, I don’t. I never got to be a rock chick or live the high life, it all sucks. I wish I had headed off to California and got to visit the Troubadour club and listen to The Eagles, Jackson Browne and James Taylor sing live…way before they all became organic drug counsellors, fat and bald. I wanted to jump into Jacuzzis with them when they wore denim shirts and skinny jeans; I wanted them to dedicate a song to me, why didn’t I get to have mindless sex and a heroin habit with the groovy Americans? I was too busy trying to avoid scurvy and head lice when ‘Hotel California’ was being immortalised to vinyl. I am off to apply full strength expensive wrinkle cream and try on a dress that will never fit me again. Youth is wasted on the young. |
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There is nothing I hate more than restaurant staff that ignore you and sit chatting SHIT for ages. I took my daughter out for dinner and we sat there starving. “Well, it’s not a secret anymore” the annoying blonde waitress giggled. “I knew you kissed him” squealed the red haired girl. The red haired girl sat stroking the blonde girl’s hair and a big daft young bloke was plaiting the red girl’s hair. They were the tableaux of annoyance. Ashley and I were the only people sitting down, so it wasn’t as if they had much to do, but a fucking menu would have been welcome. We were too tired to fuck off elsewhere. So I eventually shouted “Hello” and then acted nice as those bastards can pee in your food. The food arrived and it was not too bad, but the staff need bludgeoned to death with a blunt spoon. Today started with a call from the man who is supposed to fix my laptop and he was late, the insurance I took out on my laptop gives me home visits if it is fucked and my keyboard was worn out and the click button on the internal mouse was broke. He eventually arrived as I was leaving. Husband was now in charge of the geek and I left the geek instructions. “Do not do anything that wipes out my memory, just fix the keys please?” “I can’t guarantee that” he said smiling. “No, you will guarantee that” I said not smiling. “I can’t guarantee that your memory will be fine, but I will try. By the way I have parked my car in your private car park out the back will it be ok?” he added. “Yes, it will be ok, but I can’t guarantee that, now fix my laptop with minimum damage to its well being” I said as I slammed the door leaving. Husband gave me a hushed whispery telling off in the hallway. “Don’t be nasty to the bloke” “Fuck off…and if he screws my laptop, you better go set fire to his car” I hissed back. The rest of the day went fine. Had some meetings that went relatively well and hopefully will be fruitful as the year wears on. Spent the night clearing out the hall cupboard which smells funny and none of us can figure out what the damn smell is. So every article was emptied out and washed down, but we still can’t figure out where the strange smell is coming from. In the midst of the clear out Ashley found our old vinyl LP collection and demanded she get them. I told her “No” and she sulked. I have no idea why she wants them….probably because she thinks everything is really hers and can’t quite grasp why she can’t get everything she sees. I may bite her when she is sleeping and see how she likes that. Had a rant about crap TV to my husband who sat there nodding. I mean seriously how can that much shite get commissioned? I can’t be the only person who screams at the telly. The thing is… everything I hate seems to be everything people on a UK comedy website forums LOVE… I know this because I googled the name of the show and screeds of adoration came up. I must be one of those people who hate things that everyone else just raves about! You know that feeling when you stare at a painting and everyone sees something that you just can’t? I see a big square red and brown box that a toddler with a squint may have painted with a potato stamper and other people see genius works of art and pay millions for it. It’s all fucked. I hate that type of comedy TV sketch shit where a bunch of students have got together and created something that doesn’t have a punchline but has a ‘deeper meaning’ and annoying emotional-haired boys squeal with hysterics at it. WHY? I don’t know….I am probably too old and dim to get it. I also watched the Sarah Silverman sketch where she swims about like a mermaid then pees a bed and gets her friend and a policeman to come quick to her house because ‘There has been an accident” is the unbelievably bad punchline and I pulled a nose hair out to relieve my inner pain. Was that FUNNY…honestly? Really? People laugh at that? It’s me that’s got it all wrong, I can feel people writing back as I type this telling me I am shit and a crap comic. They are probably right; I have no sense of humour. |
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Two weeks ago a terminally ill girl won the right to refuse treatment after a hospital ended its bid to force her to have a heart transplant. Hannah has a hole in her heart and copes with various symptoms from previous childhood illnesses. Hannah is aged 13 and had decided she wanted to die with dignity and fought for her right to do so, tooth and nail. Hereford County Hospital child protection team contacted authorities and threatened to remove Hannah from her parents care if they failed to bring her to the hospital for the live saving operation. Her parents were swamped by the might of the social services and hospital protection team, but the parents stood by their daughter’s decision and the case has been dropped. Hannah is now at home and preparing to die in her own time. Meanwhile in the rather down market poor area of Haringey London, the social services, the child protection team and a paediatrician failed to recognise the systematic abuse of a 17 month old boy who was found dead in a blood splattered cot last year. The wee boy named Baby P attended the hospital where a prominent paediatrician failed to notice his broken back and several broken ribs; he was allowed home to die at the hands of his mother and her abusive boyfriend. The doctor said the baby was ‘miserable and cranky’ two days before he died. I suspect his broken spine, ripped ear and numerous injuries might have made him rather upset. Baby P had been the subject of many social services enquiries and was on the child protection register, and despite that, the social work team were at pains to keep the family together. Haringey social services seem to have learnt no lessons from the Victoria Climbie case in 2000 when Victoria managed to slip through the social care net and died at the hands of her carers. The court case surrounding Baby P has led Lord Laming to start an investigation into the issues surrounding his horrific death. He said “It would be awful wherever it happened, but it seems particularly sad that is has happened in the same area where Victoria Climbie experienced this same awful cruelty and a terrible death and involved the very same services” Social services do a sterling job when they get it right. Yet there are too many social protection workers who are determined to ‘keep families together’ and in the process manage to let real evil bastards slip through the net. Adults who are determined to torture kids will manage to dupe the authorities into believing everything is fine with their kid. Like the mother of Baby P, she smeared chocolate over his bruised face, yet the care worker couldn’t tell the difference between the dirt and the cuts. That’s appalling and worrisome. I am sure Baby P would have said different if only he could have had a voice, he wasn’t allowed to speak, he couldn’t speak, he was battered and cowed like a small tortured animal. The social services in Haringey need to account for what went wrong, yet again another ‘investigation’ will occur to please the government and the do-gooders will bleat their excuses. Someone somewhere let that wee boy down and that needs to be addressed. Things won’t change unless you go live in Hereford, where it seems the social services are determined to get involved in the care and protection of your child. |