How many fights can I have?

There I was dragging my slightly sick ass into town to take back a gift that I bought husband.
Ok…here’s the story…I bought him a fancy silver case that I thought contained a beard trimmer, what it actually contained was a hair dressing set. This I should have known because the cardboard sleeve around the box said “Hair grooming kit” I mistook hair for beard…easy mistake it was the Christmas shopping sweats that made me choose wrongly.

I discarded the cardboard wrapping as husband opened the gift and he ripped it up for recycling (husband is currently obsessed with recycling- I am too and thought I could swap him for Eminem, turns out recycling isn’t swapping…who knew?)
Anyway I took the silver box back to Boots the chemist.

The young assistant with a rash of spots who looked about 17 years old- took one look at the silver box, took in my explanation that I thought it was a beard trimmer; he noticed the cardboard sleeve missing and said loudly “I cannot take it back in this condition”

I said “What condition? Untouched? It’s perfectly unused?”

He said “There was a cardboard sleeve on this and it’s now gone”

I said “Well, now I have two complaints, the woman who sold me this knew I asked for a beard trimmer and she not only sold me the wrong goods, but she screwed me for the cardboard sleeve”

He said “Are you honestly trying to tell me that this box came without a sleeve?”

I said “Yes, (I was lying I couldn’t explain my husbands compulsive recycling habit) Yes It never came with a sleeve, if it did come with a packaged sleeve I would have known it was hair dressing kit and not a beard trimmer, now I am disgusted”

He said “Then how did she scan it into the till as the barcode is on the sleeve?”
He looked smug at his question, he thought he could break me at this point, but he didn’t know I have been questioned under pressure for concealing guns and weapons in my life.

“Well as you know all electrical goods are kept behind the counter in the Braehead store because of the sheer amount of thievery going on and she must have scanned it from the pile she had near her with her scanning gun” I smiled and added
“When did you assume that working for Boots made you Monsieur Piorot, do I look like a 1920s cigarette girl who stabbed someone with an art deco lamp? Just refund the goods, my husband doesn’t have a lot of head hair but has a huge beard, it’s like dating a bloke from ZZ Top, so deal with it”

A man behind me laughed, I laughed but spotty sales boy didn’t.

I then asked for the manager of the store, by this time I was NOT leaving till I got a beard trimmer in return for the silver cased Hair dressing kit I mistakenly bought but refused to accept my guilt in the part.

The young assistant made a phone call to bring down a manager “She is really sarcastic and difficult and I think she is lying” I heard him whisper on the phone to the manager who was now having to brace himself to meet ‘Eva Braun the difficult customer’ (which is a good reference as Braun make shavers).

I stood my ground beside the photo counter, I saw the manager come along the baby bottle aisle ….I made good eye contact and smiled broadly (this always makes them scared, never act agitated it throws them and they don’t know how to deal with a pleasant but forceful customer).

As the boy approached me (he was actually younger looking that the spotty assistant if that was legally possible) “Hello Miss Godley” he spoke.

Shit - how did he know my name? Now I was thrown.

“I saw you last week on stage at Jongleurs- you are very funny, now how can we fix this? I tell you what go and pick a beard trimmer and this will be all sorted” He said with confidence that shook me.

I felt horrible, he knew I was lying, the sales boy knew I was lying, I wanted to die, then I figured that ‘Hey who cares…lets get a beard trimmer for Grizzly Adams’

I am going to be nice to people for the whole of 2007 and not lie anymore to sales assistants….or I am going straight to hell, but at least I get smooth kisses before I go.

Sorry sales boy and assistant manager child …I promise to be good.

Abi at the Nativity….

My wee three year old great- niece Abi went along to watch her big brother Shaun at his school Nativity. Her mum is my niece Ann.
Ann has three kids, Shaun, Abi and Julia.
She recently got married to the father of Julia but has two different fathers to Shaun and Abi.
Her husband is a wonderful step dad to the kids and they make a lovely wee family and I am so proud of them all, especially Ann who came through a lot having kids quite young, yet managed to find the right man.
Abi is my favourite funny wee great niece who has more than enough of my DNA to cause trouble daily!

As Shaun stood on stage and sang “Once in Royal David’s city” Abi piped up loudly “Who is David mummy?”
Her mum tried to speak quietly said “Its part of the bible story now be quiet we can talk later” and patted Abi’s wee chubby legs that were covered in bright red tights.

“My daddies name is David, but he isn’t living with us, I have a step dad called Rob” Abi insisted in telling an elderly lady in front of them.

“Mummy why is that child pregnant, you were pregnant last week” Abi loudly announced.

“Abi, I wasn’t pregnant last week, your baby sister is nearly six months old, now shush please” Her mummy got irritated.

“Is she pregnant with baby Jebus?” Abi carried on.

“His name is Jesus” her mum hissed “She is being Mary in the story, remember we told you it?”

“Yes I remember and that man isn’t Jebus’s daddy is he?” Abi yelled now.

“Abi, stop shouting, yes that’s right he is not the father of the baby Jesus” Her mum added through gritted teeth as adults around started giggling.

“Who is Jebus’s daddy then?” Abi now stood up and faced her mum in the church aisle.

“God is Jesus’ daddy; can we talk about this later please? Now sit nice and watch the show” Her mum now exasperated.

“I have a step dad, like Jebus, but who is God then? Where is he up there on the stage mummy?” Abi spoke-now getting louder.

“You don’t get to see God, he doesn’t always turn up now Abi please shush and we can talk later” her mum started to get frantic as people were staring.

“Is he like Shaun’s daddy? Coz he never shows up does he?” Abi nodded her head and shouted to the stage “Shaun… God is like your daddy coz he never shows up when he is s’possed to”

Her mummy then grabbed Abi’s wee fat cheeks and hugged her close to shut her up….how I WISH I had been there when Abi was trying to make sense of God.
I would have cheered her on.
Ann called me to tell me and I couldn’t stop laughing, I wish one of the parents had brought along a video camera and filmed her, how funny would that be on YOUTUBE?

Seeing my brother…

I had to go through to Falkirk yesterday to catch up with my lovely brother who not only has HIV, he now has cancer but is fighting it well.
Mij has had various drug issues in his past and this combined with the HIV and cancer would make many a man crumble…NOT my crazy brother he is just so fucking funny and spirited…he called me last week ad actually said “Janey I worry about bird flu”

I laughed out loud and said “Mij, you have had HIV since 1986, you have came through heroin addiction, you have fucking cancer I don’t think a pigeon is going to kill you!”

He has a mad jumpy dog called Cooper whom he loves dearly and it keeps him going.

He lives alone and I worry about him being lonely so I go through to the house that is just an organised tip (but much cleaner in the past year than ever…thank God) and spend the day with him.

I got to Falkirk rail station, popped into the supermarket to pick him up some food and then jumped on a bus to his street. The bus cost £2…that’s outrageous £2 for a single short bus trip? I only get charged a £1 in London I was angry that they charged that amount. The people out there are hardly rich and that’s just mental.

Anyway Mij was waiting at the stop to meet me and Cooper was dragging him all over the pavement barking and jumping, poor Mij loves the dog but the animal is clearly too powerful for him. I love Mij’s funny stories and we stocked up his fridge and sat down for tea. Cooper sat there staring at my sandwich and wined for bit as I ate it all up, then the daft dog decided to try to shag my leg. His big sharp claws gripped my ankle and he humped my calf!
Cooper has really short white and brown hair and looks a bit like a big Jack Russell Dog mixed with a Grey Hound!

“Fucking stop it you mad bastard, Janey is your Auntie” Mij shouted, as if the dog can only hump humans who are not related! I giggled and shoved the excitable animal off me.

I remembered that I had brought the Scotsman newspaper to show him, as I had a big article in the paper that I wrote about heroin and prostitution. He was very impressed and we both chatted about drugs and women who go ‘on the game’ to provide their habit. Mij asked me if he could keep the paper, I agreed and he stuck it on his wall with all the other posters and newspaper clippings. It always feels funny sitting in his living room surrounded by my face in various different shaped and sizes.

Mij and I chatted about his grand kids whom he loves dearly, they live far way and he really misses them. We talked about books we had read and then he spoke about our mum and my book. Now my autobiography really does blow the lid off our family and the sex abuse I suffered from an uncle of ours and it also charts Mij’s demise and his violence towards our mum who died in 1982.
He has NEVER spoke about the book and I had no real idea how he felt about it, and he told me he hasn’t read it but got second hand information about it from a mate.

“I feel so guilty and awful about how I treated my mammy Janey, I hit her” he mumbled through tears.

“Yes, I know Mij but she created that relationship with you, she cultivated it and you were a product of her spoiling you as a child, you were the first born and she doted on you. When dad left she became very angry and she somehow enjoyed fighting with you in a strange way” I replied.

“I think what you did was very wrong, you bullied me as well and I know that you loved me, you told me that many times, but I think your depression even back then was clearly apparent, I am not excusing you Mij but there is a bigger picture to this, you never beat her and left her crying, YOU both fought and she took part in that and goaded the fight because she needed somehow to express her shame at dad leaving”
I added and I believe that.

Mij sat there in silence and I believe to this day that kids who hit their parents or physically fight with them are reacting to ‘learned behaviour’.

Mij never did walk in, beat up my terrified mother and make her do stuff against her will, mum and he both scratched, punched and kicked each other, she would run at him and throw things and fight till he reacted and then would sit and cry and hug him. Both of them crying and being sorry to each other. It was very disturbing for me as a kid.

I explained to him that that’s how I wrote about it in the book.

As we sat there in silence I looked down to Cooper who was now lying on his back showing me his white stomach, the pink skin showing through and there crawling up the short white hairs was a FLEA…..I was shocked but immediately reached down and plucked it from his flesh and threw it straight into the gas fire and heard it crack.
Much in the same way my mother used to do when she plucked fleas from my skin as a child.

“What the fuck was that?” Mij screamed.

“A flea, fucking hell Mij Cooper has fleas” I screeched and jumped up scratching my legs.

“He has been staying at my mates house and he has cats, I have to leave him there when I get chemo, they must have given him fleas, I will go get the flea treatment from the bathroom and we will do it to him” Mij jumped up, Cooper barked and we all ran into the bathroom to get the magical flea killer drops.

Cooper sat quietly as we put the drops on him and then both Mij and I started scratching ourselves. Cooper lifted his back leg and scratched his tummy with an awkward claw upwards…it was so funny as the position was so clumsy looking. There we were all three of us clawing away, I scratched Cooper in the places where he can’t reach and he was really loving it, he stood there and let me run the sharp metal brush through his back, if a dog could have smiled then he was doing it!
So I finally made my way home, and Glasgow was very dark when the train pulled into Queen St station.
Husband and I went shopping as soon as I got home and I was exhausted to be honest, but last night as I finally climbed into bed, I recalled that horrid flea and have spent the whole night clawing my flesh and had dreams of being a kid with insects and lice creeping through the folds in my skin at the back of my knees! YUK…
I woke up this morning and had what can only be described as a ‘Rape Shower’ I scrubbed every bit of my skin and stood under a blasting hot shower till in finally felt clean.
Goodness knows if I actually have fleas, I will die if I do!

What a day!

I met up with an old pal called Big Betty. I knew her from my pub days and she is a right funny character. She asked me all about my work in comedy and loved chatting about my autobiography as she recalled all the incidents in my past.
I decided to open up my laptop and show her some of my sketches, the one she requested is the short film on You Tube of Ashley and I performing the skit about Ashley being ‘Special Needs’ girl.
As we were watching the sketch it slowly dawned on me that she had a Downs Syndrome cousin and I started to feel awfully odd….she simply pursed her lips and looked me in the eye and said

“I really don’t approve of this you know my cousin Sally had special needs, I am offended at this, and she never asked to be born that way”

I paused and replied “Actually Ashley did this sketch because when she went to the local kids club, she always recalled how Sally would beat her up for crayons, Sally was 28 years of age and Ashley was 3 years old, she told me that she always had to take the crap and no one would help her, so she figured that there was comedy in the manipulation that Sally wielded on her”

Big Betty agreed…slightly and smiled through gritted teeth.

The conversation continued and Big Betty decided to tell me how she lives downstairs from “Three Darkies from Nigeria, and that the Paki’s who work with her really smell funny and stink” I gasped at the sheer amount of political incorrectness spilling from her wee funny mouth and shuddered.

“I find that kind of talk offensive, I have a relative who is half Indian and funnily enough he never asked to be born that way either, although he is very happy and we would never change the way he is” I snapped at her.

She burst out laughing as did I and she said “well we are both right, I suppose Sally is retarded and your relative is a Paki”

“Both of us are wrong actually” I said.

Christmas Shopping is Evil…

I cannot believe that I actually went into town on a fucking Saturday this near to Christmas with a ten year old boy. My nephew Shaun and I had to keep each other company as his mother went for his ‘Santa gifts’.

Shaun explained that he knew Santa wasn’t real and that his mum buys the presents. I smiled and we grabbed each others hand and raced off to the big fancy shop called Fraser’s in Buchanan Street. It has been a department store in Glasgow for a century and the blond sandstone building is architecturally awesome, huge pillars on the inside and out, stone sculptures hanging off the top façade….so wonderful.

We followed the colourful toy floor stickers that trail at the start of the store entrance and headed up the big cherry wooden staircase decked in the most beautiful decorations I have seen this year. Shaun gasped at the hanging toys from the ceiling and raced up the steps till he reached the top TOY department.

He quickly headed for the ‘Boys Toys’ section and I could hear him yell ‘Awesome’ at the top of his voice when he came upon the massive robotic dinosaur that was being demonstrated. We browsed the area and discussed various games and computer stuff that was all out for display. I bought him a small James Bond car with working ejector seat, he was so happy and clutched it to his chest as we made our way out of the store.

Shaun being polite held the massive wooden and glass exit door ajar to let some ladies enter and they all smiled and thanked him, then a lady in a fur coat stropped past him without even a glance or word of thanks as he struggled to keep the heavy door open.
An elderly woman in a formidable looking trench coat and boots barked at the woman who brushed past Shaun and shouted in the posh-est Scottish voice I have ever heard “Excuse me madam, but if you thank children and appreciate them for being polite, it breeds encouragement and praise, your manners are dreadful” The fur lady turned on her heels and looked at the trench-coated lady and then at Shaun.

Shaun stared up at the fur coated lady through his wee spectacles; he smiled at her and the furry woman just walked off in a huge strop.
The elderly lady in the trench coat bent down to Shaun and said “You are a lovely helpful young man and your mother must be proud of you”
Shaun gave her his mega watt smile and turned to me and said in the loudest voice “Aunty Janey, that old posh woman nearly had a punch up with that big fat woman wearing the cat coat”
The elderly lady laughed out loud and walked off waving to Shaun.
I laughed my ass off at the ‘cat coat’ comment and took him to meet his mum.
We then proceeded to battle against the tide of grumpy parcel laden Glaswegians as they too made their way through the busiest city centre shopping day I have seen in years.
People spending millions on presents….its crazy!
I told Shaun how as a kid, we used to get a stocking with a tangerine inside it and a small board game like Ludo or a doll for our Christmas, he was amazed at how little we got. I explained that back in the 1960s we didn’t have that much cash and we just accepted it.
“Aunty Janey, you must miss your mum because she is dead” he said looking at me with those big brown penny eyes he has.
“What made you think about my mum Shaun?” I asked him.
“Well I was imagining you as a wee girl at Christmas and then I pictured your mum talking to you and then I remembered she was dead and I felt sorry about that” he spoke quietly.

I told him how my mum would have loved him; she would have been a wonderful great- grandmother to him had she lived long enough to see him. That only led to more questions about my mothers death and I wasn’t sure if Shaun had been told how she died, my mum was murdered and I didn’t want to have to tell him in case that wasn’t something he was to be told until he was older. It wasn’t really Christmas shopping conversation to be honest.

At that moment his mum arrived on the horizon, she was laden down with giant Santa bags and a huge smile. Thank God- I thought to myself, no more awkward questions from my wee favourite sensitive nephew.

So there we have it, I hate shopping!

Blood, sex and tears…

Well there was blood, last night as I was compere at Glasgow Jongleurs I decided to leap off the stage as I brought on the first act and promptly crashed to the floor and ripped a big hole in the knee of my tights and blood seeped out of my flesh. The good news is NO ONE saw it as the lights are dark in the corner where I jumped and the act was getting a big applause as he grabbed the mic!

I am such a dick! What made me think I was still 14 years old and can jump like that? My knees recalled youth but my torso reminded them that I was middle aged and buckled in protest!

As if that wasn’t enough drama for one night, here’s more….I was standing at the Dee-jay box chatting to Jay our music man when a tall fat grey haired man approached me “Hey Janey, remember me? You gave me a mention in your autobiography” he boomed at me with open arms.
I gulped quietly and stared at him, I don’t recall this mans face, is he Barra my first boyfriend? Is he one of my husbands family who I haven’t spoke to in years? “I am sorry, I can’t remember you at all” I answered smiling.

“Well, I am the detective that searched you father in laws house the day we found the guns” he laughed and hugged me, as if this was the way you normally greet people who you have jailed in the past.

“Holy Fuck! You are indeed” I still strained to hug the man who changed my life back in 1994.
“Janey, it is so good to see you, I am no longer in the police. I remember talking to you that day about acting and comedy, do you remember?” He asked.

“Yes amongst other stuff that we chatted about that day, like guns and bullets I mean there was so much we said I can hardly recall the idle chit chat” I replied sarcastically but with fond humour.

“Well anyway, you spoke with such passion about how you hated being in the pub business that you wanted to act and write, so it made me think back to my original career choice and soon after we met I left the police and now work as an actor and am involved in music” He beamed at me.

I recalled that man back in 1994; he was the ‘nice’ copper of the two that arrested me after finding a cache of arms in my late Father-in-laws house (The police found more weapons of mass destruction in that house than the US army found in Iraq) Anyway, he was kind to me and I always appreciated that, it was the most terrifying day of my life.

I was worried that I would end up in prison for being in possession of my in-laws weapons and one of that family would be left to raise my child (We all know how that would have turned out! - No University, teen pregnancy and a predilection for fake tan and cheap gold)…so thank god I was out after one night in the cells.

“Janey I am so proud of you, honestly I am, you never belonged with those people and that family were so crooked, that man you married would only have dragged you to the pits of the earth, good for you getting away from them, the bunch of no gooders that they are and making your self successful” he grinned.

“I am still married to him and love that man actually” I spoke with a big smile.

“Fuck I am sorry, he was kind of nice and not like the rest of his brothers” he gasped trying hard to reconcile his statement.

“That’s ok man, I know what you mean” I answered.

We parted and he went off to his table with a big smile to tell his mates who were all watching our meeting.

Life is stranger than fiction, that’s for sure….how nice to meet that guy again and to know he read my book and to accept his congratulations on what he saw as my success…so nice.

My embarrassing Moment with a pop star!

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!

I Love New Zealand…

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.

The Things my Brother told me…

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.

Christmas Card

Have a wonderful Christmas and very prosperous 2007,
From Janey Godley & Daughter Ashley

My Tree is Up!

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”

Tracing my family Tree…

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!

Meeting Jesus in the street…

Yes I did meet him, he was about fifty years old, smelled like a cats ear and had a beard that owls lived in but he said he was Jesus and I didn’t want to be the Doubting Thomas of my generation, mostly because I am not called Thomas and the other reason was -what if he really was Jesus and I called him a fucking smelly old bastard?
That’s wouldn’t be very welcoming to a man that came along way and expected a party on his arrival would it?
“I am Jesus the son of God” He shouted at me as I tried to squeeze plastic bottles into the recycling bin that husband makes me go to, every time I leave home I have to carry various plastic shapes and shove them into an unfeasibly small hole in the big green wheelie thing.
So I smiled and said “Hello Jesus, you must be glad to get shot of those sandals what with Glasgow being freezing?”
“Yes, I am glad, now have you any money for me?” he snarled through black teeth as a big squawking crow flew out of his beard (that didn’t really happen but I imagined it could, I was bored….Jesus is quite boring and demanding).

“No I am sorry, I gave most of my spare cash to the Catholic lady shaking a can at the end of the road, but since you are Jesus I did indirectly give it you” I smiled.
“She never gives it to me” he shouted and things that I am not sure of rattled in his big dirty over coat.
“Well that’s Catholics for you” I answered.
“She will give that money to the Vatican and they will buy gold shit with it” He growled.
“Yes, I suppose being Jesus that stuff must belong to you then eh? You should go to Rome and claim it back and buy cider with it or give it to poor people” I added.
“Buy cider with it” he confirmed and nodded his big woolly dirty head and rubbed his face with coal miners fingers, all black and grimy.

“They never give it to poor people and I don’t need anymore statues” He spoke as I finally shoved the last green plastic bottle in.
“Well I am sorry Jesus, I am saving all my spare cash as your birthday at Christmas costs lots of money and I need to buy a Playstation 3 for my daughter” I sarcastically threw into the conversation with our dirty Messiah.
He swung round and his dirty big coat let out a reek of piss and booze, he bowed elaborately, pointed one toe and then grabbed my arm and swung me under it singing “King of the Road” at the top of his voice.
People watched- shop keepers peeped through windows and old people crossed the road to avoid me and Jesus having a bit of a dance.

We stopped and I finally inhaled a breath (the smell was rotten; Jesus has very questionable hygiene habits). He kissed the back of my hand and ran down the road with his dirty coat flapping in the cold wind screaming “Fuck off, I want cider”.
Jesus must really like cider and there was us all believing he liked wine…who knew?

I hope he gets a bath before Christmas, he was a nice man, bit smelly and nothing like I imagined him to be, but at least I got to meet him.

My First Marriage Proposal…

I was 16 and it was 1977, the year of punk in the UK, the year the Queen celebrated her Silver Jubilee. It was 27th September and I was standing outside the Palaceum Bar in my home town of Shettleston in Glasgow’s East End. It was bitterly cold, frost was settling on the pavement giving it a slippy-ness that made old people walk even slower.
That’s where I met the man who asked me to marry him; he was called ‘Barra’ that’s was his nickname, he was born on 24th May 1962.
Let me tell you about Barra.
He came from a big family of Catholic housebreaking robbers (nice eh?) We chatted briefly and recalled how we had known each other as wee kids. I didn’t really fancy him; I didn’t really know what fancy-ing was to be honest. I wasn’t your average 16 year old sexy teenager. In fact I looked like a boy to be truthful and was often mistaken for one. Not that that fact puts a slant on Barra’s sexuality! I was chatty and was interested in loads of stuff, but not sexy or sexual in the least.
Anyway we walked together and he took me by the hand into this close (that’s a long public hallway in the Glasgow tenements) and we kissed for what seemed ages and I got slightly worried because I had to get to work in the morning and I had a curfew of 10pm. That time limit annoyed me as I was working and surely an adult? But my mammy insisted I get home for 10pm.
Time went on and I had to stop the kissing for two reasons.
1) I didn’t really like kissing
2) I didn’t actually know this boy and wanted to look at him but the darkness blurred my vision and every time we stopped kissing, I could feel his face very close to mine and to ease that uncomfortable quiet close scrutiny I kissed more!

We did eventually stop kissing and he brusquely grabbed my hand and led me out of the close and walked off into the cold and left me as if we had never been there in the first place. It was an odd feeling, like when you accidentally catch sight of some school friend naked at swimming class then meet them later standing at the school canteen. You know more about them than you needed to and now there sits that awkwardness that had never existed before. It was kind of like that.
Barra and I had held hands, touched each others faces, lips had met, tongues had been flickered and now we were strangers again. Maybe he was shyer than me?
I walked home in the freezing cold and went over it in my head. It was nice and dangerous and yet oddly I felt disconnected.
Maybe after kissing me he realised I was shite at it and left disappointed? Who knew? Not me!

I went to work the next day and when I got home I ran round to the Italian Café where I hung out with my mates. The Italian Café was our local place to be and there was a man who worked there we called Spock because he really did look like Doctor Spock from Star Trek. His long brown face, sharp arched eyebrows, flat dark shiny hair that came to a point on his forehead made him a real point of attention for us kids. “Spock can I have 20p tub of ice cream?” he never blinked or reacted which made us even more convinced he was a Vulcan. He was the only man who never got the usual two finger salute from us cheeky kids; we always gave him the open palm V sign that made Spock famous on TV!
Anyway my pal Elaine was there; she was two years younger than me and had just finished school.
“Guess who I kissed last night walking home from my sister’s house?” I giggled.
“Who?” She answered.
“Barra” I said.
Before we could react to my exciting information, I turned and there Barra was standing behind me. He looked angry and mumbled something to me and indicated that we go outside with one finger pointing to the door.

I was so shocked, I didn’t expect to see him and now was horrified that he had heard me tell Elaine, maybe he didn’t want anyone to know?
Holy Fuck! I thought…. I am in trouble. I knew he was violent and had heard about him fighting and stabbing people, he had a reputation. Was he going to slap me or something? I was shaken and slowly pushed through the queue and walked outside.
He stood there; around him were a few older guys that I knew were friends of my older brother. They all nodded when they saw me and then carried on chatting.
I stared at my shoes, they were shiny black brogues that were in fashion at that time, women wearing middle classed men’s shoes? Who knows? Anyway I stood and avoided eye contact. The glare of the café lights lit the whole street up.
“Janey” he whispered near my face.
I looked up and saw his very blonde hair, extremely blue eyes and pale skin and secretly wondered if he was actually German!
“What?” I answered. Teenagers can be very monosyllabic when it suits them.
He lifted up my chin and kissed me there in front of everyone. I recall being so embarrassed and could hear people laughing. I pushed him off and expected to see young guys pointing and laughing at me but they were all in other conversations, till one looked over and said “Barra you coming to the pub?”
“I will catch up you go” he said. He could get into pubs and buy beer.

He was only 15 but did look much older, he had a blonde moustache growing and had a weary grown-up face, and also his family’s reputation guaranteed that not many people gave him trouble. They were a just a bunch of petty criminals, though two of his brothers were serving time for robbing a post office in Glasgow.

“Can we meet later?” he seemed so confident and adult now.
“Yes ok” I stammered.
“Where will we meet?” he added smiling.
“Here” I said, I didn’t have many other places to go in Shettleston, it wasn’t like a sprawling metropolis with memorable landmarks and meeting places, it was either the café or the grave yard and I didn’t think the grave yard sounded romantic enough!
“Do you drink?” he asked me as he went to walk off.
“Yes” I replied then suddenly wondered if he meant alcohol, which I didn’t drink but I did drink Irn Bru (Scottish soft drink), and I thought maybe he wanted to bring me a can of Irn Bru as a gift and then all of that sounded mental and I added “I drink but nothing alcohol just mainly water, tea and Irn Bru and sometimes milk”

The stupid words all came out of my stupid mouth and he laughed out loud as he walked to open the pub door next to the café and shouted “They don’t sell milk, see you in an hour”.
I had a boyfriend!
I worked way up in Castlemilk, which was 10 miles from Glasgow’s East End and attended night school in Barmulloch which was 15 miles from Castlemilk! My nights and days were taken up with public transport and working in an old folks home.

Barra and I would get together two or three nights a week. We never went to my house as he was very shy about meeting my mammy and I never wanted him there as my house was so dirty and poor looking and sometimes the electric had been disconnected. So we spent most of the time hanging around closes, sitting in the cold street, chatting in the café or waiting on him getting a bus back to Easterhouse where he lived.

He would occasionally go to the pub with his brother and I would wait for him to come out, kiss for a wee while, wait for him to get on the bus and then go home. It wasn’t an exciting courtship, pretty boring to be honest and he never really spoke much. The kissing never went further than cuddling up against the cold and that suited me totally. He never asked me or pushed me further into anything more.

One Saturday he came to see me, unusually he was waiting for me at the bottom on my street. I could see him standing there, pacing and chatting to his older brother. I worried what may have happened, maybe yet another police charge for him (he had been pulled in by the police a few times since we had been seeing each other).
I reached him and he was staring nervously at me, his brother was rubbing his chin and stood then stood with his back to me.
“Janey, I fell asleep last night at this girl’s house and we woke up together in bed and I think something happened, you know what I mean” he stammered this out.

I looked at his brother who finally made eye contact, Barra stood there watching my face. I was touched that he had needed support to tell me this, I actually felt odd, because his demeanour required a reaction and I didn’t have one. I didn’t care if he had sex with another girl, I really didn’t and that moment scared me, because it meant he thought more of this relationship than me.
“I don’t care, if you are shagging someone it means you won’t be pestering me” I blurted out.
“I don’t pester you” he shouted angrily.
His brother walked away and Barra let him go. We walked together and got up to the café.
He looked so sad and I kept reassuring him it was fine, I was ok about it. In my naivety, I thought placating him and ignoring his ‘mistake’ was being a good girlfriend – he realised that it meant I didn’t really care enough to be angry. I was NEW to all these dating things remember.

That night as we stood wrapped up in each other kissing in the close he pulled my face close, I could smell the beer on his breath and I hated that, he then whispered “I love you Janey”
I was shocked, I didn’t know what I was supposed to say so I added “Me too” then realised that wasn’t actually an answer.

Barra pushed me out of the hug and spat “Fucksake, do you know how long it took me to say that” and walked away from me out into the cold.

We made up eventually, but we hardly spoke on a real deep level, he mostly sat on a step then got drunk and I chatted away about pop music, people at work, my studies, my latest art project, my mammy, my nephew, my favourite things, my yearning to travel, my political opinion and so much more as he just sat and stared at me.

When pressed he never had an opinion on anything, he had no intention to get a job, had no thoughts on his future, shrugged when asked what he wanted to be when older and over all never made any comments about anything. It bored me to death….I had a million things to do.

One night when we were walking back from the close to the bus stop (we did this every night we met, it was fucking freezing and I worked daily) we met an old friend of his mums.
“Hello Barra, how are you?” she asked in a jolly way.
“Am great Mrs Wilson how’s the boys?” he answered.
“Is this your new girlfriend? Your mammy said you had a new lassie” she smiled at me.
“Aye this is Janey, she is a…..college person” he beamed “She goes to a college at night and does college things” he stammered over his words, he was trying to boast about me but forgot the word for people who attend college.

“I am a part time student studying English and Art” I said.

“Why would you do that shite? You not getting married? I heard you were getting married Barra” the old woman added.

Barra blushed and mumbled something and we walked off.
I was horrified and staring at the wet pavement as we headed for the bus stop.
“Come up to see my mammy tonight?” he asked me.
“I have work in the morning and you’re a bit drunk, are you sure?” I tried to wangle out of it. He pleaded and I agreed.
We ended up on the long dreary bus ride to Easterhouse. The old ramshackle green bus trundled through the dimly lit streets heading out of the city and into the out lying schemes.

Finally we got to his street and walked the short distance to his six in a block 1940’s three bed roomed flats. His home was warm and smelled clean. I had met his wee mammy and dad before, just a regular nice middle aged, working class couple, except his mum looked older and beaten down by life; she had a small thin frame and wispy grey hair pulled back from her face. They had raised seven kids, most of which had ended up in trouble with the police.

I sat there and accepted the cup of tea, his mum smiled and chatted away to me and Barra sat there huddled near the fire.

“Janey will you marry me?” he blurted out.

I was stunned by the remark, he looked at me, his mum looked at me, his dad stared at me and I clenched everything in my body with sheer terror and shock. In the background a clock ticked, a cat stretched and meowed on the chair and everyone waited for my answer.

“I don’t want to get married, I want to go and paint the Taj Mahal” was the only words that came tumbling out of my mouth.

“The Taj Mahal? Is that a restaurant in Parkhead?” Barra said “Why would you want to paint that?”

“No its in India I think, its beautiful and I want to travel and maybe go to Australia, I like kangaroos” I added…words…. just fucking weird words kept coming out of the big hole in the front of my head.

The room went silent, I stared at the flowery cup in my hand, I could feel the glow from the fire on my face mixed in with the utter horror and embarrassment that swept over me, what was wrong with me? Who else mentions kangaroo’s in the middle of a marriage proposal?

“You are only fifteen Barra, I am only sixteen and haven’t finished my studies, we are really too young” the first sensible words came out.

“You can leave college, you said that it costs too much didn’t you? We can get a house near your ma’s and we can have kids, they don’t have to be Catholic” he looked at me speaking for the first time since I had mentioned Indian Palaces and kangaroo’s.

“You have to pay for college?” his mammy asked.

“Yes, its night school but I work all week and can afford it” I replied “I really want to get some qualifications so I can get a good job, I hate kids and don’t want a council house in Shettleston”

“What do you want to work at hen?” his dad asked me.

“I want to…..I am not sure really, but I want to travel” I spoke quietly, annoyed at my own lack of direction.

It was the beginning of the end. As I left his flat that night his mammy took me by the arm at her door and said “Go hen, go do what you want to do, marriage isn’t everything and my boys are bad news, I love them but you go see that Taj Mahal”

Barra and I broke up after that New Year, we really ran out of things to say I think. He was also accused of mugging an old man for his whisky on the way home from a shop and I was dragged into the police office for questioning as the police thought I may have witnessed something. I hadn’t but I knew that wasn’t what I wanted in my life. I never wanted to be involved in police issues. (Well we all know how that turned out! I got charged with possessing guns in our house in 1994- sometimes you can’t avoid that stuff)

I still have a poster of the Taj Mahal.

I never did see it, I still haven’t been to Australia and chased kangaroos, but I did meet another man who was born on the 24th of May 1962, outside the Palaceum bar and I did marry him on 27th September in 1980 (the day I met Barra in 1977). Strange coincidence? Who knows?

But I think I got the right man, last I heard Barra was selling drugs to kids in the street and has been in and out of prison for years now.

Extreme sports people….

Yet again two men have been found after being lost in the Scottish mountains and died later of hypothermia, it’s really sad but I have a theory and possibly the answer.

Big frozen hostile mountains in Scotland are not MEANT to be climbed by human beings especially in the WINTER TIME!

If you really want to get an adrenaline rush, then lock yourself into a two bedroom flat that is occupied with two mental unstable needle wielding junkies and a starving Alsatian dog, cut off the electricity and stay there until you find the exit. The worst that can happen is- you may get jagged with a dirty needle and bitten by a tufty mad dog, but the excitement will be awesome AND the air rescue people won’t be involved.

I reckon when God (if it was him that made the earth) designed our world- he did it in a certain way that people can live on the flat safe bits and scary animals like bears and wolves can live in the high frozen bits, same as the sea….we don’t have the capability to breathe underwater so we STAY on the safe flats bits and don’t get eaten by sharks and killed by sting-rays or other underwater predators that live there. It just makes sense.

I don’t really understand people who pack stuff into a wee bag and decide to brave the elements and climb up a sheer snowy cliff face….doesn’t make any sense at all to me. It’s not as if there is a prize at the top?

Glasgow is freezing just now and if I could go to the shops with a feather duvet wrapped around me and tied at the waist with a rope then I would! I fucking hate the cold.

My idea of extreme sports is going to the local video store without wearing a bra, or peeing with the toilet door open, or having sex without brushing my teeth in the morning.

If you really need an adrenaline rush then buy adrenaline in injection form from a crooked nurse and hit up in your toilet, keep off our fucking frozen KILLER mountains……you will die!

Children in Need singing…..

Craig Hill and I were part of the SPEX –Factor charity singing competition live on BBC Scotland on Friday night. It was all for Children in Need! We were up against TV presenters Julian Sinclair and his brother Cameron Stout, and the BAFTA award winning actors Kate Dickie and Ian Robertson. We were all doing The Proclaimers songs and GOD they are hard to sing without shouting!


I have never been that excited in my life! There I was all dressed up in a wee kilt, a new bra and top (The bra did make my boobies really high and scary but too late to go back now) and I stepped onto the huge stage set with my lovely singing comedy pal Craig Hill. I had to hike up my short legs onto the tall stool and sing my heart out and meanwhile my bladder felt like it would burst!
Craig can really-really sing and I am not too good but I did my best and we made a great effort, we even had a wee waltz at the end. The studio was mobbed with loads of fund raisers and guests, the air was full of flying cameras and strong lights and I was so happy we sang well.

The atmosphere was wonderful and we all knew it was for charity so we were all very supportive of each other and full of nerves. Craig is the consummate professional and never once made me feel nervous and encouraged me to sing my soul out…I LOVE him.

It was a phone result and after the votes came through Craig and I were knocked out first….we laughed our asses off and did breathe a wee sigh of relief because the next song we had to sing ‘Letter from America’ was so bloody hard we kind of relaxed that we didn’t have to go through with it, but it was such good fun that we all enjoyed the night.

There was such a party atmosphere backstage and God knows how that BBC Scotland staff managed all those people and all those kids and all those bloody short takes in between dealing with network BBC was amazing! I was impressed.
Husband called me and told me he was very proud of me and said I had ‘sexy legs’ on TV, dad called me and told me ‘You sat really nice on that stool’ (nothing about my singing obviously) and Ashley was DJ-ing in a club and said she could see me in silence as they kept the big screen on in her club and she clapped as she saw me walk on.

One of the judges in the studio was Lamar the sexy black UK soul singer and he was so nice and gave me some lovely compliments…..cute black man…mmmm…the Sugarbabes were live in our studio also and they were so gorgeous and tiny and sang like sexy angels!

I had such a great night and may give up comedy to pursue a career in pop music now...AM JOKING, thanks to all who voted and supported the charity.

Getting ready for my big BBC singing appearance…

Singing is something I am not very good at it, I cant really sing very well but am giving it my best shot for BBC Children in Need slot. I bought a lovely wee kilt and smart jumper to wear. Craig Hill is my beautiful singing partner and BOY can he sing he is just bloody amazing!
So Craig and I rehearsed and it seems to be good, we are singing the Proclaimers song ‘Sunshine on Leith’ and if we get through to the second round we are singing ‘Letter from America’.

So after the singing session I popped over to see baby Abi, her new baby sister Julia and their mother (my niece Ann Margaret). Abi is now aged three and the funniest wee creature in the world. I was amazed how big wee baby Julia had grown; she is no longer a wee ‘prawn’ newborn…she is so cute and her eyes are huge!
Ann Margaret went off to the shops and left me in charge.

I was cradling the baby and Abi said “Aunty Janey, can I face-paint myself?”
I agreed and carried on snuggling the wee new baby, then minutes later Abi came running into the room completely blacked up! Her entire face, ears, neck and hair were a deep shiny black!
All you could see were the whites of her dark eyes!

It was scary and funny to see a toddler do an ‘Al Jolson’ (Old US singer who blacked up and sang…very politically incorrect nowadays). I pissed myself laughing and decided to teach her the old Al Jolson song ‘Mammeee’ complete with blackened jazz hands.
When Ann Margaret came back from the shops Abi came running into the hall singing ‘Mammeee’ waving her wee fat black chubby hands, Ann Margaret screamed and dropped the shopping and shouted “Aunty Janey, what the hell have you done, she is doing a Black and White Minstrel show!”
I did explain that Abi did the make up, I only did the choreography!

So today I got Ashley up at 4pm, she had been DJ-ing last night and was out very late and went off to do my workshops. I am looking after a bunch of 12-16 year olds teaching them comedy as a form of reinforcing self confidence. Yesterday they were treated to an exclusive Q&A with an amazing BAFTA award winning Scottish Comedy Actor who will remain un-named, he is an old mate of mine and came along at my request… the kids were hysterical with excitement that he came to chat to them. I will forever be in his debt for coming along at such short notice and being very humble. I have good friends!

I am off to sing my songs….talk soon.

Missing in Action as usual…

Am so sorry my blog has suffered by being so bloody fucked up busy. I lie in bed and imagine I am writing my blog, I have all these great things to tell you, then wake up, ignore my laptop and jump on the tube to the next gig.

In my defence, I have written two articles for newspapers back in Scotland and have been gigging like a nutter, no excuses for ignoring my blog…I KNOW!

So here is a rundown. I had a wonderful time performing my play in Oxford on Tuesday last week. John Fleming (my Manager) and I caught the bus up to Oxford early and we wandered the beautiful tree lined buildings and streets.
I cannot begin to tell you how amazing that city looks in the weak winter sun. We went to Christchurch University and strolled around the grounds. The place is so startlingly awesome. Imagine being a student there? It made me wish I had was 18 again and instead of getting married in Glasgow’s East End I was studying in that ancient and gorgeous city. It wasn’t something that was considered when I was a teenager, going to Oxford? No…. going to prison…YES…getting pregnant…YES…getting a flat in Oxford to study law…NO!
I stood on those cobbled streets and watched all these wonderful young people, ride bikes, chat in groups and lunch beneath 14th Century Monuments and secretly wished I had had those opportunities….but then again maybe I would not be me now if I had been them then….does that make sense?

I suppose knowing that those educated and privileged people had taken time out of their night and paid to see ME perform a play that I had wrote did give me a sense of wonderment that I secretly enjoyed! I am not an uneducated failure after all!

The wonderful and talented actor Beth brought her boyfriend to come along and watch and that made it lovely for me, you have no idea how it feels to have a professional actor watch your stuff….so nice, I love her for supporting me like that.

I took some nice pics of Oxford and will post them soon.
John and I caught the late night bus back to London and husband was awake and had tea on the table for us arriving at 1am. What a guy!

Oxford has become my regular haunt, as on Friday I was back there to compere the Jongleurs club in the city. I caught the 5pm train from Paddington on my own, IPod at the ready; coffee in hand and instead of having a leisurely journey to my fav town….I was beaten near to death by the scrambling rampage of fat suited businessmen trying to get home for the weekend to their stone cottages and country piles in Oxford.

I have never seen so many badly behaved professional men in my life…..politicians and bankers by day, fucking fat rugby tackling passenger kickers at the weekend…I shoved my way onto the train but lo and behold it looked like a scene from those awful trains of death that shunted prisoners from camp to camp in the Second World War! I was imagining me sitting there listening to music and leisurely sipping tea reading a newspaper….OH NO! I was crushed with my face into the back of a fat man wearing a damp duffel coat outside a toilet in the corridor of the train….if they transported lambs like this, the public would have an outcry and vegetarian militant lesbians wearing oatmeal cardigans reciting placenta poetry would throw themselves on the track in protest. Why do we suffer this horror?
So I got myself into the first class carriage.

It was like a Gordon Brown convention, loads of smart dressed overly coifed men in cashmere coats and bright pink ties….the kind of men you suspect are living with their boyfriends in Dolphin Square and work in Westminster and go home to their bored wives in Oxford at the weekend. Ok I know that’s a generalisation but when they saw this scuzzy frazzled Glaswegian sit near them, they visibly grimaced. How dare scum enter their streamline clean first class carriage?

I ignored them; they peeked over pink Financial Times broadsheets at my damp face and frizzy hair. The ticket man came waddling down (do they ever do anything other than waddle?)
“Your ticket is not first class miss, you are not allowed in here without a first class ticket” he shouted as he looked at my crumpled rail ticket.

The men in pink ties smirked as a group, grey haired with shiny faces, all enjoying the one moment in their week…..the poor person had been caught, oh how they knew I never held a first class ticket….they sat in combined silence and nodded the nod to each other that rich people do when a common person has stepped into their oak smoked- cashmere-leather briefcase world without permission!

I looked at the ticket man and said “Look mate, there are NO seats on this train and I am not paying £18 to stand in a fat man’s armpit outside a toilet in a corridor for an hour, so I am taking this seat, I refuse to be dangerously rattled about on this shaky shit train, so deal with it”

“I can call the police and have you charged” he snapped with bristling authority.

The newspapers moved, eyes peeked out, Blackberry’s were ignored, laptops were clicked shut for better viewing purposes, creaseless shirts on well fed bodies leaned nearer, no one spoke….silence in the First Class carriage.

“Look, I really don’t give a flying fuck if you call the Queen, call the FBI, call your mother, I am not moving, I refuse to be treated like a refugee begging for air on your shit train, so jail me…I am stand up comic and its all material as far as I am concerned, I cant imagine all these nice politicians and bankers are going to appreciate you stopping the train and getting the police on for a woman who wanted a seat, do you?”

The ticket man smiled and moved on. I won.

Just as I settled into my warm comfortable seat, the crispy white shirted man leaned across and spoke loudly “You know madam; you have to pay the correct fare”
I looked him straight in the eye, I was aware his compatriots were staring and I said “No mate YOU have to pay the full fare, I don’t, I argue with people and stand my ground and you have probably paid enough for both of us, so thank you, now please don’t interrupt me anymore, I want to listen to some hard core rap on my IPod”

I don’t know what the collective noun is for a bunch of fat rich business men but I think it’s ‘wankers’.

London is great, the gigs have been awesome -husband has been good, annoying but good…we go home tomorrow and I am looking forward to seeing Ashley. Talk soon.

My Topless gig on radio Kerrang!

Yesterday was just as mental as possible. I left my Chelsea apartment at 3pm and headed up to Borehamwood to meet with John my manager who would be driving me to Birmingham for my gig there at 9pm.
As soon as I got off the train at Kings Cross I saw the message posted on the wall explaining that the train I wanted had been cancelled and I had to go through Kentish Town instead. So I dragged my tired arse up to Kentish Town, came out of the station and was crushed by around 8 million drunk pissed antipodeans who were mostly all wearing a sweater that said “Church”.
That confused as me as what Sunday Church serves that amount of alcohol? A turn out Church was a club! Silly old me.
I managed to get to the right platform to get the train up to Borehamwood and came upon a very young boy, spectacles hanging off his faces, wearing a Railway uniform, cheap tie askew shouting through a megaphone some mumbled words as hundreds of people jostled and shoved him around trying to find out where the replacement train was.

A big baldy headed man dragging a giant awkward Alsatian on a thick chain ran towards the young befuddled train boy. The dogs nails were skidding and its legs scattering all over the concrete walkway, its tongue hanging out and breathing madly – it managed to mount the young man’s leg as he tried to cope with multitude of frustrated commuters. The place was chaos.

I gave up and called John to come collect me from Kentish town and drive straight to Birmingham from there. We hit the road at 5pm and even before we got to Milton Keynes the traffic had slowed to a complete standstill. The dark skies were full of magnificent fireworks bursting over the beautiful red slashed sunset that fell over London. Still the cars never moved.
I started to panic, time was ticking, and we were doing 3 miles an hour for over two hours. I was due on stage at 9pm and it was now 8.50pm. We could not work out why the traffic was so slow then we came upon four huge lorries lying on their side, windows smashed, glass everywhere mixed with blood on the dented windscreen and suddenly my anxiousness to get to the gig was replaced with utter horror at the gnarled machines that had crashed on that road ahead of us. It really did put my petty stress at being late into perspective!

The gig was really cool, a lovely gay gig at the Nightingale bar. The audience were such good people and had waited patiently for me to arrive. I appreciate that.
After the gig I was off to be a guest at Kerrang! Radio, live in the studio, Tim Shaw is an amazing shock jock, yet he handled the interview about my past life and my comedy with amazing sensitivity and asked me outright questions no other live radio presenter had dared…..and whilst we were discussing child abuse, my mothers murder..Etc….the two glamour girls in the studio stripped naked! It was so very funny.
I was sitting with naked girls and having the best laugh ever.
Then Tim and I decided to tell the audience that I was going to go topless…I called husband live and asked him what he thought of my tit shot on radio and he just hung up laughing (he was annoyed that I even needed his opinion on this! If I wanna strip for another man then that’s my prerogative!)
Anyway Tim set it up for the listeners and I pretended to get my baps out…of course I didn’t it was a joke….but my brother was listening in back in Scotland and called me this morning horrified that I had got my boobs out on radio!

My daughter Ashley is mortified yet again, she loves Kerrang! And can’t believe I spoke about my breasts and even suggested getting them out with her fav DJ.

I am never going to grow old gracefully am I?

Meeting the World’s most amazing director…

My London trip is going amazingly well. Other than walking miles with husband who just ‘loves walking’ …I do enjoy the strolls through Hyde Park but we almost got into a fist fight with a cyclist. Husband knows how scared I get on busy roads and held my hand walking across High Street Kensington pedestrian crossing. The green man flashed for us to cross and the red light kept the traffic at bay, yet a cyclist ignored the light and peddled straight through and almost knocked me on my ass. He then slowed down and mounted the pavement and got off his bike, and started to walk off.
“What are you doing?” shouted husband.

The man in tight bright Lycra cycling outfit turned round and shouted to my husband “Do you have something you want to say?”

Husband rushed towards him, me in tow.

I spoke first “Look mate the red light was on and you….” I started to say

The guy looked at me with disdain and butted in “I was dismounting”

Husband let go of my hand and threw himself at the man shouting “You fucking lying arse, the lights were red, you went through them, you almost hit my wife and now you fucking stand there trying to justify it by saying you were getting off your bike, I will fucking wrap your shite bike right around your skinny bright green legs”

The man jumped back on his bike quicker than you could say angry Scottish person and sped off almost knocking people like skittles on the pavement and shot off into the distance.

So that drama over I had a great sleep last night and arrived at BBC Radio studios this morning to take part in ‘Loose ends’ on BBC radio 4. The amazing actress Rachel Stirling was a guest and also the most wonderful director Sir Alan Parker, he of Evita and Midnight Express fame, oh and Fame the movie! He was so nice to meet and chat to, I was overwhelmed but he put me at ease! How good is my job getting to meet such interesting people?
The other astounding guest was Derren Brown; he is UK’s foremost mind bending, stunt magician.
During the radio show I shoved a note over to him that read ‘ give me the lottery numbers now’ and there was a wee drawing that I had done of me sticking an axe into his head in a mock threat….and HE sent back the note with six numbers on them! So we will see!

We went to the pub afterwards and Sir Alan Parker sat there for a while having a good old chinwag, I adore his work and feel privileged to get to know him a wee but more.
He told me that my comedy stint was wonderful and remarked that comedy in such a small room to such a small amount of people must be the hardest job in the world and I made it look easy! How nice!

I was out last night at Groucho with best mate Monica. We sat and ate chips and talked shit for ages (that’s what we do) and finally caught up with each others gossip. She is so busy nowadays and it was really great to just sit down and be together without phones or work or staff or managers or comedy people getting in the way!

I did bring along Easy Living Magazine as this months issue (December) has a great article inside about me! (It’s always about me me me) the photo shoot was lovely and I do look nice in it, except I seem to have loads of make up on! I will upload the pic as soon as I can.
Must go - Aspergers man is asking me what kind of Apple pie do I want? Apple Sponge-Apple Crumble-Apple Puff? Cold Custard or Cream?

It’s making me crazy….I just want pudding!

Aspergers Man is making me mental…

For those who don’t know, my husband has mild Aspergers Syndrome. Since travelling with me the last few days, he is so mental he makes Rain Man look like Al Gore….he is driving me to madness. Since we have been in this flat in London he has moved around the furniture, colour co-ordinated my clothes and re arranged my toiletries, I have Tampons all in a small box, lined up pointy ends facing out.
I was sitting writing this blog and he managed to move sofa’s about and slide tables around as I sat still. It was like that scene from Amityville Horror, I looked round and there were chairs stacked on top of each other on a small occasional table!
I was just about to go into the Groucho Club for a quick pre gig drink when he called me “Janey, when will you be home?”

Me-“I don’t know, I may stay out late”

Husband - “Do you have an estimated time of arrival?”

Me – “No. Why?”

Husband- “Its just I want have supper all ready for you”

Me-“It’s a fucking salad, there is no cooking, you can have it ready when I get there”

Husband- “Do you want a bacon roll for breakfast?”

Me (exasperated) - “I don’t know yet as its just 8pm, I have no idea what I want at 8am”

Husband- “Well if you want bacon I can put it at the front of the fridge and when I open the door it will be nearest to hand in the morning”

Me (now convinced he needs to die) -“Are you that bloke from ‘Sleeping with the Enemy?’ Am I going to have to dye my hair and fake my own death?”

Husband (completely unperturbed)- “So that’s a yes to the bacon?”

It’s been like this for days now. He constantly needs to know everything I may want in the next fourteen hours so he can get it prepared in advance. I am so used to travelling on my own I am not used to someone asking me what I want to eat next Tuesday.

To top it all, I woke up this morning with a big knotted elastic band in my bushy hair, I could not work out why my hair looked like a special needs person, husband saw me trying to unravel it, he smiled smugly and said “Last night your hair touched my face so I got up and tied it into a pony tail as you slept, that why you have a strange side bunch”

That man is re arranging my hair in my sleep that is grounds for divorce.

Today I also have a nasty head cold, it makes me feel ill. I have snotty stuff coming out of my beak and I want to remove the bowling ball from my brain!

My First Newspaper Column!

So in between all the dashing through the night in cars/planes and taxi’s I am finally in London. Brechin was awesome, Manchester was amazing….I am so pleased that the gigs went well. I even managed to meet up with people who check the blog and have read my book! That’s an amazing feeling…trust me.
I am currently practising singing for my live TV appearance on BBC for Children in Need… I am not a Madonna, well she isn’t really a good singer either but I wish I was better.
On Sunday past my very first own column went in the Sunday Herald Newspaper Magazine! I was so chuffed to see it and you have no idea how proud my father is, he loves that I write for a newspaper, you see comedy is great but JOURNALISM is worthy. I wrote about Sacha Baron Cohen, his latest film and the validity of offensive comedy. You can see it on my website.
The flat here in London is wonderful, we have a huge two bedroom flat with a balcony, and it is so central.
I love the people at Crown Lawn, and they are my fairy Godmothers!

I must tell you about Brechin, it is a Cathedral town. It’s a very cute wee place just beyond Dundee.
I went to see the ancient Cathedral, it was built in 9AD originally and like all Catholic chapels, it became a Church Of Scotland after the reformation, not that you need to read that on any tourist documentation, the crucifix above the tower door had Jesus’ head hacked off and that always gives a good indication on the religious persuasion of any building. Protestants are not big with religious imagery…That makes me giggle.

The people were lovely and very welcoming and the area surrounding is just beautiful at this time of year. Those trees that are turning golden brown, burnt sienna, russet, copper red and dark burgundy would give New England in the US a run for its money!
The sun shining through the crisp leaves is breath taking. I was speechless, we often forget how lovely and scenic Scotland is and take that surrounding beauty for granted. Come to Scotland at this time of year and be wowed!
Castles, monuments, Roman Ruins, eye popping mountains….the list goes on.

So I am getting ready to do my gigs here in Old London Town, I do love it here and have brought along my video camera and hope to do a video blog here.
I will keep you all posted on my singing progress, don’t expect too much though!

Someone has put up Christmas lights

I am looking out of my window here in Glasgow and across the road there is CHRISTMAS lights twinkling in someone’s flat, they are strung across the window frame…..it is only October for goodness sake!
We haven’t even had Halloween and yet FIREWORK’S are banging making Glasgow’s West End sound like Iraq, I can’t sleep for the constant banging outside.
Why is this happening?
Why don’t we make everything months in advance and let’s have a New Year Party on Monday?
Talking about Monday, I am so bloody nervous. It’s the huge party and announcement of Scotswoman of the Year of which I am a finalist. I still haven’t figured out an outfit, I still haven’t bothered to get a hair appointment ….I am so scared.
I am really honoured to be there but it is scary for me, I know everyone knows me as this chatty outspoken stand up comic but I am crap at parties and meeting complete strangers and often end up gibbering shit about three legged dogs and squirrels! Unless Ashley is with me, or my mate Monica, I sit quiet and people think I am being stand offish …..I know that sounds odd.

When Ashley and I went to NZ to the comedy festival, I was pretty quiet the first weeks there as I didn’t really know anyone in Wellington and backstage when all the comics got together I sat and played with the theatre’s cat.
When Ashley and I got back to the hotel she said “Mum, you need to be less unapproachable, you ignored everyone there and sat with that scary cat, some guys there asked me if you didn’t like them”

I was appalled that I had given that impression, but I do get very insular in small rooms with lots of people, especially being a comic…everyone expects you to do tumbles and pull a big magical joke out of your arse every five minutes. I did like the cat, he was a big fat ginger Tom who ran after me and then I fed him raw salmon which made him love me.
I did eventually get to know the other guys and they are awesome, but I am either extremely quiet or extremely chatty….never anywhere in between!

I have become a strange sleep recluse the last week also, which doesn’t help. Sometimes I get like this where I just spend all day asleep with a cover over my eyes to deny me any daylight to remind me what time of day has arrived. I sleep and sleep and slop about the house all tired and un-washed….maybe I am turning into Howard Hughes, fuck does that mean I am going to have to design a flying boat? Shit- that will take weeks to put together! Can I just shove Kleenex boxes on my feet and pee my shorts?

Even husband is getting distressed with my appearance.
“You are going to wash your hair for Monday night’s party aren’t you?” he asked tentatively.
“Yes, I am and don’t worry I know what to wear” I added as I tried to shove my toes into the end of an empty toilet roll tube (I have no Kleenex boxes).

Husband is not coming with me to the party as he HATES anything that involves publicity and virtually disappears when that stuff happens. I have four Film Premiers to go to in London, one meeting Ben Affleck and Bob Hoskins, husband has refused to go to any of them.

We go to London next week, that’s after I have survived Halloween, Guy Fawkes, Christmas, New Year, spring and summer here in Glasgow in the next three days!

Junkie, drunks and Swans…

On Tuesday I went out with a film crew to do the short film that will be presented to the assembled guests at the finals of ‘Scottish Woman of the Year’ dinner.
It really is just a small clip of me walking around with a voice over, giving the people there a taste for who I am.
The other five women had theirs done and the crew were lovely and knew that I was a comedian and had decided to make it a wee bit funnier.
So we took a walk down to the Glasgow Green and beside the River Clyde, I saw a big bunch of swans strutting around so I decided it would be funny if I pretended they were a comedy crowd and I addressed them as if I was doing comedy and the birds all honked and flapped at me.
“Come on swans, give me smile, tip your waitress, I will be here all week” I giggled.

Then a wee Glaswegian drunk wandered over in to camera shot. He was wearing a dirty tee shirt, had no teeth and stank.

“Why do you think that big swan isn’t joining all of those birds?” He said.

He was right the big bird stood a distance away from the other swans.

I looked at the big haughty swan and said to camera “This wee Glasgow man who is locally known as Doctor Doolittle has posed a very sombre question”

The wee drunk closed his eyes in a professional manner threw up one arm and shouted loudly and proudly “That’s because they are geese and that is a swan, if you are going to talk to them at least get there breed correct, Geese hate being called swans that’s why they honk at you” The wee drunk man smiled smugly to the camera.

He was right they were bloody geese! I hadn’t even noticed…how much of a city kid am I?

I went back to look at the swan with the wee drunk stumbling man behind me, still with the camera running, and as I approached the snooty tall white beast- two big fat long rats came scrambling under the swans legs and scurried towards me.

“Arrrggghhh fucking big smelly rats!” I squealed as the wee drunk laughed aloud.

“It’s ok they are water rats, they don’t bite!” He said running behind the rats that were running after me……the camera still shooting the whole thing.

We couldn’t have arranged this if we tried.

The wee drunk man refused to leave me alone to get the shot done “give me money” he demanded.
“I don’t have money wee man” I said (and I didn’t)
“Well I want money for being in your film” He stood his ground.

“I think you will find we never had you in the film, we never asked for you to be in this wee film and we are actually trying to position the camera to get you out of our wee film” I snapped back.

“Well I told you about the geese” he replied smugly.

“And you want payment for pointing out a swan isn’t a goose?” I asked him sarcastically.

“Aye I do” He shot back at me.

“Well, no is the answer to that, I recognised the rats and I am not getting paid for pointing them out am I?” I laughed and then he laughed and finally wandered off, but still managed to shout at me in the background.

After escaping the rats and drunks, we walked towards the suspension bridge that sits over the River Clyde for a shot of me walking across.
Just as I started walking, I saw a man drag himself out of the water at the bank side, he clambered up through the muddy clearing, ran in front of the camera and came up to me.
He was filthy, dripping and I thought I may be dreaming, how surreal can my day get?
“Listen if you want to film me you can, I will tell you my story for cash, I was chased into the river by gangsters, now film me” he shouted, wet arms outstretched and bawling like a mad man.

“We don’t want to film you actually” I replied. The camera woman kept the film going; my wistful walk amongst the red rustic autumnal leaves was going in an entirely different direction.
We then cut the shot and tried to ignore him. He ran around everyone and came back at me as I lit up a quick fag and gripped my take away coffee carton for smoke break and possibly a looney break,
“Give me a fag you bitch” he hissed at me.
I looked at him and smiled “No”.
“You fucking middle class bastards come here with your camera’s filming shite and here is me with a real gangster story, I just came out of the Clyde…now give me a fag” he aggressively spat at me.

I watched as the three women production crew fiddled with equipment and made a concerted effort to ignore him, I stepped forward and shoved my face right into his and said through gritted teeth.

“Listen you fuckwit, I am from here, I lived here in the Calton for years, I am not fucking interested in your fucked up junkie tale of woe, don’t stand there thinking I am some mumsy middle class arse that you can scare or intimidate, you ever speak to me like that again, I will fucking throw you back into the river, if you want anything from me, I will be glad to help but you have to respect me first or you can fuck right off and go drink your methadone elsewhere”

He looked at me, raised one eyebrow and said “Well if you are from here you know how shite it is, I have problems” he put his head down and stuffed his wet swollen fingers into damp pockets.

I answered him “Yeah…fucking big problems and if you treat people like that and try to intimidate women like that then no fucking one will help you, I don’t let anyone speak to me like that”

“Can I have a cigarette please?” he asked politely.

“Yes” I said and handed him one and gave him the coffee.

“Do you know Shorty from the Calton? I asked him as he lit the fag.

“Aye, I know Shorty well, you know him?” He replied blinking through the smoke.

“I told you, I lived here, I used to own the Weavers Inn up on London road” I answered.
“Fucksake you should’ve said that” He smiled gripped the cigarette with his teeth and thrust out one hand to shake mine.
“You must be a Storrie” his broad smile spilt his face.

“Yes I am a Storrie….well by marriage but I have changed my name since, what’s yours?” I asked him.

“I am not telling you, I will get battered for fucking you about” he laughed loudly and he walked off with my cigarette and my hot coffee “Cheers Storrie” he shouted from a distance as he held up the paper cup and made off between the big trees that lined the river.

We did manage to finish off that short two minute film of me walking about and talking about my charity work. I don’t think the lovely film crew even imagined they would be staring through a camera at a nominee of Scotswoman of the Year as she argued with geese, had an animal lecture from a wee drunk and threatened to throw a drug addict into a freezing river, but then again stuff happens to me.

Oh and by the way, must of the charity work I do is with people who have drink and drug problems….ironic?

Native American Indians and baby Abi strikes again…

I have to thank Marie Leaf, for sending me her hand made dream Native American Indian handmade Dreamcatcher. She posted it to me from all the way across the world.

It is beautiful and the feathers that dangle from it are just spectacular. I lie in bed and watch them flutter and dance in the late Scottish Summer sun. My dreams have got better except they are now BIZZARE and detailed beyond belief. I dreamt I was working in a huge bar I am not familiar with and had a stroppy fight with Kofi Anan and the BeachBoys, whilst and old gangster I knew became a make up artist that painted mustard on babies faces! Go figure that shit out!

I managed to get our boiler finally repaired this week; we have been living without hot running water for months now. Boiling kettles to wash dishes, the showers worked, but the taps didn’t so I managed to at least get myself cleaned! I even washed pots in the shower last week.
Plumbers are so good to have in the family and they are a dying breed of workmen, no one wants to be a plumber anymore. Loads of young people all want to go into media and film, hardly any want to get a real trade like brickwork and electricians etc….the Government here in UK is trying to recruit more youngsters into these trades as there is a dire shortage.
I don’t have any skills like that.
My dad could do plumbing and home repair jobs; my mammy was an expert wall paperer and painter. In the old days people were too poor to hire folk to come do stuff to their homes, but I never managed to gather those skills. My whole flat needs repainting and it will wait until I can afford one!
Till then I will live with yellowing walls and dull white doors!

I am hoping one of those TV shows will offer my home a make-over….but I suppose that will never ever happen!

My niece Ann-Margaret was telling how she is coping with her daughters the new baby Julia and the crazy toddler Abi.
Those who read the blog often will be familiar with the antics of Abi; she is now three and can TALK for Britain in the Toddler Chatting Arena. I love her so much; she is extremely funny and very sharp for a wee cute baby.

The other day Ann –Margaret finally finished breast feeding newly born Julia, coping with sore nipples and a cranky back she finally put Julia down for a sleep and gave herself a well earned rest.

Two minutes later she heard the baby’s “Waaa Waaa” screams from Julia’s lacy crib in the bedroom. “Oh ….crap, please don’t be awake wee preciousness” the weepy hormonal Ann-Margaret whispered as she struggled to get on her feet, being careful not to jerk her sore pelvis.

Just as she stood up Abi came running in and said “I just checked and that wee baby can’t talk yet, I spoke loudly and clearly and all she did was scream, when will she talk mummy?”

Abi’s big brown eyes pleading annoyance to her mum with her bubbly jiggly curls bouncing about as she struggled to understand why a tiny child won’t talk back, Ann-Margaret had to bite her bottom lip and restrain her shouts at the cute toddler who had woken up the baby again stood there waiting for an answer.
“Aunty Janey, please take Abi till she is at least 21 years old and bring her back for visits” my poor niece Ann-Margaret pleaded in desperation.

I am sure it will all work out in the end, but it must be madness having a toddler and a new born still on the breast….thank GOD I am too old for that stuff, though I wouldn’t mind having Abi till she was 21 years old, she is such fun!

I made a new video blog on my website, it is a satirical spoof of the famous UK Labour MP Sion Simon weblog where he spoofed the Conservative leader David Cameron….you can see it on my main webpage if you are interested.

I am in the FINAL SIX of Scotswoman of the Year!

I cannot thank all of you enough and a big Thanks to everyone who voted for me. I am also very touched the way the Glasgow Evening Times put me forward for this amazing award.
The other wonderful nominee’s for this prestigious award are amazing women who have overcome hardships, and went on to be inspirational to many. I am honoured to be up there with them!

The article in tonight’s newspaper is here
JANEY GODLEY
Comedienne Janey Godley proves laughter really can be the best medicine.
As a child, she was sexually abused by her uncle, which she recounted in her book, Handstands in the Dark.
She then married into Glasgow's gangland and watched as many of her friends and family were sucked into a life of crime and drugs.
Yet she was determined to take a different path in life. After 30 years she found the confidence to prosecute her uncle.
Today, the 45-year-old has become the inspiration for victims of abuse from all over the world.
"I am a great believer in trying to make the best of a bad job," she says.
Her award-winning play, The Point of Yes, tells the story of the 80s heroin epidemic.
She runs comedy workshops for 15-18-year-olds and drama workshops for former addicts, using their own experiences as inspiration.
Janey has worked unofficially with abused women at court, telling them what to expect, and this year, on International Women's Day, she contributed to a Fighting Violence with Comedy event in London.
This month she hosts the Emma Humphreys Memorial Awards, which recognises women who work against male violence.

If you haven’t voted yet and WISH to VOTE click on this link

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/lo/features/7025084.html

I am so chuffed and grateful, you have no idea how this has cheered me up!
Thanks everyone for your kind words and testaments.
Much Love Janey