Don’t let me look back in anger

Things are happening in my life that keep making me look back, its not good news. Recently when I was in London it happened. I immediately recalled the first time I went to London to stay with my pal Finlay.

It was 1994; I was hardly doing any comedy and was running my pub at the time. Just the sheer excitement of being away from the pub, husband and my child made me giddy with happiness.

Soho looked like the most amazing place in the world; the big bright lights of Piccadilly dazzled me like the oik I was back then.

It was fantastic to be free from domesticity and just be me and just be with my pals. I recall looking in Time Out magazine and wondering how I could possibly contain my bursting exhilaration at the thought MY NAME one day might be in those listings as a comic at a club, it just made me foam at the mouth.

Years later when I wrote articles and was featured in Time Out, I giggled and had a wee heart warming feeling, recalling the Janey who thought that was THE DIZZY heights of fame, and it was a good feeling.

But somehow I now feel a bit flat, it might be because I am getting older and am becoming tired whilst travelling, I am not sure what this feeling is, but I miss the excitement of being so amazed at doing stand up.

Does that make sense?

You need to know I LOVE doing comedy; I feel I am finally me onstage. It is the best feeling in the world and I honestly am blessed that I get paid for doing something I think is easy and wonderful; I know I shouldn’t say that. I should say how comedy is so technical, a skill that takes years to hone and blah blah about the art- but I love comedy and I it doesn’t feel like hard work to me.

Please don’t take from this that I am poo-poohing my art, or being flippant about all the years its taken me to get to a decent level, but I just get worried someone is going to walk up and say “you are just talking, why is that a job?” and I am scuppered! I have been told be many people in my life growing up to ‘shut up’ and now I get paid for talking, that makes me giggle inside, yet there is this awful foreboding feeling inside me.
Do I finally have depression and my brain can’t compute what that actually means? Can that happen?

I have never had depression before and always rail against it as I have been surrounded by depressed people my whole life and they really annoy me (sorry if that’s sounds unsympathetic, but if you live with someone with depression it basically means when they are sad and don’t want to go out- you are NOT going to the beach either and You don’t have depression) There is nothing for people who DON’T have depression but live with people who have depression –they get therapy- you get moaned at.

So I don’t know why I am feeling strange and odd lately. Maybe I am just going through an odd phase, yet the only thing that makes me happy is going onstage.

Ashley is all grown up and writing for a living and doesn’t need me so much, husband is happy and fine and I might be suffering from some empty nest thing. As everyone knows how much I love being with my daughter and I talk about her all the time. I know I do…but you have no idea how proud I am that she is just lovely and funny and such good company to be around.

I think I might be having a mid life crisis, I may end up like those women who get their hair cut like Suzie Quatro and start wearing fringey leather jackets and start visiting the Hard Rock Café’s all over the world collecting beer mats, tee shirts and getting photos taken with Jimmy Hendrix’s guitar. Can that happen to women overnight?

Why is looking back to me being all glowy about comedy and visiting new cities not making me happy?

Or maybe I shouldn’t write a blog in a damp Manchester hotel room with a really bad period pain and a colonoscopy to look forward to? It might be that then eh?