Children get older and so do parents

Being away so often makes you forget your actual role in the family and the world in which you inhabit. When I was in Australia I was so busy trying to work hard that Ashley really did become my carer for a while and was checking I was eating, sleeping and resting enough. Much in the same way I do with my dad, who I am always worried sick about when I go away. Parents notoriously die the minute you step on a plane to leave the country, well old ones anyway!

My wee da is fit and healthy though especially for his age, he gave up smoking when fags went up a ha’penny in 1955 and hasn’t drunk since 1981 and despite having a heart op and small stroke in the late 90s and suffering the death of his beloved wife two years ago, he is actually fighting fit for an old Glasgow man. Though the older he gets the more racist he seems.... weird that eh? He is like a geriatric insane Jerry Sadowitz but without the irony, ticket sales and ability to shuffle a card deck.

When we were going over the census form I can’t even begin to tell you the stuff he said, so am just leaving it there. Suffice to say he doesn’t have much respect for people who encourage women to wear Burkhas “Imagine I tried to tell your mammy what to wear, she would have kicked my knackers and quite rightly so, women shouldn’t be told how to live”

He then went on about how odd it is I leave my husband to go round the world doing comedy, yet he prefers I leave husband as he looks after dad....I can’t win can I? The other thing dad loves is clear spray sun block factor 30 somehow he loves this product, it’s not as if we get a lot of sunshine in Glasgow but on the days it comes out, he liberally sprays his baldy head and hugs the can. He is odd and has been known to drown squirrels accidentally in big bin down near the fence that gets full of rain water (I promised him we wouldn’t talk about that again).

So am back from Australia and back in the game, I have decided to NOT go to Edinburgh fringe (I was kindly offered a paid show with all expenses covered) but I don’t want to go this year. Instead I have other plans in the offing. I will doing Soho Theatre in last weekend of August and I will be writing a new play and a radio thing and have some very interesting meetings coming up this week. Things are pretty exciting and even if they don’t work out- I don’t care, am not being tied to Edinburgh for a whole month!

Life feels ok, it’s been a hard start to this year- my beloved brother Jim died suddenly on New Year’s Eve and was alone in pain prior to his death which haunts me. I never even called him over Christmas and that haunts me...I have been very fucked up about this and then I never got to go to his funeral. Things felt odd, but am looking onwards and upwards.

So here I am watching friends daughters grow up and get married, watching Ashley look after me, try hard to look after dad and all the while try hard to remain 22 years old inside my own head. It really is just the early 80s inside my body, am still hoping George Michael will Wham me at some point and I still dance to Fame when I hear it on the radio.

I asked husband the other day if I still look like the 18 yr old girl he married and he looked at me and said “No, you have bigger boobs and more fat on your ass and you talk better and you believe in yourself more and you read better books” that’s what happens when you ask an Aspergers man his honest opinion. But it was true am older, better read and much fatter than the girl who dressed in a £58 wedding dress and let a priest tell her how to love a man back in 1980. (Turns out the priest was an IRA sympathiser and fled the country when he got involved in cash for arms -we don’t know if we are legally married and if he was legally a priest)

“Club Tropicana drinks are free.......”