Life makes me stay awake

“Janey, you awake?” my husband asked me at 5am. “No am fast asleep fuck off” I answered, truth was I was wide awake, I was wriggling about and doing pretzel shapes and trying to switch my brain off. One minute I was drifting off into a submerged world of shifting memories, me and my dog Major galloping at speed across Greenfield park, then my mammy standing beside the sink dabbing my face with a cloth then I was suddenly awake again...like I was falling through layers of my life and getting a snapshot of the visions. I miss my dog and my mammy.

Am rather discombobulated lately, those of you who know me will be expecting me to be prepared for the Edinburgh fringe, and those of you who have been paying attention will know this year, am not doing a one woman show. Every year since 2002 I have done a one woman show and on some years as much three different shows a day for the whole run. I just decided this year not to do it. But good news is, I will be going through for some gigs and heaps of slots and the chance to see shows that I can enjoy without worrying about my own show!

Unusually Ashley is doing some shows at Fringe, she is in a show called Alchemy it’s on every weekend – she is doing sketches etc and am so happy that she gets to enjoy her fringe without producing my show as she has done for about ten years! Go Ashley!

I am having a great year actually- having been to Adelaide, Singapore and Canada with Ashley on tour – I feel as if I am the luckiest person in the world to be doing a job I love and enjoy. I didn’t think I would have a decent year since my brother died on December 31st last year, the good thing Jim taught me was to live a bit and don’t look back. I am doing that now.

The holiday in Salt Spring Island was amazing and I still miss Sarah and her two awesome dogs Parker and Abbey. But you have to realise that you cannot spend your life going on holiday week in and week out sometimes life catches up and you end up back on a train or plane heading to the next gig. Talking about gigs, every time I step onstage with a comic who says “hey I was on TV recently” they normally die on their arse onstage, isn’t that funny at least in an ironic way?

Had fun on twitter- I love watching comics suck up to famous TV comics yet backstage and in company they slag them to death, the shallow two faced-ness of it all makes me somehow warm inside. It’s the same as how Michael McIntyre really riles the likes of Stewart Lee (as was much reported lately) I am not a huge fan of MM but by fuck do I enjoy how he annoys at least 400 comics on the circuit, it makes me giggle that the ‘intelligentsia’ of comedy hate him. But the public will get what the public wants and Mr McIntyre is what they want!

It almost equates to the level of unbridled hatred that ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ the comedy show that won a BAFTA received en masse Mrs Brown’s Boys just about reduced half of the comedy circuit to suicide with anger and spitting hatred at their ‘Irish shenanigans’ all sorts of abuse and screams of ‘lifting of material’ went on. Truth is, I never saw it and have never enjoyed men dressed as women on telly, and we have women to do that job.

So life goes on. By the way have any of you ever listened to the song The Tin Man by America? I love that song but it’s like someone has just randomly picked phrases for a song OR verbalised a dream! “So please believe in me when I say spin around, Oz never did give nothing to the Tin man that he didn’t already have!”

Anyway back to “Janey, are you awake?” husband finally got my attention, I turned round in the wash of dawn light, untangled my legs in the twisted duvet and leaned over to him and whispered “What is it?” he looked at me with strained blinking eyes, his pupils adjusting to the light flooding into the room and said “Did you remember to pay your tax bill?”