Love and Lost Passport

You know that deep happy love feeling when you wake up and think your stomach will explode with excitement and you want to tell this person you love absolutely every thought, fear or desire but think it's best not to, because when the love fades and the shit hits the fan they might use it against you in a future argument?

 

That's not love, that's endorphins & a hormone cocktail making you insane and the very same chemicals that produce that feeling are an identical mix to that which make people angry and confused enough to pick up a samurai sword and attack people near a busy flower stall, because God told them to.

 

The reason I bring up hormones and love is, am sure am about to batter full force into my menopause and instead of getting the usual symptoms hot flushes and dried up womb/vagina (none of which has happened) I am pretty busy fucking up my life and just losing stuff (like my passport) and getting giddy about love.

 

If my menopause was an interpretive dance movement it would resemble 'trees swaying in the wind, whilst screaming and searching bags frantically as people scattered in different directions then very hard hugging that scares the frail and small animals in my life".

 

Don't expect to see it at the National Theatre is all am saying.

 

All of this has somewhat disconcerted my husband who is used to my brand of 'love' which is basically me trying to be nice and with moments of touching affection. Now he gets undying declarations and long winded stories about all my hopes and dreams and he stares at me with the hollowed eyes of a man who has been in this relationship since he was 16yrs old and utters "we are not getting the bathroom tiled" or "please don't tell me anymore am bored with your mouth moving fast and your hair is bushy did you know that?" He has Aspergers syndrome which makes flowing conversation with perfect segues something that only happens in an episode of 'Friends'.

 

I have also taken to suddenly gripping him tightly in the night making him scream as he thinks the house might be on fire or a hostage situation is in play. Normally I don't like being touched when am sleeping, now I wake up and have an urge to cuddle hard. And I mean cuddle. Husband is worried sick. We have a language that no longer needs proper constructed words, we say sentences to each other that if in public sound innocuous but to the long married trained ear, you will not the coded passive/aggressive hatred and barbed verbal stabbing. That's love isn't it? That we bothered to understand each other's codes and underlying hatred we share?

 

So the losing stuff is getting worse, recently when I was in Canada I managed to drop my passport out of my bag on the very last weekend of the 5 week tour. I was in St John's Newfoundland and it was a bank holiday weekend.

 

On the Thursday after flying from Toronto on Porter Airlines (which are amazing) I managed to let my passport fall out of my bag onto aeroplane floor. I was so flooded by hormones and needing a hug that I never checked my bag. So by time I got into St John's I was hysterical.

 

The manager of the Yuk Yuk's comedy club must have been so happy so deal with a slightly smelly, screamy, tufty haired emotional woman who can yell "I have lost my passport" constantly. Then I went onstage and did an hour show, every night for three nights ..not once did I let it upset me but inside my thoughts were interspersed with "I have lost my passport" it made me sweat funny. Yuk Yuks were so helpful they gave me a landline and an office and the time to call all necessary people as there is no reason that the officials from the British Consulate didn't get to hear me scream "I have lost my passport" and hear a woman who I swear to god was Mary Poppins answer me back "press one if you have lost your passport". I pressed 'one' quite a lot.

 

One of the women in the club looked me right in the eye and said "have you ever lost a breast to cancer? No? then chill the fuck out its just admin"

 

She clearly hadn't been suffering from an emotional pre menopause had she? And her brand of reality bites just made me weepy and needing hard hugs...she wasn't helping is all am saying.

 

The Yuk Yuk's comedy club in Newfoundland is absolutely stunning, it has a natural slate wall as a back drop and as I stood onstage saying funny words but in my head I was screaming "I have lost my passport" and I leaned against the wall and for some reason I cannot explain, I wiggled a finger in between the bricks and got my finger stuck. I had the option of doing a whole hour as I stood in the one spot with my finger stuck, or stand forward and show the 200 odd people exactly what I was doing as I was supposed to be entertaining them.

 

I showed them "I have stuck my finger in the wall, please tell me that Holland isn't behind that wall and when I pull my finger out I flood a nation?"

 

They laughed and I got my finger free.

 

Good news is- Porter airlines found my passport and all the screaming and sweating was for nothing. So now that drama was over I went onto lose house keys, my oyster card and a curly headed toddler called Bernard, (not a good name for a consummate floor licker).

 

Ok calm down the toddler was found quickly. It ran away from me in a shopping mall in London, he wanted his mum, who had asked me to keep an eye on him for a few minutes so she could go to the loo. I would have chased him, but he wasn't mine and I didn't know her well enough to worry about a missing screamer called Bernard. And I was slightly emotional and needed a hard hug.

 

It all worked out in the end.

 

 

So thanks for reading, if you want follow me on twitter @JaneyGodley for updates.