Thursday, June 22, 2006

No going back….

I have had people and journalists all week ask me why I tell all in my blogs. I think I have an inherent need to keep talking or I will die! Sometimes at home husband hardly speaks, he is very quiet. So I call mates and I call family and when I have exhausted them I go on stage and talk and when that avenue is done, I talk here. Maybe one day I will run out of words.
At least I get paid for it on stage! That helps!
Got my credit card bill in today and husband sat there with ‘that face’ on, you the face that makes shocked looks at every expenditure, fucks me off, I pay my own bills, but he does all the financial work for me.
“How much did you pay for a pair of jeans? You know you can get jeans for £4 at Tesco’s” He tells me solemnly.
“Yes, and you can have a wife who wears Tesco’s jeans, luckily you have me who doesn’t” I add.
“I wouldn’t mind a wife who wore Tesco’s own brand jeans, she would be nice anyway” He mumbles.
“Good, then go fucking find some cheap chav who wears cheap clothes” I smile back.
I mean my jeans were only £20, hardly fucking astronomical- I may stab him at dawn. He still shrieks at the price of Lycra tights “What £7 a pair of tights?”
If it were down to him Ashley and I would be wearing wooden clogs that we carved out each time our feet got bigger or he would have paint to change the colour of the clogs if we fancied something different.
Left to him we would be eating shit spam and chips.
I live in nice places and eat good food and wear lovely clothes, he forgets I was the child who wore torn and dirty clothes.
I had filthy underwear and shabby shoes as a child, I lived in a dirty house that was infested with fleas and often had to pick lice from my hair. I once had scabies and had to paint my naked body in a foul smelling chemicals and stand naked till it dried, the sheets on my bed had to be burned and I slept with an old coat the rest of that winter.
The smell still haunts me. I still dream about the filthy toilet and sometimes clean it in my dreams! I cannot stand bad smells or untidy places. I clean pub tables before I sit at them, I wipe cutlery in restaurants before I eat.
I am not going back to being poor. I may die skint, but whilst I am alive, it has to be decent accommodation with clean bed linen and at least four star hotels. Nothing less will do.
People mistake it for snobbery or class obsessed, but it has to do with maintaining my own standards.
You would be surprised the amount of comedy bookers who assume you will ‘stay over’ at their flat when doing their gig to avoid costs!
I need to be booked into a good hotel, have my own privacy and not have to sleep in someone’s bed!
When I was a child, I remember going to other girl’s houses and being amazed at how clean they were, I would envy the drawers full of clean pants and socks that lined them. The fresh cotton smell, the tidy rooms with clean bed linen, the books lined up on white shelves, the fresh food and non shouty sober parents that served hot soup, all stunned me and made me eternally jealous.
I recall vowing to myself that when I was older I would never live dirty again, I would never watch my child picking lice, and I would never again eat leftover chips that drunks dropped in the street.
I haven’t and that’s how it’s going to stay.
I am so glad Ashley has never had to suffer any of the above indignities, she has had a very privileged life in comparison but she does know what I went through and does appreciate every penny spent on her.
So I am not going to wear £4 jeans, fuck off and find some grateful whore who will dear husband coz it aint me.

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