Am Exhausted

Leeds was lovely, but I am glad to be home. I have a sore throat and chesty cough and feel like shit. I had to get up today and drag my carcass awake. I managed to fix my hair nice and get my entire make up done as I was going to STV to do a comedy thing to camera. I felt like sleeping all day and ignoring my career and fuck TV shows. But I was good and did it, my body feels awful.

Baby Abi, (she isn’t a baby anymore she is four years old) came over and sat and watched Ratatouille the latest Pixar movie and loved every minute of it. I then put up the ironing board, covered it and let her paint for ages. She loves painting and the ironing board is perfect for adjusting to her height.

I have two days off before I head off to London. I am attending Christmas parties all this week, I have one tomorrow in Glasgow, then another on Thursday, one in London on Friday, another in London on Saturday and finally another one in London on Monday! I will party-ed out.

I am not very good at parties, I don’t really socialise well. I know I should but I am shit at it. You would think someone who talks for a living would be fun, but not me. I get insecure at parties and the more insecure I get the more inappropriate I become.

For instance, once at a party I got so shy and strange I asked a woman if she really wanted to be married to the stupid husband she introduced me to. Then I laughed out loud when her husband told me she was infertile, I didn’t mean to laugh but it was so insensitive of him to tell me and I got awkward and giggled.

I hope I behave better this year. I am going to brush up on my socialising skills.

Rainy days do get me down

I am still in Leeds. Life was in turmoil yesterday. My brother Jim now lives in Essex with his daughter and five lovely grand kids and I go a call saying he had taken ill. Jim is a complex person but I adore him, regular readers of this blog will know that Jim has come through various drug problems, living with HIV and more recently he survived cancer.

Those worried I am spilling my brothers secrets on this blog will be heartened to know he gave me the say-so to tell all, otherwise I would not say anything!
He is my beloved big brother!

Anyway it seems he was very ill and I wasn’t totally sure why. His daughter had been given conflicting news from the emergency docs at Colchester Hospital and I needed to find out personally.

I called the hospital a few times and luckily managed to talk to a Scottish nurse! She was very friendly and helpful and called me back with Jim’s exact location in the hospital and the number to speak to the doc treating him.

It seems he has pneumonia and some other infection. I was worried he was dying and would have to cancel my comedy gigs in Leeds and dash to London, but the news was good. He was stable.

I called back a few hours later for an update and a wee Liverpudlian nurse said “he is still in a coma and there is no response”

“When did my brother go into a coma?” I screamed alarmed.

“Erm….sorry I have got the wrong notes, I am really sorry” she pleaded “Let me find your brothers notes”

After my heart beat normally I found out Jim is still stable and being treated for the chest infection.

My mate John Fleming drove down to Colchester on my behalf and visited him and gave me the news. I have been onstage every night and have been rather worried, so John is a great mate for doing that.

So far Jim is ok and continues to get better daily.

So husband and I got up today and despite the rain we set off for Otley. It’s a small market town outside Leeds and home to Mr Chippendale (not the sexy dancer but the famous cabinet and furniture maker).

The rain pounded down, we arrived to a small village flooded with water with puddles that could easily handle a small canoe if we so felt like it. I tried to look at the wonderful charming street scenes but the fact that my trousers were flapping and soaked irritated me.

Then Ashley our daughter called.

“Dad!” she screamed.

Husbands face became ashen. I stared at him, my heart stopped, the rain soaked my head, and splashes from cars soaked me as I stood stock still trying to decipher the look in husbands face. I wanted to rip the phone from his ear and find out what was happening to my precious child.

“Are you ok? Are you bleeding?” he asked as the rain muffled his words.

My legs shook- what the fuck was going on? He directed me to a bar off the main road and we both walked inside, him with phone still clamped to his ear. I wanted that phone NOW…I need to know what is wrong with Ashley and he was talking too slow and not giving me any indication, why did she want to talk to him? Why not me? I talk faster and process information quicker…

Husband finally passed the phone to me.

“Mum, I fell down the tube station in those evil brown lesbian looking sports shoes you bought me last year” she sobbed, she was really crying, big gulping sobs came through the ear piece.

“Baby, are you ok? Are you cut? Are you injured? Burn the lesbian shoes, through them out the window, talk to me!” I spoke quickly, I almost lactated and had a breast leak, I haven’t heard her cry like that since she fell off her scooter in 1994.

Husband was shaking his head and patting my shoulder, and trying to communicate something to me, but it was distracting me from my daughter’s pain.

“I really want my dad to come home, I miss him and no one is here when I fall” she squeaked…she sounded like she was five years old. “I don’t know why I am so upset, I really miss my daddy”

She almost hyperventilated on the phone and as I stood in front of a big crackling fire in a tiny wee bar in Otley surrounded by locals staring at me as I shouted about throwing lesbian shoes out of a window, I continued to get her breathe slowly. People stared more, like I was trying to help deliver a child over the phone.

That was until I added.

“Breathe slowly, now hold it and breathe again, not too fast, take it slowly, now grab one lesbian sports shoe and throw it right into the road from the windows in the front” I spoke slowly and clearly.

Husband giggled and ordered tea.

Ashley finally calmed down, I finally calmed down, I hung up the phone and watched loads of wee old men stare suspiciously at me. I didn’t care, my daughter was scared and hurt and it’s my job to fix that shit.

“She is upset, tired and fell and misses her dad” husband spoke as he pored tea into a cup for me. We both sat there in the wee bar in wet clothes and decided to head back to Leeds as the day was complete wash out.

We got back to the car and…it would not start!

The rain lashed, it sounded like pebbles being battered off the roof and the fucking car refused to start.

I sat with wet legs, wet head and freezing hands. Husband called the AA and gripped the wheel in anger; he hates the frustrating feeling of things not working properly.
I knew Ashley missing him was upsetting him and he felt annoyed he wasn’t there for her when she needed him.

Finally the AA turned up, fixed the starter thingy and we drove back to Leeds in silence. I watched his face, his jaw was stiff and he was grinding his teeth. The rain slashed continually.

“I miss her” he spoke.

“I miss her too, she is ok, you know, she needs to accept shit happens and she needs to know she will get over it, she really wants you home, but that doesn’t make you a bad dad for not being there, how do you think I feel? She doesn’t really miss me” I said.

“You have been travelling since she was eight, I was always there for her” he said.

“That sounds like I was never there for her, am I a bad mother?” my heart sank.

“No, you are a working mother, that’s a good thing; I am a dad, that’s a different thing”

We drove in silence, both of us trying to work out how to be a good parent, yet earn a living. I knew Ashley was having a bad day and would come through it all. She isn’t that weak or needy, she just must be feeling down, she is strong like me.

The phone rang again, it was Ashley. My heart missed a beat as I pressed the button and heard her shout “Guess what? It’s snowing here in Glasgow! Wow, mum I am so happy, I need to go my as mates are here and we are going to a party tonight, sorry I upset you, I just missed dad. I threw the shoes away…Love you mum” and she hung up.

Being a mum and dad is fucking scary.

Being a sister is scary.

Being a comic is easy, am back onstage in Leeds tonight. Life is ok.

Working Class Leeds

I love Leeds, I am here for a week performing comedy at Jongleurs and the place is awesome. Very cosmopolitan, sassy and certainly a jewel in the north, but and I say BUT very hesitantly.

If you want to catch a glimpse of the working class, real Northerners, the Alan Bates type characters who are the solid bread and butter pudding of these people, you hang out at the outdoor side of Leeds Market.

There is a shoddy mish mash of stalls selling cheap stretchy pants, misaligned underwear and Knick-Knack-a- roonys, the likes of what people like me would balk at. Plastic clocks painted in cheap gold varnish, retarded looking Georgian ladies parading as figurines made of plaster of Paris and painted with colours than you can lick off.

There is a concrete parapet where the ‘interesting people’ hang out. I always make an effort to be there and watch them, not out of any perverse voyeurism, but because they are genuinely fascinating.

I sat down on one of the many metal benches that line the concrete shelter with my polystyrene cup of searing hot tea and sipped away happily. Sat beside me was a huge fat woman, she was wearing a tent like pink cotton coat and had a bright floral scarf tied around her big head and it knotted beneath one of her many chins.

At her leg was a huge multi coloured nylon bag that was bulging at the seams.

“It’s a pissing carry on this Christmas shopping isn’t it? I mean I ordered a side table out of Argos two months ago and they told me it was out of stock, so this lady called me and told me they would send a pissing cheque I said ‘A pissing cheque? That no good to me my young lady, I aint got the money to go into town to cash the pissing cheque’ then I got into town and pissing Argos told me the bloody table was now in stock and they were delivering that pissing day!” her words came out in a torrent.

I made apologetic noises and sipped my boiling tea; she carried on “Have you seen these?”

She bent down into her big bag and pulled out what I assumed was a tarpaulin, she unfolded the material and I recognised that they were in fact a big pair of black Lycra knickers. She pulled them to full stretch and I gawped and gasped “Oh my God they are the biggest knickers I have ever seen”

“Yeah they will fit my pissing big arse” she giggled.

“Or a ship” I added. She laughed a throaty laugh and we sat chatting some more.

Then along at the next bench I watched what I can only assume was a family of seven people of various ages and sizes.

All but one of the group was sitting down. I assumed this was the mother. She was a giant woman, her thighs spread over the entire bench and her girth took up the whole space. She had on a blue coat and a blue dress, her bare mottled legs were massive and her ankles were bulging. I couldn’t stop staring at her feet.

These feet were firmly strapped down by the industrially thick brown leather straps of her sandals, the density of which could hold down a big top carnival tent or secure ships to a harbour midst a squalling storm. Swollen burgeoning flesh popped through the spaces between the leather, like water balloons being squeezed between toddler’s fingers. Her fat ankles spilled over on their own flesh and doubled up as the leg met the foot. I wondered how she managed to walk.

Surrounding her was the family. There were prams with squealing babies and toddlers who ran around the group.

I genuinely had trouble trying to work out who were the men and which were the women. The entire group had short ‘bingo’ haircuts and they all had a big blotch of bleach apparently combed through the hair. Like someone had found a big tub of peroxide and they had experimented on each other and all enjoyed and celebrated the results!

Yellow-white short spiky hair was everywhere. They all had smallish heads, no necks and their bodies just got bigger and rounder as your eye went down, like Weebles, no distinguishable waists, hips or boobs…just rounded people with yellow-ish hair. All dressed in grey, black and blue sports wear.

Though I assume none of them were joggers or sprinters.

This was a sexless look and it was very popular, even the young teenager amongst them was dressed in this acrylic nightmare with yellow-ish hair. No one had dared to stray from the fashion, I looked at the babies in the numerous prams and wondered how long it would be before the peroxide would be slapped on its wee head!

The group was loud with laughter, they chased each other around, they smoked, they swore loudly and they were affectionate with babies. Then they all moved off. I watched the big fat mother struggle to get off the bench and waddle off towards the bus stop near the market.

I finished my tea, stubbed out my cigarette and headed off to the flat I am staying in here in Leeds.

Leeds is full if amazing characters and I love it.