This life of mine

My train journey’s are becoming legendary, on Thursday I caught the train to Manchester as I was off to stay overnight courtesy of BBC so I could get up early Friday and do a slot on Woman’s Hour BBC radio 4.

The train down to Preston was chugging about a bit; I didn’t feel good and soon felt sick. I have never had travel sickness in my life. There is nothing worse than going into a train loo, lifting the lid with a patina of sweat on your torso, a heaving vomit in your throat and staring a shit stained loo. I gagged up as much as I could and staggered back to my seat. What the fuck was wrong with me? Sick? Was I pregnant? I think am pregnant at least six times a year, don’t ask me why, I have never had an unplanned pregnancy but in a past life I must have had seventeen abortions and at least ten babies and that’s blighted my soul forever.
Ok back to real life….I think the engine was dodgy as I felt like I was on a dodgy boat.

Then the train stopped, the engine broke…of course it did, I was on the train wasn’t I?

I had to get off that train, me covered in sweat and vomit heaving luggage and onto another train heading to Manchester. That train was overbooked and packed like trains you see in India with people hanging off the side and sitting on the roof. Ok, am joking not that busy, but there were no seats to be had.

So I had to stand, in a crowded train, feeling sick and with a slow realisation that I wasn’t pregnant because that twisted pain in my womb indicated I was about to have a period. Then the full on womb cramps kicked in. I jerked forward; almost head butting a toddler in a buggy, as I clutched my lower body. Then I felt sick again.

I realised something on that busy train, nobody likes a vomitter and nobody cares about your luggage they couldn’t give a flying fuck if you are harbouring a bomb, just don’t vomit on them. That train crowd basically stood on, kicked and pushed my wee suitcase about as I staggered to and from the loo through the overcrowded carriages.

I felt like dying, but am sure people go through worse than period pains, vomiting and standing for two hours on a crowded train. Things did get worse as four big giant faced Scottish posh students got drunk on three cans of shandy and started swearing loudly and discussing Slipknot.

The swearing I could barely handle but the Slipknot talk had to stop. I tolerated it as best I could.

There were some elderly people near them and small kids behind them, yet big faced Stewart, Alistair or the Alis-star-man as this dick called himself continued swearing in their over privileged accents. There is something horrific in hearing a middle class pony trekking wanker shout
“Fraser, stop trying to commandeer the conversation you awful cunt” ok…say that last sentence aloud but in a very posh accent, imagine you have a big giant head with bushy hair and look like inbred minor Royalty as you say it and you can see why I attacked them.

“Ok, you need to all keep your voices down, there are other people that don’t want to hear your irritating middle class voice trying to sound ‘street’ and if you mention Slipknot one more time, I am going to beat your horsey face to death with my shoe, am sick, I have a period, I am trying to stop smoking and am really tired, I will actually kill you with the handle off my case, are we clear?” I shouted at them.

They all stared at me, one of them piped up “who are you the voice police?”

I leaned over and whispered “Listen up you wee cuntfaced knob, there are kids and elderly people who deserve respect, the fact you think shouting out swear words in that fucked up incestuous accent makes me think you believe you can do what you want and you cant. So shut it”

At that point a big burly older bloke pulled me out of the way and said “shut up using that language like this woman says- get up and give women these seats or I will throw you off the train as it moves”

Everyone went quiet- then the boys stood up sheepishly and we got four elderly ladies into the table of four seats. The Slipknot crew stood at the train doors all contrite and the crushed passengers breathed a sigh of relief.

Finally we got into Manchester in time to get slashed with sideways rain as we all ran through the dark streets, scattering looking for taxis, buses and various lifts away from the train station.


I got into the hotel the BBC had booked; it smelled funny is all I am saying. The shower had two setting burning napalm hot or burning acid hot, so I stood near the scalding water and had my first ‘steaming’ in my life. Not a shower but a ‘steam’ that came of the pounding water, my feet got scorched but I needed to feel clean.

I just ate some sandwiches and got into bed. I needed to be up early to go to the studio and do the Woman’s Hour interview, which was about the BBC3 Free Thinking festival about ‘comedy versus tragedy’ which is happening on Sunday in Newcastle. I of course was defending ‘comedy’ against tragedy and after that journey I was qualified for it.

I couldn’t sleep, I tried…but at 3am till 6am people stood beneath my hotel room in the city centre of Manchester and just SCREAMED for no good reason. I looked out to see if a rape was happening, but no…no rape just students and drunk people who had gotten on buses into the city centre to SCREAM beneath my window…wasn’t that nice of them? The screaming went on and off all night, I expected to get up, put on the news and hear that there was a crazy –on – the – loose knife slasher in Manchester chasing people and making them scream…but no…the only news was the BBC journalists were on strike and I was going to have to cross a picket line to talk inanely about comedy versus tragedy.

After a night of reliving a 50s B movie of screaming, I walked down to BBC Manchester and chatted to the picket official, I explained I was just a contributor to a radio show and that I really supported them. I gave out leaflets for them and wore the badge, then crossed the line and went to talk live on the radio. I felt like the dirty scab that I truly was.

You can listen to the radio clip here: http://janeygodleyclips.podomatic.com

Am now home and feel better, isn’t the world better when you get clean pants and into your own bed? Comedy versus Tragedy? I suffered both!

Janey Godley Podcast “Episode 17”

(Pleases be aware that this Podcast Contains strong language)

Mother and Daughter comedy team get to natter and the world gets to hear it on Janey Godley’s podcasts, expect some bawdy language and home truths, as Janey Godley and Ashley Storrie lead you down the roads less taken in their fantastic weekly podcast. Listen as mother and daughter banter, bait and burst with laughter.

In the seventeenth episode of Janey Godley’s Podcast the mother and daughter duo discuss time travel and how they would utilise it, bullying and how it should be stopped, how fat girls split into two camps at 14, how heroin and alcohol are different and how they are the same, what is and what is not racist, why Obama is getting whiter, how they are both coping without cigarettes, Why Janey had fringed ankles in a dream, Janey’s up and coming gigs for children in need and the woman’s hour and an encounter with three Alsatians in an opticians office… all this plus Ashley reveals her own coping techniques when it came to bullying.


Please do comment on the Janey Godley Podcast At the following link:
http://janeygodley.podomatic.com

Notes from a broad

Things have been worrying me deeply. I have been looking up the internet and trying to figure out if I have either- eye, bowel, lung or brain cancer, turns out am old and have nothing like that.
I have stopped smoking and so has my wonderful daughter Ashley, the feeling of her supporting me has been awesome. I really feel its time to get fit, lose weight and get off the fags.

I am not going to be one of those women who starve themselves, this about me trying to feel better about myself.

But I have been having strange pains and boils again.

I just get random pains then go search them on websites, years ago when you had random illness’s an old granny or a woman in your street who kept cats and made gooseberry jam would diagnose your illness in the absence of a doctor.

I recall we had a woman just like that in our street, called Maggie who made flowers out of twigs that she shaved at the end into chrysanthemum heads; it was amazing how she did it. Anyway we called her Maggie Make-believe as she told fantastical tales about ships, pirates and past lives. She also made poultices and gave out herbal type medical advice to anyone who would listen. She also drank home made nettle tea way before the bored housewives of Chelsea discovered its healing properties.

There was an old woman called Auntie Jean who lived in Maggie’s bedroom, Auntie Jean was completely ancient, she looked like a skeleton in a crocheted matinee jacket, her white hair haloed in wisps around her angular white face. She whispered and waved when I came to visit her, and smelt of talcum powder and death.

I never wanted to see this woman who really wasn’t my Auntie Jean, even at eleven years old I knew that was a wee woman waiting to die as Maggie Make-believe made chrysanthemum flowers in the living room and dipped them in blue food dye to sell. But my job was to go shopping for Maggie, she loved me and would bring me in, let me make a disfigured flower then usher me into the talcum room of death to sit by Auntie Jean who looked and sounded like a ghost.

The worst thing was when Auntie Jean asked me to sing a wee song for her. I couldn’t sing and was constantly aware that my shitty voice might have been the last thing she heard on earth. So then wee fat Maggie would come into the room and sing so loudly I was worried we would miss Auntie Jean’s last breath, it just didn’t feel right to be belting out a Tom Jones song to a frail dying woman.
Maggie was a gypsy-ish woman, I suspect. She was a fat as she was tall and wore big flowery dresses and spoke funny. She really loved Auntie Jean and took great care of her.

Maggie’s house was immaculately clean and I am sure she looked after Jean better than any medical staff at that time in the 1970s. I have to say I was relieved when Auntie Jean finally died, as I was worried that she would die during my frequent visits and I didn’t want that to happen.

Maggie was serenely accepting of Jean’s death, something I hadn’t witnessed in my family or my life at that time. She didn’t believe in God, she believed in fairies, woodland earth or something to do with nature reclaiming its own and sang a big song when Jean died with the windows open flung wide (to let her spirit go free). She put the radio on full blast and we both danced to a Marc Bolan song as Jean’s dead body lay in the next room, I was freaked out at first but Maggie assured me Jean loved music and happiness. I was either helping a wee hippy celebrate death or I was enabling a mental person…either way it was ok and felt quite good at the time.

I was thinking about Maggie the other day and decided to write this blog about her, for back up info I called my brother and asked him “do you remember Maggie Make-believe who lived in our street?” Well he didn’t and I am starting to think I imagined her! If anyone out there recalls a lovely cuddly wee woman called Maggie who lived in Kenmore Street in the mid 70s and who made wooden flowers and could cure verrucas and made her own cough medicine and pain poultices, do let me know.