JANEY GODLEY - Scottish actress, comedienne, author, playwright & journalist

Janey's Blogs - September 2006

Friday the 1st of September 2006
10:39:05 PM

Enough with the lumpy face...

I cannot believe this lumpy looking red boil is STILL on my cheek, I have tried everything to get it to come up to a head, I have had an insurmountable set of treatments been slapped on it, I have had hot water on it to draw it up….I mean it has had more attention than Princess Diana’s sexual past. I don’t think there is a paste or cream that hasn’t been smeared onto this fucking evil lump….

Maybe I have cancer? Holy crap! What if I do? Can it be?

I am over-reacting I know, but sometimes I sit and look at it and wonder what is keeping it thriving …..If I tried to keep a spot alive that long for the GREAT BRITISH FACIAL SPOT COMPETITION, then I would not have succeeded as much as I have now. I hate this lump.

What if it never goes away?

Ok I need to stop obsessing I know, I have done nothing but fight with husband since I got home from Festival in Edinburgh.

He tells me he would rather sleep alone than be with me, he told me he is sick of me talking, he told me he is entirely bored with my life, he doesn’t want to go where I am going, he doesn’t want to spend his life chatting to me on the phone from the various cities I end up in week after week.

So I sat and cried, I felt bereft of all emotions then I decided not to let anything hurt me and guard my heart. I don’t need his approval for my life and I know he is feeling down and is lashing out at me because he is upset about his own stuff but I cannot fix him or fix his life. He needs to do that alone and I will carry on with my life and hope he comes through whatever he is going through, I do love him but I cannot stop my life and my ambitions to sort out his emotions. I did that shit for most of my life and guess what ….it didn’t work!

Today he apologised and told me he will stop being so difficult and try more to help me. I hope he does. I have places to go and people to meet and stuff to do.

Ashley is good and is getting back into her routine so she can get back to Uni soon and I am off to London next week. I feel odd and confused tonight and worried I may just go back to being Janey who lets her self worth and emotions be dragged down a dark hole by a man who loves her, while she cries in the dark and hope one day he stops making her feel that way. Or maybe …just maybe…I will be me again.

Sunday the 3rd of September 2006
06:55:21 PM

Oban and beyond…

So finally after a stand up argument, throwing useless clothes into a suitcase – tears and snot running down my face, husband and I finally reconciled and set off in the car for the 3 hour journey to Oban on the coast of Scotland.

We seem to argue at everything we say, see and engage in the rules of war over the tiniest fucking subject. We trade in insults, we speak a double language loaded with sarcasm and pain, words that are so sharp they are never used to describe or verbalise only to hurt and shard each others souls.

We are both Olympians at this trick, both of us can throw daggers through sentences that describe ordinary events, like offering tea, asking for a phone to be handed over….all of these sentences are no longer forms of communication but opportunities to wound and slice.

I am better at it I suppose and he sits quietly – his silence stronger than my clever strung together words that look like a trail of evil fairy lights bursting out of my mouth as my brain quickly deduces his next move, my sharp cells snapping together forming yet another tirade of satirical adjectives, another paragraph of his failures, yet another situation where he let me down, even before he can say a word I have the answer to all is insecurities sitting there patiently beneath my tongue itching to jump up and stab his face as I smile at my cleverness and quick witted brain power. See me? I am great eh?

No I am sad, I never seem to learn to shut up or at least accept my words hurt, I even hate sitting here writing this, I hate admitting I may be wrong, you should have heard how I shot him down time after time, I was good…so fucking good a politician would have gave up his post after I razored his personality and pointed put his constant failure, his past demeanours, his never ending useless-ness to me…then I realised that I only ever do this and it hurts me, because if I am right then why am I here? Why do I love this man? Why stay and make it worse? I don’t know…

Then to make matters worse I clicked on the radio and James Blunt came on

“You’re beautiful, I saw you with another man, but I’ve got a plan’ what the fuck does that mean? James Blunt is planning Rohypnol and gaffer tape to a woman who happened to sit across from him on the subway? His name rhymes with CUNT too much I for my liking.

So we finally hit Oban, the lovely wee seaside port town is charming, but it is one of those Scottish small towns where any pub or hotel toilet has a light switch that has to be found on entry, as if they worship electricity liking it to Uranium.

You can never find the fucking switch, and have to sit and piss in a cold toilet in the dark, a window is always open and you can hear evil seagulls outside the wee open window screaming as you sit there in the eerie darkness.

Hotel receptionist was truly a full blooded cousin of Norman Bates, I shuddered as she stood there flicking fat fingers through the ‘Diary of Bookings’ that sat on her woodchip table. She had a helmet of hard silver shiny hair, dead eyes and the most horrific red lipstick on that crumpled face.

“No booking for you, would you like to just book the room now?”

After finally getting booked into a room that was supposed to be organised, we struggled into an ancient elevator, it had double sliding trellis doors that you had to manage yourself, I silently wondered if Mrs Bates was standing behind the front desk pulling on the rope to get us up, her big fat bingo wings struggling, sweating and shaking as she got us up there floor by damned heavy floor-maybe that’s why she was angry.

The gig went well; the people of Oban are fine and funny.

I am home, tired and stressed about my marriage but convinced that being victorious in every argument doesn’t actually mean and I am ‘winning anything’.

Wednesday the 6th of September 2006
02:24:11 PM

London is hot…

The weather here is awesome; I am in the most amazing apartment in the West End of London. I have a huge penthouse suite that Crown Lawn organised; they are just the best people in the world and look after me like I was their own family. I love them.

The balcony looks over the whole of this side of London and it’s just wonderful.

The place is so cool and I feel like Joan Collins sitting here in Park Avenue, all I need is a couple of naked dancing boys and my day is complete!

So husband and I have come to an amicable agreement that we stop going over past misdemeanours and concentrate on our future, for if I can only remind him of everything he did bad (and I think my autobiography already did that, people all over the world now know what he has done to me) then we need to reconsider why we are both in this relationship.

I have no idea why every time a memory comes up, for instance if he mentions Disneyland holiday in 1995, I immediately recall how he fought with me that night and I ended up sleeping outside on a beach lounger, I don’t recall the other 22 nights when he walked for two miles to get me painkillers from the outside garage, how he surprised me with breakfast in bed, how we sat on the beach all night and watched the sun come up and how he held Ashley in his arms all night because she was sick and wouldn’t sleep in case she choked and her temperature went up too high.

No I remember the one night he was an ass.

Why is that? I have a BANKFUL of holidays, days out and special occasions that are marked by one argument, one fight and one time he spat at me, he told me the reason he hardly recalls the past or chats to me much is he is scared it will trigger a bad day and he will spend the rest of his time sad, because he is being punished for something he did in 1987.

I need to stop and realise that for every ‘bad’ time there are the wonderful days.

Here is one….

In 2004 I had been on a live Big Brother TV show on UK Channel 4 television called Kings of Comedy. After the intensity of performing live on demand and being under the scrutiny of 57 cameras 24 hours a day, they let us out on the Thursday night till Sunday lunch time to do our regular circuit gigs. The studio was in Bristol; far enough from my home in Glasgow, where my poor stressed out family were watching me constantly through a TV lens.

Remember that whilst in the ‘comedy TV house’ I was under immense stress and the politics of being stuck with five other comics was mental, anyway on that first Thursday night when they drove me to London, I arrived at the Hotel and lay down to sleep at midnight. At 5am in the morning my husband and Ashley arrived out of the blue to see me, they had DROVE ALL NIGHT to get there to be with me and it was just wonderful to see them and lie with them after the week I had been through.

I remember how great that felt, just to be with them and how much I loved him for doing that for me.

So there are many good times and I need to sit and recall those and not every fucking half hour of badness wipes out months of amazing times.

Friday the 8th of September 2006
11:19:35 PM

I love Liverpool…

I managed to scam my way from London to Liverpool by train, ok here is the story. When I booked the train ticket online I mistakenly booked it for Thursday the 7th of September as opposed to Friday the 8th. Now I did try to rectify seconds after the confirmation email came through and I had realised my mistake, but the nasty women on the line insisted that I have to pay £68 for a Friday ticket (how fucking expensive is that for a train? The flight to London was £40) and go through some procedure to get back the original £12 I paid for the Thursday journey.

Anyway I turned up at Euston, collected my tickets from the ticket credit card machine and boarded the train and took my chances. The ticket guy came, I nonchalantly handed my tickets, he looked at them and said “This is yesterdays tickets” I gasped in horror and explained “That cant be right, I just collected them from the ticket machine, my journey was booked for Friday, look at my booking online on my laptop” I showed him the receipt I pasted and copied onto my desk top from my email, except I had obviously altered the date and day in the same font. (I am sneaky). He looked at my laptop, looked at me and said “Ok there must be a mistake” I know I am going to hell, but even Jesus would understand why I refused to pay over £60 to go two hours on a train from London to Liverpool!

I finally get to the amazingly unique Parr Street Studio hotel. This is one of the oldest recording studios in Liverpool and now has some very basic but comfortable hotel rooms. They give you a key to the LIFT! It is ancient and one of those old trellis type sliding doors (again…remember I had one of those in Oban last weekend?) then you insert your key and pull the shutters over and get up to your room. I think this place is really good for musicians and performers to come to, I think when the refurbishment is complete ordinary members of the public will love it, yet I think that will make it lose some of its eccentric charm. The great news is it has a wonderful cool private members bar where musicians all hang out and that’s where I am sitting right now. I did the gig at Bar Blue and it was awesome, I do love that club and the audience are excellent.

The dockside of Liverpool has all been renovated and so trendy, they have a Beatles Museum and there are thousands of tourists visiting the area, mostly they are Oriental from what I have seen, those Eastern people really love the Beatles!

The whole city is geared up to be European City Of Culture in 2008 and I am sure it will make a great host city, I remember when Glasgow was the City of Culture in 1990, it is a wonderful accolade to have and bring millions of regeneration to industrial towns in UK.

Parts of Liverpool are still run down, even just off the city centre and I do hope those beautiful old buildings get recovered as they are wonderful.

I walked home from the gig and stopped in the bus station to check a text on my phone, the bus station is brand new and all shiny and very well lit but was completely deserted. Just as I sat on shiny chrome bench I heard footsteps coming towards me and there was a fucking smelly stumbling drunk heading for me. I sat there and sighed inwardly, always me, they always come to me every time I am a nutter magnet. He sat right beside me, pressing his thigh against mine- that’s how close he got.

“There are hundreds of benches empty and you come to sit beside me” I snapped at him “Do you have a fucking problem?” He mumbled with the alcohol reeking off his mouth. Great! He was actually Scottish. “Yes I have a problem, get your manky leg off my thigh and fuck off; I don’t want to talk to you” I said back. I stood up and walked on, he followed me, I walked faster- he walked faster. I then turned on my heels in this empty big bright yellow and white bus station and shouted right at him “Fuck Off! I will actually kill you, I have killed before” He stopped in his tracks. “Get fucked, do you want me to stab you, I once set a man on fire and took photo’s as he burned, then I ate his barbequed leg and God told me to do it” I screamed into his face and jumped up and down like a mental patient. He ran off in the opposite direction, screaming as he went, arms flailing and sloppy trousers flapping in the breeze.

I sat back down and finished my text and out of the corner of my eye I saw a bus station attendant watching me closely! Now I was the bus station nutter- I could see him tentatively talking into his radio. Now we all know I have never killed before and I wasn’t going to stab him but it really works sometimes to OUT CRAZY the NUTTERS! They hate it if you are more mentally damaged than them, it is too much competition, I learned that trick from days in the bar when I worked in the roughest part of Glasgow, whenever some crazy fucker come up and whispers evil stuff, just agree with them and tell them you really want to fuck a dead body or can you cut him and drink his blood…..it works most times – except when you once meet that man who does like that – then run for your life!

So I am in Liverpool for one more night and then it is back home to husband and possibly normality.

Monday the 11th of September 2006
11:56:34 AM

Meeting Friends….

I had my last gig in Liverpool last night and went back to the hotel for a good sleep. The hotel is also a recording studio and private club so late at night music blasts constantly straight into my room. Normally that would annoy me, yet the music was awesome and after 15 years of having lived above a bar, it kinda soothed me to sleep no worries. ..

This morning as I was packing to catch a train home ( I was so desperate to get home and see husband and Ashley, I have really missed them) I had that sinking feeling of sitting on a train for ever…then Neil Shackelton called me. Neil is a stand up and was in Liverpool for a family party and was driving home to Glasgow! Did I want a run home? YES!

So I shared the journey home with one of the funniest and loveliest men you could meet, he and his best mate Will made sure I got home safely. WE laughed the whole way in the car as Neil and I reminisced about our days when we were comics together, Neil hasn’t done stand up in a few years and is thinking of getting back into it and he should, he is fucking hilarious.

Neil and I once did a gig way up in the North of Scotland maybe nine years ago. The gig was held in a small working man’s club, it was awful from the start, and the people came out for the night to enjoy the singer who was on before us.

The singer was ‘sixty-something’ year old man who had jet black dyed hair the same ebony matt black you normally paint onto tyres to make them look shiny and fresh- his face was covered in fake tan that never actually reached his deep wrinkles and this left brown flashed stripes down his sagging face. He resembled an old tawny zebra!

His bright metallic red shirt was open to the waist revealing a thick silver curly chest and nestling there was a disgustingly large gold necklace in the shape of a lion….I am not joking….it was a LION made of gold.
His tight hip hugging white synthetic trousers were so flared they almost covered the gold plastic shoes that peeped just out of the bottom, like gilded tongues that flashed when he walked. When he came into the back room to say hello, Neil and I could not even begin to make eye contact for fear we would laugh up a kidney.

I watched the man glide around the main room with the confidence of a constantly elected President, his people cheered as he picked up his guitar, the place was electric when he plucked the guitar and his voice resonated throughout the small community room as he burst into the worst hammy version ‘Jailhouse rock’ that I have ever heard in my life.

I swear I thought I was taking part in a spoof movie; surely these were a cruel people that egged on the crazy pensioner who couldn’t sing?

Neil and I just sat there in impending horror, if these people loved him they were going to fucking hate us, which was all I could think.

As we sat at the side of the dance floor watching this trippy scene as the locals got up to dance. The people there were dressed like something from the 1960’s, I know this sounds like a unfavourable lazy stereotype but there is no other way I can explain this.

There were a group of women to our left all wearing the thickest traditional Fair Aisle woollen jumpers in the brightest colours, it was very cold outside I grant you but all that small gathering of women were wearing clothes that were too small, the sweaters were pulled snugly over rolls of fat and barrel chested breasts…they all looked like Buddha’s in sheep’s clothing.

Then to the other extreme, there were a small clutch of younger women to our right wearing the cheapest version of the latest styles, gaudy red nylon tops with plastic glittery straps or yellow polyester shirts on top of the biggest jeans I have ever saw stretched over the fattest asses I have ever seen.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not the thinnest of women, I am over weight but under no circumstances would I wear jeans if I got to that size…now way EVER! That amount of fabric could house nine people at Glastonbury under a marquee.

The strange thing was- the women who were slim looked underweight and sick!
They were either extremely fat or dangerously skinny…were we about to perform at The TITTY TWISTER from the film From Dusk Till Dawn?

The few men that were there were exactly the same! A whole bunch of fat, brightly dressed farmers with ruddy cheeks or thin dying- looking pasty men.

And still the aged rocker sang on…..

Then it was time for us to get on stage, I have to say it was the hardest gig I have ever done, people stared as I told funny stories….tales that became un-funny as each word left my mouth, each punchline faltered and died as it left my lips, like saggy balloons on the brink of deflation falling from my tongue…even my breath felt empty as I tried to suck air in standing on that wooden floored room.

I walked off to the sound of my own feet, clumpy hollow noises followed me….the fat/skinny people looked relieved but not unperturbed that we failed, it was as if they expected such an occasion, before I could even reach the end of the room, the scary shiny old man struck up his rendition of “Beyond The Sea” and the whole place burst back into life. I was merely an interruption in their fun pack pensioner loving cabaret.

Neil and I sat together after being paid for the worst service in the world. Just then one of the fat woolly women came over and asked him to dance….Neil looked horrified but she stood there demanding he danced with her. She smelled of sweat and cheap beer.

I looked at her and said “I am sorry but he wouldn’t be able to hear the song because the sound of your cloven hooves on the wooden floor would drown out the music”

At that we ran out of the place, started the car and drove off out into the coldest night in the remotest part of Scotland. Black roads, no lights, gravel paths and Oasis blasting out of the sound system as owls and other night birds flew past the long strobe of the headlights. We laughed like mad clowns, with a mixture of fear and bewilderment until we reached civilisation or at least a motorway that we recognised.

We finally stopped somewhere outside Fort William, we got out of the car and looked up. The thing I remember so vividly about that night was the sky….honestly it was awesome, with no city light pollution and the clear conditions, there was every star and constellation known to us, just hanging there sparkling above us like a dark carpet sprinkled with glitter, the night air was so fresh and we lay on the car bonnet with our backs warm from the engine and gasped at the stars.

We agreed that we might never become great comics, but we both knew we would never be ancient cabaret singers dressed in shiny satin and that somehow made us feel ok.

Neil and I talked again about that night today and we laughed all over again, both of us spluttering and giggling, feeling shameful for slagging the wee awful singer who in actual fact did entertain those people better than we could ever have hoped.

So I am finally home, sitting in my own house on my own sofa and happy.

Thursday the 14th of September 2006
03:51:26 PM

Life with Godley the mental patient …

I still have that lump on my cheek, it will not go away. I think I have to maybe go to a voodoo witch to get it removed completely. The antibiotics never seemed to work, they only gave me thrush. Now I have a lumpy face and an itchy vag…wonderful!

I am now on special bifidicus tablets to restore the wipe out of the good bacteria that was flushed out of my system. AArrrhggghhhhh!

I am back on stage this weekend at Glasgow Jongleurs and can’t wait to perform to a nice home crowd. I love comedy and being on stage makes me insanely happy.

Cant say the same about husband, he is terrified to realise that I am home for a few weeks and is planning his escape, he feels like a hostage when I am at home.

Ashley is getting ready to go back to Uni and normality. We had such great fun at the festival together; performing together has been the most wonderful time for me. I will miss her when she goes to Uni. Although she is still at home, she is gone most days and we don’t get to do our favourite thing which is watching daytime telly with the volume turned down and adding our own voice over’s. It is hilarious watching Star Trek and voicing every scene as a gay men’s get-together. Try it…it is fun.

Watching Dr Spock stand there in his tight skin fitting costume saying loudly in a fake American accent to Captain Kirk

“Yes, I do want you to lick my back”

Captain Kirk then turns to the big screen up front and points to a scary totalitarian monster that appears

“He is my ex-boyfriend, he keeps following me throughout the universe, and he wasn’t even a good kisser”

I will miss those funny times and have to try to enrol husband in this game, he hates it and screams at me for ruining his favourite day time watching.

I am a mental patient.

Next week husband and I celebrate 26 years of marriage together, which is usually an excuse for a big fight, if you recall last year, he managed to DELETE my entire address book online by mistake the night before we were due to go away for our 25th Wedding anniversary…….I refused to go away on holiday with him and we spent the night in tears, lets hope this year is better and I am going to be a good girl and not fight.

Well that’s the plan.

Saturday the 16th of September 2006
12:47:26 PM

Ashley is FAB…I am so proud!

Ashley my daughter got her exam results today. Now bear in mind that she was sitting her exams for Uni in between performing her Sketch Show at this years Fringe in Edinburgh. Yet today she got A’s and B+ RESULTS!

I am so very proud of her as I knew the pressure she was under. Thank God she has brains! I would be absolutely devastated if it turned out that she ended up with no formal education like me. I always wanted her to have a great start in life, and this way she will.

I was onstage tonight at Jongleurs Comedy club here in Glasgow, it was so lovely, the Glasgow people are amazing. I love them. Though the NO Smoking ban is making us all mental as the cold weather is coming in, as you may recall I have STARTED smoking again….I know its fucked, but I am sorry.

So there we all stand in the cold night air puffing like mad, shivering and filling our lungs with evil smoke.

My dad doesn’t know and he doesn’t read the blog and I am terrified he will find out as his disappointment in me will crush me. Strange isn’t it….how we still crave that approval from our parents, but my dad is amazing and I love him so much and he has never told me to be anything other than who I am. Yet he was so very pleased when I stopped, he called me everyday to tell me how proud he was…..and now I have to stub out a ciggie when he calls me for fear he will hear me puff.

So there we have it…I am a nutter again, smoking till my limbs go numb. I need to get psychiatric help me thinks.

Monday the 18th of September 2006
12:34:37 AM

Maybe I think too much...?

How can there be 120 odd socks in my laundry basket?

I know!

That’s way too fucking many odd socks for one family to own. Where did their partners go? Did they divorce each other and jump out of my window? Did they argue as they were rolled up together, like a fiery couple (possibly imitating husband and I) AND just split up…!

Should I start a website showing pictures of my lonely odd socks - advertising for a partner?

Would this solve the world’s problem of odd sock-ness?

Imagine the results…people from around the world could check the socks online in a close up image and start posting single socks around the globe and we could actually match them all up and maybe world peace would be next?

I can’t even begin to imagine where my odd socks went, they must technically be somewhere IN THIS HOUSE…because no one would come home with one sock or go out wearing odd socks…or lets assume I lost one or two on travels…but not fucking 120 ! That’s impossible…

I have checked in Ashley’s room as that is the main focus of our investigation, her room could possibly be hiding Osama himself –under the mass of clothes and strewn paperwork, shoes, make-up, camera equipment and boxes of sentimental shite that she stores. We did a thorough search and we only found five and guess what THEY WERE ODD and MATCHED NONE of the ones we had in the laundry basket!

So there we have it people….lets get together and unite all the socks in the world and bring them back together….or maybe I should start writing my new book and stop finding socks and getting into my other strange hobby of taking pictures of Trainspotters…..I DO…I have 49 pictures of ‘Trainspotters’ standing on cold train stations.

I am A TRAINSPOTTER SPOTTER! How crazy is that? I take photos of them on my phone as I pass through various stations on my travels! It annoys them and they all huddle together and avoid me. A bunch of fat men wearing acrylic and woollen jumpers, holding expensive cameras – getting excited at engines makes me giggle.

None of the Trainspotters are WOMEN…you know why? Because I don’t ANY woman who would give up her weekend to stand on a cold rainy Midlands train station to write down the number of any fucking train or waste time taking pictures of them ! We are too busy counting socks that are odd and taking pictures of them.

Tuesday the 19th of September 2006
03:22:27 PM

Fighting again…

Well there are more territorial issues going on in my home than there are in the Middle East…well I know that’s an exaggeration – but I am prone to some exaggeration when it comes to describing my relationship - well not really exaggeration, more exacerbating and explaining the problem is how I would like to describe it.

I believe that as we get older we become much more easily annoyed in a relationship.

Thinks about it, at first when you meet a man/woman, you love their ‘little habits’ …things like…when they snort aloud as they laugh, OR when they talk over you as you make a point OR how the snigger at your inability to cook/vacuum/iron and fold towels.

After 25 years of marriage - these tiny things make you plot his murder daily.

You must remember how you would tell friends that ‘He has this funny wee thing where he cleans out my handbag for me, he throws away bits of paper and makes it all tidy, its really thoughtful of him’

YES I KNOW…as I write that I can hear screams from women all over the globe shouting “He goes into your handbag?”

A woman’s handbag is akin to the Holy Grail, it is where we find sanctuary and safety in a world of madness, its where we keep that last bit of gum, that scribbled phone number of a TV producer, that last tissue, that favourite wee packet of sweets, that dirty mangled tampon (that we will use in emergencies, despite the health issues surrounding it) that voucher for a free coffee that you will never use but reminds you of the time in Barcelona, the crumpled photo of your baby niece, that foreign coin you can never use - but makes you smile when you remember Amsterdam, that un-stickable first class stamp and the free lipstick you got from a magazine that would only look good on a cheap whore….BUT…it is YOURS!

We need this shit in our lives.

My husband recently cleaned out and re-arranged -

1- My handbag
2- My underwear drawer
3- My kitchen cupboards

I am now baffled as to where my ‘good bra’, ‘favourite cup’ and ‘phone number on the back of bus ticket’ has gone and he now must die.

He sees this as ‘helping’ and I see it as ‘territorial terrorism’ and it must stop or I will hide his

1-     Batteries - that - work collection (Ashley uses them on audio stuff and he freaks)
2-     Favourite socks that match
3-     Beard trimmer with battery that works
4-     Favourite black pen
5-     Remote control (Which is more prized that the Ring from Lord of the Rings!)
6-     The small bag that he hordes all his small change in

I can be a bastard as well and I am better at him in this ‘War of the Roses’ tactic.

So today we fought again and the anniversary is looming, where will we go? What will we do? Will we celebrate or silently seethe?

Watch this space.

Wednesday the 20th of September 2006
08:46:07 PM

Old people who kiss in the street…..

Husband and daughter Ashley came to meet me today after a meeting.

As they both entered the bar, they passed in the entrance an elderly couple (mid to late 60’s probably) who were locked in a passionate kiss….seriously into a massive big clinch and my daughter was horrified

“Arrrggghhh pensioner porn” she screeched as she threw herself into the seat opposite me!

I saw the couple at the door and thought it was not nasty but very nice in a lovely way.

I mean , if they were a couple of scary old drunks mauling each other, I would be worried it was going to end badly, either in violence (Glasgow drunks veer from affection to hostage situation very quickly ) or worse -full on open air sex! (Yuk).

This was a very well-dressed middle- classed –looking couple and they really were wrapped around each other, completely oblivious to the school kids and human traffic that occupied the busy West End street.

I imagined that they were an elderly couple who once fell in love in the 1950’s but were somehow tragically torn apart and finally 50 years later meet up and declare their undying love for each other!

Or maybe it was just a happy couple celebrating their wedding anniversary in public….why did that seem so alien to me?

Why could I not consider that two people would still want to kiss in public after being together for 50 years?

I can’t imagine being with someone that long EVER….yet I am married 26 years next week….I still think we are dating and I am not too sure about him yet, I haven’t decided if he is the ONE.

When husband came to Edinburgh during the Fringe he drove me mental. I recall going up to a bar to meet Ashley after one of his particularly bad Aspergers syndrome episodes (my husband has mild Aspergers).

Here is a typical conversation my daughter and I had, it really does sound like a scene from some cheesy sitcom.

Ashley- “Where is dad?”

Me- “Dad?....oh sorry he died in a horrible fireball accident”

Ashley- “Are you trying to plot his death again?”

Me- “Yes, its true I am, he sat tonight after I did three shows, one radio show and one interview and decided to teach me binary numbers and explain why logarithms are important in society, and I never really got into it but I did realise that you should never marry the first man you have sex with, so I did learn something”

Ashley- “Mum tell him to go home please”

Me- “I did, apparently he lives with us, how did that happen?”

Ashley- “I mean back to Glasgow, leave him alone”

Hopefully Ashley will never marry young, never believe that marrying any man will get her away from the hopelessness of her family, because that’s why her dad and I got married. I am not being horrid, that’s the truth, we were only teenagers.

His family were a male dominated gangster type Glasgow crime clan and mine were dirt poor and broken emotionally.

I just wanted to find a boy and make a lovely wee family unit, a wee house and lots of love, just create what I didn’t actually have.

We were a couple of train wrecks waiting to crash into each other and WE DID!

Thank goodness the one important amazing thing that came from both of us un-educated, emotionally trashed, sexually abused and mentally crippled kids was that beautiful daughter.

Yet we are still together….still looking at each other like strangers in the dark, still scared the other will leave, still holding onto each other like a broken boat in a swollen river, still spitting and hating, loving and crying, kissing and biting, shaming and smiling, still waiting….yet still hoping they will kiss in the street when they are pensioners?

Maybe we will or maybe we won’t. I really don’t know.

Friday the 22nd of September 2006
02:13:51 AM

Old People Who Shout in the Street…

Today in Glasgow the weather was really weirdly hot, I mean full on sunshine, warm breezes and sweaty backs as you walked through the humid city streets. It was weird. It is mid-September, this is Scotland.

I sat outside in a street café and could feel some strange African-like breeze pick up napkins on my table and flop them onto my knee with a warm draught.

Yet the weather man says - Hurricane!

I must tell you what happened when I actually sat down at the café table.

The place was busy as I said - the weather was unseasonably hot, I approached one table where a younger guy in a blue tee shirt sat alone, he was facing an elderly man in a white shirt, but the elderly man was at an opposite table with an elderly guy in a bright red shirt.

I spoke to the younger guy as I held my coffee and sandwich on a tray “Excuse me can I join you at this table?” There really was nowhere else to sit.

The younger guy nodded and indicated to the empty seat beside him and carried on chatting to the elderly gentleman.

Just as I put the coffee on the table the elderly man in white shouted loud enough for the whole outside café area to hear “No you cannot” and laughed very loudly at his ‘apparently funny’ comment.

I simply smiled and said “Actually I wasn’t talking to you, this isn’t your table” as I sat down and placed my bag on the floor. The younger guy looked uncomfortable as the elderly man was being very loud.

“Oh she is very tough, I would watch her!” the old attention seeking white shirted interrupter added and laughed (yet again) at his ‘funny comment’. “I bet she could make your tea go cold with a stare, tough woman at the table” he added and laughed again.

“Really…you call me tough? I would thought being assertive is what I am, but I suppose you would never confound stereotypes and any woman who speaks out must be very scary, well thanks for that” I stared at him full on and went back to stirring my coffee. I then completely ignored him and started flicking through my newspaper.

He was not to be ignored, he was clearly one of those old men who had to have EVERYONE listen to his fucked up Victorian opinion.

He then took a big breath and shouted “I wouldn’t like to come home to you with an opened pay packet!” (Followed by his annoying loud guffaw) people around us started to look uncomfortable.

I merely flicked another page and said without looking at him “I don’t need a man to bring home money to me as I make my own cash, and even if you brought home all the money Bill Gates owned, I would still fake my own death to get away from you”

This enraged Mr Misogyny “I see you are not wearing a wedding ring, that’s because there isn’t a man alive who would be stupid enough to marry you”

By this point he had stopped being ‘Jovial Old Scottish Bloke’ and had turned into angry old man who hates any woman who talks back.

I didn’t even look at him, I simply plugged in my horribly expensive outside-noise -reducing earphones, switched on my IPod and listened to 50 Cent blast into my ear canals. I could see the old man getting red and angry, pointing, shifting in his seat, ranting and banging his fist on the metal table that rocked his tea all over the surface.

Still 50 Cent rapped my brain senseless.

Eventually I pulled out the earphones and caught him practically screaming at me

“Women like you are the reason kids today are beating pensioners”

I lifted my head and spoke “Obviously not enough” and smiled to myself.

He then stood up and said “I despise women like you, you are destroying the very fabric of Scottish Society, you think the world owes you a living, I bet you have robbed lots of very good men of a job with your lesbian militant ways, women like you were put in mental institutions when I was a young man” The people at the nearest tables started whispering and gasping loudly at his outburst.

At this I burst out laughing and looked at around at the horrified looks on the coffee drinking Glaswegians who were shocked at the transformation of happy old man to angry Hitler bloke.

I looked at him, leaned over and said “Listen old man, I have been married 26 years, raised a daughter, and been self employed since I was 17, in fact I gave more men more jobs than you have ever lost. I have never had to justify myself to any man as to why I have every right to have a voice, so I don’t see why I have to start now. Sit on your old arse and stop making a big show of yourself, you are frightening people around you and I am listening to some sexy black gangster rap, why don’t you go home and shout at your wife?”

“My wife died four years ago” he said with a degree of glee at the thought of shaming me in front of people.

“What did she die of…boredom?” I answered “She must be really proud of you, standing there shouting at a woman sitting alone, calling her a lesbian and making assumptions about her life when you know nothing about me”

He then stood up; he looked at me and went really red.

He looked around at people wanting their support, at that point a man with bright red hair and a smart suit leaned over holding a piece of paper and a pen and he said to me “You are Janey Godley, I loved your book, it was such an inspiration to me, can I have your autograph?” I was stunned, I thought yet another bloke was about to hurl abuse at me.

I thanked the suited man and quickly signed my name, I held it to him and he then spoke to the elderly man and said “You really should be ashamed of yourself standing there shouting at this woman, she wrote a book about her life, she was abused as a child and she is now being abused as an adult, you really should mind your attitude”

I watched the old man stand there, not really dealing with the situation and I actually felt really sorry for him.

Old guys like him have set attitudes that are ingrained into them since childhood and it must be hard to shake them off and to have a woman answer you back in public must be the biggest insult of all time, then again the old bastard started it….so I smiled as he stumbled through the tables muttering to himself.

This just goes to prove that warm weather in Glasgow in September makes people fucking crazy, before tonight there will no doubt be seven murders….hopefully none of them by me.

So as I write this, I look out of the window and the trees are blowing all over the street, the wind is howling and that promised hurricane is checking into Glasgow.

I don’t like strange weather cycles, it makes me scared and snappy.

Sunday the 24th of September 2006
11:50:13 PM

Fights, Cat-faces AND Smoked Haddock….

Yes all of the above are involved in today’s blog.

First of all Ashley and her dad have been locked in battle for two whole days.

Let me explain, Ashley tells her dad she likes smoked haddock fish, so he buys her it every week.

This week he bought smoked haddock the size of a small whale…it was HUGE!

Whilst I was out the town fighting with pensioners at coffee tables, Ashley asked her dad to drive her to her grandfathers house, he said yes and then he said as they were leaving the flat “Do you want to cook that smoked haddock for tonight’s tea?”

Ashley replied “No, thanks I am not coming home for tea tonight”

This upset husband (don’t ask me why, but sometimes his Aspergers skew his opinion)

He then snapped “No one eats the food I buy in this bloody house” and refused to drive her to her grandfather’s house as he felt she was being unfair (for not eating the giant whale-like fish he bought!)He then called me and interrupted my street argument to tell me the whole fragmented weird fight he had just had with his daughter. I stood in the street and tried to make sense of the smoked haddock story but gave up and invited him to come a walk with me.

Anyway, eventually Ashley came home and refused to speak to him for TWO WHOLE days…this drove me to distraction and I wanted to resolve it.

My niece Ann Margaret (mother of Sean and of the famous baby Abi in my video blog) and who is heavily pregnant with her third child and READY to pop at any moment came over to visit. She lay fat and uncomfortable on my sofa as husband and Ashley tried to thrash the argument out and reach a conclusion because I had made them both sit down to talk about it.

“I want smoked haddock” Ann Margaret shouted over their voices “I have a huge fat baby that is slowly chomping on my womb, stop arguing and make me the smoked haddock”

Eventually Ashley made her dad realise that he was being unreasonable and he apologised and I cooked the smoked haddock…it was fucking huge and I had to skin it and it stank….yuk…

Three days that smoked haddock argument lasted.

So I was then called to do a live broadcast for a radio show on Saturday. I had to do three minutes live comedy and an interview in Edinburgh in front of a live audience.

When I got there, the audience consisted of one adult and nine toddlers who had faces painted in the style of cats. Yes –small kids with wee cat faces all staring at me as I tried to do comedy live to the nation whilst staring at confused sticky cat painted kids!

My life is crap sometimes, but I did manage it….in the background I could here this wee child say “Why is that lady not doing anything but talking, can’t she do a tumble, that would be funny, is she supposed to be funny?”

So that made me think that if all adults painted their faces full time the world would be a better place…, imagine it.

If you had to deal with some authority figure that had a big fat face painted as a racoon or a bright butterfly, then it would be easier to deal with, strange frightening lawyers would not seem scary if they were talking to you with a big colourful cat on their cheeks!

It would be cool, teenagers who had acne need never feel ostracised – they just need to transform their faces into wild tigers or vibrant parrots! I love this idea…

George Bush could come on live television painted as a funny monkey and Tony Blair would have the face of a bright pink pig…I am loving this idea…aren’t you?

I am excited about this week, hopefully I will have some big news to tell you all that I cant really mention just now -till it gets released in the press….speak soon.

Tuesday the 26th of September 2006
09:58:15 PM

Where Rape is not a crime and why I like my husband today…

I am having a bad day shouting at my computer screen as I write.

I read with complete and utter horror in a magazine this week that, in Pakistan, women who were raped were jailed or worse….stoned to death.

The law that they have purportedly broke is called Hudood Ordinance. The rapists walk free and the Pakistani government extremists continue to uphold this law!

I really get mad at this stuff and wonder how in the so called ‘Modern World’ this stuff can still exist, I try to make my blogs funny and sometimes vaguely interesting, but today I am having a rant.

I was raped as a child, and to be told you are the bad person and deserve to die for being raped makes me want to scream and makes me re-visit the shame I felt at five years of age.

Some of these women were pregnant as a result of the repeated rape; some of them were very young girls.
I cried reading the article and feel very privileged that I live in a society that recognises child abuse and rape. If you want to join the campaign for a change in the law go to www.actionaid.org.uk

Life sucks and I can only be happy that I was born into poverty and not some extremist religion or country.

Thank God Scotland’s society is based on sectarianism and alcohol problems, and not hell bent in making women full-on second class citizens. I sometimes get mad at the injustice of misogyny, but now I appreciate the difference.

On a lighter note husband got up and cleaned the house, he does this often and I have realised why I will stay here forever - he completely understands my deep psycho-need for domestic cleanliness. We aren’t meant to be together in all other aspects of personality, that’s for sure but he gets how I need a clean house and tidy cutlery drawer. The thought of divorcing him and having to teach another man why I need a clean fresh pillow case daily and washed in fresh lavender cut from my dad's garden seems too much to bear. My husband gathers the lavender, crushes it up in a sock and washes it in with my bed linen for me. That’s devotion. Not necessarily love…or maybe it is?

I will be nice to him on our anniversary tomorrow 26 years and counting.

Thursday the 28th of September 2006
08:02:05 PM

Fights, sex and anniversary nights

We did manage to get through our wedding anniversary without a fight…well almost.

Here is what happened, we decided NOT to plan anything (coz that always starts the fight) and take the day as it came. So we got up and did some paperwork with the tentative view to go out for dinner at night, somewhere local.

As it happened I got a last minute job writing an article for a Scottish newspaper to a deadline….so that was the day screwed, it was 1000 words they needed and loads of back research involved. By the time I had finished writing and had it pre-checked by my manager John, the whole day and most of the night was gone.

No Anniversary dinner for us.

It was ok though, he understands, living with someone who has a strange job is cool with him.

Just when I thought it was all going to be cool, husband found the mail and brought it upstairs…..yes my credit card bill arrived. He almost died when he saw how much Ashley and I spent in Edinburgh…so there we have it, the ‘world’s cheapest man is married to the world’s most expensive woman’ conversation came up.

To combat this and to back up MY side, I showed him a magazine that displayed handbags and shoes that cost £8000, I never spend that much on handbags and shoes, and he merely flicked the page and shouted in despair because the magazine cost £2.50 …that’s was enough for him to get mad.

So I kicked him and ran into the bedroom. I won.

It really bugs me because this man spends NOTHING, how can he do it?

Honestly, he wears the cheapest shoes and has no reason to buy more until those ones (after three years believe it or not) wear out.

Why would he need another pair of shoes? He has one smart pair of shoes for a suit and trainers he wears daily and that’s all a man needs according to him.

He still wears clothes he had from the early 90s and would have worn the stuff he had in the early 80s but I threw them out!

He really cannot understand the concept of buying ‘more clothes’ when he has perfectly good stuff that fits…it bewilders him that men go shopping for clothes “Don’t they have any clothes at home?” he snaps, when we pass them in a store.

So imagine how he feels when I buy ‘yet another top’

“You have tops at home, don’t you have enough tops? I iron about 20 tops and at least 15 pairs of jeans, why do you need more?” he mutters when I browse through a shopping mall and he is forced to be with me.

He will never ever learn will he?

Or maybe he is right? Do we just keep buying clothes we hardly ever wear to satisfy some strange consumerism need that has been bred into us through the media?

He should be happy with me though, I very rarely buy very expensive stuff, and my best mate Monica thinks nothing of spending £200 on a pair of shoes. I am pretty cheap in that I would never spend more than £40 on shoes, I am a cheap bitch!

Ashley has her first day back at Uni and she was all tired and talky when she came home. She had made us both a lovely hand made card, which was really nice.

We decided long ago to stop buying anniversary presents, neither of us needs anything new (except some tops that I get myself obviously) and we feel it is a waste of cash.

So last night we all sat up talking and catching up with each other on the sofa, Ashley was full of excitement about her new film course (she loves Uni) and then we got a call from my niece Ann Margaret she had a wee fat baby girl. So we did get an anniversary gift after all!

We had planned on having time to ourselves and possibly having some anniversary sex, but both of us are way too old and tired and promptly fell asleep!

I woke up today (Thursday) and had a photo shoot for a forthcoming news article, the very thought of having to put make up on and dress nice that early in the day made me feel grumpy. But I did it, a whole new shiny hair-do, nice clothes and high heels, before 2pm! I looked like a hooker….

The day got completely thrown into disarray because an Aunt of my husband had taken ill and he had to go to hospital with her, he spent 5 hours in the emergency room until they finally got her admitted and settled. She is doing fine, husband realised that my niece who has just given birth was in same big Glasgow hospital, so he dashed off to the new maternity wing to see Ann Margaret, poor tired woman that she is, all sore and craggy.

I haven’t seen the baby yet, but apparently she is ‘ridiculously beautiful’ I can’t wait to hold her!