Late Nigh Walks 09/29/2007 Europe/London +0100 BST

There can be nothing to make you feel more ancient than young people who had out flyers for city centre night clubs avoiding you in the street.

These pretty long legged sexy chicks saw husband and I approaching and almost got hit by a speeding car to make sure we weren’t getting an invite to ‘Hard Rock Sexy Night at The Nice’ n’ Sleazy’.

We laughed, wrapped our warm woollen coats around us and carried on regardless. Young people were hanging out in groups in what can only be described as beachwear, on a dark September night in Glasgow. I don’t ever recall wearing a skimpy pair of knickers and a tiny bra without a coat, in the freezing cold.

As we walked further down the road we came upon a couple of big fat Romanian women selling pink glittery cowboy hats and some cheap cellophane wrapped roses. The fat Romanian woman took one look at husband and offered him the chance to buy a cheap tacky pink hat.

“Do I really look like a man who wears pink plastic cowboy hats? He asked politely as he stuck both hands into his long black cashmere overcoat.
The woman begged for money and we both walked on, I have no issue with Eastern European beggars or hat sellers but if we don’t get offered the nightclub tickets then we surely don’t qualify for the pink hats either. The Romanians need to get some marketing tips from the sexy club promoters.

It had been a good night out; we had gone to a lovely restaurant called The Rogano in Glasgow for our wedding anniversary.

We used to eat there many years ago but since our incessant travelling and busy lives we haven’t really had time to enjoy our own culinary delights in our own fair city for such a long time.

It was lovely and the meal was awesome.

We both decided to take the surprise menu.
It consists of the latest fresh produce and seemed a good idea.

I asked the waiter (who must have about 18 years old if he was day)
“Does the chef come running out the kitchen dressed as a cat, carrying a huge silver platter and as he meows loudly does he pull the lid off the platter and reveal a stuffed mouse?”

The young man, in the very posh restaurant looked at me with frightened eyes and said “No, I think it might be fresh fish” without a smile or any hint of humour.

“Well cats like fish as so that would work also” I added, still trying to be funny, as other diners craned their necks to see who the mad person was.

“She is always trying to be funny, ignore her and please add a bottle of Rose to that order please” husband sombrely spoke. The waiter liked him and hated me and my ‘whacky’ ways.

The food was fabulous. After dinner I decided to go outside to their heated seating area and have coffee and a ciggie, husband brought out his after dinner brandy to join me, it was our wedding anniversary and so we should be together he told me.

Outside there was a small drunken debacle going on with various Glaswegian punters who after too much expensive wine, were going a wee bit mad. Just shouting and staggering about, nothing violent.

The restaurant waiters, who were all dressed in their starched black and whites, were nervously trying to contain the madness.

We sat beside two women in their mid-fifties who were slightly merry and nice, if not slightly beaten down a bit. They had the air of two women who had seen their fair share of shit lives. Just as we sat down with our coffee and drinks, one big fat drunk man stumbled away from their table.

The gas heaters pressed down warmth through the frosty Glasgow air, out door tables are popular since the smoking ban and are always crowded at night.

“That drunk man would not leave our table, but we did get rid of him eventually, he wasn’t bad, just a bit crazy” the blonde weary woman said to us. I think she was concerned that we assumed she and her friend were part of the drunken rabble.

“Well I am sure he meant no harm” husband added and smiled.

Two male waiters milled around the small steel topped tables and started clearing up as the drunks moved out.

The two women explained they were sisters and then just as we were about to toast 27 years of marriage the blonde one blurted out “My son died last year, our mother died this year and my husband died when I was young and our cousin died” she pointed to her sister and added “her husband just got put in a home with a long illness and is never coming out again”

We all sat there is complete silence, the staff shuffled their feet and didn’t know where to look, I didn’t know what to say so I blurted out “My mother was murdered!”
The two women stared at me; the atmosphere was thick with awkwardness and husband burst out laughing and said “It wasn’t a competition; you don’t have to shout out deaths Janey!” He laughed more and clapped his hands with amusement at my odd statement.

The two women laughed as well and I giggled under my breath, the posh starched aproned staff stood uneasily and then they started laughing as well.

“Here is to all the dead people we both know, and to many more years of enjoying the living” I said and lifted my coffee cup, we all clinked glasses and sat smiling.

“Yes, cheers!” said the two ladies.

We all sat chatting some more about life and other stuff that strangers do when they meet, we traded backgrounds and past address’s and spoke about jobs and places we both knew and have been.

“We haven’t been out in years, this was nice chatting” the blonde woman added and smiled broadly.
“Yes, it is nice” I said and it was nice.

The Handbag and the Pliers 09/28/2007 Europe/London +0100 BST

I recall our first wedding anniversary as if it were yesterday. We ran a pub at the time and we both got out of bed to them smell of coffee emanating from the coffee maker which was on a timer and spluttered to life every morning at 9am. The radio clicked on and Fat Larry’s band sang ‘Zoom’. It was 1981.
I never thought we would last a year of marriage. No one did, in fact the favourite bet had been 6 months. We were so mismatched, one person really quiet and easily annoyed the other (me) loud and rambunctious.

I knew he would be my boyfriend from the minute we met, he mentioned on an early meeting that he wanted to travel and from that moment I set out to bewitch him into my way of thinking.
Any boy that wanted to escape Scotland was ok by me.

I couldn’t believe I met someone who saw beyond, babies, factory work, religious bigotry and football. My idea of hell was to settle down in a wee council house, raise some kids and spend my life making steak pie and soup whilst being a member of the local bingo. It was his idea of hell also.

Yet, still we didn’t match. He didn’t like socialising, he mistrusted people in general, hated families, despite being one of seven sons with an overbearing father who was named locally a ‘Gangster’ and he disliked having to work in the pub his father gave us to run.

It seemed all our plans to run away to see the world were put on hold, to appease his dad. We conformed, we became publicans, we served booze that we didn’t drink, we breathed in smoke that we didn’t want and we listened to enough shit from drunken wife beaters to make any normal person prefer a slow death rather than carrying on.

But carry on we did.

So that morning of our wedding anniversary we requested a night off to go into town and have dinner in a city restaurant. I was excited, we never got to eat dinner together in almost a year as the pub was so short staffed, and we worked the shifts between us.

One ate dinner and the other tended the bar until it was swap over time. Either one of us ate would regularly eat slightly cold food.

I pressed my burgundy skirt that matched my jacket, a crisp white blouse was laid out and I found a wee handbag that was given to me by my sister. I never up until that point used a handbag. I had no need.
I never carried cash or keys and I never owned any make up!
I was twenty years old and had never been shown or had any interest in make up.
I didn’t come from people who used make up, my mum never had any in her life and my sister married young and left home when I was 14 years old, so I hadn’t been introduced to it.

I remember sitting in the bedroom wondering what to put in that handbag and I came up with an idea. I lifted a pair of heavy red rubber-handled pliers made of dense stainless steel and shoved them into the black satin lining of the bag just to weigh it down a bit. It felt better with a bit of weight in it.

Later that night husband and I headed off on the bus into town. It was a short ride as we lived near the city centre and we walked to the restaurant. It was lovely just to sit down and eat Indian food in peace, both of us getting warm food at the same time.
“Where did you get that wee handbag?” husband asked as I lifted it politely to go to the bathroom, they way other women did.
“My sister gave me it” I answered.
He looked puzzled and said “What do you have in it?”

I leaned over in and whispered “I didn’t have anything to put it in, so look”
I held the bag open and he saw the big pliers in the bag. He laughed out loud and said “Are you going to take the fittings off the toilet pan and bring them back to the pub?”

“I should do that actually as our toilet pan in the pub is broken” I laughed back.

I went into the fancy toilets of the Indian restaurant and stared at pliers in my handbag and wondered if there were other women in the world who carried tools in their bag because they didn’t own stuff to put there. I couldn’t ever imagine what I would ever need a handbag for in my future, who needs to carry stuff around with them? Pockets were good for loose change and keys.

Little did I know that in my future I would own a huge bag collection and ultimately end up carrying my entire life in bags as I travelled around the world, needing so much stuff, like my IPod, passport, credit cards, painkillers, tampons, pen and notebook all at my fingertips! How naïve I really was back then.

That night was lovely, we enjoyed the dinner and spoke about how after one year of marriage it was still ok and we should try to see if we could last another year.

“I promise Janey, one day we will get away from here and travel, I don’t know how or when but we will get there” he whispered as we stood in the cold September night as the rain slashed side ways into our faces.

Well we stayed in that marriage and that pub for another fifteen years before fate dealt us a hand to escape. My father in law died in 1994 and the family turned on each other to the point where we felt we were running blindly into an abyss. We had to make a life changing decision. We would simply go.

We didn’t know where we would end up, what job we should be doing or even where we would stay. With having an eight year old daughter in tow now the adventure was a lot scarier and riskier than we anticipated.
But we did it, we never once looked back. We left our pub and flat, got a house and I became a stand up comic and writer.

Slowly of course, not overnight. Though sometimes when comedy seemed too hard or to politically difficult to break into with me being a woman and in her 30s, my husband never once told me to give in. He reckoned after 15 years of doing his preferred job I should carry on with my preferred career, no mater how difficult it seemed to be.

So today we are 27 years married, and tonight we are going to my favourite top restaurant. I will carry a handbag, but leave behind the pliers; I will pay for the meal, as I prefer to do that. We will eat nice food and wonder yet again why we are still together (this is something we do quite often, as we are still mismatched). We don’t have answers, we can only keep wondering. It may take us another ten years of wondering, but that will be ok, I suppose.

If not… I can always shove heavy pliers into my handbag and hit him hard on the head, ok not the romantic ending you wanted dear reader, but…it’s my life and I get to choose!

The Acid Trip, the Robbers and Nancy the Dog 09/26/2007 Europe/London +0100 BST

Back in 1982 we owned a bar in the East End of Glasgow.

 

 

It was the kind of place that Hollywood directors would later spend millions of pounds recreating when they made films about the birth of New York .

 

 

It was a back street hellhole; the customers wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Tarantino film which had featured vampires, dead people and heroin users.

 

 

The carpets stuck to your feet with years of urine and indecipherable waste that may have dated back to Victorian times.

 

 

The walls were a result of umpteen fires; it had loads of smoke damage and sported that aged, crackled paint which is now fashionable with gays in urban lofts.

 

 

The artwork consisted of the kind that showed dogs and cats dressed in cheap suits playing poker pasted on a tacky mirror. The customers looked like the badly dressed animals in the picture.

 

 

I fitted in: that was the scary part.

 

 

I was only 21 years old.

 

 

We had a pool table. Occasionally, if a fight broke out, the pool balls and cues were used as weapons and stabbing implements. How lazy were our thugs? They didn’t even bother to carry their own artillery.

 

 

We had to buy new pool balls and cues every three months due to the damage they received. New eyes and foreheads weren’t our responsibility.

 

 

One hot summer day, I got very bored.

 

 

It’s not a good sign if you get bored in a place where there might be a police raid every half hour.

 

 

That would be fair excitement to any other soul in a city, but not in Glasgow .

 

 

It merely broke up the monotony of dull drugged men, Duran Duran on the jukebox and a vicious pit bull terrier called Nancy that occasionally came bursting in and bit people at random. We never knew who the evil white snub-nosed dog belonged to, but we all carried a scar.

 

 

It would butt the door open with its hard head, a scream would go up - “ Nancy !” - and people who knew the war cry would leap onto tall stools, the bar or the pool table till Nancy got her fill of anyone who didn’t know the Nancy code.

 

 

Some foolish man would assume that this feared ‘ Nancy ’ was some disgruntled wife coming in for her useless husband and stayed in his place, supping his beer.

 

 

Her jerking evil square-looking head, pink nose and foaming mouth made good use of her twenty second raid.

 

 

Then the poor unaware soul that never jumped to safety got bitten.

 

 

Nancy would run back out of the other door that could be pushed from the inside and off she would go to the next pub on her rounds of biting people, till she got bored as well I suppose.

 

 

So the day I got bored I decided to freak out the young guys who had just dropped acid. Acid was popular back then.

 

 

I knew this was a potent form of LSD as there had been talk of it knocking people mental.

 

 

My plan was this: I would get a local notorious bank robber called Billy who was a customer of mine to fake a robbery in the pub to really freak the boys.

 

 

It would be funny I said, as we plotted the scene.

 

 

There were three young guys at that pool table. ‘One-Ear’ - a ginger haired spotty man with one ear. ‘Bob the Cat’- a diehard punk who wore chains on his neck. And ‘Dodo’- an eighteen year old skinny heroin user who sang Gene Pitney songs with his eyes shut.

 

 

I gave Billy a hand gun that fired blanks. I say this like everyone had a fake gun lying beside the hand wash sink, but this was the East End of Glasgow and that was as normal as having dogs and cats play poker on your walls.

 

 

Then I had to recruit the other ‘actors’. One guy called Ike was, in fact, a real actor and was in the film ‘Gregory’s Girl’.

 

 

I directed the show.

 

 

Ike would be shot and fall to the floor, I would hand over a bag of cash and the gun would then be fired at me and I would die. We spoke in hushed tones till we got the scene right in our heads.

 

 

Billy walked outside and pulled over his face the brown nylon tights I gave him as a mask. I watched through the glass panel on the door.

 

 

He dramatically held the handgun aloft and prepared to run into the bar to play out the scene. At that moment two policemen, who were in a passing car, stopped their vehicle and leapt from it, jumped on him and held him on the pavement.

 

 

“It’s a fucking joke.” he hissed as the coppers tried to cuff him. “We are going to freak the customers out. Go ask Janey.” I am sure they had heard every story and excuse going in the East End . Amateur dramatics were not going to stand up in court they must have reckoned.

 

 

I was wondering what the fuck was keeping Billy. I mean, he didn’t have to get into character - he was a real robber!

 

 

Then I saw through the small door window the policeman started to drag him into a police car and I dashed to the door, opened it and pulled Billy free and shouted at the policemen:

 

 

“What the fuck are you doing? We are playing at me being robbed! Do you know how bored I get in there?” I pointed at the pub. “He is not going to rob me. He is pretending to rob me to scare those three fuckwits who are full of acid. It will be fun!”

 

 

The policemen looked at each other, shrugged and then let Billy free.

 

 

 

“Come and watch through the other door and see it, if you don’t believe me,” I hissed.

 

 

The policemen must have been as bored as me because they agreed and Billy once more pulled the tights over his face, watched as the two policemen ran to the other door on the other side of the building.

 

 

They opened the door quietly and peeped through, unnoticed by the three acid heads who still hadn’t hit one ball and were stoned out of their skulls.

 

 

Billy kicked the door in and screamed: “Everyone on the fucking floor!”

 

 

The three guys didn’t even move, they all stood stock still and stared at the ceiling.

 

 

I stifled a giggle and then Billy ran at Ike. He fired the gun at his head. A huge bang went off and Ike dropped to the floor in his best acting skills.

 

I screamed for effect.

 

 

Then Billy demanded that I hand over the money. I had a big bag prepared and held it over and Billy then shot me. The gun noise failed this time and Billy actually shouted “Bang” to make up for the lack of noise!

 

 

I fell behind the bar and lay there like dead.

 

 

I managed to fall in a position on the floor where I could still see the three pool-playing acid heads.

 

 

They hadn’t even moved! They were all staring at the fucking ceiling.

 

 

Billy held the gun over towards the three guys and shouted: “You saw fuck all or you die!”

 

 

None of them spoke. They all stood stiffly and stared upwards, not moving, not breathing, not looking anywhere but the same spot on the ceiling that they had been visually fixated with since the robbery began.

 

 

Billy ran out. At that moment Nancy the biting dog ran in, she took one look at the bodies on the floor, the men staring at the ceiling, she was totally confused and headed straight for the other door for a quick exit.

 

 

I had never seen that dog looked so scared in my life!

 

 

At the other door she saw the two policemen on their knees peeping through the door. She finally got her victims, leapt and bit one viciously on the head and made off into the street. Barking as she went.

 

 

The policeman screamed, fell into the pub which by now resembled an elaborate game of statues and the three acid trippers dropped to the floor when they saw the policeman in uniform.

 

 

They huddled together under the pool table and clung to each other like doomed men on the Titanic.

 

 

I leapt to my feet and clapped my hands, laughing loudly. The three men under the pool table screamed like girls.

 

 

Ike got up and hugged me and we both took a bow. The three men screamed again. This time one fainted and the other two screamed more.

 

 

The policeman ran around looking for the dog and demanded the first aid box.

 

 

Billy came running in carrying the money bag and laughed at the policeman with the bleeding head and watched the remaining two acid boys scream and scream over and over again. The noise was deafening. Ike and I were laughing our heads off and commenting on each others fantastic ‘death’ positions.

 

 

At that point, my father-in-law came into the pub and tried to make sense of the chaos.

 

 

“What the fuck is going on?” he shouted over the noise.

 

 

“George, it looks bad but here’s what happened. Billy, Ike and I decided to pretend to be robbed to freak out the junkies, the police watched on for a laugh, but one of them got attacked by Nancy the biter and Ike and I pretended to be dead, then Billy ran back in and the guys under the pool table are really scared...funny eh?”

 

 

“Why?” he merely asked, his arms outstretched.

 

 

I looked around at the frenzied scene and said quietly: “I was bored”.

 

 

The three acid trippers lay under that pool table for nearly an hour and could not be coaxed out till the drug finally left their system. The policemen drove off to the local emergency hospital to get a tetanus jag for the injured cop and Ike, Billy and I decided that acting was a great job and one day I should write a play about the pub.

 

 

“Maybe when I get bored enough” I smiled.

 

 

And one day I did!

 

 

The Samaritan’s 09/24/2007 Europe/London +0100 BST

There is a wonderful organisation here in the UK called The Samaritans who are on call 24 hours a day; they listen to people who are on their hunkers and at their deepest darkest despair. Sometimes people just need to talk, it doesn’t have to be suicide it can be about bullying, worries about health, family…anything really. They listen. They have volunteers and do sterling work.

I donated a signed copy of my book and a huge painting that was part of an award winning art exhibition, the painting is called ‘One Night in New York’ and the bidding is on EBAY and it’s only up there for ten days. Here is the link

EBAY Auction


Please check it out and get bidding of you want a fabulous original artwork and give some well needed money to charity. It will be so worthwhile and you can stare at my painting that has some really funny swear words written boldly on it, something to annoy the in
laws and local church group with!

Thanks guys!

What Women must never do or say 09/23/2007 Europe/London +0100 BST

Following on from the previous blogs about what men must never do or say – here is the female equivalent!

Women must never say to men-


• Can you actually see your penis when you look down, or does your tummy hide it?


• Is that you squealing with an orgasm or has your foot gone into a cramp during sex again?


• Would you like to come into town and help me pick shoes?


• Yes, I would love to watch the football with you, but only if I get to score the footballers asses out of ten for cuteness. Is the grass muddy? I love it when it sticks to their firm butts.


• Of course I would love sex, but can you take the weight on your elbows as a punctured lung is not really considered erotic?


• Let me pluck your eyebrows.


• Wear this pink sweater with cats faces on and prove to everyone in the pub that you are safe in your own sexuality, or I will think you are gay and hiding it.


• No, there is nothing wrong with me and if you can’t actually guess what is wrong with me then that’s because you don’t pay attention, and no I am not giving you a hint as to what may be wrong with me. What do you think is wrong with me?


• I would like you to pick my outfit today for a very important meeting; I trust your fashion sense implicitly.


• Wear a bandana and faded jeans, I loved the 80s.


• Try on my pantyhose/tights under your jeans…just for a laugh.


Women should NEVER say any of the above, it’s evil and bad!

Flybe Are Shit 09/21/2007 Europe/London +0100 BST

Flybe airline in the UK have driven me to near screaming. I was booked to fly out of Glasgow on the 9am flight to Southampton to do comedy from the Thursday till Sunday. So I got up at 7am and made my way to the airport all sleepy headed and irritable. (I don’t do mornings).

As I stood in the queue a man with ginger tufty hair, a mustard corduroy suit and paisley patterned dickie bow just jumped the queue and went in front of me. Normally I would have shouted, but I was too tired and all the other business men who looked like a Gordon Brown look-a-like contest all stood meekly watching. I sighed and stood annoyed but said nothing.

Then the check in desk clerk announced the flight to Southampton was cancelled. We all had to troop over to the service desk for info. Of course corduroy man was there first. He babbled and chatted in his upper class annoying accent for ages as I stood behind him waiting for the information. He then left his place, carrying his entire luggage; he banged into me and knocked my laptop to the floor. He just carried on regardless and marched through the queue.

“Excuse me, you could at least say excuse me or sorry” I finally screamed in frustration.

“I am sorry” He sneered with his head half over his shoulder, like saying sorry to the lies of me was something he never really bothered with.

“Really? Well you don’t sound sorry, just watch where you are going” I answered and I could feel the businessmen shuffle, they probably didn’t like confrontation.

The mustard suited man leaned over and bellowed “Well thank you for being so understanding” in his own sarcastic way.

That was enough for me “Listen up you middle class queue jumper, don’t look down at me and stop acting like you know how to communicate with people, the last time I saw someone dressed like you we were throwing coconuts at their head in a village fair, now piss off and learn some manners”

The men behind me giggled.

The woman at the desk giggled and informed me I had to come back at 2pm for the next flight. I was so angry and tired.

So I duly arrived back at the airport in time to catch the 2pm flight and guess who was seated in the tiny seat on the tiny wee aeroplane beside me? Oh yes mustard dickie bow man!

It was one of those aeroplanes that looks it flew in World War 11. I was horrified and annoyed, the plane was full and mustard man made such a fuss getting into the minuscule seat, banging against me, elbowing me and tried to open a broad sheet newspaper that almost covered my face as he stretched out his yellow corduroy arms.

I hissed “Excuse me, spatially unaware man, this (I indicated my seat area with my open arms) is my dance space and that (I pointed to his wee seat area) is your dance space, do not cross the line, touch me again and I will stab you with a pencil in the eye”.

He looked at me and spoke loudly “You are incredibly rude”

I answered “Yes I am, now shut up and if you speak to me again, I swear I will scream and get that air steward down here quicker than a poof running to a Kylie concert, you understand?”

He shut up.

Finally the plane landed and I watched everyone or almost everyone pick up their luggage. There was about twenty people left standing and we all realised our luggage wasn’t coming. Fucking Mustard man got his luggage though…
My luggage somehow never made it on the Glasgow plane, which I don’t understand, the plane is the size of a skateboard, and how can they fuck that up?

So there I was in Southampton with no luggage, I had to go to the town centre and buy toothpaste, toothbrush and clean knickers.

I checked into the hotel and now I have woken up and it’s Friday, I have a show tonight and no clothes STILL! I need to go into town but its cold and my thick jacket is in that case.

I called John Smeaton back in Glasgow. He is the accidental hero of the terror attacks on Glasgow airport and he is a baggage handler there and a good friend of mine, he is on the case to find my case.

So everyone feel sorry for me today, I am cold, dirty and look like a pikey.

What men must NEVER DO 09/20/2007 Europe/London +0100 BST

To follow on from my last blog that I had so many comments about, so I thought I would add on.

Here are some examples of what men must NOT do.

Men must…

• Never buy Lavender talcum as a birthday present, and then after the screaming has finally abated produce ANOTHER tin of talcum because the supermarket had a two for one deal on the product.


• Never say out loud “When did your knickers start cutting into your fat bum, you have red marks, do they hurt?”


• Never stroke your wife in the dark in bed and ask “Is that your boob or that fat bit that comes round your back?”


• Never ask why after so much application of make up you look the same as you did when you started.


• Never laugh out loud when you bang your toe.


• Never …when asked an opinion on your outfit actually assume that we want the real truth.


• Never tell a complete stranger on an aeroplane “That’s my wife just farted, she ate a curry last night and always farts like this the next day”


• Never point out a spot in your wife’s face; I think she would already have guessed it is there.


• Never laugh out loud in a shop when your wife holds up a dress.


• Never tell people that your wife can’t cook and you once almost died of food poisoning when she made an apple crumble.


• Never tell a journalist that your wife doesn’t really see comedy as a job, she talks like that in the house, the shops, the car and to kids and you would rather pay to shut her up and that you cannot understand why people pay to hear her and that she talks like that in her sleep. You see… they print that shit.

• Never ask her why she married you, it was probably a long time ago and in the late 70’s skinny boys with big eyes seemed sexy back then.

So there we have some of my sage advice on what men should never say, now I know there are loads of things women shouldn’t say, but I am not about to reveal the sisterly secrets, faults and misdemeanours. Am I now?

What Men Must Do 09/18/2007 Europe/London +0100 BST

A mate called me last week and as she is single she discussed certain things a man must DO and NOT DO to be on a list of possible boyfriends. Now I thought this was awful but then I realised I too have an agenda that my man must follow. For example, I know I could never have married or gave up my womb to reproduce with any man who used the word ‘Zeitgeist’ in his everyday language.

There are other words I have banned from coming out of my husbands mouth and I have made a list.

• Soporific
• Cognoscenti
• Latte double hit
• Anything that is preceded by the word ‘Uber’ like Uber-excited
• The saying ‘amongous’ like to say ‘chocolate-amongous’ as to express lots of chocolate.

There are also things he cannot wear or I will divorce him…for example-

• Wearing cuffed track suit bottoms with leather shoes and white socks.
• Acrylic tank tops with a white shirt beneath.
• Football tops of any kind EVER.
• A fake tan.
• A beanie hat.
• Leather sandals of any style.
• Jewellery of any kind.
• A tattoo or nipple ring.
• Busy Christmas sweaters with reindeer or trees.

There are also sayings he cannot come out with or I will go to a beach and fake my own death, here are a few of these examples.

• “Darling lets go to Macramé classes and make beaded pot holders”
• “Janey I adore taxidermy in birds, see my stuffed peacock?”
• “I love making seashells into lampshades”
• “Do you fancy trying dogging?”
• “Let’s go hill walking”
• “Do you like my fake tan?”
• “Madonna is a wonderful writer of children’s books”
• “Don’t you think Victoria Beckham is gorgeous?”
• “Do you think I would suit a pipe?”

He knows all of these topics are off limits and I am not saying he wants any of these things, but in my mind they are the worst things a man can say other than “ I like stabbing babies” which is horrendously off limits and I don’t know anyone who would say that…but it was an extreme example.

So my pal is right, she should have a list of things she looks for in a man.
There are good things men can say and do like…



• Cleaning.
• Ironing.
• Raising babies.
• Cleaning out a Hoover.
• Going to the late night shops for cookies.
• Hand washing your underwear.
• Cooking.

I suppose that’s a bit much to ask, but it’s worth a try.

Imagination 09/12/2007 Europe/London +0100 BST

I think I make a good friend to my close pals.

Though according to very reliable sources I exhaust people, I talk too much and I don’t really listen.
This last bit could be true as I know that sometimes when people tell me their problems I am mentally redecorating their flat or imagining what I would do with such a cute alcove. Or I am off on an Arabian adventure.

It’s a problem I call attention deficit disorder. It hasn’t actually been officially diagnosed by a real doctor but it’s my excuse for being annoying when it suits me.
I can fake interest and go away to a place inside my head and run barefoot on a sandy beach.
I have been known to speak and drift away at the same time.

No one really notices this gift except my daughter Ashley.

“Mum, are you listening to me? I just told you I broke my ankle” she said one day in the middle of a conversation about all the things that happened that day at university.

“You haven’t broken your ankle, you are fine” I muttered as George Clooney kissed me on the mouth as I lay in a swinging hammock on a beach in the Bahamas’.
“Yes but I am trying to get your attention” she moans.

I can pay attention and pay lip service in the same moment.

But she says she can see it in my eyes, I have a ‘distant’ look when I am supposed to be focussed.

When I was a child I could very easily take myself out of horrible situations and completely immerse myself in another world. Handy when you are being sexually abused or watching a screaming fight between your parents, good for distraction all round.

I call this gift ‘Drifting’ and I love it. The sheer amount of times I have been in a drudgery of hell and transported myself to another place.
Like when Ashley was a baby and was taking at least four hours to feed on one bottle and by the time that bottle was finished it was the time to start her next feed again!

I would sit there and have conversations in my head with Charles Dickens, Voltaire or have myself walking through some Amazonian rain forest looking at all the different plant life, smelling the deep earthy wet undergrowth or be simply swimming up and down a huge open air pool. The water lapping at the sides of my arms relaxing and refreshing me with every stroke, never once leaving the room or disregarding my baby’s welfare, drifting is a gift.
Sometimes I have had to sit through the worst of comedy nights as new acts or even established acts who have bored me to the utter depths of insanity and off I go…to the Great Wall of China, to tea at the Ritz, to lying on a quiet grassy headland looking out to sea, the gulls above me calling out, the water crashing off the rocks…all easily accessible in the darkest and nosiest of comedy clubs.

Even sexual imagery is a wonderful escape; I can be with any man in any place at any time. The amount of times I have made Brad Pitt exhausted on a train to Edinburgh is obscene. Daniel Craig, the new James Bond has kept me well entertained on tube rides through London, and 50 Cent my favourite rapper doesn’t mind I am 46 years old as he drags his big leather belt off his jeans and strips, dances and lays me down on his bed whilst I have been sitting through a mortgage meeting with my bank manager.

I call it a vivid imagination; my mates call it ignoring them, but who can tell?

Would you rather listen to an hour of ‘What shoes should I buy?’ or go fuck Justin Timberlake in the back of his limo as he begs you for more?

As Einstein once said “Imagination is more important than knowledge”.

Middle Class Hypocrisy 09/11/2007 Europe/London +0100 BST

The latest news in the Team McCann story is gripping the UK.
You will probably know the story about Madeleine McCann.

Madeleine went missing from her holiday flat in Portugal on May 3rd when her parents left her and her two younger siblings alone as they had a dinner date across at the tapas restaurant 50 yards from their bedroom.

Madeleine has never been found since that fateful night.

The parents Gerry and Kate have had an audience with the Pope, they had millions of pounds in a fund to help find her, they have had major TV and media stars pledge support to their cause, they had MP’s in the UK come out wearing yellow ribbons to remind people of the missing child.

Madeleine’s father even spoke about child safety at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, they have flown around the world in private planes, and been courted by the press from all over the world.

Yet no one asked them why they saw fit to leave three kids under four alone in an apartment in a foreign country with no baby sitter or carer to keep a watchful eye on them.
Who leaves small babies alone in a flat? No one I know.

They could just as easily choke on their vomit if they were sick, fall out of bed, scream from a nightmare and wake up hysterical and possibly be sick (again), wet the bed and want Mummy…a host of things that can happen when small children are left alone…never mind intruders trying to snatch them.

I don’t know anyone in my family who left their kids alone in a flat and walked off to have dinner in another part of the street and I have alcoholics and drug addicts in my family. The people I am talking about may not be the best parents in the world but they don’t leave their kids alone and none of the kids have ever gone missing.

The UK charity the RSPCC advise parents that it’s illegal to leave kids under ten years old alone in a house and parents can be prosecuted for negligence if this occurs.

The McCann’s left twins aged two and toddler aged three alone in an unfamiliar room in a foreign country.

The McCann’s are white middle class doctors, from a professional background in the UK, so no one has challenged them on their decision to leave three toddlers under four years old alone to fend for themselves as they ate tapas with friends.
It’s a class issue through and through.

Imagine the horror of reading about some overweight, flip flop wearing single mum from Essex who left her three babies alone in Butlin’s as she went off to eat a burger 50 yards from the chalet and one child went missing. Pictures of the tubby woman in her white shell suit and cheap jewellery would be splattered over every tabloid that would scream

“I left my babies to get a burger and my child is missing”.

We would hang the worthless woman for sheer negligence.

Her crying fat face on TV begging people to help find her child would be met with derision and pain for the poor kid.
The other babies would immediately be shipped off to a foster home whilst the burger scoffing bitch had to account for her bad parenting skills to outraged authorities.

There would be no outpouring of pain, or candles lit or locals supporting the woman as she held a teddy bear in grief for her missing baby.
Pop stars would not be flocking to lend supportive and heart wrenching songs to the website of the child, politicians would shun her suggestion of a meeting, football teams would give no minutes silence for the missing child’s remembrance.

There would be no free flights or television chats and millionaire celebs would not offer a penny to a fund.

The Pope would have condemned her as an unfit parent and David Beckham would never have given her two minutes of his precious money charged time.

The fat burger muncher from the spam sucking society would have to live the rest of her life in penance for deciding to eat alone and not caring for her kids properly. She will get what she deserves.

Do you honestly think the world famous author J.K Rowling would pledge money to a clumsy stupid fat woman who left her kids alone to go eat from a burger van 50 yards from a holiday flat whilst one of her kids got abducted?

Maybe I am wrong and society would get behind this poor uneducated woman, but it’s an odd state of affairs when questions were raised in Parliament when the infamously and achingly common Jade Goody and Danielle Lloyd made racist comments on a reality TV show in the UK, yet no questions were raised when a nice middle class couple through blatant neglect and misjudgement managed to lose a child as she was left alone in a holiday flat.

The images of the slummy Jade Goody dominated the headlines for weeks, many media giants predicted her fall from grace and sure enough her career was over. Yet the McCann’s will go home to be doctors. What does this say about us a society?

Still the image of the slim blonde pretty mummy McCann and well dressed daddy McCann seem poignant and acceptable.

They only went off to eat tapas, they are doctors and come from a clean middle class house and wear nice coordinated clothes, their hair is shiny and they are devout Catholics.
How can they be judged badly?
They must be good people underneath.
They just wanted dinner and some local wine with friends, leaving their kids alone isn’t really a bad thing is it?
We have all done it ourselves haven’t we? When on holiday after working hard all year, mummy and daddy deserve a little ‘me’ time don’t they?

NO! They can pay for the onsite baby sitting service more than the burger eater.
They could easily have taken shifts on eating dinner the way millions of parents do every where when on holiday and babies need their bed time.

Now the gears have shifted.

The parents of Madeleine McCann have been named as suspects in her disappearance.

So much has been said about the alleged evidence gathered by the Portuguese police, apparently Madeleine’s DNA has been found in the boot of the car that the McCann’s hired six weeks after Madeleine’s disappearance.

Team McCann is screaming that evidence has been planted; this is confusing for me, as I can’t imagine how the police can plant evidence when there is no body to gather evidence from. And why would they do such a thing?

The McCann’s swore blind they would not go home to the UK till Maddy was found. They are at present back in the UK after being named as suspects.

Their respective families are screaming to every newspaper that will listen that ‘It is an outrage to believe Gerry or Kate could kill their own child’

How can they know this for sure?
I don’t know if they are capable of killing their own child, I don’t know anyone capable of killing their own child but statistically it has been proven that kids are more likely to die at the hands of a family member than a stranger.

We have to ask ourselves why we believe the McCann are incapable of killing their child.

Is it because they are doctors?
Is it because they wear nice clothes?
Is it because they both have university degrees?
Is it because they don’t look like killers?

Or do the middle classes of the UK want to believe that the parents are innocent as they have all joined in this parading of grief from the start?

All those politicians who hugged them on TV, all those media stars who lent unbridled support… surely they didn’t get it wrong?
Surely all those letters of sympathy and hope they sent the McCann’s will not be held up to them as reminder that good people like them can do bad things.

But now so many people who leapt on the Madeleine bandwagon are now systematically jumping off.

Being middle class educated people is not a good enough reason to omit them from suspicion; the only thing that will omit them from suspicion is evidence. The crime scene from where Madeleine was taken was contaminated right from the start. The McCann family invited loads of friends and family round to the flat where the child was taken and allegedly refused to leave.

The casualty of this debacle is the child Madeleine. She seems to be forgotten in the whirlwind of publicity. Hopefully she will be found alive and well at some stage.

Now there is uproar from the trustee’s of the Madeleine McCann fund. The parents want some of the gifted money to hire the lawyer who had defended General Pinochet to defend them.
That money that was raised to help find the child, some of it came from ordinary people across the world, some of it was gifted by the richest people in the UK…no wonder the trustee’s are angry.
It was never assumed to be used as legal fees to defend the very people who were supposed to protect the child in the first place.

Only a middle class mentality can have two Doctors who leave their kids unattended on holiday, have one child go missing, get the world’s press at their feet, be horrified at any suggestion of foul play and get millions of pounds and a meeting with the Pope as a result.

The McCann’s may prove their innocence of the accusations of killing their child, but in my eyes they will always be guilty of neglectful behaviour of leaving their kids alone in that flat.