Thoughts

The Edinburgh festival is over for 2010 and so with it the 24 hour anxiety, constant low level depression and neurosis, which frankly is a relief especially as I wasn’t even performing this year. Instead we embark on one of my favourite months, September. I love September not just because it signals the end of the Edinburgh festival, but also because…no actually that is why I like September… well that’s kind of ruined my point…lets face it September signals the end of our Summer, which frankly is quite depressing. Alright, lets not agree to a suicide pact just yet. Instead why don’t we take a fond look back on the last few months; the sunshine in July (can’t actually remember if we had any), the long days in June (at least 2 of those) and of course my tan. Yes, it really has been rather good. So much better than other years, no real strap marks or peeling skin just a really good, even tan. Now I don’t know about you, but that makes life seem a bit better, doesn’t it? I’m sorry did you just say you wanted to punch me in the face? Hmmm interesting…

Look, I know for ‘health’ reasons we’re not allowed to tan, or sun bathe, or get brown, or look brown or wear brown clothes. Ok maybe you can look brown. It’s just that if I’m outside in the sun, unless I cover myself from head to toe whatever skin is exposed tends to go a bit darker. So shoot me! (Stop there because I know some of you would like to.) This year I have suffered a record amount of abuse, for no other reason than I have managed to go a bit browner than the average Brit. At the beginning of the summer it started with people innocently saying, “Oh you’ve got such a lovely colour, you cow! I’m so jealous.” But very quickly turned to, “I wouldn’t want to sunbathe next to you, you absolute BITCH, I hate you and your stupid tan. I would love to repeatedly give you a dead arm whilst inflicting your smug face with a Chinese burn you absolute arse hole!” My Mum can be very direct. Even my girlfriend spent most of the summer in a mood about the colour of my skin, “Can you not stand next to me.” “Why?” “Your tan is annoying.” “My tan is annoying?” “Yes and when you stand next to me it’s even more annoying.” “How can my tan be annoying?” “It just is, you’re making me look white.” “You are white” “Well you’re making me look whiter than white” “Maybe you need to stop washing with non biological detergent and start using soap.” “Do you want me to punch you in the face?” “No.”.

What people don’t seem to understand is that I may have a tan in the summer but in the winter I look yellow, anaemic and generally unwell. I see my friends with their white skin in the winter and they look so annoyingly pink and healthy, like one of the Famous bloody Five. Whereas I have to suffer 9 months of every year listening to people say things like, “You look so tired are you not getting enough rest?” “Have you been ill?” “Are you anaemic?” “Look at those terrible dark circles!” “You should take vitamin B supplements.” “Have you thought about wearing make up?” “I am wearing make up” “Have you thought about wearing more make up?” SHUT UP WILL YOU! THIS IS JUST HOW I LOOKI!

I don’t know what the answer is, I just know that despite the abuse, I like my tan. However, I’m acutely aware that it’s beginning to fade and so with it my special powers to irritate the hell out of everyone I meet. Very soon I’m going to look yellow and dead and that’s not good. Maybe I should go down the route of fake tan. I’ve been to Oldham so I know it doesn’t even need to look natural or suit my skin tone. I saw one bloke who looked like he’d abandoned his fake tan and just got to work with a tin of Ronseal and a brush. You may laugh but you only need one coat and it doesn’t run. Fact. Hang on, I’m sure I’ve got some in the shed…

I don’t have kids, don’t get me wrong I’m not a kid hater, in fact I like kids. They’re so much more honest than adults, you know where you stand with a 5 year old. If they like you they’ll let you know, but if they think you’re a bit of a twat then they won’t spend 20 minutes talking to you whilst looking over your shoulder.

The problem with wanting kids when you’re a woman in your 30s is that most of the things I try and focus on in my life, like writing, performing, spending time with friends and family etc are deafened by the sound of my biological clock. I’m sick of people telling me that I’ve got plenty of time. “Don’t worry, you’ve got ages till you have to think about getting pregnant. You’re still young” I’m 35. “Oh… no, you’re buggered then.” I’m resigned to the fact that I’ll probably have to think about adoption because by the time I get my act together my womb will be like scene from a Spaghetti Western. By that I mean tumble weed not full of Mexicans.

The fact is if a woman wants kids then that is pretty much all she has on the brain. Just going to the cinema with a friend can get awkward. “What film do you fancy going to see?” “Dunno, don’t care.” “Well we could see…Inception or …” “I don’t care, I don’t bloody care? Can you get me pregnant? Can you? CAN YOU GET ME PREGNANT ARSE HOLE? NO? THEN SHUT UP!!” Ok, I lied when I said that was my friend, it was actually my girlfriend. She’s quite sensitive at the moment.

Obviously I have friends who have kids, and of course I love the little nuggets, but for some reason unknown to me, they think I want to come to their kids party. “Molly is going to be 3 on Sunday and she’s having a party we’d love you to come” Why the hell would I want to come to a 3 year old’s birthday party? I’m 35, not 5. Unless you’ve got a punch bowl filled with gin I’m not coming. What is it with adults going to kids parties and hanging around watching them play? “Ah, look they’re playing!” “It’s lovely watching them play together.” No it’s not it’s boring. BORING. These days there are more adults at a kids party than there are kids. Isn’t that just a little bit creepy and weird? When I was growing up, if I went to a party my Mum would drop me off. Yes, that’s right she left me at my friend’s house. That’s normal and then she’d pick me up at the end of the party. Dear God, she wanted to get rid of me! If someone had asked my Mum if she’d like to stay she’d have said, “Why?’ “To see your daughter play and have a glass of wine…” “I see her play every day and I have wine at home. Goodbye.”

Another thing I don’t get is kids’ party food, I remember when it was hula hoops, Smarties and iced gems. Now it’s pitta bread, olives and humus. For crying out loud give them some chocolate! “My daughter actually prefers tzatziki to sweets.” “Really then why is she face down in the sugar bowl right now?”

The truth is that I clearly can’t cope with the responsibility of having a kid. So, for now I’ll settle for our house cat, yes we have a cat. He’s not alive you understand, he’s stuffed. We have a stuffed cat. He’s really no bother at all and if nothing else, we get to watch him being dry humped by an over confident squirrel every other week. Maybe I should start with a goldfish…

“It must be great being single!” These words are nearly always uttered by a serial monogamist who has been in back to back relationships since they were 7 years old. I confess I’m not single, but I practically have a degree in solitude as I didn’t start dating till I was nearly 25 years old. I know, I know I have no idea what the hell I was doing before then. I mean my life was so uncomplicated you’d think I’d have done something worthwhile with my spare time. For heaven’s sake I could have written a book, become a successful stand up comic or at least learnt a language. But no, I seemed to have focused my attention on eating my body weight in cheese whilst simultaneously trying to figure out why the eczema on my face was making me resemble the Elephant woman. Yes I see now that I’m allergic to cheese…

So, due to my many years in the wilderness I often think I have more empathy for my single friends than other people. In fact I’ve always considered myself to be a pretty good wing man. In case you don’t know what a wing man is, I’m that special friend that will help you engage with the opposite sex or the same sex or whatever. Unfortunately, I’ve recently discovered that I am in fact crap at this. When it comes to discretion I have about as much subtlety as a brick to the face. It would seem that I have little to no control over the expressions that appear on my face. I think I’m looking upbeat, casual, approachable, so that any man that might want to chat to me, or my friend will feel confident to do so. The reality is that I have adopted the face of a constipated shot putter after my third disappointing throw.

I also have a terrible habit, as soon as someone tells me not to look somewhere, I will look. Couple this with no sense of direction and you have a disaster waiting to happen. I was out in a bar recently with my single girlfriend and I was doing my best to look casual (we’ve already established how that looked.) Meanwhile my friend had spotted a guy that she liked and decided to adopt the subtle clock strategy. Needless to say, I had no idea what the hell she was going on about, “Ok, don’t look now but that guy I like is at 6 o’clock” “Where’s 6 o’clock?” “Behind you… I just told you not to look!” “Sorry… I can’t see him, where is he now?” “ Ok…he’s at 3 o’clock’.” “What? Where?” “No that’s 9 o’clock you idiot!” “ I don’t know where 9 o’clock is?” “He’s at 20 past 8, no 3 minutes to 4, he’s at 17 minutes past 7!” ‘Where the hell is he?” I’m now spinning around on the spot, I look so obvious people are looking at me just to see if I’ll fall over. “YOU IDIOT! HE’S OVER THERE!” “Oh, I see him…don’t worry I’ve got this…Excuse me mate my friend over there…hang on! where are you going? COME BACK!” We haven’t been out again since.

It’s just as well that fate has been kind to me and despite my general incompetence I am now extremely lucky to have the love of a good woman. She’s always there for me, through thick and thin, even during shot put practice and not many people can say that. (Or would want to…)

I have an unfortunate disability in that I have no spatial awareness. I just don’t have a clue about distances or weight, or indeed any other unit of measurement. I’m just clueless. This isn’t helped by the fact that as British people we haven’t quite figured out if we use metric or imperial units. Are we pounds and ounces or kilos and grams? We drive miles per hour but we fill our tank with litres of petrol, on top of that we measure the efficiency of our engine by the gallon. What the hell is a gallon? Is it more or less than a litre? I’ll be honest with you, for me a gallon is just a lot of fluid. As a kid I would use the word ‘gallon’ all the time, “Oh yeah I drank about a gallon of coke yesterday!” I was showing off, I did not drink a gallon of coke. Where the hell would I have got a gallon of coke from? When you buy bottles from the supermarket they’re in litres anyway! Chances are that I actually drank 330ml of coke. A can. That’s all. I had a conversation with a comic about my car. “How many miles to the gallon does that do then?” “I dunno” “What are you a 1.4 litre engine?” “Errr…yeah?” “ So it goes about 60 miles to the gallon?” He might as well have asked me the theory of quantum physics. I was clueless. Now, If he had asked me the same question in bottles of coke I might have had a better chance of guessing.” I’d say my car goes about 60 miles per 10 bottles of coke.” A lot of you are thinking that doesn’t make any sense. Of course it doesn’t make any sense I have no idea what I’m talking about. That’s the point!

We also measure distances in both miles and kilometres. Which one are we? Let’s commit to one and be done with it for heaven’s sake. My problem is I know roughly how far a mile is but I have no idea how long a yard is. When my sat nav tells me I have to turn left in 200 yards I start to panic. What does that mean? It doesn’t sound far, is it further than 200 metres, does anyone know? And if so, how long is 200 meters? Ironically whenever anyone asks me for directions my standard response is that it’s 100 yards away. Mainly because I have no idea how far a yard is and 100 yards sounds generic enough in terms of distance. “If you go down here it’s about 100 yards on your left” “Great and the swimming pool” Oh yeah that’s also 100 yards… “And Liverpool?” “Liverpool I suppose that’s about 100 yards?” “And from here to a black hole floating in a space time continuum?” “About 100 yards” “You have no idea what you’re saying do you?” “No…”

The thing about us Brits is that we hate the idea of being European, despite the fact that we ARE. There I’ve said it, we are EUROPEAN. Why can’t we just embrace it? I blame Nigel Farage, it’s idiots like him who think driving on the left hand side of the road represents a sign of ‘genius’ in a nation. No Nigel, it just means when we leave this country we’re more likely to go round a roundabout the wrong way and yes I am talking from experience. I want to be like my Mum, she’s Spanish and she understands metric perfectly. Kilometres, metres, litres, grammes…she knows what the hell she’s doing. Unlike myself, who still equates a metre ruler as being the same size it was when I was 5, which makes it taller than me. I’m guessing I’m wrong about that too.

So, the next time you’re at the supermarket buying 3 fluid ounces of butter, 6 grammes of carrots and a kilo of orange juice. Think of me… (that is right isn’t it?)

I’ve just come back from a lovely weekend away in Cornwall. “Have you been? You really must go…” Yes, I actually have been saying that to people. There’s something about holidaying in England that is quintessentially unique. On no other holiday would I consider staying in a B&B with a shower with no water pressure, breakfast that took over an hour to arrive and a car park so small that people had to climb out of the boot of their car to get out, and all of this without complaining? It’s England for heaven’s sake, what do you expect? At least we had a view of the sea, not that we could see it behind the thick net curtain that covered every inch of our expansive window.

I feel like this holiday has aged me, I’ve never been to visit so many ‘gardens’ before. I mean I like a plant as much as the next person but we spent 7 hours looking at green things over two days. It’s not even the looking, I like looking, looking is easy. You glance at one side of green things, and then you glance at the other side. I can even feign looking interested and making the right noises “ooh what lovely hydrangeas!” But then they expect you to read about them. No one tells you about the reading! They should have a warning sign before you enter, “Are you middle aged? Do you like plants? Are you easily intimidated by lots of reading? If you answered ‘yes, yes, no’ then this is your perfect day out! If not, there’s a pub down the road.” By the end of looking round the Eden project I felt like I’d finished the plant version of War & Peace. I mean how much information do I need about the cross pollination of a begonia? I get it, they’re flowers, they’re pretty – is there anything else to look at? No.

Of course you can’t holiday in Cornwall without a cream tea. Now the thing I’ve learned about the Cornish is they think everything is Cornish. We were told that we were drinking Cornish coffee despite the fact that I’d already seen her empty out a packet of Kenko into the coffee filter. Anyway, there I am having paid £4.50 for a cup of tea, a scone, a pot of jam and what can only be described as three pints of cream. I don’t even like milk but I’m watching myself spread clotted cream on a scone thinking, “I hope I don’t run out of jam.” It’s not like when I’m at home I find myself with a couple of pieces of bread thinking, “Now, do I want ham & cheese in my sandwich whipped cream?”

I’m just hoping that when I do hit middle age, which lets face it isn’t far off. I won’t suddenly decide that Capri pants are a good idea. I have never seen so many pairs and so many different colours. Women in this country cannot get enough of them and if they can get a stripy top to match, well they’ve reached fashion Nirvana. I was having a real laugh about this until my girlfriend pointed out that I was wearing three quarter length shorts and a blue and white striped t–shirt. It’s all over people.

I had to distract myself from my impending future fashion faux pas by going for a walk. I really do love walking. As a kid I can remember being taken on walks with my parents and spending the whole time thinking, “What’s the point? We’re only going to walk back again. BORING!” Now of course I can derive real pleasure in just walking, looking at the view, smelling the sea air and of course meeting people along the way. Ok, I confess I hate that bit, mainly because I’m not sure of the rules. I grew up in London so I still feel extremely uncomfortable saying ‘Hello’ to anyone I don’t know. I mean if I was to start greeting people on public transport, chances are I’d be sectioned. But I understand that this is the country way. My girlfriend is completely at ease greeting strangers, having been brought up in the Shires, she’s practically a hobbit. “Hello” she says, “Good Morning!” she greets perfect strangers and they reply, “Hello!’ “Alright there?” I think to myself, this looks easy I’ll try it. I walk on ahead, clear in my mind that I shall greet the next walkers who pass me. I see a man walking toward me, he looks a bit grumpy…hmmm, maybe I shouldn’t say “Hello”…maybe I should wait to see if he says “Hello” first. Yes I’ll do that… He walks past me and I hear a cheerful, “Hello!” as he greets my girlfriend. “Hello!” she says. I suddenly hate walking.

And now I’m back home I miss the sea air, the late breakfast, the beautiful countryside, the shower with the water pressure of a burping tap, the cream teas and of course those badly dressed middle aged women. If only every holiday could be this English!

Note: the author of this article is actually hoping to go to Cuba next year should she ever get enough money together. If not expect another blog about The Lake District, Dorset or Norfolk…)