Ashley and I were watching a wedding in a movie tonight and she asked me about her dad and mine’s wedding preparations. So I told her.

 

It was the summer of 1980 when we decided to get married, we settled on a date in late September. We had already been living together, I had turned 19 and husband was still 17 when we got the plans together. God, we were so bloody young, what were we thinking? I wasn’t pregnant and we didn’t have to do it, but I thought I loved him enough and basically we wanted to escape our families and make a wee life for us.

 

I recall cycling on my wee red bike into Glasgow city centre to a wedding dress shop. The first dress I spotted was £58 it was on the sale and it fitted fine, so I bought it within six minutes of being in the place. I didn’t really see wedding dresses as a big thing, to me it was like a work uniform or some sort of attire that was required for the day. I didn’t once consider style, shape or size; I was pleased I got one cheap. I knew husband would be pleased at my penny pinching methods. He didn’t really approve of spending what you didn’t have, and I too didn’t want to go into debt over a bloody dress.

 

The woman who served me said “You should look at others, you shouldn’t just pick one this quick, and your mum should see it first as well”

 

She was being really pushy and kept nagging at me to consider other dresses and I wanted the one I spotted myself. It was cheap, it was white and it fitted, what more did I need? I was only a teenager with no real fashionable insight and I was worried about my bike that was sitting downstairs in the shop front.

 

I was annoyed at this and said “My mother is dead” and I handed her the cash. The woman looked shamed and shut up.

 

Now my mum wasn’t dead, but I just wanted to buy it and get out of there, I know it was a rash thing to say, but she was pushing me emotionally and I wanted to shock her into shutting up. My opinion was important and didn’t need my mum to yea or nay the frock, nor did I need that scraggy faced woman’s opinion- it was my wedding day and my dress.

 

You should have seen the look of horror on the woman’s face when I tied the big white cardboard box that contained the puffy white dress onto the back of my bike with a big stretchy wire. It was funny looking back, she must have thought I was nuts.

 

Husband and I decided to get married from our family home’s instead of our own flat in the Calton.

So he was staying at his dad’s and I was at my mum’s flat in Shettleston.

 

I kept the dress at a friends house near my mums as her house wasn’t really that clean and I was worried it would get smoke damaged from all her smoking or dirty there.

 

The night before I got married, I cycled over to my father in laws house, my husband to be was out working at the bar and I knew my father in law would be alone. I brought the bike into the hallway and he and I sat and watched TV. I needed a bath and my mum’s bath hadn’t worked since 1976 and I didn’t want to be a stinky bride.

 

After my bath, my father in law and I sat and ate ice-cream and cycled back home where I met up with Maggie. She was my bridesmaid and an old pal of mine. We both stayed at my mum’s that night. Our wedding was at 11am the next morning and we had hairdresser’s appointments the next morning. We both got our hair done and simply walked back to my mum’s flat.

 

It was a hive of activity; my brothers and my niece Debbie were there, all getting ready for my early wedding! People were chatting, drinking beer, all getting excited and kept asking me if was ok. Maggie and I felt odd being the centre of attention but carried on with our business of getting dressed up for the big day.

 

I didn’t have make up or anything else to do, as I didn’t wear make up back then. There were no big preparations. So I simply got out of my jeans and jumper and pulled on the dress, I thought I looked nice. I popped the diamante tiara on my head, pulled over the veil and that was me done and dusted!

 

No fuss, no messing or flapping about nervously. I recall walking out of my childhood bedroom dressed up in the big white dress and felt like I was going to out for my Halloween party, I spotted my wee red bike and I wished I could just jump on it and cycle away.

 

The morning passed quickly, the wedding ceremony was over in a flash. We went to his dad’s pub, that’s where we first met. We ate lunch and by 1pm we were out of there, I got into my jeans and we left the two dysfunctional mis-matched families to their own devices and went to a bed and breakfast in Saltcoats for our honeymoon.

 

Husband and I got there early and decided to go see a movie as we had time to kill. We saw ‘Kramer versus Kramer’ a film about divorce on our wedding night! We ate chips and headed to the accommodation. It was slightly smelly and really old fashioned.

 

It was freezing cold and the bed was foamy and hard. A cat meowed loudly at our window all night long and in the morning a big Alsatian dog that belonged to the owners bit me as I went for breakfast. Memorable.

 

So there we have it. A wedding, a cheap dress, a non existent hen party, a horrible honeymoon and nearly 30 years of marriage, not bad eh?

Friday morning was hell. I woke up to get ready for a photo shoot in Glasgow’s East End (Shettleston actually, my home town) as I had written an article for the Sunday Herald on the forth coming by-election. Whilst washing my hair, I heard Ashley being very sick. I hate it when my child is sick, even though she is 22 years old, it strikes fear and pain in me to see her unwell.

 

Ashley finally feels better and I somehow start vomiting instead. Now this is too busy a day for me to be throwing up, I have to do a photo session then get on an aeroplane to Cardiff, so I get stressed more and puke up more.

 

Husband holds my hair back as throw up more bile into the loo. The make up I had carefully applied for the photo’s was now either being sweated or smeared down my face. That’s when the photographer called me from his car to let me know he was downstairs waiting. We had time issues; I had to get the pics done before 11am so that I could get to the airport in time for the flight. Subsequently I had no time to make myself look presentable.

 

I managed to pat some foundation powder on my scaly white face and run downstairs. We drove to Shettleston, I felt cold, sick and creeped out by old streets. I saw where my mammy lived, where I went to school and the photographer decided to get me out onto the street for the picture.

 

“Can you twirl round that lamppost?” he shouted, behind the huge lens of his camera.

 

“No, I will vomit again; can we do pictures that don’t involve me swinging, twirling or doing anything that will induce sickness?” I groaned.

 

I vomited again. The man waited for me to wipe my mouth, I smiled and he clicked on his camera.

 

I finally got home in time to see Ashley looking better from her puking session (what the hell is wrong with us?) and caught the flight to Cardiff.

 

The hotel is nice and I checked in with time to get ready for my comedy show at Jongleurs. I stood at the window and stared out. At that precise moment a big white beady eyed gull landed right on my window sill, pecked the window and stared at me.

 

I flinched. It stared. I poked at the window, it nodded its head. I clapped my hands hoping it would hear me through the glass, it stared more and refused to budge.

 

“There is a big scary gull staring at me and wont get off my window ledge” I hissed to husband on the phone. I don’t know why I was whisperings, the gull just stared at me, occasionally cocking its head at me and pushing one back beady eye further up to the glass.

 

“Maybe it’s your mum coming back to see you from the dead, you had a worrying day and this is her way of comforting you” he said.

 

“My dead mammy is a fucking seagull in Cardiff?” I screeched at him “Couldn’t she come back as an eternal butterfly or something beautiful and romantic? Not a big beady eyed gull”

 

“Well people don’t choose what they come back as” he added. Now he was annoying me. I had banged a shoe at the window to get rid of the gull and that means I have tired to attack my long dead mum who happens to have become a seagull, my day was already tough enough.

 

The gull stared at me.

 

“Are you my dead mammy” I shouted through the window. The gull stared and bobbed its head. “It’s saying YES” I shouted to husband.

 

“See, I told you it was your mum” he laughed.

 

The gull flew off the ledge and I laughed as well. Just like my mum, it got bored with me talking.

 

So The Sunday Herald will carry an article and a photo of me tomorrow, good news all round. Am off to stalk the streets of Cardiff to see if I can spot my mammy flying over the rooftops and throw her some bread, she may be hungry.

Writing a weekly column for a famous Scottish newspaper has its ups and downs. My column gets printed on a Monday and the deadline is Friday afternoon. I love to see my photo and all my words printed in The Scotsman and the novelty of reading it aloud in the living room is slowly wearing thin on my family, but I am still chuffed.

 

The downside is this- Each Monday after the column is printed I have the shocking fear and slow drip-drip of anxiety that I have to do it all again for next week.

 

What the hell will I write about? Does anyone really want to know about my lack of organising skills? Shall I talk about Ashley’s lack of love life? Will she hate me? Do the readers despise me and rip up my column so they can wipe their ass on it? Do other journalists hate me and mock my words?

 

You see I am a stand up comic to trade (if that is an actual trade?) and I work live in front of people who show their immediate distaste or appraisal in the moment in front me….waiting to be judged over the week makes me feel itchy under my skin.

 

I do get comments from people on the Scotsman website and they veer from ‘We hate this woman’ to ‘Janey is right about this topic’ and once my column was even quoted on the US Fox News website, so it’s not all good or bad.

 

I just worry, I suppose. The other downside is that my blog has been suffering slightly as I don’t always get to write my most inner thoughts as I have been either busy on the column of have diverted the subject to the newspaper and it didn’t quite make it to the blog.

 

So there we have it. Today was even busier as I freelance write for other publications and had to write 800 words to deadline and finish my Scotsman column and write this blog and finish off admin for the fringe.

 

I am comedian, when did life get so bloody busy? I haven’t brushed my teeth and it’s nearly 2pm. I am off to Cardiff tomorrow to do comedy, so its back on the old flight-taxi-hotel trip again. Another anonymous city, with yet another strange bed and nightmares in another dark room, yet I do love my job.

 

Like the old hooker once said “It’s not the job that kills me, it’s the stairs”

 

How right she was.

I went to a small experimental theatre show in Los Angeles many years ago where young students were putting on their ‘work’. There comes a point in everyone’s life where they sit in a studio, theatre or gallery and stare at something that the middle class cognoscenti deem art and you recognise it as mental illness.

 

I recall watching an anorexic French girl with a geometrical blunt haircut throw broken plates at an empty box as she recited the bible. She was a mix between my mammy in an alcoholic induced rant and Joan of Arc in her ‘black period’. People cheered when she fled the room threatening to kill herself in broken English. I was seriously worried about her well being, I never mistook her emotional breakdown for art. Other people did. I saw her in the car park cutting herself with her broken pottery and I didn’t know if I should intervene or give the display an appraisal. I wrestled her to the ground to get the sharp object out of her hand. Turns out that was part of the show and people who had also followed her out shouted at me to stop ruining the finale.

 

The second act that day was watching what I can only describe as a homeless man eat sticky buns as he stood silently in his dirty coat that occasionally flashed open to reveal a very impressive erection. He was cheered on endlessly; people were very amazed at his avant garde display. I managed a smile and I was quite taken by his show, who can eat that many buns and maintain sexual tension? That turned out to be an actual homeless man who simply walked in and ate the buffet. I was then angry, because I enjoyed the show and I was duped and now there were no buns at the break.

 

Last week at a private comedy event I watched a young, very posh middle class guy attempt stand up comedy. His friends at the side of the room had assured him he was very funny and he should get up at this event and do the show. It was a horrible slow car crash of a comedy death, my kidneys hurt for him, and I watched all his young mates applaud him as he spoke clunky clumsy words that baffled everyone. No one in the main audience laughed; in fact they stared in silence as he carried on talking about Badgers and jam at length. “Is it just me or does everyone imagine that badgers are addicted to cheese?”

 

“Yes, it is JUST YOU” I wanted to scream. No one thinks that and by the way mate, that isn’t even funny.

 

He carried on ranting and came off to the sound of his own feet.

 

It was all very bizarre and smacked of too many nights watching The Mighty Boosh (a successful surreal comedy duo). When he reached the side of the stage, I rushed to offer him reassurance and kind words, but he ran like a king to his friends who all hand slapped and high-fived him. The audience were stunned and took some cajoling back into a decent funny vibe. He was crap at comedy, but in his mind he was amazing. The lack of laughter did nothing to convince him otherwise. He would go off later to the local bar with his wee middle class mates and regale them with stories about his successful comedy debut.

 

What I am saying is that I am not sure if I can now tell the difference between art and complete baloney….and is there one?

 

Comedy is defined by being funny. It is something that makes people laugh. I know this because I am a comedian.

 

I will never understand conceptual art, experimental theatre or even Picasso in his strange plate painting period. Squinty faces splattered on red odd shaped plates made me think of special people who get to do ceramic painting with their mouth as their limbs were missing.

 

I may be a total philistine but at least I know shit when I see it.

I saw a programme today about a young woman who pulls out her hair bit by bit; it is a form of self harm and she has permanently damaged her scalp. It made me shudder to watch because I was a hair puller as a child. I used to lie in bed, pick out a section of my hair, tie in a knot at the end and tug it till it came straight out of my scalp. The flesh on my head would bleed and I would then throw the clumps of hair under the bed. One day my mammy found loads of the hair and on closer inspection noticed that I had a bald patch on the side of my skull. She couldn’t figure out why I would do such a thing. I never explained it to her properly.

 

I was sexually abused as a child and somehow discovered hair pulling as a way to divert the pain by ripping out my hair. I did eventually explain to my mum about the abuse, though somehow she chose to ignore my words and therefore allowed her brother to continue to sexually abuse me. My hair pulling got worse. I don’t know when I stopped doing it.

 

To this day I still tug at my hair, I twist it and sometimes chew the ends and on occasion I do pull wee bits out. The strange pain it evokes makes me feel odd and I know that it is wrong and damaging to my scalp, but somewhere deep inside it reminds me of my childhood pain, yet I continue.

 

Everyone thinks I am terribly strong and brave because I survived the abuse, because I do comedy about my past and because I wrote a book about my difficult life, but underneath it all I am still a child who tugs her hair out sometimes.

 

I know I will never reach the point where I actually rip chunks out, but I do still fiddle with my hair too much. I need to address this and stop it.

 

My daughter Ashley took a photo of me from the side on, in that picture I was chewing my hair; I looked at it and felt terrible shame and horror at what I do.

 

So today I am resolved to stopping it all, maybe by admitting it I am addressing it will help me do this.