I am still in Leeds. Life was in turmoil yesterday.  My brother Jim now lives in Essex with his daughter and five lovely grand kids and I go a call saying he had taken ill. Jim is a complex person but I adore him, regular readers of this blog will know that Jim has come through various drug problems, living with HIV and more recently he survived cancer.

 

Those worried I am spilling my brothers secrets on this blog will be heartened to know he gave me the say-so to tell all, otherwise I would not say anything!

He is my beloved big brother!

 

Anyway it seems he was very ill and I wasn’t totally sure why. His daughter had been given conflicting news from the emergency docs at Colchester Hospital and I needed to find out personally.

 

I called the hospital a few times and luckily managed to talk to a Scottish nurse! She was very friendly and helpful and called me back with Jim’s exact location in the hospital and the number to speak to the doc treating him.

 

It seems he has pneumonia and some other infection. I was worried he was dying and would have to cancel my comedy gigs in Leeds and dash to London, but the news was good. He was stable.

 

I called back a few hours later for an update and a wee Liverpudlian nurse said “he is still in a coma and there is no response”

 

“When did my brother go into a coma?” I screamed alarmed.

 

“Erm….sorry I have got the wrong notes, I am really sorry” she pleaded “Let me find your brothers notes”

 

After my heart beat normally I found out Jim is still stable and being treated for the chest infection.

 

My mate John Fleming drove down to Colchester on my behalf and visited him and gave me the news. I have been onstage every night and have been rather worried, so John is a great mate for doing that.

 

So far Jim is ok and continues to get better daily.

 

So husband and I got up today and despite the rain we set off for Otley. It’s a small market town outside Leeds and home to Mr Chippendale (not the sexy dancer but the famous cabinet and furniture maker).

 

The rain pounded down, we arrived to a small village flooded with water with puddles that could easily handle a small canoe if we so felt like it. I tried to look at the wonderful charming street scenes but the fact that my trousers were flapping and soaked irritated me.

 

Then Ashley our daughter called.

 

“Dad!” she screamed.

 

Husbands face became ashen. I stared at him, my heart stopped, the rain soaked my head, and splashes from cars soaked me as I stood stock still trying to decipher the look in husbands face. I wanted to rip the phone from his ear and find out what was happening to my precious child.

 

“Are you ok? Are you bleeding?” he asked as the rain muffled his words.

 

My legs shook- what the fuck was going on? He directed me to a bar off the main road and we both walked inside, him with phone still clamped to his ear. I wanted that phone NOW…I need to know what is wrong with Ashley and he was talking too slow and not giving me any indication, why did she want to talk to him? Why not me? I talk faster and process information quicker…

 

Husband finally passed the phone to me.

 

“Mum, I fell down the tube station in those evil brown lesbian looking sports shoes you bought me last year” she sobbed, she was really crying, big gulping sobs came through the ear piece.

 

“Baby, are you ok? Are you cut? Are you injured? Burn the lesbian shoes, through them out the window, talk to me!” I spoke quickly, I almost lactated and had a breast leak, I haven’t heard her cry like that since she fell off her scooter in 1994.

 

Husband was shaking his head and patting my shoulder, and trying to communicate something to me, but it was distracting me from my daughter’s pain.

 

“I really want my dad to come home, I miss him and no one is here when I fall” she squeaked…she sounded like she was five years old. “I don’t know why I am so upset, I really miss my daddy”

 

She almost hyperventilated on the phone and as I stood in front of a big crackling fire in a tiny wee bar in Otley surrounded by locals staring at me as I shouted about throwing lesbian shoes out of a window, I continued to get her breathe slowly. People stared more, like I was trying to help deliver a child over the phone.

 

That was until I added.

 

“Breathe slowly, now hold it and breathe again, not too fast, take it slowly, now grab one lesbian sports shoe and throw it right into the road from the windows in the front” I spoke slowly and clearly.

 

Husband giggled and ordered tea.

 

Ashley finally calmed down, I finally calmed down, I hung up the phone and watched loads of wee old men stare suspiciously at me. I didn’t care, my daughter was scared and hurt and it’s my job to fix that shit.

 

“She is upset, tired and fell and misses her dad” husband spoke as he pored tea into a cup for me. We both sat there in the wee bar in wet clothes and decided to head back to Leeds as the day was complete wash out.

 

We got back to the car and…it would not start!

 

The rain lashed, it sounded like pebbles being battered off the roof and the fucking car refused to start.

 

I sat with wet legs, wet head and freezing hands. Husband called the AA and gripped the wheel in anger; he hates the frustrating feeling of things not working properly.

I knew Ashley missing him was upsetting him and he felt annoyed he wasn’t there for her when she needed him.

 

Finally the AA turned up, fixed the starter thingy and we drove back to Leeds in silence. I watched his face, his jaw was stiff and he was grinding his teeth. The rain slashed continually.

 

“I miss her” he spoke.

 

“I miss her too, she is ok, you know, she needs to accept shit happens and she needs to know she will get over it, she really wants you home, but that doesn’t make you a bad dad for not being there, how do you think I feel? She doesn’t really miss me” I said.

 

“You have been travelling since she was eight, I was always there for her” he said.

 

“That sounds like I was never there for her, am I a bad mother?” my heart sank.

 

“No, you are a working mother, that’s a good thing; I am a dad, that’s a different thing”

 

We drove in silence, both of us trying to work out how to be a good parent, yet earn a living. I knew Ashley was having a bad day and would come through it all. She isn’t that weak or needy, she just must be feeling down, she is strong like me.

 

The phone rang again, it was Ashley. My heart missed a beat as I pressed the button and heard her shout “Guess what? It’s snowing here in Glasgow! Wow, mum I am so happy, I need to go my as mates are here and we are going to a party tonight, sorry I upset you, I just missed dad. I threw the shoes away…Love you mum” and she hung up.

 

Being a mum and dad is fucking scary.

 

Being a sister is scary.

 

Being a comic is easy, am back onstage in Leeds tonight. Life is ok.

I love Leeds, I am here for a week performing comedy at Jongleurs and the place is awesome. Very cosmopolitan, sassy and certainly a jewel in the north, but and I say BUT very hesitantly.

 

 If you want to catch a glimpse of the working class, real Northerners, the Alan Bates type characters who are the solid bread and butter pudding of these people, you hang out at the outdoor side of Leeds Market.

 

There is a shoddy mish mash of stalls selling cheap stretchy pants, misaligned underwear and Knick-Knack-a- roonys, the likes of what people like me would balk at. Plastic clocks painted in cheap gold varnish, retarded looking Georgian ladies parading as figurines made of plaster of Paris and painted with colours than you can lick off.

 

There is a concrete parapet where the ‘interesting people’ hang out. I always make an effort to be there and watch them, not out of any perverse voyeurism, but because they are genuinely fascinating.

 

I sat down on one of the many metal benches that line the concrete shelter with my polystyrene cup of searing hot tea and sipped away happily. Sat beside me was a huge fat woman, she was wearing a tent like pink cotton coat and had a bright floral scarf tied around her big head and it knotted beneath one of her many chins.

 

At her leg was a huge multi coloured nylon bag that was bulging at the seams.

 

“It’s a pissing carry on this Christmas shopping isn’t it? I mean I ordered a side table out of Argos two months ago and they told me it was out of stock, so this lady called me and told me they would send a pissing cheque I said ‘A pissing cheque? That no good to me my young lady, I aint got the money to go into town to cash the pissing cheque’ then I got into town and pissing Argos told me the bloody table was now in stock and they were delivering that pissing day!” her words came out in a torrent.

 

I made apologetic noises and sipped my boiling tea; she carried on “Have you seen these?”

 

She bent down into her big bag and pulled out what I assumed was a tarpaulin, she unfolded the material and I recognised that they were in fact a big pair of black Lycra knickers. She pulled them to full stretch and I gawped and gasped “Oh my God they are the biggest knickers I have ever seen”

 

“Yeah they will fit my pissing big arse” she giggled.

 

“Or a ship” I added. She laughed a throaty laugh and we sat chatting some more.

 

Then along at the next bench I watched what I can only assume was a family of seven people of various ages and sizes.

 

All but one of the group was sitting down. I assumed this was the mother. She was a giant woman, her thighs spread over the entire bench and her girth took up the whole space. She had on a blue coat and a blue dress, her bare mottled legs were massive and her ankles were bulging. I couldn’t stop staring at her feet.

 

These feet were firmly strapped down by the industrially thick brown leather straps of her sandals, the density of which could hold down a big top carnival tent or secure ships to a harbour midst a squalling storm. Swollen burgeoning flesh popped through the spaces between the leather, like water balloons being squeezed between toddler’s fingers. Her fat ankles spilled over on their own flesh and doubled up as the leg met the foot. I wondered how she managed to walk.

 

Surrounding her was the family. There were prams with squealing babies and toddlers who ran around the group.

 

I genuinely had trouble trying to work out who were the men and which were the women. The entire group had short ‘bingo’ haircuts and they all had a big blotch of bleach apparently combed through the hair. Like someone had found a big tub of peroxide and they had experimented on each other and all enjoyed and celebrated the results!

 

Yellow-white short spiky hair was everywhere. They all had smallish heads, no necks and their bodies just got bigger and rounder as your eye went down, like Weebles, no distinguishable waists, hips or boobs…just rounded people with yellow-ish hair. All dressed in grey, black and blue sports wear.

 

Though I assume none of them were joggers or sprinters.

 

This was a sexless look and it was very popular, even the young teenager amongst them was dressed in this acrylic nightmare with yellow-ish hair. No one had dared to stray from the fashion, I looked at the babies in the numerous prams and wondered how long it would be before the peroxide would be slapped on its wee head!

 

The group was loud with laughter, they chased each other around, they smoked, they swore loudly and they were affectionate with babies. Then they all moved off. I watched the big fat mother struggle to get off the bench and waddle off towards the bus stop near the market.

 

I finished my tea, stubbed out my cigarette and headed off to the flat I am staying in here in Leeds.

 

Leeds is full if amazing characters and I love it.

I flew into Norwich on Monday from Glasgow. The flight was great and on arrival at Norwich airport there was a white BMW mini bus ready to take me to the hotel in Titchwell, just as the BBC ordered. I was doing ‘Just a Minute’ radio show in Kings Lynn and staying in the lovely Titchwell Manor.

The white mini bus had a driver who looked about 12 years old and assured me the journey would be fine; as my mate John told me the roads between Norwich and Norfolk are notoriously arduous.

The road twisted and turned and I sat there bumping along, glad that I had two ovaries and two kidneys as my internal organs were slowly being mangled and mashed on the journey.

We had been on the road an hour before the child driver admitted we were lost.

“Do you have a map?” I asked him.

“No, I entered the postcode into my Sat Nav, but according to this we are here, now I have realised the whole area has the same postcode” he mumbled.

“Ok, let’s find a bar or garage or somewhere we can get directions” I took charge.

We drove through small villages that although beautiful looked totally abandoned, farm houses with no people, streets with no cars, stone built manor homes with nothing but ghosts to tend the gardens. I was getting really frustrated; neither of us could get a signal on his radio or our own phones. We were in 1879.

We drove up a gravely drive to an ancient looking mansion, there was no one there.

“We are back in time, I will get put into service and have to pluck chickens and you will become a chimney sweep, this is Bleak House” I laughed, he drove off and we managed to find three more villages with no people or animals, or shops or ANYTHING to indicate life in Norfolk.

Finally we must have driven through some Delorean Time Shift as we saw a garage up ahead and it had real live people in it. They pointed us in the direction of Titchwell and off we set.

The poor driver was aghast at his taxi skills and I was too tired to fight.

But Titchwell Manor was worth the wait. Honestly it is awesome. The main hotel has lovely big coal fires and set in rugged Norfolk landscape and the rooms are wonderfully small wooden cabins. The floors are wooden, painted in cream with pale green cool walls all with a huge wooden bed filling the centre of the room. Whoever designed these rooms knew what they were doing; the peacefulness is reflected in every aspect of the décor. A big deep bath, cool shiny metal taps, and light flows in from the huge patio windows that over look the farm land outside. I was amazed at the distinct lack of noise.
It was so quiet I have discovered I may have tinnitus; there is a slow deep ringing in my ears that I have never heard before, as I have never been anywhere this quiet in my life. I could hear my kidneys working….I could hear my eyes blink!

I have noises in my head!

I saw a squirrel walk up to my window. I lay on the big white bed and watched it scrabble about, it stopped and clawed at its own bottom and not only did I see it - I HEARD it…that’s how quiet it is. You can hear squirrels scratch their own ass in silent Norfolk.

Then radio show went really well, ‘Just a Minute’ is the scariest radio show in the world. You have to talk for a whole minute really fast and not deviate, or repeat or hesitate…and it has millions of fans and listeners. It can be so frightening, but you have to go with flow and be funny as well. Nicholas Parsons who hosts the show is just a wonderful wit and I adore him.

Next day I caught the train to London where I was doing a gig for Scotscare at the Caledonian Club in Belgravia.

That show was slightly odd as most of the people who turned up were really old and very posh, BUT they were an awesome crowd and I relaxed into it…it ended up a great show.

I caught up with Monica my best mate, we chatted and ate crisps and talk shit for hours. That’s what best pals do.

Soon it was time to get on a flight home, but why the fuck do I always book an early flight? I had to get up at 7am and get taxied to Stanstead Airport, I was so tired, I had a period from hell, and my womb was trying to implode. It felt like three wee angry terriers were fighting over a biscuit in my uterus.

I arrived home to a clean warm bed, two painkillers and a great sleep before I had to get up and go perform in Edinburgh Jongleurs.

Sorry I was late with this blog, but life is mental.

Things happen to me. I went to my local late night Asian shop to get milk and fags at 2am. This is normal for me and I love it when it’s quiet.

Anyway when I arrived there were two police officers, one a woman and one a man. The shop was empty except two members of staff who were chatting to the two officers. I heard the woman police officer say to the counter assistant “Did you see the man who had the dog that bit my colleague?” The Asian man then walked with her up the back of the shop to get some privacy.

I thought to myself “Shit I missed a dog biting a policeman my timing really sucks”

Then I picked up some chocolate and headed for the counter where Mohamed 2 was standing, he walked away from the officer and started bagging my goods.

“Hey Mohamed Two, how are you? I have been in Canada did you miss me?” I said.

“Yes Janey, did you do some shows?” he asked with a smile. The policeman at the counter was getting agitated.

“Excuse me, but we are trying to conduct an investigation here could you please get on with your purchases” he snapped and then added “And that’s racist calling him Mohamed Two”

“Listen up Mr Policeman, I want to have my full late night shopping retail experience, we always chat and if you need to make a full investigation then shut the shop, and by the way he is Mohamed Two, the other guy is Mohamed one and his dad is Mohamed three, I am Janey One and my daughter is Janey two and my husband is Janey three, so suck that”

Mohamed laughed “She is right I am number two, we call my cousin Mohamed Plus One”

“I need to question him and you chatting will distract him” the copper insisted.

“Why is he a goldfish? Does he have retentive memory problems?” I asked.

“Look I could give you a warning about obstructing a police investigation” he snapped.

“Well now that you have warned me that you are about to warn me, it’s kind of lost its threat don’t you think?” I laughed.

The policeman glared at me, Mohamed packed my bag and took my cash, I turned to the policeman and said “I wish I had seen the dog biting your colleague”

The policeman said “Why so you could laugh?”

“No, so I could give you a really descriptive account of what happened, I am a stand up comic and I am great at watching things and describing them, like I will about this incident between us tonight, you should read my blog, its on my website, you are officially today’s blog, so thanks for that” then I left the shop giggling and Mohamed Two shouted goodbye.

There is nothing better than getting into your own bed with your favourite pillow and cuddling into it. The familiar smell of your own bedroom is great and hearing Ashley banging doors as she gets up for Uni was even wonderful. I missed my home and am glad to be home from Canada.

 

When I arrive home from a trip I always do a quick check. I walked around the house to look for deformities.

 

There is a burnt out blackened saucepan that as yet has to explained, there are black splash marks on my kitchen ceiling that Ashley vehemently denies are there, she tells me I am seeing things. The sofa has a strange dull stain on it and the clothes drying rack refuses to stand up as one of its legs are broken.

 

The bathroom has no soap and there are four tubes of toothpaste in various states of squeezed-ness (if that’s a word?) and my towels are all damp and I have 17 towels. Can they all be wet at the same time? What happened when I was gone?

 

I will never know because my daughter has decided I need ask no questions as no answers will be forthcoming.

 

Life goes on; at least she is alive and well.

 

I brought home season 5 of 24 and season 7 of Gilmore Girls and I sat up last night watching too much telly. I slept till 4pm today and felt drugged and dizzy. It’s not jetlag, it’s me being too bloody stupid and staying up too late.

 

I have good news though, my all time favourite BBC Radio 4 show ‘Just A Minute’ has asked me to be a panel guest again, I will be on the show on the 26^th November recording. I love the show and have been on it twice before. I am excited.

 

Then on 28^th November I will on at the Scotscare gig here at the details on their website www.royalscottishcorporation.org.uk it’s a wonderful charity so please support it if you can.

 

Am off to work out why there is strange dead cat smell coming from the cupboard under the sink, Ashley denies that she can smell it, but it is there.

 

I suppose the welcome home banner she made on the back of my mobile phone bills wasn’t a great idea but at least the thought was there.