There can be nothing better than your first decent shower in a warm bathroom after Glastonbury. Ashley and I had our first shower in London to be precise. We were staying in a friend of mines house, he is gay and an architect and you should have seen his shower room!
WOW…a huge wet room with pulsating (don’t you just love that word?) shower heads and giant fluffy towels, with heated floors and all the shower products you will ever need in your gay life!
I think I actually shed a skin when I got clean. I had scrubbed and exfoliated and then slathered myself in sweet smelling body lotion…it was heaven.
The downside of the wonderful stay in his lovely house was that he had two mental cats (who would have thought?).
One cat was a huge blue/grey coloured man cat with orange eyes and it jumped about like a bulldog and the other was a tortoiseshell female cat that sat quiet and loved to be stroked.
The big man cat followed me about and kept rubbing his big sturdy back against me and when I went to bed, he promptly leapt onto the bed and bit my feet through the duvet.

To be honest I was tired I didn’t even feel it.

So we are home in Glasgow and my entire suitcase contents needs washed as everything smelled smokey due to the camp fire being near our tent.

Husband is so happy to have us home, yet never had any decent food in the fridge and Ashley through a big huffy tantrum and he had to go get loads of nice food for her today.

I never really explained in my last blog entry how horrible I felt in Glastonbury as the sheer amount of rain and mud made me feel so dirty, wet and miserable. It was awful and so fucking soul destroying beyond belief. Though I really love the festival, I whinged and when I got out and realised that people had actually died in the floods- I shut my moaning mouth and decided to stop being so whiney.

If I go back next year I will most definitely hire a camper van or caravan type vehicle to live in, as that will be warm and safe and easy to deal with. I still have flashbacks of standing up in that tent and stepping into cold rain and trying to stop the flood of water spreading into my dry clothes.

Life is good here in Glasgow and I have learned one thing, homeless people deal with stuff I can never even begin to imagine and I had a warm expensive tent to live in. They sleep on the streets and deal with our weather day in and out without any shelter and I now have the utmost respect for their resilience.
I am selfish and very very grateful.

Well I survived. I am sorry I have not written a blog in days but there was no internet connection whatsoever. Ashley my daughter and I pitched the tent (in the rain) and it was allocated beside the campfire (which never stayed alight because of the rain).
Within hours the whole campsite turned to MUD, by that I mean mud and sludge that was so thick it sucked the wellies off your legs... (In the rain).

I was the first actual stand up to perform in the huge cabaret tent. It took me ages to walk the short distance to the tent due to the huge volume of…did I mention the mud?
Anyway, the gig had all the makings of a nightmare, as I was first on and the room hadn’t had comedy yet as such. But then, the rain came harder and the whole tent filled up!
I walked on stage and had the best half hour gig of my life! It was awesome, I even got to tell a huge long story and in the middle of my set the magnificent crowd was quiet and listening and then from the deluge of wet people all I could hear was a wee “Mwaaa” a baby cried!

The place fell about laughing as I explained that it was the youngest heckle of my life, so we all went quiet again and listened to see if the baby would cry again and it didn’t but we cheered anyway.

Living in the tent was fine, but the relentless rain made everyone so bloody exhausted and having to dredge through miles of knee high mud was making me so upset I cried.
I suppose having a period in the middle of that quagmire wasn’t helping at all. Don’t even think about the toilets!
But I do love Glastonbury, though I silently prayed for escape after about two days.

Ashley had a great time, got to see and hear wonderful music and made fab friends as always. She manages to connect to people and have lasting friendships everywhere she goes.

I on the other hand screamed so loud when a big black beetle ran through my tent everyone laughed as I shouted “Please help me a big beetle is hiding under my jumbo pack of sanitary towels” Ashley was mortified and kicked me.

So I am safely out of the camp and sitting in London waiting to fly home with a huge bag of smokey smelling clothes and hair that will never really be clean and to top to all off I think that beetle is in my case. I saw something scuttle amongst my underwear bag as I reached for clean knickers today and I immediately decided these knickers are clean enough…
Did I mention the rain? Oh yes it rained for eight days solid.

My daughter Ashley and I got up early in Glasgow to fly out to London today (Wednesday). We are packed and ready to head off to Glastonbury. First we must stop off in London as I get my lift from London to the festival site and Ashley has packed a huge case of clothes which I don’t think she will be able to wear as finally the weather here in UK looks like rain.

We have a golden spring which reached temperatures of 90 degrees on some days, now when I need the weather to hold…it looks like rain in Glastonbury for the whole weekend. Wonderful.

I am so tired because as soon as we landed we got driven straight to BBC broadcasting house for me to a short piece about the festival and then a car drove us to our swish and truly awesome flat in Westminster.
I think the last person to live here was Tom Cruise…I am joking of course but you should see this place…WOW…right next door to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament…I am so lucky.

Ashley and I headed down to the Groucho club and had dinner, and then we literally slumped into seats and needed our beds.

We have a big day tomorrow, and I am not looking forward to putting up that huge tent which will be my home for the next four days…no sireee. From the lap of luxury to a big fucking muddy field…this is my life!

I cannot believe that Daryl Hall is 61 years old; I just found this out when I uploaded his amazing solo album from 1993 ‘Soul Alone’. I found a big box of cd’s in my wardrobe from when I used to own a bar in my almost past life. You should hear ‘Philly Mood’ its astounding.

The best thing about owning that bar from 1980 till 1994 was that I was in charge of the jukebox and I got to choose what went in and what came out. It seems fair that I had to spend the best years of my life in that fucking old pub, that I chose the theme tune to my own life.

I loved Hall and Oates from their early stuff right through till today. I am still shocked that Daryl is 61 years old and I still fancy him!

How odd is that?

Thinking about the old pub in the Calton near Glasgow Green, I recall the first song I heard in it. It was ‘Strawberry Letter #21’ by the Brothers Johnson. The year was 1979 and I was fascinated by the old vinyl playing jukebox. The last song I heard in it was ‘Hotel California’ by the Eagles in 1994.

Years later maybe mid 80s I remember the first cd jukebox’s coming into fashion and the first cd we got was ‘Captain of Heart’ by Double. Back then it could only hold six cd’s at one time and then technology progressed and we ended up with a small box on the wall and a big box downstairs in the cellar that held 500 cd’s in all.

We rented the system but owned all the cd’s and I loved picking all the favourites. Daryl Hall’s Soul alone was one of my favourite’s it never really took off but I loved it.
I also put in people like Todd Rundgren and obscure numbers from the likes of Dean Friedman.

I loved Dean Freidman; his late 1970s quirky music was such a love of mine, though the majority of my rough mad drunk East End Glaswegians hated it! I was a huge fan and didn’t care a fucking hoot what they thought.

Years later at the Edinburgh Fringe 2004, Dean Freidman was doing a show at Edinburgh also and he brought along his young family to see my show.

I was horrified as some of the material included talking about child abuse and murder and I didn’t want to scare my long loved idol’s kids. He shrugged, laughed hugged me and insisted they sat with him.

All the way through the show I was thinking in the back of my head “I can’t do the punchline about making my daughter do porn to pay back for her school fees as Dean Friedman’s kids are watching me” it was awful but he laughed at everything I said and before I closed the show I told the audience that he was there in the room.

I couldn’t believe that this crazy wee curly haired man whom I had adored his music and grown up listening to his songs was sitting watching me do comedy…it was too surreal…he even sang “Do you still love me? Yes I still love you, we can thank our lucky stars” just for me!

How odd is my life? Maybe my jukebox is coming to life and Daryl Hall will turn up this year? Here’s hoping…mmmm…