Ashley, husband and I were recalling the mental trip we took to LA, Las Vegas and San Diego.
It was Christmas and New Year of 2001.
We thought we would have loved to spend our holidays in the US, we flew first class over the Atlantic but then when we landed we quickly realised that living in hotels became really boring and we ended up fighting amongst each other. Husband got cabin fever and Ashley and I took to riding the buses in LA for entertainment.

I have to tell you that public transport in LA is the fucking funniest thing ever.
The first bus trip into down town LA was the best. Ashley and I sat together when a woman got on the bus, she sat opposite us. She had impetigo and the surrounds of her face was black and the inner part of this poor woman’s face was really white. Bizarrely she looked like Minnie Mouse. She sat quiet then five minutes into the journey she started talking out of the side of her mouth, the whispering got louder and before long she was screaming “Fucking bitch, you lesbian cunt” to no one but the empty seat beside her.

Ashley and I sat clenched trying not to laugh, which is terrible I know but to see this poor woman with the domino face screaming obscenities made me giggle.
We managed to get off the bus without causing any embarrassing situations and headed into the fancy shops.
The journey home was even better.
As we sat down on the bus, a man got on dragging a huge black plastic bag of discarded hub caps. They clattered and clanked against people’s knees and he didn’t apologise at all. He was dressed in a woollen jumper as trousers- he had managed to stuff his two legs through the arms, the hemline of the jumper was tied together at his waist with a big bit of rope! His skinny brown hairy legs were poking out of the cuffs of the jumper and on his feet were a pair of mismatched tatty slippers.
His top half was dressed in a newspaper that was stapled at the armpits.
I was agog at this man; he stood there and started to scream about Vietnam, the poor man was obviously mental.
If that wasn’t enough the bus managed to crack its wing mirror off a passing truck. The bus had a bit of a jolt but nothing bad, the noise was startling though.

This being America, and the culture of suing anything that makes you blink hard- the bus halted and the driver looked up the aisle and asked loudly “Is anyone hurt? If so I have compensation forms here”
Everyone looked at each other and we all knew that no one had even been jolted badly, at that point ‘hubcap man’ threw himself on the floor, his hubcaps rolled all over the bus and he screamed “I have been injured, help me now”

I burst out laughing as he faked a back injury and tried hard to gather up his errant hubcaps. This is ENTERTAINMENT….why anyone bothered to go to show in LA I will never know, as long as the public transport exits we have full on fun.
Hubcap Man then left the bus limping like his leg had been sawn off, he couldn’t quite decide if he was faking a leg injury or a back injury, he filled in his form and then hobbled back on.
We sat tonight and laughed about the various situations that we had encountered from that trip. We recalled the night we attended a murder mystery dinner, the food was so slow in coming, the actors were so fucking hammy that Ashley stood up and shouted at one point “Who the hell do we have to kill to get the next course!”
The show was dire, Ashley and I heckled all the way through and annoyed everyone else at the table, we were terribly behaved I do admit, but we were hungry and the amateur dramatics was making us plot deaths in between the shit food.

LA was not as wonderful as we imagined but the free entertainment was the highlight of the trip.

My daughter Ashley is nearly 21 years old and still lives at home. She is at university and commutes regularly and hangs out with her mates at the weekend.
Her room is a mish-mash of relics that chart her growth from the eight year old girl that moved in to the brand new flat we bought in 1995 to the film student/sketch writer/DJ that she has become.

There are wee stickers of Beatrix Potter (that she hated but I managed to paste to the wall) and posters of Eminem (that I drool over as well) there are high heel shoes scattered around the carpet like land mines and her wee teddy bear she has owned since she was two is tangled up with Play Station wires.
I think I prevent her from moving on to the next stage of her independent life by cosseting her and keeping her emotionally needy. I convinced her that staying here and not moving in with her friend was a great financial decision, when in fact she should have gone and found out for herself!

I do realise that this is not really an expression of motherhood but a selfish act on my part….what would happen if she left?

Would I be scared to face the void left behind? Would husband and I sit there and stare into the abyss of the years left to fill it in with comedy trips, comedy festivals and BBC Radio 4 sessions?

I don’t want to be 46 years old this month, I want to be twenty one and live my life all over again, preferably with Ashley at my side, forever 6 years old- wearing bunches and collecting Polly Pockets and organising day trips to our favourite sea side towns in Scotland. That can’t happen (unless I can get her hormonally injected and genetically deformed to suit my selfish needs, it worked for that wee black guy on US TV)

I spoke to the husbands of some of my friends who had kids at the same time as me and the men were looking forward to getting their wives ‘back’ to just have some fun with the women who had dedicated the best part of 20 years being mothers to broods of babies.
No more early morning school runs, making jam cookies, holidays interrupted by screaming bored teenagers, working extra hours to support students. These men were waiting patiently for the fledglings to fly and get back to having sex on the sofa with the sexy lass they married when Duran Duran were ‘Wild Boys’ back then Adam Ant hadn’t went crazy and George Michael was straight.
Those men may have to wait that bit longer, as recent media articles reveal that young adults are staying at home that bit longer and mostly the mothers are holding them there. Poor husbands!

I don’t have that situation, as my husband raised our daughter as much as I did.

I have been working on the road as a comic for nearly ten years now. I was the one that went away, he was the one who sat through the Nativity plays, the drama club attempts, the teenage sleep-over’s and the countless birthday parties.

Ashley is very territorial with her fathers affection, in fact when she leaves I will be looking forward to ‘getting him to myself’ in a funny sense. I cannot show him any affection in front of Ashley; she gets her giant body wedged firmly between us and demands his full attention!

We both raised her together for the first eight years as we were working parents.
We owned a bar together then and made sure she had plenty of time and love from us both.
My husband was very determined about being a very good loving dad as he suffered from absent father syndrome as did many kids of his generation where the father worked all hours and was hardly seen except on Sundays!
He was a great dad and I tried to be a wonderful mum.

Although one of the best pieces of advice I was given when our daughter was born came from an aging Aunt.
“Always look after your man, because your kids will grow up and leave you soon enough and you will be left with a stranger if you ignore him” she told me as I cradled my new born to my breast.

I thought at the time she was being slightly cruel, but I do know what she meant now and I did try to make sure I was a wife as well as a mother.

So I suppose the reason I persuade our daughter to stay at home is I love her company.
Not many young people share a passion and career with their parent, we both adore performing, we did a sketch show together at last years Edinburgh Fringe and we went on tour together to New Zealand.

She gets me in the way no one else does, we write together and I love being around her wacky sense of humour, we both like the same music and love the same films and comedies.
I am not saying she is my best friend because that would undermine the love we have as mother and daughter.
She and her father share a deep love of foreign films, TV cop shows, radio plays and really enjoy each others company, yet he is still her dad…not some delinquent best pal who happens to have produced her in the mid 80s.

I want her to stay because I love having her in my life.

My husband doesn’t need to wait for me to come back to him after mother hood; I never really left him in the first place.

I say all this just now but I am not sure how I will feel when her room is stripped bare and no evidence of her shows on the carpet or the walls….maybe then I will write something different?

Last night the comedy gig in Leeds was awesome, it all went fabulously well. I came back to the hotel, got stripped and had a great shower, I haven’t been sleeping good, so I thought this would make me nice and sleepy and maybe I would get a full nights kip.
I came out of the bathroom naked (as you do) and then managed to crack my left tit off the door lock and scratch a gash into my nipple. The pain was fucking horrible, I jumped on the bed holding my giant boobs that was now bleeding and was terrified to look at it in case I had actually ripped off my nipple! I look like I was the victim of a sex attack from Fu Man Chu.
It wasn’t that bad- I have a deep scratch, yet still I managed to sleep.
Got up this morning and decided to go out for breakfast and book myself a back and neck massage.
The massage place was nice, the young girl showed me into the room and told me to lie face down on the bed which has a big hole for your face to go into, so you can breathe and get rid of your tension at the same time (seems reasonable).
The only problem is, if I lie face down my humongous boobs get squashed and there is no hole for them to fall into and remember ONE OF THEM has a cut on it!
So- much to the embarrassment of the young masseuse, I fashioned a bolster for my upper breast area to lie on from a big rolled up towel, it takes the pressure of my tits getting flattened. The girl was being professional at ignoring me and my scratched boobs.
So my last night at Leeds Jongleurs can only go well, I hope…and maybe just maybe I wont scar my other boob and go home to a very bemused husband who can only imagine what I get up to when I go on the road alone….and come home with tit injuries.

I was booked to do comedy at Leeds Jongleurs from Thursday to Saturday this weekend, the gig was booked in ages ago, and so I bought a cheap rail ticket for Thursday morning at 9am.
I realised I hadn’t had a confirmation call from the comedy company, so I called them and thus ensued a mix up. They told me that Leeds might not be on but they would let me know later that night on the Wednesday. I waited….no call….I waited some more…no call… then on Wednesday late I packed a case just to be sure, my train was 9am the following morning.
I text and called the company…to no avail.

I assumed the gig wasn’t on Thursdays, but just to be sure I got up at 8am and sat in my pyjamas and waited for the call….none came.
Then at exactly 8-35am I got a text telling me the gig was on.
I rushed to the train station, dragging a laptop and a suitcase. Luckily I live near Glasgow Central…
I found a four seater with table free and plonked my stuff down and settled in. I was really tired and stressed from all the last minute rushing and the last thing I wanted was company.
Lo and behold, a hippy, long haired couple sat beside me.
They proceeded to pull out two bottles of wine and a half bottle of vodka from their bag! It was 9am for fuck sake…I could barely get down coffee!

The smell was making me heave, I hate drunks….after 15 years of owning a bar in Glasgow’s East End, the last thing I wanted was two lush’s sitting with me.

“We are from Bath, we own an organic farm” slurred the woman.

Great- I thought! Drunken snobs into free fresh farming, yippee fucking dippee for me!

“What do you do?” the slow blinking smelly woman asked.

“I am a comedian, I am really tired and to be honest I don’t want to talk” I said.

I shouldn’t have told them what I do for a living, obviously everything else I added to that meant nothing and she wanted to interview me on my life….it was my own fault, I should have said “ I am an office cleaner” which I usually do but I was tired and the words came out.

She sat there and he dragged his dirty fingers through his lank dirty blond hair and in his deep weird sounding English accent said “We love Scotland, tell me what kind of comedy do you do? I know comedy so well, I love Benny Hill, come on girl give us a laugh” he then turned to his female companion and added “This will be great she will entertain us all the way home!” and he actually snapped his drunk fingers.

I thought I was going to stab them right there and then and it was only 9-30am.

I sneered and tried not to breathe the stench of organic sandals and wheatmeal cardigans and said “Look, I really cant be fucking arsed listening to you two talking shite, I don’t want to talk about comedy, I want to sleep and can you please stop slopping vodka everywhere, I am quite grumpy ok?”

Now this would have made normal people balk….but oh no…not the two organic drunks from Bath, they thought I was just ‘joking’ with them.

Other Glaswegians who sat near could tell from the tone of my voice that I may just get up and beat them to death.

“She is so funny, isn’t she Ralf” the drunk woman barked and snorted as she threw down another plastic glass of vodka into her mouth.

“Listen I am not joking, I am very fucking volatile, get away from me and find another seat NOW!” I stood up and screamed. At that point the ticket man entered and even he walked back the other way!

The drunks laughed again, I just grabbed my things and I moved seats.

I finally got to Leeds at 1pm-ish and checked into the hotel to find YET again….another hotel with dodgy internet connection. (This is the fucking bane of my life) but I am finally online at £10 a day for the connection charge. (I hate that as well, I am very grumpy)

The good news is Leeds Jongleurs is a fantastic gig, the people are awesome and I love that club. I even got to meet a lovely couple who read this very blog! How awesome?

We had to drive through the horrific New Year storms to get to Edinburgh to perform at Jongleurs.
New Years Eve is a strange thing in Scotland, we are World Famous for being ‘great’ at it…but in all honesty, we are just people who have parties in each others homes and can be very choosy about who attends these gatherings.

Despite this people come from all over the world to enjoy our Hogmanay celebrations…cities host ‘street parties’ to accommodate this tourist event. When I was young and my family had huge Hogmanay parties…people who ended up in the street were there because no one wanted them in their house!

Lets look at this in perspective- Scotland is FREEZING in December, the last place anyone wants to go is the fucking street! The rain becomes horizontal, the wind would blow your kidneys out and the temperature is the stuff that killed explorers.

Yet, street parties are advertised in Scotland and tickets are sold and people come from ALL OVER THE WORLD to stand beside a drunken Englishman in a squinty Kilt who will probably throw up on them as soon as the New Years bells chime!

The real Scottish Hogmanay-ers are tucked up in their warm homes with a fire roaring in the grate, warm food is being served and welcomed guests are sipping the really good malt whisky that is kept for such occasions, family that they despise are standing in the street singing “Auld Lang Syne” to three Japanese people holding an umbrella.
Does no one else know this shit?

So anyway there we were, husband and I trying to force the car to reach 60 miles an hour in driving hurricane winds with sea lashing of rain battering us dangerously near other cars that were trying to cheat nature and stay on the M8 towards Edinburgh.
I was fucking terrified.
Husband suggested we switch on the radio to distract me, but I refused in case we crashed and I died to the sound of ‘Girls Aloud’ singing their shite.

I was so scared, we finally made it into Edinburgh, we parked the car and I had to pull on a huge snowboarding coat to stop the howling wind and rain lashing me to death as we ran to the venue.
The gig was sold out, about 400 people were packed into the biggest comedy venue in Edinburgh, I was the MC. The comics went on and I was having a great night, we heard that the street party outside at the famous Princes Street and Castle was cancelled due to high winds and normal Scottish December weather.

Just as the last comic walked on stage the lights went up, the mic stopped and a fire alarm announcement came on…..the crowd went crazy, the comic came off and in my job as MC I ran on to let them know what was going on (I may die in fire sometime)
I knew the mic wouldn’t work, so I shouted really loudly over the chairs being pulled back and people starting to leave “Everyone sit down, there is NO fire, its just a false alarm, now the street party has been cancelled and we are NOT going to cancel this night!”

The whole place went quiet, people sat back down and I ran about the stage shouting “Ok, let’s have a game of inappropriate questions!” I knew the mic and lights would work in five minutes as the management told me so from the side of the stage. We just had to wait for the false fire alarm to reset.

The crowd laughed, we even played a game of ‘pretend bingo’ and a sing a long of Donald Where’s your Trousers! Finally the lights clicked down and the mic came back on, we got the final comic back on to rapturous applause and the night finished perfectly. I was exhausted and knew we had to drive back through the gales to get home to Glasgow.

Husband stood at the side of the stage when I came off he said “Well that was great Godley, you worked for your cash tonight, I never knew you knew the words to Donald Where’s your Trousers!”
I didn’t I made the words up…I can improvise…thank fuck.

The journey home was worse than the one going, and due to all the set backs, we were late getting home…and on the M8 coming into Glasgow we clicked on the radio and heard Big Ben in London chime in the New Year. We wished each other a happy New Year and kept on trying to drive through the hurricane…it was romantic and deadly at the same time. That’s my life all over!

Husband and I finally got home and finally got to bed, Ashley had called to tell me that her Dee Jay job went great and after she finished her Hogmanay job (we Godley Girls work our asses off) she was going to a party (see…NO street standing for the connected).

I was lying in bed all warm and always slightly worried as Ashley was out late (when do I get over that she is 20 years old?).

Ay around 4am the door opened and I heard Ashley come into the hall. I jumped up to see if she was ok and made it through the storm…she was stood there in a fancy dress but wearing trainers, in her two hands were two spiky looking high heels, her handbag was on the floor and she moaned “Mum please help me out of this dress I am going to be sick”

Ashley is like me, two drinks and we vomit like bulimics….I quickly pulled her dress of and tried to drag up her masses of hair as she threw her head over the toilet pan. I noticed she was still clutching her high heels shoes.
“Honey, why are you holding your shoes?” I enquired as she made those vomitty noises.
“A man shouted at my pal in the street, so I clubbed him with my heel” she told me as of I needed to know that. Still she clutched her shoes like a security blanket and kept being sick.
“You hit a man with a shoe?” I asked with incredulity.
“Yes, he was fat and French and wearing a kilt, he called my pal fat, so I clubbed him” she spoke angrily. Her right eye had black makeup dragged down to her cheek, like a dirty black tear had fallen from her eyes.
“Are you ok? Do I need to do anything?” I started to worry.

“No, he fell, but we got a cab and left him in the street, he shouldn’t have slagged my pal off” she said and threw herself into bed. I sat for a while and watched her in case she was sick and choked, which is a huge obsession of mine….vomiting and choking is my favourite fear. So I waited until I heard her breathe steadily before I crawled back to my own bed.
Ashley got back up the next morning, still clutching a high heel in each fist; she had slept like that all night!
Street parties were cancelled, people died in the storm, the wind blew trees down, the rain flooded roads and tourists sat in a thousand hotels and B&B’s wondering why they bothered and somewhere in Glasgow a French man in a kilt woke up with a stiletto mark on his scalp and made a New Year Resolution never to call a Scottish Girl fat.

Welcome to 2007