Here I am in Glasgow, I am so pumped with adrenaline that I cannot sleep or properly rest. After the whirlwind of the Fringe, I thought after 80 odd shows I assumed I would go home and sleep like a raped hostage victim, turns out I am still high as a kite!
I still have a boil on my cheek and my gums are bleeding….stress apparently- But I don’t feel stressed, maybe after all these years of saying I never get depressed or worried all this time- I have been- and just not noticed it? Can that happen?
Does that mean I am unaware of what my body and soul tells me and I could actually be dying and not really fucking recognise it? Hopefully not.

So good to get into my own bed and unpack that huge bag, but I am off again soon to do comedy on the road again. So maybe the bag should just have stayed packed?

Husband freaked out this morning when I woke up, and wandered around the room looking for the toilet….I do get quite disorientated at times and it is mental. I even called him Colin…and I don’t know a Colin! Divorce will loom if this keeps up.

I am loving writing my new book, fuck the ideas keep flowing and I am so buzzing with words that just flow into the laptop…..not necessarily good words but fun none the less.

Ashley is like a dead dog in her bed, just lying there with her wee face all serene as she sleeps, but her wee tongue hangs out…its funny and cute!

I have work all this week and I am hoping the lumpy red cheek spot goes as soon as.
The blood is bleeding in my mouth daily from these gums.

I got my gums diagnosed in my hallway as the lady downstairs is a dentist, she has just had a new lovely baby, I checked the baby out, she checked my gums out under the hall light….I am too busy to go a dentist just now.

I need to get some special mouthwash, means I can’t kiss husband at the moment, which is a relief for him I suppose.

Must go and get the Dracula taste from my mouth just now, holy fuck how bad does blood taste? YUK!

I have no idea which Fringe day it is, but so far I have done about 68 shows…I am not sure exactly but for sure 60 performances of my own three shows daily SO FAR!
I have a nasty lump boil on my cheek that started as an insect bite, it has now developed into a hard lump and I ended up vomiting last night. Now I don’t vomit like other people, I even need an audience for that! I am so scared I will choke that I made John (my manager) stand near the loo as I retched.
I once was so scared I would choke in my vomit that I made a concierge from a hotel in Cardiff stand beside me as I puked….that’s awful isn’t it?

I am sure there are men who find watching women vomit sexually exciting and I wasted that time on a grumpy concierge! I am sure there must be a website dedicated to it.

I am over the moon with the festival to be honest, all of my shows have had four star reviews and the play at the Assembly in particular has had great critical acclaim. I have had lovely TV people in very interested in the play and the sketch show…which is good news all round.
Today I have decided to write another book, this time fiction. I am so fired up with the idea that even whilst I was vomiting last night I was still thinking about the plot line!

Ashley has had a great time as well, it is so good to be able to live with and work with her, the press keep asking if we fight and they hardly believe that we don’t. She is fucking great to have around and her infectious humour makes my day. Thank God she has her father’s height and my sense of humour; it could have gone the other way.

The book is still selling well, more than we ever imagined and I am so proud of that, it was such a buzz to be able to be at the fringe and have a top best seller out at the same time. I don’t think I will ever be able to recreate that feeling again, as long as I live! Well at least until I write the next one and hopefully it will sell well.

So we are near the end, I did manage to do three shows + a day, I did manage to get four stars for all three shows, I did manage to have a good time and my philosophy of enjoying it did happen. My mammy was killed at 47 and I am 45 and Ashley and I have decided to have the best time for the next two years and do everything we wanted to- and so far it’s working!

Thanks also to the LOVELY Steve Bennet for the amazing FOUR star review on CHORTLE website, I had the smallest audience EVER this fringe and he still enjoyed the show. I love him!

Well I did try, she is 20 years of age and I was married at her age. Ok …here is the story; she met a comic in NZ called Cori. He is relatively new-ish and we both supported him when we were over there, giving him any advice about the UK we could, Ashley even filmed his show for him.

Ashley had a bit of a crush on him and with him being single it all looked lovely. I immediately had reservations as I don’t want my daughter dating a ‘comic’ I know that’s wrong but in this industry we ‘comics’ are not the best people to be involved in as we tend to be fucked up self obsessed nutters.
(I know- I am one of those).

Anyway, she was a bit smitten and she and he had lots of time of flirting and getting on, though I must point out that nothing actually went on between them.
I spoke to him and told him I didn’t like him showing any interest as I don’t want her getting involved with someone on the other side of the world as we would be leaving NZ soon and as my daughter has NEVER had any relationship I didn’t want her heart being broken by some guy who saw her as a holiday romance. He agreed and was nice about this and I respect that.

So they both agreed to keep it friendly though Ashley was courting a huge crush on him, and that was lovely to watch and hard on me as I am a mother and I would rather poke out my own eyes that watch her being hurt. I know she has to go through pain sometimes and there is only so much I can do without being interfering so I shut up….though I did at one point tell him if he hurt her emotionally I would actually stick an axe in his forehead and I pointed out on his head with my index finger where that axe would go!

So….he finally came to Edinburgh as he has been in the UK working as a comic for a few weeks. I was pleased to see him and Ashley was excited and as high as a kite! They both went out the other night as he only had three days in Scotland before going off again to do comedy somewhere else.

He arrived and promptly got very drunk and Ashley went back to his place. She was so excited and so she should be, she was totally smitten kittens with this guy and she has waited ages for him to get here and finally kiss.

They had a bit of a snog and Ashley was annoyed as he was very drunk and she decided she would not sleep with him as she didn’t want to have to remind him in the morning what they had done, and as she is very moral about her personal sexual choices (fuck knows where she got that from?) she didn’t want to feel as though she had ‘raped’ him and surely if this was their first time the very least he could do was remember the event that would be so important to her? (I may not have done much right in my life, but my daughter is a fucking star as far as I am concerned, she will never fuck a man for a hug that’s for sure!).

So the next night when they met up he then told her he had a girlfriend back in NZ. Ashley was shattered, she was so angry that he had led her on and he had months to tell her he was involved with a girl, they had kissed and been quite intimate, she was fuming and felt so stupid she sat and cried.

I then was about to get the cunt killed, I could press one number on speed dial and he would be history, but I know violence will not solve this.
So he was leaving Edinburgh last night and she refused to go along to the party and say goodbye to him. I urged her to go and at least get closure, she refused. She told me she had said all she needed to say and now sits wondering if all men are liars and doubts her own self worth, so I am now sharpening an axe again…

I am proud of her, she never compromised herself, he on the other hand came to Edinburgh, the BIGGEST COMEDY festival in the WORLD…he never got a gig, he never went to meet any promoters, he never used his valuable time to make himself known to people who would be important to his career here in UK….he got drunk.
Ashley on the other hand managed to do her show and go back to Glasgow to do an exam at Uni….so Cori, if you are reading this…. THANKS….I never did have to axe you, you managed to fuck it up yourself and I hope you get your career up and running, I hope you sort yourself out, I do hope you meet a woman who stands by you and you love her with all your life and I hope more than anything you stop drinking yourself into oblivion. You are someone’s son, I am sure your parents are proud of you, but not as much as I am proud of my child today. I am rooting for you Cori, I know there is a good soul in there waiting to be found and fixed, I am just glad it’s not my daughter who takes on that project.

Be-safe but more than that be-ware…..me.

PS- Yes Cori, this did go on my blog, all 120 sites that get over 10,000 hits a day, journalists, bloggers and people from all over the world will have read this….so look…you are famous after all!

On a lighter note, Ashley and I had great fun on Bruce Devlin’s daily show at The Stand comedy club. It was a chat show thing and was really nice, Bruce is a good host.

I have now had too many late nights! I am loving it but incredibly tired and excited.
Though I haven’t yet lost my hatred of that noisy fucking ‘tard’ that dresses up every night and takes tourists on the ghost tour outside my window here in Edinburgh.

I nearly pissed myself last night as the co-hort that helps the ghost tour dressed as a monk with a scary mask ran into my daughter Ashley as we were leaving our building.

She was coming downstairs outside the block of flats, when MONK-WANK came running up behind her and stupidly shouted “Arrrggghhh, I am a scary monk”
Ashley stopped in her tracks, turned and grabbed his brown oat mealy cloak and screamed back at him “Yes, I know what you fucking are, you noisy tit, I hear you every night, shouting outside our window with the out- of -work -actor ‘Dracula’ that disturbs our only sit down meal of the day, my only wish is that I can shoot you between the eyes with a ball bearing gun and get off free, now get out of my way”

I stood there laughing my head off, I know she was being churlish, but for the love of God…EVERYNIGHT for near on twenty nights we have suffered this shit.

So there we have it….my daughter almost punched a monk.

On a better note, I had the lovely wonderful actor Beth Cordingly; she is in the play ‘Breakfast with Johnny Wilkinson’ at the Udderbelly, come to see my play The Point of Yes and told me she really enjoyed it. She is an amazing actor and writer and for her to compliment my work was awesome.

So today I am tired, overworked and exhausted but serenely happy.

Today is Friday; it is 2am…I think? I am not so sure to be honest. The Edinburgh Fringe is a bit like a scary time vortex, I no longer know where or who I am.

I appeared on the famous BBC Radio 4 show ‘Just a Minute’. This show is so huge and wonderful I was so scared I would fuck it up and have to be thrown into the nearest wheelie bin for my lack of talking skills….but I think it went just fine.

Yesterday I hit that wall of tiredness that those signs over motorways warn you about; luckily I wasn’t driving a car.

I was about to perform my play and my brain actually froze dead.
I was standing backstage behind the black curtain waiting to go on and do the whole 55 minutes of this play, all the words are mine all the actions are mine and I know it inside out- yet my brain started to play re-runs of Little House on the Prairie for no apparent fucking reason!

My thought pattern was completely disjointed and my heart started racing…FUCK FUCK…my head screamed to me…as soon as I stepped into the light, every single word came flooding into my soul. It was like my brain was fucking with me, it was teasing me and waiting to see how long it could scare me! I really don’t need my own brain sabotaging my career….I suppose I was just over tired, but it actually was one of the best performances I feel I had.

There is a scene in the play where I play an addict who is trying to apologise to her dead mother and at that moment when I imagined my own murdered mothers coffin, my eyes filled up and my throat tightened and I actually thought I was going to fall apart on stage, but it felt strangely powerful and pertinent in that instant and I used it to carry the dialogue through the scene.

I loved the show today- despite the exhaustion.

I then ran up into the old Town and got to the Underbelly and went into the Sketch show with Ashley, it is so entertaining to do that show and not really tiring for me, as it does feel like too much fun.

Blog Live! Is on at 8-10pm and I had a lovely house and a great time. Although by then I was kinda worn out, it is exactly half way through the festival and I just love it.

Ashley went home today to sit an exam at University and made it back in time for the show, she is a fucking trooper.

Husband has gone home to Glasgow for a break from the mad ‘Travelling Gypsy Jester’ family that we have become.
He really doesn’t enjoy all the ups and downs that go with being a performer or their partner; he hates the adrenaline rush, the worry and the fear of failure that seems to push us Godley/Storrie girls to the limit.

I am sure if he had his way I would dressed in a gingham apron, hair in a tight bun and making flans and Ashley would be five years old forever, with her hair in pigtails wearing angel wings and inviting everyone in the block to the funeral of dead goldfish!
That aint gonna happen…I can’t bake and she has discovered high heeled boots and boys.

Poor husband, he told me last week that we had now been married for 25 years- Eight months and 14 days; I looked at him and said

“Ok Shawshank who is counting? Have you hammered an escape hole in the bedroom wall with a fucking toffee hammer?”

One day I will get very old and stop travelling, stop comedy, stop being me and settle down to a life of crossword puzzles and slippers. Not yet.