Janey Godley’s Blog

Am listening to Jay-Z and I do so love him…Empire State of Mind is awesome…anyway I am sure you are not reading this to find out what music am into.

 

Last week, my ears decided to totally block up with bricks of wax. Yes, I produce more wax than a queen bee and my ear then cuddles it all around my ear drum and making me deaf. This was a pain the ass as I had a lot of work this week, you try doing a charity auction half deaf!

 

The people at the Boisdale Club in Belgravia London really helped me out, they raised hands to pledge cash, love those nice folks, but the tartan carpets were odd though. You always know you are in England when you see hundreds of tartan throughout a building.

 

I then flew home half deaf picking at the ear, filling it with ear drops (which are more expensive than crack per fluid ounce) I now have a healthy ear drop habit, they don’t work. You know what works? Nothing, just in case you were interested, I filled my gungy ears with that stinky expensive fluid and all that happens was that it all ran onto my neck.

 

I had warm up work for a sitcom called Life of Riley. I needed to hear; I ran to my doctors to get an emergency appointment and was seen by a woman I have never met before. She was either Latin American or faking a funny accent to add a frisson of excitement to my ear examination…or maybe I couldn’t hear her properly. “Are you Spanish?” I asked.

 

“No, am Asian, is there something funny about the way I speak?” she snapped at me. I had now insulted a woman who was about to poke a big shiny pointy thing into my ravaged tender ear hole, that will learn me.

 

Apparently the wax STILL hadn’t softened enough for them to syringe it. The wax in my ear is made of titanium steel and is refusing to let the expensive stinky drops soften it down. Perfect.

 

 “When will it be ready?” I pleaded.

 

“Three weeks or maybe never” she shouted at my ear.

 

Must remember to never get Asian people mixed up with Jennifer Lopez, my ears are doomed. So I went home and syringed them myself, fuck it.

 

So some wax did come out and I can now hear enough to get by.

 

The warm up work was awesome and tiring at the same time, asking people to laugh at the same joke on set can be weary, but that audience were amazing. Met the lovely Caroline Quentin who helped me out a few times, by coming over and chatting away to the studio audience, and that helped when they got bored of me talking.

 

I didn’t have to fly to Southampton this past weekend as the Jongleurs comedy club there has shut. I will miss the gig but Southampton was a pain in the arse to get to from Glasgow, so am enjoying a weekend free.

 

Well I am actually working tonight in Glasgow and managed to fill in the gigs, but the news I am trying to convey is this- I get to stay at home for a weekend!

 

I am struggling with the no smoking….well actually I started smoking again that’s how much of a struggle I was having. Now I am OFF them again…wish to fuck I could just kick the damn habit.

 

Some breaking news, I am now selling my autobiography ‘Handstands in the Dark’ through my website and you can click and buy it there www.janeygodley.com

I love travelling by train, and last week when I headed up to Hamilton to meet my mates mum, my love was reinforced.

 

As soon as I walked onto the platform at Glasgow central low level trains, I was greeted by a child’s voice shouting “fucksake” really loudly.

 

I spotted a young mum looking harassed and trying to deal with a wee toddler in a pram. The baby girl was about two years old and absolutely stunningly gorgeous. She had big amber eyes with thick long eyelashes, a mop of curly blonde hair and cheeky dimpled smile, she caught my eye and shouted “Fucksake” really loudly at me and giggled. I never made a move, inside I was laughing as it was really funny to see a baby say this, but I kept a neutral look on my face.

 

The mum bent over and tried to shoosh the baby, she then stood up and said “I am really sorry she won’t stop saying that”

 

“Just ignore her, don’t fuss when she says it and just keep talking to me” I replied as the baby shouted “fucksake” over the top of us talking. People on the station started to stare with disdain at the mum.

 

The young mum explained “my brothers taught her this and I can’t stop her, she shouted it at the woman in Marks and Spencer’s and at the ticket man upstairs, I am mortified”

 

“The reason she keeps saying it is because you react so violently or there are shrieks of laughter, she does it because it gets her attention, she is performing and knows her best punch line so well and it’s a solid bit of material, I know I am a comedian and that’s what we do” I said.

 

The mum and I kept chatting and ignoring the “fucksake” that resonated round the station, eventually the baby stopped shouting it out. She then started to point at other things that caught her eye as soon as she realised her punch line was getting no reaction. I told the mum to give her brothers a good kick in the bollocks about teaching a baby to swear and to completely ignore the “fucksake” until the baby finally gives up on it.

 

 

After my ‘parent advice class’ I got on the train to Hamilton.

At the station I spotted a poster for a beauty salon called

‘YA BEAUTY’ which made me giggle, and then there was an advert for

‘THREE BABY BEARDED DRAGONS’ which were wee lizards up for grabs. I love local adverts, they are just awesome.

 

My favourite was an advert for babysitting which stated in bright red ink marker

 

‘I LOVE KIDS AND HAVE NEVER BEEN FOUND OR CHARGED WITH TOUCHING THEM AND AM AVAILABLE FOR BABYSITTING’

 

I can’t think of anyone who would let that person near their kids!

 

To round off my week, last Friday I went up to Montrose to do a corporate gig and had a great fun night. The weather was horrific during the night, the wind whipped the trees bare and the rain battered the south east coastline of Scotland. I was worried sick, as husband and I had to get up early and head back to Glasgow for my flight to London and I hate travelling in storms.

 

I sat there in the dark of Montrose at about 4am and willed the weather to change, and sure as hell at 7am Montrose was sparkling in the autumnal sunshine! We managed to get to Glasgow airport in time for my flight to London.

 

I had a wonderful gig at the 99 club in Leicester Square, but woke up in London with my left ear totally blocked. I hate that, it is like being underneath water; it makes me partially deaf and hurts like hell.

 

I had an audition in London and went along half deaf, I was worried sick they would ask me questions and I wouldn’t catch what they said. It went all right and I am hoping I did get the job.

 

So am back in Glasgow and still have one deaf ear, husband is pissed off repeating everything, and daughter is now miming things to me and asking me questions in the form of physical theatre and dance. Hopefully my ear will unblock or the doctor will revise his ‘we don’t syringe ears’ policy and help me out OR a car will hit me on the head and my ears will pop.

Today I realised that I had written my 1,000 online blog. It all started in 2004 when I wrote a blog to help me get over writers block when I was writing my autobiography. It turns out I loved the blog and can’t quite let it go. It is syndicated to over 170 sites across the World Wide Web, it gained thousands of regular readers, it enjoys over half a million hits a week across the sites its published on. I have made many friends, learned loads about myself, annoyed people and ended up writing for a prominent Scottish newspaper and got freelance work throughout the world. That’s what happens when you write down all your thoughts for people to read!

 

Whatever site you are reading this on, please enjoy and accept my heartfelt thanks for all the support, here is my 1000^th blog…

 

Nut Brittle and frayed tempers…

 

I love Lidl as the moment, their fresh trout and their low fat frozen yoghurts are the best I have EVER eaten in my food noshing life.

 

“Excuse me do you have nut brittle, I got it here last week and it was in your Greek produce section, where is that been moved to?” I asked a podgy faced man in the fresh veg aisle.

 

He pointedly ignored me and carried on talking about some bank loan he applied for to a wee red haired bloke who was stacking up Christmas cards against chocolate flavoured Santa’s.

“So, I called the bank and they have refused my loan…” he droned. I watched the red haired bloke bend down deeply into the display as if he was trying to hide inside it. Podgy face carried on regardless, his bank conversation needed to be aired.

 

I walked off and decided, rather than do my usual thing and argue with spotty penniless podgy man, I went in search of the nut brittle on my own.

I got absorbed in my wee Lidl shopping experience and as I turned into another aisle I stumbled yet again on the podgy bank loan refused shelf stacker, he was still droning onto the red haired man “So, I then asked to be put through to head office and they kept me…” at that the red haired bloke leapt up and screamed “Shut the fuck up you annoying smelly bastard”

 

The red haired man threw a big tantrum and started to pull down all the Christmas trees and boxes of cards whilst screaming at the top of his voice “Fuck you Colin”. Fat podgy man (who I assume is Colin) stood there aghast, and then decided the best thing to do was run away from the devastated Christmas area and leave red haired man to explain himself to the manager who was fast approaching having dashed from the Polish fish display.

 

Just at that moment the woman from Afghanistan who sells the Big Issue outside (she is called Tick Tack- I swear to God that’s what she told me) well anyway her dog which is called ‘Bad Dog’ got off its leash and ran towards the melee and bit the poor ginger haired shouty man, then tried to rape a Christmas tree by humping it hard with it wee pink tongue hanging out.

 

Chaos ensued, Tick Tack started running after Bad Dog and chased it back out of the store and ginger man had to be calmed down. The Lidl is just so crazy on Tuesdays – I found the nut brittle, it is so delicious you should try it.

 

So after my Lidl experience I headed up to Easterhouse Platform Theatre ‘The Bridge’ and got some posters prepared for their display, ticket sales are going great and you can come see the show on November 14^th, just call  0141 276 9696 or email them info@platform-online.co.uk for tickets, give them your details and they will get back to you.

 

Am still reeling about the closure on some Jongleurs comedy clubs after a take over of the company last week, loads of comics, staff and management have lost- jobs, cash and future work and I am just hoping they all recover at this difficult time near Christmas.

 

 

Firstly I cannot escape Cheryl Cole’s new single…everywhere in Belfast was battering it out on radio etc…making me insane, though it does sound better after it has been electronically voice tuned - she was shit singing that live. I didn’t recognise the damn song from her military dance display on X factor.

 

Secondly I LOVE the way Irish people say ‘wee’ all the time.

 

“Do you have a wee key to your room? Do you want a wee help with your case? Do you have a wee credit card so we can have a wee swipe at it?” that’s awesomely lovely. I also flew on a wee plane called Kevin Keegan (yes it really was called that) and couldn’t stop giggling that I was inside Kevin Keegan and arrived at George Best airport, football players are so big in aviation.

 

The Ulster Hall was just lovely and I did enjoy the Amnesty gig, all the people were so bloody good onstage.

 

So after all that I went for a ‘wee’ cup of tea outside Oscars champagne bar in sunny/rainy Belfast. It didn’t look like a champagne bar as it actually sells Danish pastries and breakfast buns. I just sat my arse down on a wee seat when a woman sat opposite and called me a cunt for no good reason. She then told me all about Frank in 1967 and how he was a cunt as well. She had a mullet hairdo and skin that look like crumpled tin foil that had been flattened out but refused to go smooth, I called her Scary Betty. She had the haunted eyes of a woman who could set fire to trees just with her memories. Her continual rant never stopped when my niece Ann Margaret called, in fact she could hear Scary Betty in the background.

 

“Aunty Janey, I can hear a nutty woman in the background are you sitting beside a Looney?” She asked,

 

“Yes, I am” I answered, Scary Betty leaned over and whispered “Tell her to go fuck herself”

 

“She can hear you Ann Mags, you’re not really helping by talking about her” I giggled.

 

Scary Betty stared hard at me and then a great thing happened, three Asian men sat down. Scary Betty shut up, she knew that shouting at them would be really bad, so went back to hissing filth at me, as me being white could not take offence to her abuse…apparently!

 

 

Eventually the waitress came out and told her to leave, Scary Betty stood up and told the Asian men that nobody likes their music (which was the least racist thing she could say) I meanwhile breathed audibly and went back to my newspaper. The smell of stale sugar puffs magically disappeared as she left and that was just a bonus.

 

Bigger news was taking afoot but I didn’t know that, though I was about to find out. Jongleurs comedy clubs had a big meltdown. If you are unfamiliar with Jongleurs they are a comedy chain that hire loads of comics every weekend and huge amounts of staff in their popular clubs.

 

Apparently, and I am not sure of the entire facts, but the company got bought out and it means that in the hand over five clubs have been closed for good. Nottingham, Southampton, Bristol, Oxford and Bow have been shut. I was gutted as I am booked into Nottingham this weekend, any way my personal grief gave way as I realised that almost 200 jobs have been lost, throughout the company. I will miss all those lovely people who made me welcome and who always checked my happiness levels before I went onstage. Bless all those poor folks who have lost their jobs, I wish I could do something for them. I am thinking of you all as Christmas approaches.

 

So therefore I have the weekend free, and will have some weekends to fill but am not that fussed as I am a comedian and will pick work up anywhere.

 

On another note, I am looking forward to Christmas as I am going to be home this year and near my dad. I love him and he will need me this year as he is alone, it will be nice to share it with him.

 

Also have a big audition coming up in London and will need all the luck I can get for that one!

Speak soon.

Leeds was sunny and I love autumn, isn’t that something? The drive through Ilkley and Skipton and all across that area with the trees and foliage turning bright gold to vivacious red was awesome. That’s officially me getting old, I am a leaf peeper! But I have to say the Midlands countryside is just stunning to see at this time of year, and Leeds looks so quaint, who knew it was hotbed for terrorists? It looks so peaceful and nice as well!

 

As I was walking through sunny scary hotbed of terror that is Leeds, I sat by the little river and took in the view. A man approached wearing inappropriately short shorts, you know what I mean, over 40s mens shorts should be below knee, under 20s men shorts can be showing some clam if they want, they are young and their skin still fits them. This man was in his 50s and was grossly over weight, the shorts were disgustingly tight, and I couldn’t stop staring at his crotch which is disturbing to say the least.

 

Of course saggy ball man sat right beside me on the lonely tow path, what else do you people expect?

 

“Lovely day isn’t it? Do you like robin red breasts?” he shouted into my face, I realised he look a bit detached and possibly slightly special needs.

 

“Erm…yes they are nice” I stuttered.

 

He then pulled out a Christmas card with a robin on the front and shoved it in my face. “Nice” I said and prepared to leave. He grabbed my arm to sit back down; I looked anxiously around for some help as tight short baggy ball man might throw me into the river.

 

“My name is Barry and my mum is dead” he whispered.

 

Now, in my head all I could think was ‘has he just killed her?’ or is he disturbed because she died years ago?…I was getting scared by the minute…I always imagined how I would die, but I never thought I would end up in the river at Leeds by a fat man wearing shorts wielding a robin red breast Christmas card.

 

“My mam died years ago and she gave me this card” he said as I sat back down and his arm was gently now resting on mine.

 

I suddenly didn’t feel scared, I felt sad for him. We chatted for a while and he told me things about his mam and how she used to sing to him and after she died he lived in a big home and made pottery.

 

His speech was rather stilted and childlike and I didn’t feel threatened. Then we just sat in the quietness and he had a wee sleep! Yes, he napped as he clutched a Christmas card in his hand. After about half an hour I heard a woman shouting at us along the pathway. She hurried up to us as he jolted awake.

 

“Barry, what have you been told about wandering off?” she shouted at him. She wasn’t being angry more concerned and I explained he had been sitting with me chatting. Barry was all confused and stuttering out sentences trying to explain himself.

 

“Barry was having lunch with us at the river side pub along there and just disappeared, didn’t you Barry?” she calmed down, but still looked harassed.

 

He got up and staggered a wee bit, I think he was tired. The woman just took his arm and walked him off. They got about 30 feet away when he turned and shouted “Bye Katherine” at me. Nice to know he paid attention when I told him my name! I hope Barry had a nice day.

 

I walked slowly back to the flat and noticed that Leeds has its Christmas decorations up in the town centre.

IT ISNT EVEN HALLOWEEN PEOPLE!

Either that town is obsessed with Christmas or they want to shove Christianity down everyone’s throats and wipe out their reputation as a town that breeds bombers of the Muslim fundamentalist nature.

 

Now don’t everyone comment and write hateful things about me slagging off Leeds, just don’t shoot the messenger, by the way as an addendum to that four counter-terrorism detectives have been arrested for allegedly abusing corporate credit cards to claim up to £120,000 in fraudulent expenses while gathering intelligence after the 7/7 bombings.

 

Is everyone corrupt?

 

Either way I had a great weekend in Leeds, and I had fun.

My daughter Ashley is better; her swine-flu has finally left her body. I didn’t enjoy her swine-flu period, there were no surrealist paintings or amazing art work- it just made her grumpy, whiney and her hair grew five inches in depth as well as length during her bedroom internment. She looked like a big woolly snot ridden mammoth.

 

She emerged recently looking paler, thinner and was slightly alarmed that the world had still turned despite her having nothing to do with it for three weeks.

 

Ashley got up this morning and asked her dad if he could go get her a ‘Fat Toosh’ he thought it sounded sexual and hid behind the toilet door till she stopped speaking, turns out a fat toosh is actually a ‘fatoush’ which is toasted Lebanese bread with salad, the local take away had shoved a brochure through our letterbox. She also got Ian Rankin’s new graphic novel shoved through the letter box, she was excited and even danced a wee bit.

 

I on the other hand have been suffering some deep self loathing; I need to lose weight and its not happening fast enough. The non smoking is going great, but my will power falls flat when it comes to stopping eating fatty food. So my weekend at Jongleurs Bristol was dominated with cottage cheese and cold meat, as that was all I would allow myself to eat. Low calorie and minimum carbs was the call of the day.

 

I have realised that I am the same weight that I was the day I gave birth to Ashley! So I am now walking about carrying that big lump of weight around my body, I could hardly walk when I was fully pregnant with Ashley and now that’s the body fat I live with. I hate myself now.

 

The good news is I have lost half a stone since I started really hating myself. Maybe I will really hate myself enough to lose another three stones and then I will look slim but full of deep tortured self deprecating low self esteem and develop borderline suicidal tendencies. But fuck it, I will look good eh?

 

Husband is ill prepared for this recent mood swing and has been staring at me in the dark in bed whispering “Are you ok Janey?”

“Why do you think I am fat? Can you feel the bed dip at my end?” I snipped at him.

 

“I am scared” his voice was like a thin shadow veiled with fear.

“I am fine, when I get thinner I will be finer” I shouted and broke the hush.

Bless his wee soul, he thought it would cheer me up if he got up at 5am and danced and sang a song at the side of the bed…naked. He didn’t know it made me want to take a toffee hammer to his eye. Sometimes I don’t think he knows me at all.

 

I think I may be going through a mental mid life crisis.

I am spitting nails about Roman Polanski and the cock sucking Hollywood deadbeats who are calling for this child rapist to be released. He raped a 13 year old girl and then hired a fleet of expensive lawyers to keep up with the extradition laws of the all the countries he could visit as he fled the US to avoid a prison sentence.

 

He admitted having sex with a minor. He drugged, sodomised and raped a 13 year old girl, but hang on, don’t forget the man is an auteur, he won an Oscar for fuck sake, Woody Allen is crying for his release – we cant possibly jail this man, he knows Harvey Weinstein and Harvey is going to speak to Schwarzenegger to get these insidious charges dropped. Its just a load of rich famous people excusing child rape, even women’s rights campaigner Whoopi Goldberg said “ it wasn’t rape-rape”  really? There is such a thing as rape-rape? I never saw that kind of rape in the film the Colour Purple did you?

 

Speaking as a woman who was raped as a child, I am aghast at the attitude of people who can excuse this behaviour. The man who raped me told people I was promiscuous and coerced him into it; I was five years old at the time. His defence in court was that I was often seeking his attention, my uncle got three years in prison and people screamed ‘Rapist’ at him, but then he was a lazy, wife beating, debt ridden ex Orange Walk flautist and not a Hollywood pal of Tilda Swinton, David Lynch and Martin Scorsese. If only my Uncle Rapey had friends in high places, the attitude towards his child abuse would have been different. (The abuse continued into my teens- I was 13 years old when it stopped, which was just the prime age for Polanski)

I read an astounding article by Michael Deacon in The Telegraph newspaper in which Deacon said “I reread an extraordinary interview Polanski gave to the novelist Martin Amis in 1979, the year after Polanski went on the run.

The interview originally appeared in Tatler and is collected in Amis’s excellent book Visiting Mrs Nabokov.

Here’s a section of the first quote it contains from Polanski.

“If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!”

 

It doesn’t astound me that Polanski would say this kind of thing in public; it just amazes me that people view that kind of behaviour as acceptable if the person in the frame is famous!

We just need to look at the Michael Jackson debacle to know the veil of stupidity people drag over their morals when a ‘hero’ is involved.

Friends of Polanski have screamed out in his favour that his family were murdered in the Holocaust and his wife was killed in a horrific attack, so he should be left alone now!

 

That is a terrible insult to the families who died at the hands of the Nazi’s, and a slur to men whose wives were murdered, to suggest child rape is part of the recovery from such atrocities is just plain daft, and don’t get me started on ‘it was years ago, lets forget it’ as we all know that’s just begging the comment- so was the Polish Ghetto’s but you didn’t forget those did you Mr Polanski, and quite rightly so. Traumatic events do not fade with age and neither does their legalities.

 

Roman Polanski needs to serve the sentence he deserves. Apparently he is married with two young children; well let’s hope they grow up safe from the predatory eyes of a sexual beast who likes his victims ‘young’.

 

So now I have gotten that out of my system, I want to talk about Nick Cave. I didn’t really know who he was, but my niece Ann is dotty about him. We knew he was appearing at Borders Bookstore in Glasgow, so Ann and I headed off to the Rogano restaurant for our usual outside table for Oysters and tea. I love the Rogano, husband and I celebrated our 29^th wedding anniversary there and the place is just lovely. Anyway we sat outside, she smoked and I bit my finger nails and made yukky noises as she slurped on oysters (I really can’t do food that you can’t chew) anyway, we hatched a plan to see Mr Cave.

 

We both ignored the long queue of people who had official tickets (we had none) and we barged past security (We had determined looks on our faces) and we stood near the table that Nick Cave was signing books.

He is a slight wee man with terribly odd dyed black hair.

 

“God, why are they playing whale death music over the crowd Ann?” I hissed. Of course that was Mr Cave’s music; I was too stupid to know that. It sounded like the tapes you get free to help with child birth.

The security man came over and said “if you don’t have a ticket or his latest book with a receipt then you don’t talk or approach or get anything signed”

 

Mr Cave is very snooty about these things and what with the whale music and his tiny peanut head dyed very black I wondered why people liked him. Apparently he nearly drowned Kylie, so he can’t be all bad eh?

 

Ann got all hot and excited and stared at him longingly as I chatted to an extremely agitated autistic man in his 30s.

 

Yes, I met an autistic man who was trying hard to find out where the blonde girl assistant who was ‘stood there, right there with her arm like this’ had gone to. He staged the scene for me by being ‘him’ and then ‘her’ and how she stood and how she looked. Then he blurted out “My jacket melts in the heat and it this isn’t yellow its citrus colour” as he pointed to a yellow bit of his flammable top.

 

He was getting agitated and the crowd who had come to see Mr Cave started staring at him. “What is it you need to know?” I asked him.

 

He rocked back and forth a bit and stared at me wide eyed, I didn’t look away. “I need to know where I can get a magazine called Shortlist; this book has pictures of it”

He thrust the book into my face and there were photographs of a magazine called Shortlist, I recognised it. “You get them free in airports”

 

The man nodded and wrote down ‘airports’ in a book and then slapped his two hands over his ears and shouted “this music is making me sad inside”. I could only nod in agreement.

 

He then spotted a Borders assistant and ran after him in a sideways run with arms flapping, scaring the Mr Cave fans, who hadn’t seen a man in flammable fabric run sideways in their lives possibly. I giggled and Ann said quietly “Why do you always find Aspergers or Autistic people no matter where we go and why he is running about mad?”

 

I shrugged and quite liked the odd man in the bright jacket and was sad to see him go; he was infinitely more interesting and accessible than Mr Cave.

 

Ann and I decided to leave; we headed back to Rogano and watched the local Big Issue seller get photo shoot after he had had a make over and new suit. He was dressed like a proper toff and given a lobster dinner to celebrate a birthday of the Big Issue campaign. The bloke sits outside the Rogano for years and is well loved; he looked amazing in his suit and his shiny shoes. It made me gulp back tears as he stood there drinking champagne, but somehow underneath it all, I felt he was being patronised and said so to the photographer.

“Well, he got a new suit and some good food” he snapped.

 

He doesn’t need a new suit and the chance to drink booze with the people he normally begs off, he needs a home and it’s appalling to know he had been homeless for 18 years and got a suit for good behaviour outside the Rogano.

I suddenly felt odd and wanted to leave, there was a sad feeling inside me when the homeless guy was walking about suited and booted, he looked happy but discontent at the same time. I couldn’t quite process what I was feeling and kept thinking things like- how can he beg in a suit?

Where will he keep it when he sleeps on the street? Will it be harder to lose it now or was it easier for him not to have the nice clothes in the first place? I didn’t know the answers and no matter which way I formulated them in my head it all felt wrong.

 

So, to top the day off Frankie Boyle came into the Rogano and we had a wee chat, he is looking a bit better after being unwell lately.

 

Ashley is getting better and wants to thank everyone for sending her love.

 

This blog is in conjunction with the Red Card Campaign on Twitter.

 

Scotland’s domestic abuse statistics rise by 80% after a Rangers and Celtic football match was reported by assistant Chief Constable Neilson of Strathclyde Police. During an Old Firm match serious and violent crimes can double.

 

After one football game back in February this year, police were called out to 185 incidents of domestic abuse- a jump of 52% compared to weekends when a match is not being played.

 

Assistant Chief Constable John Neilson said the force arrested more than 550 people on the day of the match - all of whom were drunk.

 

Officers also had to contend with a rise in the number of attempted murders, assaults, and breaches of the peace.

 

 

And such incidents have peaked during the past Old Firm showdowns during this year.

Now with the league match next Sunday at Ibrox the bigoted wife beaters need to feel the might of the football clubs. Punching the wife is a serious as punching a fan, yet a violent thug will only be refused entry to a match for fan bashing, and wife beaters will still get welcomed into the terraces. This needs to be addressed. Men who beat their partners and have been prosecuted should never be allowed into a football ground for life.

The clubs should be highlighting this situation, it can’t all be blamed on alcohol and if the clubs are seen to be doing something, it can only help.

 

 

Sectarianism has been being tackled with some success.

But thugs have basically swapped one form of abuse for another and yet again women get the brunt of their pent up frustrations.

 

 

These cowardly thugs, are restricted from bottling other football fans who wear a different coloured scarf on the streets by the police have now found an outlet for their drunken spitting hatred. They can now do their beating in private.

 

 

It is shocking to realise that women and children recognise that when their father’s favourite team gets beat, then so will they.

There has to be some sort of solution to this issue.

 

 

Police have warned pub and club owners to reinforce their responsibility towards customers and to make sure that drunks will not be served.

 

 

Booze is not always the cause for post match wife beating, it’s not as prevalent with other Scottish premier league clubs, it is mainly connected with Rangers and Celtic fans, and so that rules alcohol out as the sole instigator in this issue.

 

 

There is something that runs deeper with the psyche of the Old Firm fans, why do they become so vehemently angry? What makes an Old Firm football attendee kick his wife in the head when his team gets beaten?

 

 

Someone somewhere needs to come up with an answer and my opinion still sways towards football managers and committees to come out and talk about Old Firm violence.

Sectarianism isn’t Scotland’s dirty secret- Old Firm Wife Beating is.

 

 

Please support this campaign on Twitter, do all you can to highlight this issue. Thanks Janey Godley

Ashley has been really ill; we didn’t know what to do other than kill her quickly with a firm pillow pressed against her sick face, but husband offered another option, how about we take her to hospital? I am the kind of person who if I cant fix it- I will kill it. I am sorry I sound cruel but I am crap with sick kids and sick people/things in general. If you don’t believe me I used to have a hamster that had eczema and a goldfish that swam sideways. They are no longer here.

 

It turns out Ashley may or may not have Swine flu…I think she has a viral infection but then am the woman who drowns fish so what the hell do I know? She has been told to drink plenty fluids and get bed rest and this she is really good at doing, so that’s a relief, though she is really sick, I am being sarcastic and I do worry.

 

She gets really hot then shivery and cold then I get bored listening to it and hide in my room. When she was a tiny baby and used to vomit all down my back when I picked her up I felt like squashing her wee cheeks hard, though I never did that- I merely wiped up the vomit and hugged her till she felt better. But I thought it would be honest to admit that sometimes your kids can make you insane. People underestimate the power of sleep deprivation, it is used a torture technique during interrogation and yet babies can induce sleep deprivation and people – usually mums suffer it in silence. I am not saying I am about to snap, am just saying it can happen.

 

Luckily Ashley was a sleepy baby, but once or twice when she did scream in her cot at 4am and I had a 17 hour shift in the pub to get up to, it was horrendously annoying.  She wasn’t wet or hungry- she was just determined to get me to lift her up and I showed my mothering skills off by ignoring her and sleeping through the throat wrenching screams. She never really did make it a habit. I have little patience for that kind of behaviour.

 

The same goes with my patience for husbands Aspergers, I no longer care about his deeply inconvenient syndrome, he has been a tad screamy and insanely picky the past month as he is going through his Aspergic episode – a pillow to his face might happen soon as well. Did I tell you all I have stopped smoking? I am loving it and feel I may have passed the worst of it now…but I think I am slightly short tempered.

 

So I woke up today to discover that all the electricity in the surrounding area has been cut off. It was like the power strikes of the 70s, I walked about the house trying switches, as if some magical power had stayed in one wall and would give me light! I called people, I moaned, I worried about my frozen foods and I huddled under the covers with Ashley and told her about the dark days when I was a kid and our electric got cut off, how we sat with candles, how we walked about with blankets to keep us warm, she got bored and fell asleep. I woke her to continue the story, she was ill, what else did she have to do but listen? The bitch…anyway she got a fever again and I got heat off her back. So sometimes a viral infection can be good.

 

I am off to London this week for a bunch of meetings and a few other things and then off to see Monica and Elaine my buddy’s. I am doing a one woman show at The Platform in Easterhouse on November 14^th.

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I want to stop eating bucket loads of biscuits and stop smoking without actually harming someone. Life is odd at the moment, I saw a woman with a funny black hooded hat scream at a cat in the street, the cat stared at her and basically gave her a cat sneer, and ignored her. I love cats, they really don’t give a flying fuck about people, if they were humans they would be either mentally retarded folk who are unable to recognise feelings OR upper class foppish Oxbridge bedwetters who believe the world owes them a living. They have a disdainful look about them and people end up serving their needs which apply to both the mentally retarded and Oxbridge bedwetters.

 

Anyway this woman screamed at the cat, her voice reached whistle range and the cat merely licked a paw and wiped its face. Ok, the woman was wearing a Bhurka, and she was scared of cats, I never explained the full story, I omitted she was a Muslim lady in devout looking dress and was terrified of the cat. A man came running out of the Mosque across the street from me and he screamed at the cat as well, the cat licked its other paw and wiped its ears. The man was also scared of the cat. He paced round it, tried throwing stones at it and then finally flicked it with his foot; they needed the cat to move away from the woman’s front door. I was annoyed at the cruel way they were treating the fat tufty cat, so I walked over and lifted it up and placed it in the garden opposite her door.

 

This leads me to wonder if people with Asian/Muslim origin don’t like/hate cats and if they do, then we are missing a huge opportunity in the war against terror don’t you think? Maybe that’s why the Muslim fundamentalists wanted to blow up the bar Tiger Tiger in London, it wasn’t the ‘loose Western Women’ they were after but anything that represented big cats!

 

Maybe we should be allowed to carry cats onto planes and if another terrorist hijacking situation comes into play we just throw cats at them?

 

Anyway that’s how my brain is working as I stop smoking and try to stop eating. I have HEAPS of work and auditions/meetings etc…and I need to focus and stop getting involved in cat/Muslim situations and get my head into work.

 

I am off to see The House of Barnarda Alba at Citizens Theatre this Thursday to see the show. I wrote the foreword for the programme and am excited that Siobhan Redmond who plays the lead character cited my autobiography Handstands in the Dark as an influence on her playing a woman in a gangster family.

 

Lastly I am excited about Susan Boyle’s new song Wild Horses, which is awesome, though the press in the US citing her as the world most famous Catholic, made me giggle, surely that would be the Pope? Not Jesus as some people originally believed to be the most famous Catholic, as we all know he is the worlds most famous Jew. I still find it funny that Catholics pray to a dead Jewish man ….ok…don’t get all stroppy and start sending me hate mail.

 

Ok, on that odd note I am off to not smoke…speak soon.