Showtime!

by Mothership on November 30, 2009

Is it Monday already?

The weekend passed in a haze of crazed activity with Friday daytime devoted mostly to practicing for the show and bumping into my host’s furniture, pausing for cups of tea and short bursts of performance-related anxiety and further punctuated by encouraging text messages from friends and family.
As the evening approached I pulled myself together and packed a bag with my stage outfit and donned my grown-up dress to drive to my aunt’s big birthday bash in Wandsworth. By the time I got there the house was heaving and I slunk upstairs to one of the many bedrooms to put down my bag and found my grandfather sitting peaceably on his own with a book and  a glass of white wine. I felt rather envious of him escaping the somewhat intimidating crowds below so I stayed and chatted with him for a bit before braving the throng, but eventually had to take a deep breath and jump in to the sea of 150 of Aunt’s closest friends, sloshing dangerously around on at least double that number bottles of wine and the party had only been going an hour.

It was fun, loud, but thankfully quite brief – I repeated my ‘what I have been doing in the last six years’ story at least fifteen times in the space of an hour and a half, and then I escaped into a taxi and went off to the club.

Once arrived I was slightly surprised to see a giant queue of bald, buff men outside stretching around the corner and it was only just eleven o’clock.

I did mention this was a gay club, right? It’s not like I was doing a star turn at Spearmint Rhino..

I waltzed up to the front and told the bouncer I was doing the PA and was promptly shuffled inside and to the palacial dressing room adjacent to the stage which was about the size of a disabled toilet cubicle.

But it did have it’s own chandelier.

In due course Graham the Hair God turned up and we got down to the serious business of curling my blonde locks into a bouncy mass of girlyness. While he did that I sang along to myself on the iPhone to get in a bit of last minute practice.
Time was ticking along and we were getting closer and closer to kickoff and inevitably I had to go to the loo.

Only trouble: No toilet in dressing room and the ladies loo was on the other side of the stage so I’d have to come out, fight my way through the crowd and then back again.
When I peeped out the club was RAMMED. And I mean completely packed with huge, sweaty, bare-chested blokes all boogying with abandon.  I couldn’t face it.

I also couldn’t hang on.

AGHH!

Graham offered to go out and guard the door so I could wee in the sink but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do that.

Fortunately the sound man appeared at that point and he solved the problem by taking me out of a side door and back in through the front of the club to a secret toilet (secret loos!) that only special people got to use. I tried not to think about what else happened in there. Just held my nose, did my wee and rushed back out again.

Then IT WAS TIME.

Gulp.

They introduced me and I stepped out.  For a moment I was slightly weirded out. The crowd was right up against the stage looking up at me expectantly, and one guy in the middle already had his camera out (YouTube, here I reluctantly come).  Then the music was a bit quiet in my monitors so I had to signal the sound guy to make various adjustments so I could actually hear what I was doing, but within about four seconds it was all as it should be and I got straight into my routine.

The great thing about gay clubs is that you can camp it up with no fear of sounding silly. I LOVE that.

“Are you ready to get sweaty?”  I shouted.

The roar was deafening.

I’ll take that as a yes, then.

As soon as the drums kicked in they all started jumping and I forgot any nervousness I ever had and we were away.

I had a completely fabulous time on stage and to my utter amazement and delight the crowd knew all the words to the songs and jumped up and down to the choruses punching their fists in the air. (I had zero idea that this was going to happen. I thought I”d be struggling to get them to pay attention, to be honest.)

I did forget all my carefully choreographed moves, but I had such fun that I really didn’t give a shit.

I was up there for ten minutes which was both very long and very short, and at the end I thanked them and curtseyed and blew kisses (ooh, I’m such a DIVA) and they all cheered and clapped and I ran off into the dressing room, giggling like a six year old.

SO GLAD IT WAS OVER.

After that everyone on my guest list started to pile into the dressing room, like some college prank when you try to squeeze as many people in a phone box as possible. We stood around having drinks and chatting and by the time we left it was nearly 3am. I got home closer to 4 and then couldn’t sleep for an hour.

Hilariously enough one of the club staff told me that a very important promoter had been by to see me and that ‘big things’ could come of this.

Fifteen years ago I would have been ecstatic to hear that and I might even have believed it for a little while, but for me, that life is in the past. I don’t want to be a pop star again, I don’t want to do loads of gigs, I don’t want to go to nightclubs and prance about on stage at 1am (well, except for the next night when I went to Guilty Pleasures with Liberty London Girl, but that was for fun, not work, and is partly why I’m comatose today). It’s nice to be a performer maybe once or twice per year so I can remember that I know how to, but on balance I like my life better now.

I spoke to Five and Two last night and they told me that they loved me, missed me and wanted me to come home so they could give me a hug.

Now THAT’s what I call music.

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Always Be My Baby

by Mothership on November 26, 2009

So lovely to be back. I do love my home town.

And all my friends and my mad, mad family.

Yesterday I spent in a social whirlwind, leaving the house at 9am and not returning until well after midnight, which used to be a frequent thing in my old life, but in Stepford with the tiny ones is almost unheard of as we live ten minutes from everything and are always returning to base, like homing pigeons, for naps, snacks, forgotten precious items, or just to hang out because it’s easier. So this was very exciting for me and also made me feel like I was myself again in some essential way.

I started out by making my way to my Aunt’s house to dump the car, whisper and confer with various cousins, uncle etc. about secret present plans, dinner arrangements that evening as it was her 60th birthday and she must at all costs be spoiled and cosseted. Aunt is a mother of four grown children and now a grandmother of two rather delicious tiny ones, and while she was busy raising her kids she also managed to squeeze in a part-time job as a teacher of graphic design at a prestigious London art college, cook about forty billion delicious meals for anyone who happened to drop into her huge, beautiful house, decorate and redecorate the former in jaw-dropping style and still have time to listen patiently and non-judgementally to tearful and troubled souls who would come to sob on her already rather burdened shoulders (and perhaps empty her chocolate biscuit tin at the same time).
You might guess that I have quite frequently been one of the latter, but I am not the only one. Not by a long shot.

She is my role model for calm, competent, kind motherhood. I really don’t know how she did it. I struggle with just the two and I’m not nearly as patient.

After I had ascertained the plan for the evening I skipped off to meet Potty Mummy for a morning of Kulture at the Saatchi Gallery and immediately blew my cover of sophistication by asking pathetically if we couldn’t start off with tea and cake instead of going after the exhibition which is what you’re really supposed to do. I just couldn’t do any clever thinking before I had some carbs and sugar. (Wait, aren’t they the same thing anyway? In my book they are, the best kind of carbs, anyway.. )
She was utterly gracious. She also didn’t eat cake. Or have sugar in her tea. Ok, just me then.

We had a great time at the gallery. They have a lot of stuff in there that is not very good but is quite side-splittingly funny so I recommend it for a good giggle. It also might have been that I had been up since 3am with jet lag so was very tired and the sugar hit me just at the right moment but PM laughed too so unless she was just being polite I think I am right, here. Or I’m a big pleb, but either way, it’s free, so you might as well drop by when you’re shopping on the King’s Road and a bit cold.

Afterwards I wandered into Peter Jones (oh, the bliss) and here I fulfilled my secret mission to buy some oilcloth table covering which is going to horrify Husband, but our kitchen table is not really a table, it’s an old library desk and as such has a ‘leather’ (I use this term loosely) center which gets all sorts of disgusting food matter stuck in it unless you really scrub it.

I am the only one who really scrubs it.

I do not like doing this.

So to make life easier I am buying these very colourful and quite whizzy oilcloth table coverings you can buy by the meter in cool designs.

Mission accomplished.

I headed off to M&S to buy a see through bra strap.

You simply don’t understand how much I wanted this particular item. I’ve been thinking about it for weeks because I need it for Friday. It fits a certain bra that only comes from M&S that is the only one that works with this particular outfit and nothing else will do.

When I was signed to my old record label they gave we band members each an allowance for clothes which, at the beginning, wasn’t very much and was also, quite unfairly, the same for the boys as it was for me. I found this totally unreasonable and asked my manager to complain and ask for more.

This got me nowhere.

Finally I went in to the head of the label myself, a somewhat shy man, not used to dealing with women and said to him very directly that I needed extra money because every single outfit needed DIFFERENT SHOES and DIFFERENT BRAS or else it just wouldn’t work and at the mere mention of underwear he turned scarlet and literally got out his chequebook with his pen shaking and asked me to name an amount just to make me go away.

RESULT!

From there I met an old friend for tea at Sketch and we had a delightful catch up and then on to meet another friend for drinks at Soho House until finally it was time for the big birthday dinner.

I went to South Kensington on the tube and found my way to Rocca, a charming and inexpensive little Italian restaurant that I highly recommend, where I was greeted warmly by the staff and seated at a long table for twelve. I was the first to arrive so I went off to the loos, but by the time I came back the family had arrived.

The birthday dinner is worthy of a post in and of itself, but perhaps the most moving moment of all was seeing the  birthday girl flanked by her ninety year old father and eighty-two year old mother, opening her presents from her parents, eyes sparkling with girlish delight, and hearing the cry of joy as she found the garnet ring her elderly dad had bought for her and the look of pure love and pride in his ancient eyes as he gazed upon his little girl on her sixtieth birthday.

Our babies are our babies forever.

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Guest Post: Deililly

by Mothership on November 24, 2009

Before I came to London I put out a request, nay a plea, to my fellow bloggers and Twitterers to ask if anyone would be so kind as to help me out with a guest post while I was away because I knew I would be totally shite at blogging extremely busy with various important engagements.

I was completely delighted when the witty and charming @deililly, a Twitter compadre, shyly stepped forward and asked if she might write a post.
I have been chatting to this witty and clever young lady from the wilds of Scotland who lives with several colourful relatives and a rather persistent cat for some months now, sometimes about deep important things and sometimes about utter frippery, and I was most sorry to miss meeting her last week in London at the now infamous #partay where apparently everyone on Twitter except me had a riproaring time.

I received her post this morning which was very timely as I was just wondering what the hell I could write that would seem remotely interesting.
My own headlines are fascinating to me, but to you they’re probably quite dull. I slept for a record 9.5 hours on the plane due to miracle pills from the doctor (chief attractive quality of my MD: he will give you any pill you ask for if you are stern enough with him. I love the internet!) I played with my cousin’s charming baby all day yesterday but gave her back when she cried. Graham the hair God fixed my roots and planned a rockin’ style for Friday which he will return to do for the gig. EOS)

So, without further ado, I bring you the post from @deililly.  I urge you to follow her on Twitter, too, and if you’re not on Twitter already, she is good enough reason to start tweeting all by herself!

Also, please do comment – she’s sure to respond as she’s ever so chatty and such a lovely lady.

Frontiers: Above And Beyond

Well I don’t know what I have let myself in for jumping up and saying “I’ll do it!” when MTFF asked if anyone fancied doing a guest post while she dons her funky pop star hat in London this week. Mind you I am not entirely certain MTFF knew either. She is one brave lady.

And I have found I have broken out in a bad case of Bashful Britishness. Or British Bashfulness?  I can loudly give my opinion to the TV (to the news especially. The newsreaders must wonder why their ears ring nightly while they are trying to decipher the autocue,) to my mother who is generally occupying another shopping channel filled planet populated with George Forman grills, and blenders that whiz you up carrot juice of a morn while playing you a samba to shoogle your digestive juices into action and answer your email at the same time.   The cat pretends to listen but only while I am holding a piece of fish.  I am not used to speaking anywhere where people might actually be listening to you.  And making them listen to me feels so *rude* (is that awfully British again?) Should see the shock I still get when anyone replies to me on twitter. There may even be a snoopy dance. Let’s not even get on to the joy should anyone actually send me a Direct Message (@deililly btw if you fancy reading my 140 character long ruminations on the weather, what I find in the fridge and the people I stare at on the bus.  Occasionally I get lost in a city which is fairly entertaining all round. Well except for the person who has to come and rescue me.)

Mind you, claiming my blog stage fright as Bashful Britishness is probably a bit of a lie. It is just good old British Wussypantsness at hitting my own Final Frontier. I am writing a blog post.  People might read it.  And if I actually get to the point of giving an opinion someone might disagree with me. Urk. Then I would actually have to be able to explain why I hold such and such an opinion without resorting to harrumphy noises and the reply ‘just cos.’

I shall blame my education for this.  I studied religion in another lifetime. Think of it as being four years of being given answers before you had figured out what any of the questions were.  Choosing a ‘right’ answer for you personally turned into a sort of religious pin the tail on the faith donkey. Giving an opinion there involved being able to name several sources in leather bound tomes from the bowels of the library, a poncey quote (usually in French) and a knowing laugh.
I entered university chockfull of opinions and certainty. And left with a nervous tic when anyone said the word God, wondering if the table really was real and hoping to all and any gods who hadn’t fled the scene that there wouldn’t be any pink and purple zebras to change my concept of reality (Don’t ask. You really don’t know what happened. Or why tables and zebras.)
Years on and I am still mostly incoherent and deeply fearful of peering through any more windows to the Holy.

Lest the Holy peers back at me I imagine. I am determined not to catch their eye till it is strictly necessary.

I might have the right questions by then.

At the next Final Frontier if you will.

So all this makes me more and more baffled with how SURE everyone else seems to be about their religion or lack of it (we actually studied atheism as a religion. Just to really confuse us all further.)  The more scientific and secular the world gets the more need people seem to have for a religion. The more humans seem capable of making or doing, the more need a lot of people have for putting the whole thing in much bigger hands. The Hadron Collider is colliding away there, perhaps with the secrets of the universe whirring out on the print outs. And… we are even less sure. To the point of wondering if the machine didn’t want to work and was in some other world/point in time/location through the Stargate trying to sabotage the scientists’ efforts.

Well it did.  Till I was thinking about 18 year old me vs me now (it is amazing how watching someone that age holding forth can open the tide gates on that!) Sometimes, just sometimes, there is this wish to go back there. To be feel so sure of myself again. To dial my universe right back to where I understood it. The older you get, the more you learn, the less answers you have and sometimes less questions since another answer would just frazzle you even further.  Is this new extreme style religious world a way of dialling it back? Reducing the world to something that makes a concrete sense? Somewhere you can gather with other ‘right’ thinkers and feel comfortable with your opinion since it isn’t standing up above anyone else’s. Like a very big group shouting at the TV together.

Or maybe religion is the static point we all move around rather than the other way round. Or an absent minded scientist left his lunch in the Hadron Collider and blamed a passing bird/wibbly wobbly timey wimey messing from the future. Maybe when I get older I will get more sure of my universe. I might even find an age where I know both questions and answers.  Maybe I should have read those leather tomes in the library. And learned French. And how to do a knowing laugh that doesn’t sound like a witch’s cackle.  Maybe I should head for the high ground and just blog about my cat. (you would like her, she is very funny. And more popular than me on the internet unsurprisingly)

What do you think?

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Learning Thanks

by Mothership on November 19, 2009

In the midst of getting all excited about my trip to London I had forgotten something.

My children are not excited at all.

Five is very not excited. She is quite upset.

She told me earlier in the kitchen that she was very very sad that I wasn’t going to be here for Thanksgiving, and then she burst into tears.

I FELT LIKE A REAL SHIT

That she might mind me not being here for this very American holiday had not crossed my mind at all. We have never really celebrated it before what with Husband being German and me being British. ,We save our Turkey murder for Christmas (when really only Husband eats it anyway) and apart from a hazy notion of corn, Pilgrims and Indians we are not quite sure what it’s all about.
Five never said anything last year when she was at preschool and it’s not as if they missed important dates out – we certainly knew all about Hallowe’en, for instance.
Still, I think there must have been a lot of talk at Kindergarten about Thanksgiving and it has clearly made a big impression on her because she feels terribly distressed that I will not be here with my apron on in true Mom style for the holidays.

She also mentioned there would be a shortage of cuddles while I was gone which just about broke my heart.

I pointed out that she gets lots of cuddles from her Dad but she said it WASN’T THE SAME as mummy cuddles.

Is it bad that a tiny bit of me was pleased by that?

She wept for a bit and I just held her and told her I was sorry she felt bad, I hadn’t understood it was a big deal to her. She’d have her father and lots of friends here and I’d call in on Skype. She told me she was sad and angry and I said I understood.

And then I told her that it was very important for me to go. That I really wanted to go and give this show, to see my friends, some other family. That I had chosen to be her mummy, Two’s mummy and I did that almost all of the time instead of being a singer all of the time, but now I needed to go and do this because it made me happy. I would be back very soon because I still wanted to be her mummy more than that. It was just a little holiday.

She didn’t really get it. I didn’t expect her to, but I was glad I said it because seeing her tearful face had struck such a chord in me that I nearly tore up my ticket.

My mum left when I was ten.

She went to grow a life that had become to small for her but she never did come back, and by the time I saw her again I did not recognise the person I called Mummy and I had grown past the little girl she had left behind. Partly because some time had elapsed and partly because her departure snapped the cord that tethered me to childhood and I hurtled into early adolescence before my time.

I lived with dad for a while, then with my mum for a bit which was – how shall I put this – not very successful, then went to back to live with my father again who was by this stage hugely involved in his career.
With all this moving around I got tough pretty quickly and learned to look
out for myself.
I became one of those disturbingly sexy young teenagers.
The kind I don’t want my daughter to turn into.
The ones that we mothers at the school gate roll our eyes and shake our heads at, thinking she’s no better than she should be.
Ironically I was a virgin much longer than many of my peers as I was terrified of real, actual sex, but I gave a great show and it sure was fun wearing the clothes and getting sent home to change from school so I could smoke a cigarette, dawdling on
the way back.
I didn’t do very well at schoolwork, either. It was a big bore studying. Well, perhaps someone could have actually sat with me and showed me how to do the homework. Or just spent some time with me at all. It got quite lonely being by myself all day, you know, and after a while it was not funny, just rather sad that everyone believed me when I said there was no homework all year and I didn’t need a book bag.
I fell in with a crowd of other misfits and outsiders.
Some of them were fabulous, some of them were not.
Some of them are still my close friends. Some of them are dead.

I stumbled and tripped, tripped and stumbled through growing up and learning.

It took ages – and here, I’m still doing it. Me and my daughter, together.

I will learn not to plan much-needed trips during important family holidays and she will learn that it’s essential to look after ones-self and it’s possible to do that and to look after your family.

Five: Mummy will be back very, very soon, and  I promise I’ll cook you that turkey you won’t eat for Christmas. xo

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Belle de Jour’s Balls

by Mothership on November 14, 2009

If you read my last post you’ll know that I was supposed to be in a log cabin putting a brave face on it just around now.

However, as luck would have it, Husband conceded this morning that one night in overly close quarters with the children who then woke us at 5.45am was more than enough roughing it for one weekend, and it would be just as well for us to sleep at home tonight.  Later in the day I suggested he might have more fun at the sunset wedding ceremony and subsequent reception on the windy mountaintop if the children weren’t there complaining (meaning if I weren’t there complaining about my migraine), and I would selflessly volunteer to stay at home and look after them.  Amazingly, he agreed to this so I got to stay at home, put the (very tired) infants to bed early and I am curled up happily with the cat, the computer and a pot of tea in my own bed.

SCORE!

But actually Husband is the smart one because he’s managed to get away from bitchy migraine wife from hell, ditched the whiny kids and gone to a free booze-up. And I’m even GRATEFUL for it.

Nuff respect.

I can’t quite escape my hideous headache enough to read a proper book or do any real writing, but I can just about skim through some blog posts and newspaper articles (ahem) and it was while doing this earlier that I came across a fascinating scoop by India Knight revealing the identity of the London call girl blogger Belle De Jour.

I hadn’t really read Belle de Jour’s blog before, and it is testimony to India’s writing rather than the subject matter that I was sucked in to reading all about her and clicking through to the blog, but once I was there I started thinking about this woman and what she had said, what she had done, why she decided to reveal her identity, and whether what she had to say had any kind of impact – positive or negative – on the way that we see prostitution, sex workers, female sexuality and power, yada yada yada..

The first thing that I thought was that her blog was a bit dull. I did click through quite a bit of the archive but none of it was particularly arresting. Maybe I was reading the wrong bits.

The second thing that struck me – REALLY struck me – was that despite the huge efforts to stay anonymous – until now when she comes out to a broadsheet and will no doubt hit the chat show circuit – was how much she clearly revels in the attention that being a celebrity hooker affords. She may have wanted to keep it separate in some way from her primary identity as Dr.Brooke Magnanti, but Belle is quite desperate for attention and wants to sell books, sell sex, sell opinions, and scream LOOK AT ME!! MEN WILL PAY A LOT OF MONEY TO SHAG ME!! in a quite astonishing and narcissistic way. I don’t buy that she just wanted to make some money, wanted some lovely shiny things and this was a discreet, possibly pleasurable way to make shitloads of money. The blog (so PUBLIC!) the book (EVEN MORE PUBLIC!) the newspaper articles (Come ON, now!) are begging us to peer, be part of her life and, what? Approve? Discuss? Not let her do this alone? No. It’s too grandiose.

I had a friend who used to be a prostitute. She said two things about that job that have always stayed with me. The first was that she rarely remembered how she spent her money, but she always remembered how she earned it. The second was that on the plus side everything that happened between her and a client – not only the sex acts but the psychological exchanges, small humiliations, subjugations of self etc. – were always in private, so there were no witnesses. This made it much easier to pretend that there were no hidden costs to her. The true price only came out years later and bit her on the arse.

I still get chills thinking about that.

No doubt Brooke will feel better when this is not a dirty secret any more and she doesn’t have to hide it. I can totally sympathise with that. But I don’t really think that the problem is going to be people going

“Eeeuw! You took money from some bloke for a blow job!”

I’m actually totally fine with that. I can think of a few shags I’d like to take back completely, actually, and seeing as I can’t, wouldn’t it be lovely to get a cheque in the post instead as compensation?

I think the problem is going to be

“Eeew! You worked as a hooker and then you wrote loads of books and articles glamourising it which turned you into a sort of virtual pimp for the call-girl industry.”

So, Brooke, I don’t know you, I barely was aware of you until today but that’s what I think:

You done pimped your own ho’ and made a lot of people think it was cool when really, it isn’t and it’s going to bite you hard on the arse one day.

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Town Mouse and the Country Mouse

by Mothership on November 13, 2009

Recently I was showing Husband some high heeled boots I had bought to go with my smart new coat and I asked him what he thought of them. He said he liked them and I looked great but then asked, somewhat resentfully, why I never dressed up like that for him. I responded rather tartly that he never took me anywhere where I could wear clothes like that. He didn’t like that answer and was annoyed with me. I was also rather annoyed with him and we glared at each other for a bit, then ignored each other, and after about ten minutes we settled down and were back to normal, chasing the children back to their places at the dinner table, exchanging news and it was mostly forgotten.

Just a quick few words here before I am forced to pack.

No. Not the exciting kind of packing where I get to fill a suitcase with high heeled shoes, cosmetics, dual-voltage hair wrangling devices, foundation garments which will do extraordinary, gravity-defying things to my bosom and assorted impractical shiny things.

That kind of packing will happen NEXT Friday before I go to London.
It’s doubtful I’ll be taking the time to write about that because I’ll be in the midst of an ecstatic frenzy with everything I own strewn about the house, some of it upon my person, some of it on the bed, some of it, no doubt, upon Two’s person.  He loves to put bras on his head and say
“Look Mummy ! I got TWO hats!”
Husband’s irritation will grow in direct proportion to my inability to do anything in what he perceives to be a logical progression. However, there will be method to my madness and by the time I leave everything will be in perfect order and I will have both of my giant suitcases packed (one taken up entirely with shoes), and each shall weigh exactly 50lbs (the limit per piece allowed by my carrier). Although I will only actually wear a tiny proportion of the contents while I am away – I often get sort of attached to one thing as if it were a teddy – I will draw enormous comfort from the fact that I have it all with me.

Today, however, I am packing, or rather avoiding packing, for a weekend of ‘luxury camping’ that Husband has booked us into at a ‘resort’ about twenty miles from here.  One of his protogees is getting married at this place and many of the guests have opted to rent the little log cabins or ‘luxury safari tents’ for a full weekend of celebrations. Thank GOD he had the foresight not to try to put all four of us into a tent in November, but the cabin is already quite a stretch for me.

It will probably be fun.

Probably.

Or it would be if I had a better attitude.

Unfortunately I have raging PMT and an impending migraine so I’m trying very hard to find my better attitude but it appears to have gone walkies.

I’m nervous that it will be cold, noisy from other guests who don’t have children and will be therefore staying up late drinking (as I would be if I were them), the children will get up at the crack of dawn and want to be entertained which means GOING OUTSIDE where there are other people before I am ready to face the world.

Did I mention I have raging PMT and an impending migraine?

Where is my better attitude? FUCK IT! It’s JUST GONE!

The wedding is actually on Saturday late afternoon. It’s Friday now and I will have to stay there for two days.

TWO DAYS!

That is a long time to be not only “camping” but being social with fellow wedding guests.

The only bright spots are that the place has Wi Fi and also that Five has a birthday party to attend back in town so I can drive her back, drop her off and sneak home for a shower and get my clothes for the actual wedding.

Which stipulates wearing ‘casual clothes and sturdy shoes’

Shoot me now.

The thing is that, for him, this is really fun! Maybe even too high end! He LOVES roughing it! He adores camping. If he had his druthers we’d actually be pitching tents, not showering for days, probably hiking 20 miles to the campsite over a snowcapped mountain and sleeping in a hut with 50 strangers (I shit you not – that is his idea of heaven). When I first met him I really, honestly did try to like that sort of thing, much to the hilarity of all my friends and family. I didn’t even own a pair of shoes that weren’t high heeled and I was not known for my love of the great outdoors unless it came with a tea garden and cake attached, but I gamely had a go because I loved him. I did sort of like camping when he did all the work and I did all the drinking and spliff smoking. But after we had kids all of the outdoorsy stuff abruptly lost its charm. Now all I want to do is go back to the city, have hot showers, fluffy towels, room service, lie-ins and nice clothes.

He hates all that. He finds it cloying and caging. He wants to be free and wild. So that’s good, he can do it with the children, I say.

However, there IS the point that in just over a week I’m going to leave him and them for twelve days, which is the longest I’ve left the children EVER. Perhaps I should suck up two days at a luxury log cabin because he’s so excited about it and really wants to go. Could it be that I’m being a complete COW and really, it’s not that hard to put on a smile and be gracious, even if it’s not exactly what I want to do? I don’t recall any invitations to superior events this weekend, actually (well none that I could actually get to, thanks anyway Twitterers)  It’s even got a fridge, a cooker and Wi Fi and Husband said he’d bring out the kettle and some teabags and let me lie in tomorrow because he knows I’m getting a migraine. (starting to cringe a bit here at massive self absorbtion, ugh)

Hey, wait? Is that my better attitude coming back?

Thank GOD for that. The whole family needs you.

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Consummate Professional

by Mothership on November 8, 2009

This last week I have written very little, either for my book or for the blog, as I have been taken up with either looking after the children – Husband was away on a business trip – or else trying to prepare for my upcoming show in London.

Although it’s not quite a “This Is It” Michael Jackson production- it’s only going to be a couple of songs to a backing track at a nightclub – there was still some musical prep. to do which involved sending mixes whizzing over the internet between myself and the DJ/Producer in the UK, editing them on my music software so they’d be exactly as I wanted them, reeling in horror as my Mac G5 ( main music computer) died a horrible death, then issuing minute, obsessive, down-to-the-millisecond instructions to the poor DJ to do it for me which he did perfectly with utter professionalism and good cheer and even called me a Fabulous Diva while he was at it.

I like the way he thinks!

After all that malarkey was sorted out I wanted to sit down and have several cups of tea to recover from my computer-based trauma, but  I had to concede that as it had been some years since I performed these numbers it might be a good idea to have a bit of a singalong instead.

When I used to do proper concerts with my band I could always rely on there being a bunch of musicians on stage to create some kind of dynamic. Our songs were never mega-fast, ranging somewhere between 100bpm and 118bpm  – fairly standard pop radio tempos – so you got lots of time to stand around, pose, sing, dance, look at your band mates, get from A to B, pick your nose or whatever.
However dance remixes and the resultant club PA’s  are much faster – 130bpm and up.  As the singer you are up there on your ownio trying to sound as good as you can on systems not set up for live vocals, to a track that has been vastly speeded up from the original and you also have physically to cover quite a bit of space, all the while moving in time to a fast pumping beat.
Often you get a great reception from the crowd, particularly if your track is popular. But sometimes nobody pays a blind bit of attention and you can evem get open hostility from aggressive clubbers. I did one PA up north many years ago where the bouncers hustled me on to a stage surrounded by a cage of chicken wire to protect performers from being pelted with flying bottles – charming!

I do not expect any of this to happen at this show – after all, quite a lot of trouble has been expended to bring me there, and the size of my guest list is currently exceeding the capacity of the club so I can’t really lose. But by the same token, many people in the audience will know me personally and I’ll have to face them afterwards, so I can’t really do a half-assed job.

I am a consummate PROFESSIONAL!

Miked up with my trusty hairbrush and using the living room windows as a source of reflection I pushed the table back against the wall to create maximum floorspace and pressed play.

FAIL ONE: I did not remember the words. I had to look them up on the internet.
I wrote these songs, you know.

FAIL TWO: I kept on missing the cues. I had to stop the track at least 15 times and write down the number of bars in between the singing.

FAIL THREE: I choreographed some sick moves. I was well pleased. I forgot them immediately.

FAIL FOUR: I have been spending too much time doing hip-hop dancing and not enough time singing over the last year and I had forgotten that it is very difficult to do both at once without getting hideously out of breath.  I made the wrong choice and couldn’t sing the second song because I was hideously out of breath in a wheezing heap on the floor.

I think it is time to have those cups of tea.

After that I shall dust myself off, pick up my hairbrush and do some more rehearsing.

I will not rest until I know every single word, catch every single cue, remember how to dance (sort of) and sing at the same time.

By the time I hit London, I will be PERFECT! Better Than I Am Now!


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All Soul’s day

by Mothership on November 2, 2009

Yesterday was All Saint’s Day
I spent it with my Granny, gone these last 12 years.

Today is All Soul’s day.
My heart also aches for the living.

Hi Little Sister,

Dad told me about your friend being found dead.  I wanted to say how sorry I am.
When I was 17 one of my friends was found dead in his apartment from a heroin overdose.

He was 24.

That felt incredibly old to me at the time, but now I look back on it at my age I realise it is so very, very young.
He never got old. He never knew about the internet. He never saw the millennium turn. He never even had a cellphone.

That’s how long ago it was, but I still think about him.

They found him in his apartment with the needle in his right arm, but he was right handed.

Freaky, eh?

But nobody looked into it too hard – he was a junkie, right?  And besides, he was already decomposing, so they just put him in a box and we all went to the funeral.
I cried and cried but it was kind of weird because I also couldn’t believe he was dead. I thought he’d just turn up at a bar a few days later chatting up some pretty girl or other. He was a real ladies’ man. Come to think of it there was a preponderance of attractive young women at that funeral, most of them decked out in the most amazing vintage outfits, complete with veils and seamed stockings (this was the 80’s and they just couldn’t resist).

I, on the other hand, had no makeup on and was wearing a navy school pinafore, but then I was just a friend. I sat at the back and sobbed quietly at the thought that I had refused to fetch him a pair of shoes he’d had on hold in London the summer before. He’d never have paid me back, but if I’d known he was going to die I might not have minded.

There’s nothing to say when someone dies that makes it better, really.
It’s just fucking tragic.

The only thing that is good is that you are still alive, that your family is not numb and devastated, our lives ruined because of a night of fun that went wrong.

You will get over this.  You won’t get over this.

He’ll always be there in the back of your mind, making you reach for a tissue at unexpected moments. Like now, for me.

The first friend you had that died.

I hope it’s the last for a very, very long time.

Rest In Peace, boys


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Dia de los Muertos

by Mothership on October 31, 2009

Whom shall I honour this Day of the Dead?

Granny? It’s me.

It’s exactly one month before your birthday. A month before I will feel your absence keenly and suddenly even though I try to forget the date and I shall weep, copiously, perhaps in a restaurant embarrassing my husband and alarming my children. Or perhaps in the car, with rage and snot streaming down my nose. Maybe I’ll just wander round the house, uselessly touching things and looking into mirrors hoping to see you there.

Will you come to say hello? Will you greet me again and buy me a sugary, jammy doughnut and introduce me to anyone you can find in your hybrid Lithuanian-German-SouthAfrican-English accent that nobody could ever accurately imitate:

“Hev yo mit mah Grendotter?”

Might you send me a message? Write me one of those nearly illegible letters whose handwriting I have nearly forgotten now? I know I would recognise it if I saw it but they’re all in a suitcase in the loft of my old house and I just can’t bear to open it because all the memories and the smell of you will come tumbling out and my insides might fall out of me at the same time and how would I get them back in?
It took me over two years just to act normal after you died, and the key word in that sentence is act. It still feels all wrong. I still can’t go to Hampstead 12 years later in case you aren’t there. Or drive down The Bishop’s Avenue because you don’t live there anymore. I wonder if I ever will ever walk on the Heath again but mostly I think I’ll avoid it because you haven’t promised to meet me there and that is so terrible to contemplate that I feel sick.

I sometimes try to tell Five about you – she is your namesake, you know – but I find that I just can’t tell her the really important things. She’s not big enough.

How can I explain to her that when my whole family fell to pieces and my parents turned into different people than they had been before, you stayed reassuringly the same?

You never changed on me and you never went away.
(I mean you did do mad things like run willy-nilly on to tube carriages with me following you, breathless and only then ask where it was going, but you always made sure I got on with you.)

How could I describe to someone who has always been cherished, that you were the one and only person who always made me feel completely loveable, adorable, and the most important person in your life?
(Remember traveling all the way across London by public transport on your own when you were well into your 80’s to have a Chinese take-away with me, giggling, tipsy, after half a glass of sweet white wine?)

Children need that from somewhere. It’s critical.

I took quite a long time growing up. I got tripped up in a few places and I slowed myself down with some profoundly stupid choices but you optimistically saw the best in me.

You stuck around and held my hand, made me cups of (dreadful) tea, took me out to dinners and made me endure endless ANC bazaars until you were sure I could handle life on my own.
I wasn’t sure I could do it but you must have been.

About 18 months after you died I met Husband. You would have loved him. Sometimes he even reminds me of you. If he doesn’t exactly agree with me he says;

“Vell I don’t know”

And it drives me MAD like it used to when you said it.

I want to shout

“But you DO know BECAUSE I’M TELLING YOU!!!”

But it also makes me smile a bit because it’s like having you back for a moment.

So, how to honour you?

With a jam doughnut? A resounding chorus of Nkosi Sikeleli Africa?
A wash with Imperial Leather soap?

Or just these words I have written and a small, private weep.

How you are loved and missed, still.

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Bad Housekeeping

by Mothership on October 30, 2009

Oh the SHAME!

Today I wrote an email to a lovely and charming lady who is one of my Twitter friends and also writes a beautiful blog.

I’m not naming her here on purpose, not because I don’t want to link to her here, but because I’m SO EMBARRASSED that I can’t quite bring myself to say who it was that pointed out my slovenly behaviour. Also I don’t want to get sued (see last two posts and commenters) for quoting someone without asking their express permission and I didn’t ask hers. I’m writing this on the fly before I get defensive and try to pretend this wasn’t really my fault.

Anyway. I’ve been reading her blog for ages. She’s utterly delightful. I’ve also been following her on Twitter and chatting away, thinking everything was fine and dandy. I’ve even met her in person – she’s very sweet and so much fun! But I tried to Direct Message her on Twitter today to ask her something and I couldn’t. For those of you who are not Twitterers, that means that she wasn’t following me. She had actually un-followed me, and for her to do this (knowing her as I do)  I surmised I must have goofed.

Uh oh.

Fortunately I had her email address so I wrote to ask if I had caused offence.

It turned out that, unwittingly, I had given the very strong impression that I was indifferent to her blog, her wonderful writing because although for months she had been supporting my writing by putting me on her blogroll, I had not actually returned the courtesy. Therefore she had very reasonably assumed that I didn’t give a rat’s arse.

She did not put it like that. She’s more polite and puts things more delicately than me.

I was quite red in the face reading her response because she called me out on a very bad habit.

I AM A SHITTY BLOG HOUSEKEEPER

I don’t keep my blogroll up to date (btw, hate term blogroll, sounds like virtual toilet paper) because I hate going into the ‘admin’ section of the wordpress blog and tinkering around. I get sort of lost in a time vortex there and God knows I have very little of that anyway, and before I know it I’ve achieved pretty much nothing, failed to write a post (and my epic memoir) and also forgotten why I went in there in the first place.

HOWEVER

This is no excuse for being rude to people who read my blog, follow it and support me.

I can’t TELL you how much I appreciate the visitors, the commenters, the fellow bloggers, in fact everyone who comes here to read.
And I love going back to read all of your blogs, too, and I really like to support my fellow bloggers. I believe in doing that very strongly.
(Yes, yes I know you can’t tell. That’s the POINT of this post, I’m just getting to the solution)

So: A quick summary and solution

If you have been linking to me for ages (or even just a day) and I haven’t linked back. I am really sorry for being so rude!

If I have missed putting you on my blogroll it is because I am gobshite and will do almost anything rather than to go to the dreadful ‘add a new link’ bit on WordPress.

However, I really DO want to put you there if you would like to be there, so please, in the comments section, can you tell me the name of your blog and give me the URL and I would be happy to link to you. (This does not apply if you are selling Vi*gra, penis enlargements or are a fan of Glenn Beck)

Disclaimer: My shitty housekeeping skills do not extend to my REAL house. My own home is a model of hygiene, tasteful decor and pristine order*

*anyone who has actually visited, please email for hush money

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