This morning I got woke up early in the hotel as the housemaid was possibly recreating her own violent life by banging the beds around in the room next to mine. The vacuum was battered off the furniture and my bed moved as she slammed the bed next door into the wall and jarred me from my sleep. I ran through there in my night clothes and asked her to keep the noise and the slamming down to a minimum as I am trying to get some shut eye!

The whole room looked like a tornado has hit it. Maybe she was having a bad day? But why did I have to suffer as a result?

The other strange thing about this amazing hotel is, in the lobby and on all of the hall way floors Whitney Houston is blared out loudly and as I sit here and type I can hear ‘Where Do Lonely Hearts Go?” quite clearly. This is EVERY day, who does that shit?

I just called down to reception and requested some Steely Dan or Bob Seger, because if there is a DJ in house who insists we listen to piped music loudly then we as guests should get to choose the songs. Whitney Houston can kiss my ass.

I am going swimming today; the hotel has a lovely indoor and outdoor pool. I am going to check the weather to see which place I go for a dip!

Speak soon.

This is my last week in Auckland and I am on the home straight, about five more days to go!

I have had such a fab time here and I do love NZ more than I can say, though a break from the torrential rain would be nice. I managed to get a really good quality webcam on my laptop and have been trying to chat to my mates on it, but they all seem aghast at my funny dancing and waving. Maybe that novelty will wear off soon?

I went shopping today in Ponsonby, which is quite nice, but never bought any clothes. I never see stuff that looks good for me. I have the dress sense of an angry teenage lesbian in her ‘sad unsure phase’. Less sexy-more practical and drab.

If only I could dress pretty? But I only dress for comfort nowadays. The thought of stropping about in high heels just to go shopping makes me want to drink bleach.

I don’t understand the logic in that anymore, though I did when I was in my 20s. I would easily slip on some heels and take Ashley a walk into town, what the fuck was I thinking? No wonder my knees hurt at this age.

My show is selling out fantastically and I am so happy the reviews are all positive.

The comics here in NZ are such a great supportive bunch of people that I will truly miss them when I go.

Though I can’t wait to see husband and Ashley next week. I need their big hugs.

All the young comics are so lovely but some of them do treat me as an elderly woman and this shocks me to the core.

For instance, I was chatting to one young guy and he was explaining how he has so much body hair that he has to wax it off as women find it off putting. I then added to this chit chat “I only occasionally shave my arm pits if they get really feral” to which he replied “Yes Janey, but you are really old, it doesn’t matter with you”

I sat there agog at this observation. What do I do now? Take off my make up and start NOT wearing a bra? Should I give up the long war against my grey roots? Will I just let my tufty hair become white and start knitting bootees for poor kids in Africa and gather cats on my lap?

I am now aware that my gentle flirting might be deemed creepy. Are young boys scared of the old lady who chats to them in late night comedy bars? Has all my sexuality drained out of my saggy body?

I am still fertile; I can bear kids if I want. I can scrub up quite well when I put in the effort.

I know I no longer get second glances from the hot boys, that stuff stopped in 1990, but surely I am not confined to the middle aged car boot sale set yet? There is life in this old dog.

How do I regain my female sexuality at 47 years old and still feel needed and wanted within?

I feel about 20 inside my head. I don’t see myself as an aged woman, when did this all happen?

All this is corrected in one giant leap, as husband still finds me incredibly attractive, but what happens when even he starts to see the old woman who creaks when she bends?

I am disconcerted and discombobulated today. I need a hug.

The women’s magazines tell you how to take a ‘capsule wardrobe’ where a few items can make seventeen outfits! A shirt can be tied around the waist to resemble a skirt, a scarf can be worn many different ways and nothing beats a little black dress.

All of that is great advice if you are a size 0 and never sweat.

I am a curvy size 16 and, believe me, there are no shirts invented that can wrap around my big bum and would make me look anything other than post-hostage/ pre-mental patient.

The best thing to do is to take everything you own and roll it up tight.

If in doubt, dump everything when you get there and buy new stuff in your destination country. Especially when the pound is so strong against the NZ dollar!

Wellington city is just beautiful; the people are extremely laid back and very polite, if not slightly eccentric.

They have a local homeless bloke called ‘Blanket Man’ who sits around the streets naked but for a woolly cover. He has huge thick dreadlocks, likes a beer and sings a lot.

I chatted to him when I was there and asked him if he minded that people called him ‘Blanket Man’ and he said, “Yes I do because, technically, I should be ‘Naked Man’ and yet the blanket gets all the attention.”

He wrapped his cover tight around him and showed me some of the city’s sights.

Blanket man told me that the parliament building is called The Bee Hive.

When I first heard this information in his Kiwi accent, it sounded like he said to me: “Our Government gets together ‘n’ behave.”

Last night I was staying in a very nice hotel for one night on Waiheke Island.

The place was awesome but very quiet. It was literally in the middle of nowhere.

I lay in my room getting ready for a radio show and all I could hear was…nothing.

Honestly, I could not hear a single noise and I have never had that level of silence in my life. The quietness was frightening.

Then I heard a buzzing sound in my ears. I thought it might be tinnitus. I was unaware that I suffered from the dreadful condition.

I made an appointment with a doctor when I arrived in Auckland today, but when I hit the city, the noise disappeared.

I don’t have tinnitus. I realised that I have just never had peace and quiet in my life and, when faced with it, I mistook it for an illness!

The weather is horrendous; it’s really muggy and damp and keeps raining buckets. I have been soaked twice. The shows are just going fine and I love meeting up with loads of lovely comics from all around the globe.

Last night in the front row of the late show at The Classic there was a girl who went to school with my daughter back in Glasgow….how crazy is that?

She shouted out that she was in the year above Ashley and I fell about laughing. It really is a small world.

I have been quite stressed trying to get everything done as I have to book shows into my diary, write my Scotsman column and keep on top of all the shows and media that I do. So sleep is good.

I miss my husband and Ashley. I love travelling but ultimately I spend more time away from them than I do with them and that eventually gets to you. I didn’t expect to be this age and spend so much time being lonely. I do get share my thoughts with crowds of people at night, but it’s not the same as curling up on the sofa with Ashley and husband.

It won’t be long till I get home and get to be with them.

Today I am doing Comedy for Kids and that will be a challenge if nothing else.

I hope it all goes well.

Janey

I am so happy, my show in Wellington sold out every night and the reviews were just awesome. I love this place. I did a Good Morning TV appearance as well and some radio and that was fun. The people here in NZ are just so welcoming and supportive.

Every night the people came to The San Francisco Bath House to see the show and they were such a giving audience, so many Scots turned up as well.

The weather here in Wellington is really hot and sunny; I even have a wee tan on my face.

So now I am off to Auckland to finish off the tour and perform my one woman show at the Classic comedy basement.

More exciting news…Time Out magazine in London had an online voting poll for the TOP TEN BEST STAND UP COMICS and I made it to number 3 in that list, I was the only woman and the only Scot in there! I am so happy.

As soon as the show was done I went straight to my hotel and fell asleep and didn’t wake up until the sun come streaming through my window this morning. The view is awesome my window looks right over the harbour and it is just a delight to watch the sunset, if I ever stay awake to see it.

Tonight has sold out as well and tomorrow morning I am up bright and early to do the Good Morning TV show. I had lunch today with a wonderful lovely NZ comic called David Cormack, he is very funny, and you should catch his show. David has been a wee rock of support since I got here yesterday; he gave me a mobile phone to borrow and loads of kind words when I was brain dead and knackered yesterday.

I had a bath earlier tonight; you should see the size of my bath in this hotel room. It is HUGE, I mean I could have swum a lap in its foamy waters, ok that’s an exaggeration. I could lie there move around and not touch the sides or bottom it is so deep and wide.

I am off to get ready for tonight’s show.

I am excited about getting my first night over with and a whole night in bed sounds better than sex with George Clooney right about now, that’s how sort of out of synch I am at this moment.

At least I wasn’t exhausted on arrival and the Museum Hotel here in Wellington is awesome beyond belief! One of the best hotels I have stayed in, right now I have a washing on as I am in one of the hotel apartments they have assigned me. I am lucky.

Speak soon

I was invited to open a new shop unit in Shettleston, the place I grew up in Glasgow. It is Kangaroo Self Storage Units. Shettleston is being slowly regenerated and it was amazing to see my old home town again. I don’t go back as often as I like. Too many bad and sad memories, but being there today was awesome.

I felt really odd as I have never ‘opened’ anything before other than a few Pandora’s boxes and clutch of Visa bills, both which scared me to death!

Anyway it was lovely and I took along my favourite wee niece Abi. She was all dressed in pink and pretty, she was so well behaved, I was very proud. She is such a wee smart intelligent social butterfly, she actually shouted out “I declare this shop open” as I cut the ribbon! What a wee star.

Abi ate too many chocolate cakes and the sheer amount of sugar made her even more chatty and animated! She stood up and told a very long complicated joke about a Red Indian who does a hard poo….I was in hysterics, it was so funny and she cleverly got the punchline bang on, she even managed to insert the pauses, the pull back and reveal technique was spot on and her wee voice was so clear. She executed the whole joke perfectly. I was outdone by a toddler. Apparently her grandfather told her the joke and she had memorised it, I was stunned!

She is such a comic in the making, watching her wee face light up and pausing for breath as she said the final line, and her smug smile as the adults all laughed was amazing.

So that’s been my day. Meanwhile I am all set to go to New Zealand on Sunday. I have a sell out show tomorrow night at East Kilbride arts theatre and I can’t wait to get back onstage there, I loved it the last time.

I have bought loads of new clothes for New Zealand and I just got my itinerary and believe me it’s a punishing schedule! I am tired just reading the damn thing.

I am STILL waiting on someone from Qantas getting in touch to help me get an upgrade as I literally hit the ground running in NZ…anyone out there? Please?

There is a hollow on the mattress that hugs me like a lover. It knows all the places to caress me and keep me warm. Strange beds have no idea how to touch you and feel like a bad one night stand that refuses to accept their elbows are jutting into your flesh.

My bed has seen me through the worst and the best of times. It supported me when my marriage became a war, sometimes right there on its very surface. It held me close when I cried in pain through illness and it welcomed me every time I dropped into it travel weary and exhausted.

That bed opened up its strong comfy heart when babies like my great nephew and nieces Shaun, Abi or Julia needed hugs in the night when they stayed with me. All of these children have been newborn infants tucked up safe within its billowy borders, now they come over and bounce up and down on its springy spines!

It has comforted Ashley in the dark nights when she had nightmares and the bed miraculously seemed to grow bigger to make space for her frightened angular teenage body.

My bed is the best place in the world and I will miss it when I go to New Zealand on Sunday.

I will miss my family as well, but at least I can talk to them, I can only dream about my own bed as I lay between stiff, dry cotton sheets in a host of strange beds that will treat me like a rapist who overstayed their attack.

Husband and I are nearly 30 years together now. I lay awake this morning and thought all about that. I have no idea why the idea of our marriage made me stay awake when I really needed some sleep, but it did.

Maybe it’s because Ashley will 22 years old next week and I have been thinking all about middle age and motherhood or maybe I just go through these periods of self reflection…I am not sure.

Either way, there I was staring at him at 5am.

He sleeps so peacefully and I wanted to wake him up to ask him thousands of questions but I didn’t.

Husband was 16 years old when we met back in the late 70s and since then this relationship has suffered at least three civil wars, constant mental warfare, fifteen near peasant revolts and one Armageddon. Still we are together.

It doesn’t make sense but then what does?

We were always so different and so completely opposite in our outlooks.

I recall when husband was my boss for fifteen years when we owned a bar together in the 80s and early 90s.

He was the manager and I was his wife. I looked to him for all direction and business sense and did what I was told. I cooked, cleaned, ran the pub, cared for a new baby and starved myself to look good in hot pink leggings and carefully maintained my big curly hair-do. (Forgive my fashion sins but it was the 80s). I taught myself how to make chicken Kiev embraced aubergines, garlic bread and ratatouille (again…new fashion in food in the 80s) I was a perfectly good wife.

Now the tables are completely turned and I own the business and do all the wheeling and dealing and he makes the dinner. Life is strange, if you could go back twenty years ago to 1988 and predicted I would leave that bar, become a stand up comedian, author and newspaper columnist and husband would be following me around the world, I would have probably think you had overdosed on infected heroin.

Nowhere in my wildest imagination (and believe me I even had a wild imagination back then) could I have even perused the idea of being who I am now. Not ever!

It takes some believing at times. When I do the bigger one woman shows and watch all of these people whom I have never met before, buy tickets to hear me talk, I have to do a reality check in my brain. Somewhere in my consciousness a wee voice whispers “Janey, tell these people you need to go and get the bar ready for opening time, stop fooling folk into thinking you are a comedian, now go boof your hair up and change the Guinness barrel”

My deepest insecurities creep up on me and for a second I get scared, then the lights go down and my name is announced and people applaud as I grab the microphone and the scared little voice in my head that berates me admits defeat, pulls on Lycra leggings and sits down in the back of my brain. It is joined with fear, shame and uncertainty. They all squeeze their tired little personalities into one dark hovel and listen to me be funny and they hear a crowd laugh at my stories. I have quietened the beasts in my psyche for one more night.

Husband never questioned my ability to do what I wanted, not even years ago when I would moan that I wanted to be a writer. He always encouraged me and pushed me to do what I wanted. I suppose I never believed that he believed in me.

Now, he is not in the least bit amazed at anything I do. He simply smiles and puts on the dinner and waits for me to come home. Where did he get such confidence in me?

What if I fail spectacularly? Will he still love me?

I never woke him up to ask, I let him sleep, he has a washing to do, shopping to get in, packing to organise and breakfast to cook, so I let him snooze more.

Munich looks nice, though I saw nothing really! I don’t even know what part we were staying in.

I did ask a local person what the area the club was situated in was known for and he explained “It used to be a slaughter area” – I never asked what was slaughtered, though I am hoping it was cows.

The club is awesome, it is so long and the stage was at the bottom of the room. It was really hot and the lights were blazing on the stage. Then when I was onstage an odd thing occurred.

The strange thing that happened was this. I was onstage for over 30 minutes and had over 15 minutes left when I felt slightly dizzy. I thought I was going to faint. Inside my head I was completely blanking out BUT my mouth continued with the act. All of these words I vaguely recognised were streaming out of my gob and yet my brain was screaming “Janey you are going to faint”

People laughed at my punch lines, yet my body was totally spaced out – I held onto a table onstage and asked for a drink of water. I explained quickly to the audience “I feel a bit dizzy, I am going to sit down for a moment and have a drink of water” which I did and then stood up and got on with the show. All the while feeling really faint. It was the strangest thing I have ever experienced. I finished the show without incident and went straight back to the hotel and slept all night.

I was aghast that I had fucked up but everyone told me they never even noticed, they were aware that I sat down for a few seconds- but they really enjoyed the show.

Last night I was back in London and I performed at Comedy Camp and I worried that my ‘stage illness’ might secretly return. I was fine and the show went fine.

I assumed that the room in Munich had little oxygen that far down in the room, that mixed with the strong lights made me slightly faint.

Tonight I am in at the Vauxhall Tavern in South London and appearing in the Topping and Butch School Assembly comedy night with Neil and Christine Hamilton. I am excited.

Speak soon all….Janey

My best mate Monica came to see my show and it was so funny to see her sitting there in the audience. She told me that my scoop neck tee shirt made a funny weird optical illusion as I held the microphone close to my cleavage when the lights illuminated me from above – basically it resembled a big black penis nestling between my boobs, every time I held it close to my chest and that made her laugh all night!

I am off to Munich to work tomorrow and will miss London – and my man- he has been wonderful keeping me well fed and watered as I run from the flat and go to work night after night.

I am never back at the flat until way after midnight, as I always end up at The Groucho after my gigs. I met some cracking comedy people and had great nights hanging out with Simon Pegg and his lovely Glaswegian wife Maureen. On Friday night I caught up with my old mate Allan Carr (Friday Night Project TV show) and even shared a quick ciggie break with Tim Roth! (Who was lovely and very down to earth, he is a top guy)

The best part was meeting all the people who came to the Soho Theatre shows after the gig. The audience were the best I could hope for and are such a great crowd.

On Sunday night I was on at the Komedia in Brighton with the delicious Topping and Butch, their show is just a joy to behold.

I am having a great time here – talk soon!

I am so knackered – I am also so happy. My show at the Soho Theatre is selling great and my first night was packed. I love the Soho Theatre.

I was tired from running around all day, you see I had to get up early (again) and head off to the NZ High Commission and organise my work visa, which I did.

Though I had some trepid thoughts about this week, as the second of April was the day I finally outlived my mammy. She was murdered in April 1^st 1982 and died at age 47.

I am finally 47 years old and have lived past her death date. That is a wonderful thing, although when I mentioned this to my husband he merely said “the night isn’t over yet” like I could be dead by midnight! He was joking and I am still here!

I am staying in Westminster in the amazing St. Johns flats and I adore this place. You can lie in bed and hear Big Ben clang its ancient bells, it’s so peaceful. Husband loves it as well. He likes the area.

I have two more nights at Soho Theatre then am off to Brighton on Sunday, then Munich on Monday and back to London for the rest of my working trip.

Life is good, I am older than my mum and I never had a nightmare last night!

April 22^nd-26^th Wellington San Francisco Bathhouse

April 29^th- May 10^th Classic Basement Theatre Auckland

The flight is extremely long and how I would love it to get an upgrade!

I can’t be the only person who ever wished this. I could never really justify the costs of going club class – so maybe- just maybe; some nice person who works for Air New Zealand would read this blog and kindly upgrade me?

I know it’s a long shot! But you never know?

I will give you a signed copy of my book, I will kiss you, I will leave you my best shoes in my will when I die…I will donate my kidneys to you!

Is there anybody out there works for Air New Zealand? (Janey gets off her knees).

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