Advice I'd Give my Younger Self

Please have a listen to my interview on the What's Offstage? programme, Soho Radio

Clearly channeling my Nana Silcox today...

I had a thoroughly good time this morning being interviewed by Nina Davis on Soho Radio. We discussed Cafe de Paris, my book about entertaining in Iraq and Afghanistan coming out, my association with the start up Getclipcrowd media curation app, my floaty high notes, my stress rash, my fall over the timber that the gardeners had left in the kitchen where I'm house-sitting. Nina also played a track of me singing, which I did like, nicely! But don't take my word for any of that, have a listen via the link above. Perhaps you've already had a listen, seeing as you're this far down the page. Perhaps you're going to go back and have a listen when you've finished reading. Perhaps not. Perhaps you won't finish reading, either.
I went to Piccadilly from Finsbury Park, reading The Sea, The Sea, the one Iris Murdoch novel I've never been able to get through before. I've tried and failed with it since 1983. I'm loving it this time around. And it occurred to me that it's now thirty years since I opened the first annual Rag Week Revue at Guildhall dancing Swan Lake with Peter Snipp as my Prince. I went to Guildhall from Finsbury Park that night, as I had student digs in Muswell HIll and would catch the W7 from the Broadway to Wells Terrace. I was in the middle of my Iris Murdoch phase at the time. I'm almost certain that I read The Nice and the Good on the way to and from that first Swan Lake.
And during the tube journey today I thought what I might have had to say to my twenty year old self.
I would have said this: Remember how mum and dad used to take you to that restaurant in Victoria when you were seven and you would always have Chicken Hawaiian Style and a Fanta? And mum would put a sugar cube in the Fanta to take the fizz away in case it brought on an asthma attack? Well, your future life will be like that risk of an asthma attack: ever a stress. And you're wrong in thinking that if and when you can earn a living from performing, all will be well.
In life there are no sugar-cube-in-Fanta solutions.

Comments

Some Favourite Books - But Please don't Lesbify Dame Agatha's Denouements

I'm too tired to read anything new so have been round the libraries taking out my default-setting books to read over Christmas. These include: The Pursuit of Love , Nancy Mitford. The blood-stained entrenching tool displayed above the fireplace, child-hunting over Shenley Common, Jassy traumatising the local children telling them the facts of life. The scene at the Gare du Nord where Linda sits on her luggage to cry and meets Fabrice always takes me back to the first reading of the novel, sitting wrapped in my Welsh Tweed shawl, in a tiny bedroom on the eighteenth floor of a high-rise in Kennington. The Pursuit of Love is romantic, hilarious and bleakly eccentric. Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady , Florence King. When I entertained troops on the American base in Kandahar, four South Carolina army captains made me an Honorary Southern Belle. Madame Galina, they said, in all her unreasonable, high-blooded, simpering flounce reminded them of the girls

My Mate Jamie-Ray Hartshorne

I've been noticing that alongside photos of Jamie-Ray being a lead in Altar Boys , creating Change My Body UK TM , working the door at Freedom - and clearly asking people passing by wherever that rockpool may be to snap a double-bicep - this sort of thing is cropping up on his social media: We're in The Diner, Jamestown Road, Camden. He's between tour dates of The Bodyguard, and meetings to discuss sportswear and creatine endorsements. The latter, he says, being all about making his product better. Between sips of his peanut butter milkshake (he's allowing himself dairy today in my honour - I don't quite know how to take that) he says in his soft Brum, 'I've signed up for a major Muay Thai event in Thailand next February. I'm going up against one of the Thai fighters. That's the only real way to gain any respect in the fighting world. That's why you've been noticing the combat photos. I've been going for tr

Where do Babies Come From? How we Learn about Sex...Book Just Launched on Amazon Kindle

Click to buy the book 'My spoken material is about the facts of life,' I was explaining to the Mother Superior. 'I've been asking people what they were told, how they were told it and did they ask questions. Terribly funny...' During my Where do Babies Come From? talk at the Metrodeco Café, Brighton, a superfluity of nuns stopped at the window to listen. In the street later that week one of them glided up and said how much they had enjoyed hearing me sing. ' And we wonder, might you please sing something for our charity evening?' I said, of course, sister. The nun nodded. 'That's very good to hear. But just to correct you: not sister - but Mother Superior.' She then asked about the spoken material in the show, in case some might be included on the night? I explained that I had been reading from my forthcoming book. While on tour I had asked people how they had

Iestyn Edwards Wonders...is it Lumpy or Runny?

Search This Blog