A SAD ANNIVERSARY

The 21 minute train journey from Cardiff Central to Bridgend on 7^th September is a slow ache: the remembrance of decades past, as I travel to the funeral of my oldest friend of 45 years, Shelley Thomas. 

The taxi takes me past Hope Baptist Church, where we acted in plays, went to the youth club, attended After Church Fellowship, and where we were both baptised as adults by the Reverend Euros Miles. 

The place where I first heard her sing and where we bonded over our dislike of a bullying fellow soprano; where she was married to the man who, after 21 years, would unexpectedly walk out one day and stun her heart; where we laughed, cried and shared gossip over the scandals that took place between those hallowed walls.  

   

Then there is Nolton Street, but the shop where we bought Strongbow cider and Breaker lager to drink behind Brynteg School bike sheds before discos is no longer there – the school where, in commemoration of Remembrance Day, we broke into convulsive laughter when the names of the dead were read out as we waited for “Harold Hare”. 

   

Neither is the Welcome to Town, where we had our first legal drinks – and, at a couple of months short of our 18^th birthdays, the first illegal ones (three halves of Kronenberg: we thought we were the Devil’s work).

   

I remember the Three Horseshoes, which is still there: our regular Friday night haunt and where Shelley met Des and I met Adrian from Cefn Cribwr Rugby Club; the Embassy Cinema, where we had our first jobs long gone now, as is Drones Night Club, where we waited outside for our dads to pick us up at 11.30pm. The rugby club is still at the Brewery Field, our main focus of social activity and where we sat one freezing January afternoon holding our ears, having decided to get them pierced on a whim.

   

I arrive at Coychurch Crematorium still in a state of disbelief, sobbing that on 31^st August my friend passed peacefully away following a battle with cancer. The queue to get in is huge, and standing out are the jackets of Cowbridge Male Voice Choir, for which she was Musical Director for 32 years. There are ex-pupils from Brynteg and we try to forget why we are there by reminiscing about the old days. When we finally make it through the doors, the sound of the choir surges and I can’t control my sobbing. It’s a recording with music chosen by Shelley and she hadn’t wanted her “boys” to sing in person, as she knew they would fall apart. Many of them do, wiping their eyes and putting their arms around each other. There is standing room only. 

   

The Reverend Euros Miles is doing the service, and it is comforting. On the way out, I pass the covered coffin and say goodbye. It is one of the worst moments of my life. 

   

I first met Shelley in 1969 when we were both 10 years old. My family had just moved to Bridgend and, as it had been in Newport, where we had lived for seven years, the church became the focal point of considerable family activity. At 13, we joined the After Church Fellowship, largely to gain greater access to said boys. One night, we both struck lucky and “snogged” our respective loves. Shelley had better luck than I did, as the mother of my chosen delight went hysterical; not only did he have glandular fever, she had been “saving” him for the organist’s daughter. That turned out well. She landed the married minister. Karma, eh?

   

Shelley and I were both pupils at Bridgend Girls’ Grammar in 1970 – the last year before schools turned comprehensive. She was a better all-rounder than I was and, at Brynteg Comprehensive, got put into the ‘B’ stream; I was in ‘C’, which meant I didn’t get to do Latin (which I really wanted to do – yes, really) and was mixed in with the secondary modern set who, resentful that having been top dogs under the old system, were suddenly relegated to ‘D’. It was a miserable time, but when we started our ‘O’ Level courses in 1975, Shelley and I shared several classes – most notably, Music and Welsh. She played the cello; I played the clarinet. We travelled to Swansea to see Andre Previn conduct and met him afterwards; we saw David Essex in concert in Cardiff’s Capitol Theatre.

   

We liked Welsh, but didn’t love it. One of the few times I was told off during my whole school career was sitting next to Shelley and trying to pass sweets under the desk. Mr James, the teacher, and mid-way through regaling yet another Welsh tale, was furious with us and looked as if he would burst a blood vessel. “Right! That’s the last time I tell you any tales about the Mabinogion!” Mission accomplished, thought Shelley and I, secretly holding up our thumbs in delight.

   

By today’s standards, we were veritable angels, but back then we considered ourselves quite naughty. We knew that some of our teachers played badminton on Tuesday nights and drove to the school when they were playing. Armed with ready threaded needles and cotton, we snuck into the changing room and sewed up the sleeves and trouser legs of their clothes. We were so easily entertained. One Valentine’s Day, we made a recording – a mix of narrative and music clips – saying what we thought of all the teachers (all very favourable – we weren’t that daft).

   

We were both made librarians and, to this day, ex-pupils remember our authoritarian regime. I in particular loved shouting “Please keep the noise down in the library!” and, during break and lunchtime, we would share the office with the 6^th Form boys who were allowed free use of it.

   

We weren’t the kinds of girls who cheated at anything, but stressed at our mock ‘A’ Levels coming up, we saw one morning the Head of History taking our exam papers to the library. At lunchtime, we went to collect the keys to open up as usual and made a note of which years’ past papers our class would be taking. Then we looked them up and prepared in advance. Shelley did worse than she had when she revised; I fainted on the morning of the exam and had to sit for it at a different time, dreading that I would be given a different paper. I wasn’t. But the stress of cheating just wasn’t worth it.

   

Shelley had much better luck with boys than I did. She was very attractive and had a stunning figure. She was wearing substantially filled bras while I still looked as if I was carrying around contact lenses. I was crazy about a boy called Jeff in the Sixth Form. One weekend, Shelley came to stay at my parents’ house and, on the Monday morning in school, said: ‘Jac, I’ve got something to tell you and I’m dreading it’s going to spoil our friendship. I’m going out with Jeff.’ I felt sick but just said ‘Okay’. At that point we passed Jeff and Shelley gave him the thumbs-up sign. I didn’t feel angry, just defeated, as I did with the opposite sex throughout my entire young life.

   

All the boys really did love Shelley. I was small, a bit spotty, and carried myself with the lack of confidence I undoubtedly had, physically. Shelley did gymnastics, rode horses, and was taller than me by four inches. Several boys asked her to the Sixth Form dance (I was told by the organiser that even if I got a ticket, I wouldn’t be allowed in because I looked too young) and she was probably the most popular girl in the school. When she sang I Don’t Know How to Love Him at the annual concert, the Sixth Form boys whooped with joy when she got to ‘I’ve had so many men before.’ When I became involved with a predatory teacher, Shelley was my confidante, and many secrets of that time have gone with her.

   

It’s in that I feel an emotional limb has been cut off. I visited her in hospital two weeks before she died and, as we had often done, we talked a great deal about our later teenage years. I told her I had been looking through my old diaries when I moved house and she told me she had burned all hers. Her secrets are not mine to tell, but when you have shared events and emotions with someone during your most formative years and then they are gone, it’s as if there is an afterlife of secrets: a sort of third person in the relationship that will forever remain untouchable.

   

We learned about sex. It mystified us. Coming from our strong church backgrounds, neither of us had any grounding in such matters. The school didn’t help. They one day sat us down in the hall and showed us the movie Don’t Look Now that featured steamy sex scenes between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. We came away with nothing other than a feeling that Venice might be a nice place to visit.

   

Shelley went to Aberystwyth University and read Music; I went to Cardiff to read English. We stayed in touch throughout and, after doing a post-graduate teaching course, we began our careers at the same time: Shelley in Maesteg Comprehensive, me in Wantage. I gave up teaching after two years, returned to university in Lancaster to do a Master’s and then moved to London. Shelley stayed in Maesteg until she retired two years ago.

   

We always stayed in touch and she supported me throughout my seemingly bizarre decisions to live in many different places. We met up from time to time and the advent of Facebook made it easier to stay in touch. When we spoke on the phone, the years always rolled away: we had a language embedded in our history that needed no translator.

   

Shelley found teaching increasingly stressful and when her husband walked out, she endured many more years of stress such as a divorce invariably brings. She was completely blindsided by the break-up and, in hospital, she said that she felt that the stress of that and teaching had contributed to her cancer.

   

When we both hit 50, I encouraged her to change direction. I had just decided to move to Los Angeles, but she said she had decided to ‘sit it out until I’m 60.’ I queried why she would want to endure another 10 years of unhappiness, but she was adamant that she wanted to wait for her full pension and then enjoy retirement. 

   

She held out until she was 56 and then decided to forego the full pension. Within a short time of leaving the job she had been in for 34 years, two years ago she was diagnosed with bowel cancer. Soon, it went to her liver and, when I last saw her she said it had reached her lungs. No chemo was touching any of it. The only time she mentioned death was when she spoke of worry for her mother ‘if anything happens to me.’ Three years previous, Shelley’s younger sister had died, and her father was also unwell and on the same ward. 

   

Shelley’s friend of 38 years, Hilary – her “bestie” – is, of course, devastated. I did not have Shelley as much in adult life, and I am glad she had the closeness of someone with whom she enjoyed many happy times as, indeed, she did with the choir, whom she adored as much as they did her. Despite the passing years and our changed lives, I always called her my best friend, and to the computer security question ‘What is the name of your best friend?’ I have always written “Shelley”. 

   

She bore her illness with the same fortitude and resilience as she did everything. Despite being a conductor, she was a very private person and, unless pushed, would not outwardly want to delve too deeply. ‘Ah, well, there we are then,’ she would say, when I went into major self-analysis mode. But she did think deeply and she was always intuitive, understanding and sympathetic to me. I hope I was to her, too. 

   

When I saw her in the hospital, we shed many tears at the start of two hours. At the end, I could see she was both tired and starting to get emotional. I hugged her and decided not to turn around one last time as I left. 

   

Despite the shock and sadness, I am blessed in having had a best friend who knew me better than anyone and whose love will never die. 

Forty-five years is a long time in friendship, but already this feels like an eternity in grief.

   

Goodbye, my friend.

   

MY PARCEL, MY RULES

And so, to my weekend awakening. 

A couple of days listening to insanely talented people. 

Amy Wadge and Mika on my iPhone most of the way from LA to New York (I think Love You When I’m Drunk might be my favourite song of all time, Mika); performances by Michael Feinstein and my friends Lyn Mackay and Phillip Arran at Feinstein’s/54 Below; catching up with the faultless TV show that is Suits.

   

I want to sing. I want to act. I want to perform. I want it all. But you know what I realised? I’m missing what’s right in front of my nose. I’m a writer. I’ve always been a writer. It’s what I do best and, more to the point, it’s the gift I’ve been given. 

So what I need to do is sit down and smell the roses that were handed to me. Enjoy the gift that fell into my lap and stop trying to hijack the ones that were given to others. Pass the parcel.

   

Now, at the risk of sounding like a real numpty for deconstructing that seemingly innocent childhood party game, I’m going to try anyway.

   

My close friend Julia (we’ve known each other since we were foetuses; she’s like a sister to me) had a birthday party for her twin boys, then aged four. I was put in charge of music during Pass the Parcel and had my back to the kids. I was quickly admonished for turning the music off as and when I chose, parents telling me that so and so would cry if he/she didn’t get to unwrap a layer; worse, that one child had to get the final gift or the whole party would be ruined by her tantrum.

   

WHAAAAAAAT? Pass the Parcel is fixed? Why had it taken me over 40 years to work this out? Was that the real reason I never got the prize when I was growing up? Because, having won everything else (Musical Chairs? My arse could hit a seat at 50mph), I was prevented from winning yet another game and outdoing the Also Rans?

   

I am mega competitive; I always have been. It’s strange, coming from a background in which girls of my generation were encouraged to go into teaching because you could (a) be at home at the end of the day to cook for your offspring (b) return to work when you have sprouted your own offspring, and (c) . . . well, any other excuse to keep you away from the real work that men did.

   

It genuinely never occurred to me that Pass the Parcel was fixed. Cheating is totally off my radar; that’s why I am easily conned. When I went to see David Essex in Godspell in 1971, I bought a glow-worm from a street seller in Carnaby Street. Five whole pounds it cost me, my entire budget for the day. 

It was brilliant. It ran all over the seller’s body and, at 12 years old and in London for the first time, I was mesmerised. When I got on the bus to travel back to Bridgend, I cried as the six inch piece of fluff sat limply in my lap, alongside a piece of paper with the instructions, “Attach a piece of invisible thread to yourself and the glow-worm and watch it squirm”, or words to that effect.

   

Gullible? Stupid? Naïve? I just like things to be what they say they are on the tin. It’s called honesty. I’d be a s**t prosecutor.

   

Back to Pass the Parcel. Cheating aside, it’s a rather interesting metaphor for life. We have our chances and we can take them or lose them. We can look sadly on when other people get to unwrap what seems to have been handed to them effortlessly.

   

Or we can Pass the Parcel that was never meant for us in the first place. Yes, I have performed and I love it. But I will never be an Amy Wadge or a Mika. What I can do is enjoy the gifts that others have been given without wishing to have or try to have those same treasures. I can admire without wishing to covet.

   

Because, and this hit me like (forgive the cliché) lightning over this weekend: I already have my parcel. I’m a writer. And I’m a damned special one. I am lucky enough to have unwrapped my parcel very early in life and I am so grateful that there is not one day that I wake up wishing to be someone else. 

To be honest, I don’t know how anyone can bear not to be me.

   

There are enough parcels to go round. 

Music, maestro! Now get off that chair before I throttle you.

  

  

  

VIVA LOST VEGAS

You’d think I’d have learned by now, but it’s true that there’s no fool like an old fool. 

I went to LA for a holiday in November 2008 to celebrate my 50^th birthday, and here I am in the USA 10 years later with my Green Card. That’s some mini-break. But despite the passing of a decade, I still fall for the c**p.

   

I learned quickly in LA that nothing is what it seems. Most people you meet are of the Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda kind, always rushing to meetings and busy busy busy, but more in a Chaucer’s Sergeant of the Lawe from the Canterbury Tales kind of way: “Nowher so bisy a man as he ther nas/And yet he semed bisier than he was.” For those not fluent in Middle English: basically, the Sergeant’s full of s**t.

   

People keep asking me how my recording session last week went. Facebook friends will know that I posted about going into a music studio for the first time and how excited but nervous I was about the prospect. I’m a trained singer but wanted to get a couple of songs professionally done and so asked on Facebook if there was anyone who could help.

   

I’m not going to name the site because they actually do a lot to help ex-pats and it is no judgment on them for what you are about to read. So much online depends on one taking people and their work at face value, so I’m not going to admonish them for what transpired. I blame nothing but my own naivete.

   

The person who contacted me – let’s call her the X Woman – told me that she would be able to record me in her studio in Hollywood. My friends will know that if there is one word guaranteed to have me diving into my purse and throwing cash at strangers, it’s the word Hollywood. In fact, it was the sight of those nine letters in the hills that got me here 10 years ago, after the screenwriter Blake Snyder e-mailed me to say “You belong in Hollywood” after reading some of my work. 

Well, that’s a slight exaggeration: it was a one sentence logline, but it was still enough to hurl me onto the Virgin Atlantic Upper Class flight and into the five star Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where I blew three months’ redundancy money in 10 days. Hey ho.

   

So, you can imagine the joy that rippled through me at the words Hollywood and studio, in the same sentence yegods! Would I want to move to Vegas when I got my residency? Would I be able to stand the heat? How would I cope with the smoking everywhere?

   

I took a long time choosing and downloading my backing tracks, but they were all too slow and in the wrong key. I selected the best I could – Susan Maughan’s Bobby’s Girl and Cilla Black’s You’re My World. I listened to the originals over and over. I practised them over and over. How hard could this be? “Delta? One way ticket to Vegas, please.”

   

Having decided, some weeks previous, to audition for The Voice USA and encouraged by my friend Ruth on an apartment-hunting trip to LA, I’d filled in the form late at night. Ruth assured me that she’d be my friend in the wings, telling the viewing audience about my tough life and how many obstacles I had overcome on my “journey”. We rehearsed it quite a few times. Alcohol had been consumed.

   

I forgot all about it until an e-mail arrived on a Friday saying I had a call on the Saturday afternoon. I phoned Ruth. She had no recollection of any of it. Nevertheless, I booked the flight, the hotel, and was 15 minutes away from the airport until I remembered one crucial thing: I didn’t have any songs. After two drinks at the Planet Hollywood bar at LAX, I was so stressed about messing up my Vegas residency, I caught a cab back to my apartment.

   

But I decided, instead, to apply online. There are a lot of things on my bucket list before I hit 60 in November. I’ve already achieved one – getting a Green Card – and auditioning for The Voice USA is another.

   

So, having chosen my songs, I set off for the Hollywood studio to record. I swear I could have got to Canada in half the time it took the Lyft driver to get me there. North Hollywood ain’t Hollywood, let me tell you. En route, I babbled incessantly about my forthcoming recording session and, by the time I arrived, I was in The Zone.

   

With trepidation, I went up the steps and was greeted by the X Woman and her tiny apartment. Her first words were, “You don’t mind the cat, do you?”

   

I hate cats. I am allergic to cats. She swept the creature into her arms and held it out towards me as a means of introduction. ‘I won’t touch it, thanks, I am allergic to them,” I proffered.

   

“It’s a hypo-allergenic cat,” she said. 

Oh, right. It’s still an effing pussy, I resisted crying out.

   

She led me into her bedroom. 

“This is my studio,” she said. I looked around for the keyboards, controls, overweight guys called called Brad with headphones on. Nothing. Then she opened a door to the “studio”. A broom cupboard. Actually, not as big as a broom cupboard. A shoe cupboard, housing a microphone and a computer screen. And about 20 degrees hotter than the 78 degree heat outside. I looked up at the scruffy foam hanging from the ceiling. “Is it soundproofed?” I asked. “Oh yes,” said the X Woman. 

Good. No one will be able to hear me scream.

   

A giraffe with laryngitis could not sound worse than the sounds I managed to emit during the next grueling two and a half hours. My voice isn’t in the best condition at the moment, but hearing myself back made me want to cut out my tongue and never produce another sound for as long as I live. I was sweating profusely throughout, suffocating, and no amount of tinkering with her computer six inches from her bed helped the X Woman make me sound remotely . . . well, bearable.

   

She thought my problem was support and entered the studio to put her hand on my stomach so that I could push against it. I nearly cracked my skull falling into the screen because I’m a veritable amazon when it comes to strength. Heck, I do boxing training. I can lift grown men.

   

“I really think this song can work for you,” said the X Woman, about the Cilla number. “You’re singing much better than you did at the beginning.”

   

No, I wasn’t. Now, the giraffe was making Florence Foster Jenkins sound like Maria Callas.   

   

I stumbled out of there $150 lighter and headed for a bar to down a pint of Stella. Cilla would have loved the story. 

As for me, I live and learn. 

Or don’t. 

Vegas, you’ll just have to wait a little longer.

  

  

D'YOU WANNA BE IN MY GANG?

Tears flowed a bit today. 

Ludicrous, I know. I have a great family and wonderful friends, but it suddenly got me, and not for the first time. I’ve never been a part of an “in” crowd – and I really, really want to belong.

   

It was the pictures of Simon Cowell being given his Hollywood star that set me off. Don’t get me wrong. I’m so thrilled for him and he really deserves it. I’ve known him for a couple of decades and he’s always been lovely to me . . . but I’ve never been part of his  IN crowd. 

The people he takes to Ascot. Wimbledon. On his boat. Who he invites to his Christmas and Summer parties. I have my theories as to whom he chooses to have around him – I just wish I’d been one of them.

   

But then I’ve never been the IN crowd. Much as I love my married friends, for the most part they hang out with other married couples. My single friends hang out with people they’ve known for decades or those they work with. My family have their own lives - as they should; indeed, as everyone should. Nobody I have worked with in over three decades has ever invited me to their house.

   

Coming up to 60, though, has made me a bit melancholy. I have no regrets about not having been married or not having had children. I am extremely close to my friends’ children, who (obviously) think I am the coolest person on the planet (little do they know that if I were their mother, I would be ten times the monster than the one they have). But I’ve always wanted to be part of a “gang” (and not in a bad way): like the people hanging round the bar in Cheers, or the four women in Sex and the City.

   

I’ve spent most of my life alone as a writer, which has undoubtedly diminished my gang potential. But I get on really, really well with gangs when I get the chance. I think you’d be hard pushed to find any TV crew who would say I was anything less than a joy to work with – and I them. I love the camaraderie, the bonding, the endless laughter. I’ve yet to do a shoot on which we were not all in tears at the end.

   

I just want it to go on. And on. And on. I’m never more lonely than the “It’s a wrap" moment, the lights go off and you’re left with the sound that is less than a whisper when the last crew member departs.

  

In school, I was never part of the IN crowd, either: the kid outside the Wendy House while her friends played with plastiscine tea-cakes inside; the one who never got to be picked for the hockey team, despite having scored three goals in the last game (“It never plays to be too competitive in life,’ Mrs Davies, the games teacher, told me); the girl who never got the attention of boys because I was short, spotty and my breasts still looked like a couple of contact lenses when I was 16.

   

I’m not feeling sorry for myself or sad; I’m just pondering what it takes to become part of an IN crowd. Maybe it doesn’t matter. But I’m embarking on my 7^th decade and still feeling like an outsider. Is that why I run, city to city, country to country?

  

I have no idea, but in recent months, I can honestly say I’ve never felt so isolated and in need of a gang.

   

I was thinking back today of a song that was big when I was growing up – Gary Glitter’s D’you wanna Be in My Gang? Bad example, in his case, but I remember thinking I just wanted to be in one. Anything. To belong.

   

“Only connect the prose and the passion,” said Forster in Howard’s End. 

If only it were that easy.