Yes, it truly is December. I know this because everywhere I look is fake snow, bright baubles and scented shopping malls. I do love it though.

Husband isn’t a big Christmas fan, he has made it clear the tree can go up, but it mustn’t get in the way of the flat screen telly and it better not flash too much, as that exacerbates his Aspergers Syndrome.

I told him that him talking about the happy Christmas tree exacerbates my hormones and makes me feel like taking him straight to punchy town, he told me such a place didn’t exist.
I said it was a metaphor – he said he didn’t like metaphors – I said “shut up or I will poke your eye with a Christmas bauble” it went on for ages, suffice to say I won and he dragged the tree from the cupboard with an annoyed face.

Every year we go through the same crap. I don’t want a gift as I don’t need anything and I can buy stuff myself. He doesn’t want anything as we can never get him what he wants (his own house with padded corners, a butler and a Lazy-ee Boy seat) so we compromise by just buying Ashley stuff.

She loves it and has made a list of what she wants. Husband who is great at searching online for cheap deals, ends up buying two things and getting loads of stuff thrown in for free, that’s Aspergers and too much time on your hands as far as I am concerned.
He doesn’t have the ‘interesting’ Aspergers Syndrome, just the annoying type.

Why can’t he just count cocktail sticks thrown on the floor? That’s a great party trick, yet his Aspergers Syndrome doesn’t accommodate such tomfoolery, he is just good at repeating verbatim all the stuff I say in anger.

He would make a great actor if he could just tell his face which emotion his words were displaying.
Anyway I must stop saying things about him; he will find out and smile but shout fiercely, which is disconcerting to say the least.
I have just realised – that’s why he doesn’t get on well with cats! They also smile and bite you at the same time, or wag their tails and purr.
Cats are Aspergic animals and don’t mix well with other Aspergic sufferers.
The past week has been busy as hell; I gigged at Edinburgh Stand and got the most awesome review…

"The queen of Scottish comedy...A bold, take-no-prisoners type of comic... Comic gold. Brilliantly painted scenarios, uproarious and touching in equal measure.... Intelligent and skilful comedy of the highest order."
(Edinburgh Evening News, 2nd December 2009)

That is a lovely thing and cheers me up no end. It nice when you get good things said about you, especially when you work hard!

I wrote a comedy article for a newspaper this week as well and did warm up at BBC which can be tiring and long, yet fulfilling.

Am off out today to get myself a pair of leather gloves, as this is what I am buying myself for Christmas.

Things are happening in my life that keep making me look back, its not good news. Recently when I was in London it happened. I immediately recalled the first time I went to London to stay with my pal Finlay.

It was 1994; I was hardly doing any comedy and was running my pub at the time. Just the sheer excitement of being away from the pub, husband and my child made me giddy with happiness.

Soho looked like the most amazing place in the world; the big bright lights of Piccadilly dazzled me like the oik I was back then.

It was fantastic to be free from domesticity and just be me and just be with my pals. I recall looking in Time Out magazine and wondering how I could possibly contain my bursting exhilaration at the thought MY NAME one day might be in those listings as a comic at a club, it just made me foam at the mouth.

Years later when I wrote articles and was featured in Time Out, I giggled and had a wee heart warming feeling, recalling the Janey who thought that was THE DIZZY heights of fame, and it was a good feeling.

But somehow I now feel a bit flat, it might be because I am getting older and am becoming tired whilst travelling, I am not sure what this feeling is, but I miss the excitement of being so amazed at doing stand up.

Does that make sense?

You need to know I LOVE doing comedy; I feel I am finally me onstage. It is the best feeling in the world and I honestly am blessed that I get paid for doing something I think is easy and wonderful; I know I shouldn’t say that. I should say how comedy is so technical, a skill that takes years to hone and blah blah about the art- but I love comedy and I it doesn’t feel like hard work to me.

Please don’t take from this that I am poo-poohing my art, or being flippant about all the years its taken me to get to a decent level, but I just get worried someone is going to walk up and say “you are just talking, why is that a job?” and I am scuppered! I have been told be many people in my life growing up to ‘shut up’ and now I get paid for talking, that makes me giggle inside, yet there is this awful foreboding feeling inside me.
Do I finally have depression and my brain can’t compute what that actually means? Can that happen?

I have never had depression before and always rail against it as I have been surrounded by depressed people my whole life and they really annoy me (sorry if that’s sounds unsympathetic, but if you live with someone with depression it basically means when they are sad and don’t want to go out- you are NOT going to the beach either and You don’t have depression) There is nothing for people who DON’T have depression but live with people who have depression –they get therapy- you get moaned at.

So I don’t know why I am feeling strange and odd lately. Maybe I am just going through an odd phase, yet the only thing that makes me happy is going onstage.

Ashley is all grown up and writing for a living and doesn’t need me so much, husband is happy and fine and I might be suffering from some empty nest thing. As everyone knows how much I love being with my daughter and I talk about her all the time. I know I do…but you have no idea how proud I am that she is just lovely and funny and such good company to be around.

I think I might be having a mid life crisis, I may end up like those women who get their hair cut like Suzie Quatro and start wearing fringey leather jackets and start visiting the Hard Rock Café’s all over the world collecting beer mats, tee shirts and getting photos taken with Jimmy Hendrix’s guitar. Can that happen to women overnight?

Why is looking back to me being all glowy about comedy and visiting new cities not making me happy?

Or maybe I shouldn’t write a blog in a damp Manchester hotel room with a really bad period pain and a colonoscopy to look forward to? It might be that then eh?

I haven’t had a decent lie in since London. Honestly you would think I had a proper job or something, having to get up early and be places is the very reason I became a comedian. I do nowt!

This morning I had to get up and go see the specialist about my ‘bowel’ issue suffice to say I am getting a colonoscopy quite soon which I am sure is sexual to a few hard nosed politicians yet evil to me.

I have NEVER found excitement in shoving things up my back bottom, seriously -its exit only- and those folk who shove hamsters and lava lamps up theirs need executed or put in a special ward. Ok that might have sounded extreme, but I am having a strange day as a pigeon attacked me as I slept.

Here is the story; my bed is beneath my window, so my pillows are basically where your knees would be if you were hanging out of my top floor windows. I like it that way but sometimes I push the windows open full and birds come up under the eaves, spot the gaping window and do a wee peep in. They see me in bed two feet away from them then don’t understand they need to be quiet and let out a big loud squawk or make a pigeon warbly noise. We stare at each other as my eyes open, big fat bird sitting on the inside of my window ledge, me lying on the pillow hoping it doesn’t come any nearer. I throw up an arm it shits on my pillow and flies out into the back court. That what usually happens, but today was funny.

I slept after the hospital appointment and I woke up at 11am to see two pigeons pecking at my jewellery box on my window ledge. They clearly fancied a wee wander in and tapped across the shelve ten inches above my skull and then sat there warbling to each other.

The noise woke me up, I gently lifted my head, the bigger bird panicked and just fell out of the window…screeching…like it forgot how to fly, but the sassy smaller bird pecked my velvet jewellery box and eyed me side on. It was challenging me! I am sure it was a ‘she’ as ‘she’ gaily tip- tapped across my window shelf, shit on it and deftly flew into the grey Glasgow sky.

This is what I miss about Glasgow, the sheer audacity of its pigeons.

It is good to be home though despite the colonoscopy and the pigeons.