So I want you to take a seat, whether it be in the comfort of your own sofa, on the top deck of the bus, the Tube (so you don’t have to make eye contact with anybody) or on the throne of the house (the toilet). I want you to get comfortable and get ready to laugh, cry and maybe even learn as I chat to you about some of the highs and lows of my life.
So yeah, so far, sitting on my arse has worked out pretty well for me. That’s why I always think:
Chapter One
EVERYONE STARTS OUT AS AN ARSEHOLE
Everyone starts out as an arsehole (we form around it in the womb).
Down the sides of sofas, underneath carpets, eaten by children and pets alike … somewhere in the world there are over a million missing Scrabble tiles.
The first nativity scene didn’t appear until 1223. It is a re-enactment of Jesus’s birthday (which was not actually 25 December, it was more likely 17 June, scientists now think).
It all started with a game of Scrabble (as most good tales do). The year 1990, me mam Elisabeth, known to her friends as Betty, then aged twenty, had black Tina Turner-inspired permed hair and stood pretty and petite at five foot two. My mam has always had golden sun-kissed skin, which she normally hides under layers and layers of black clothes. With Disney princess features of a button nose, little round face and blue eyes she is just beautiful. Now we all get a mix of our parents and from my mam I took my monobrow, my coarse hair and little sticky-out ears. But I would also like to think I get my intelligence from her. She can digest a whole book in one day, she can do a Sudoku faster than anyone I know and can complete a Rubik’s cube in less than ten minutes. Despite this she still loves trash TV like Mob Wives and Toddlers and Tiaras. She is such a fussy eater and eats nothing but beige food (chips, rice, bread – even her condiments like salad cream and mayo are beige). I definitely get my sarcasm from her; her tongue is so sharp she can cut glass with it.
My dad, Mark, who everyone knows as Toffo, was then twenty-four with an Alan Shearer haircut (that’s what he asks for when he goes to the barbers). Standing at five foot seven he has the cheekiest chappy smile you have ever seen. My dad isn’t really a sun worshipper and has what I like to call ginger skin, translucently pale with freckles (I can say this because I love gingers and I inherited this skin from him). He loves historical documentaries and football and I get my passion for museums and conspiracy theories from him. He eats nothing beige and instead eats anything that has once had a pulse (he also doesn’t believe in sell-by dates; he thinks it’s a conspiracy against consumers).
They are the complete opposites in every aspect but that’s why they work so well together. They had no idea that when they first laid eyes on each other in 1988, as their eyes met across the Queen’s pub dance floor and the sound of ‘The Only Way Is Up’ by Yazz and the Plastic Population filled their ears, they had found their soulmate. And that just two years later, on this day, ‘the Scrabble day’, the pair of them would have just found out they were both expecting a little baby girl (me).
Undecided on names, they did what every couple does – made a brew, sat themselves down on their very nineties brown floral sofa and played a game of Scrabble to determine who would pick the order of the names of their firstborn precious child. They had both already chosen names from their favourite movies to narrow the search down.
My mam had chosen Gone with the Wind, more specifically Scarlett O’Hara; the insecure, spoilt, intelligent heroine who is hopeless around men and who made a smashing dress out of a pair of curtains (I feel like this namesake explains a lot about how I ended up, especially the A* I got in GCSE textiles for making a corset).
My dad had chosen his favourite movie too. I know what you’re thinking: did he choose a classic dad film, like The Godfather – did he want to name me after Diane Keaton? Or maybe Bonnie from Bonnie and Clyde? Oh no, not my dad, because that would be far too normal. Nope, my dad is a huge sci-fi fan and his favourite movie involves a woman giving birth through her stomach to a freaky, phlegm-covered creature from God knows what planet. That’s right, Sigourney Weaver in Alien. (I feel like this other namesake explains my love of UFOs and why I have never been brave enough to give birth.)
Thank God my
