Me. You

by Dawn French

  My desire to have real conversations with my friends and family with a marked absence of hyperbole or flattery or cynicism became very strong. It must have been trying for them. It was as if I was pulling on my moorings, checking they were safe. I had no place for string, only sturdy rope. I needed resilient, industrial tensile-strength chums with enduring staying power. I worked out who they were in my forties and miraculously, they are still there today, wrapped around me, mooring me up forever. Thank you, God, or whoever, for all the right things they constantly say and do. And well done me for making heroically correct choices.

  It has been these few noble mountaineers who have taught me the following:

  • There is no need to be perfect, ever

  • Someone else’s achievements are not your failings

  • Someone else’s mistakes don’t belong to you

  • Every now and then, a bit of rejection does you good

  • Don’t resist pain, else it grows and becomes suffering, which is tons worse

  • Trust your instincts

  • Resist too much gambling/porn/fast food/drugs/booze/all-boy strip shows

  • It’s OK to say NO without having to explain

  • The ideal antidote to frustration is gratitude

  • It’s possible to change your mind

  • Never EVER be alone in a house without chocolate

  • Nothing, nothing, nothing is more significant than love

  My intense love for my daughter coloured all of my forties. There is something fantastically liberating about conceding to yourself that absolutely no-one will ever matter as much as this little chick. It was EASY to be devoted to her, she was hugely loveable and remarkable and I had longed for her. Of course, she was also lots of things I hadn’t quite anticipated, like feisty and cheeky and naughty. And I was lots of things I hadn’t anticipated, like impatient and tired and exasperated, which made for a heady mother–daughter mix on occasion, but whatever battles we fought, that lovely ol’ rope was there, tying us up securely together at all times. The ferocious strength of my feelings for her also had a price, which I think is quite common for parents, and that is a sudden and morbid fear of accident or death that might leave her abandoned. It’s a ridiculous, misguided over-dramatic fear, I know that, but I was inordinately haunted by it for a good ten years. I couldn’t bear to imagine my life without her or her life without me. If I allowed myself to dwell on it for too long, I could be reduced to a blubbering wreck with all my tortured imaginings. It was clearly a process I had to pass through because I hardly ever think like this now. Maybe that’s because I have, at least, managed to grow her into her twenties, which is older than I was before I lost a parent, and I survived that, so I wonder if this is my measure?

  In my forties she was still my baby, but totally not a baby at all any more. Everything and everyone was changing too quickly. Except me, of course. The mirror was telling me I was forty-something but inside my head, I was twenty-five.

  I read articles that told me to dress appropriately for my age, to do Pilates and to take vitamins. Oh do eff off, please. You don’t understand, I was twenty-five only ten minutes ago, this isn’t the real me!

  I have never actively resisted ageing, I have simply not quite believed it. I am not ashamed to tell my age to anyone, anytime, whoever wants to know. I am just astonished at how it comes about while you are not paying attention.

  And look out … while I was busy blethering on and looking the other way, here comes FIFTY!!!

  For me? Whaaat?!?!

  ‘I believe that everyone else my age is an adult whereas I am merely in disguise’

  Margaret Atwood

  • What’s stopping you? ___________________

  • What do you wish you could do more of? ___________________

  • Which song do you know all the words to? ___________________

  • Which song belongs to you? ___________________

  • How are you? ___________________

  • Who can you call in the middle of the night? ___________________

  • Who do you wish was your new best friend? ___________________

  • More like Mum or Dad? ___________________

  • What do you picture when you think of happiness? ___________________

  • What could you do better? ___________________

  • What last made you actually laugh out loud? ___________________

  • Most favourite meal ever? ___________________

  • Best thing you can cook? ___________________

  • Thing you’re really good at? ___________________

  • What do you neglect? ___________________

  • What job would you do if money wasn’t a consideration? ___________________

  • Biggest crush? ___________________

  • Which house would they put your blue plaque on? ___________________

  • What did your parents get right? ___________________

  • Do you have a philosophy? ___________________

  • What scares you? ___________________

  • Which memory makes you shudder? ___________________

  • The best cake in the world? ___________________

  • The cleverest person you know? ___________________

  • Who do you wish was your mentor? ___________________

  • The best thing that happened last year? ___________________

  • When you got it most right? ___________________

  • The worst fib you told? ___________________

  • The compliment that mattered most? ___________________

  • One thing you know for certain? ___________________

  • Who would you want at your deathbed? ___________________

  • What do you have faith in? ___________________

  • Who do you have faith in? ___________________

  JUNE

  In this warm, cheerful month, I want to mainly say some thank yous, so here goes:

  REASONS TO BE GRATEFUL (PART I)

  THANK YOU, Mrs McKeown, the Head Teacher at Parliament Hill School for Girls way back in 1981. I was a young probationary teacher working in the drama department then. The head of drama wasn’t in the best of health and although I was an ‘inexperienced’ newbie, there was a rare chance for me to be fast-tracked to a more senior position much sooner than I’d imagined. Teaching was my utter passion, there wasn’t another job I wanted more … until Jennifer told me about the Comic Strip, a small group of alternative comedians looking for new acts (women in particular) to join the line-up. We auditioned, we joined, we worked six nights a week with me moonlighting from my day job. I was knackered but very happy. Then the day came when we were offered the chance to take the Comic Strip show to the Adelaide Festival in Australia. Everyone else was free to go except me. I had my proper job, with all the responsibilities that entailed, I couldn’t just leave it in the middle of term. I agonized over the dilemma. In the end I decided to seek the advice of Mrs McK, the very person whose wrath I could incur, considering the fact that I shouldn’t have had a second job at all!

  Well, the twenty-minute meeting I had with her was a masterclass in selfless wisdom. She acknowledged the naughtiness, the dilemma and the circumstances, including her own need not to lose another member of staff in that department at such a key time. After considering it all, she told me that in life, you HAVE to take opportunities when they come, and that she would not forgive herself if she prevented me from going although that would’ve suited the school more. She gave me her blessing to go, and said there would be a job there for me on my return should I want it. I left her office in tears of gratitude. Had she been otherwise and demanded that I stick to my duty, I think I might still be there now, no bad thing, but … y’know … that Australian tour was the beginning of a whole new adventure, so, ta to the sagacious Mrs McK. I have always tried to remember that if people around me need to fly the nest for bigger, better or even just different jobs, it’s best to let them go wi
th grace.

  THANK YOU for being alive. We’ve had a dodgy few years where our world has lost some giants. Far too many accidents and incidents. For a while it has felt as if there was another shocking loss every day, like the Earth was slightly off its axis and people were dropping away. I lost some friends and family too. It feels massively unfair and gut-wrenchingly sad. My very-clever-indeed uncle, the historian Dr Michael O’Brien, who was a mighty intellectual, suddenly had cancer and died far too quickly. Along with the rest of the family and especially his darlin’ wife, we know that he is gone – we are just left wondering … where?

  THANK YOU, Jimmy Moir, the head of Entertainment at the BBC in the eighties, who sat Fatty and me down in his office, and explained that although he didn’t personally get what was funny about French and Saunders, clearly enough other people did, so he was prepared to ‘put my dick on the table’, and give us our own series. And thank you to him also for not actually putting his dick on the table.

  Although … perhaps he did? And maybe I just couldn’t see it …?

  THANK YOU to our fantastic country for two main reasons:

  If you get sick, someone looks after you and you don’t have to pay (a fact as I write. Not sure for how much longer …?)

  There are NO deadly poisonous snakes or spiders.

  There are hardly any earthquakes.

  There are no man-eating sharks.

  THANK YOU for me being past the menopause, which turned out to be a confusing jumble of a time where I didn’t recognize any of my body or mind’s behaviour. Thank you for me NOT murdering anyone in my immediate environs. Thank you for them not murdering ME, who, frankly, deserved it more.

  THANK YOU to my parents, the greatest loves of my life, for teaching me such a lot of good stuff. Most of it was about self-belief, family and real love. The Frenchies often managed to get a lot of things just that little bit wrong, but the things we got right were truly the best of all things.

  Although I lost my dad far too soon and too suddenly, I can definitely say that, thankfully, in the case of my mum, we were able, conversely, to say everything we wanted to before she died, quite quickly, at the age of seventy-seven. I am so grateful for that, because everyone deserves to hear, if it is true, that when their life is eventually weighed in the balance they are found to have been a superlative human and a wonderful parent, notwithstanding all the maddening, glorious flaws. She heard that from us. She knew it. Then she died. So that’s OK by me. Yes. That’ll do.

  THANK YOU for work, for it being creative and enjoyable and challenging. Much as I find a lot that I do quite daunting, I have never once wished I didn’t do it. I have always wanted to turn up. My mum used to tell me that ‘showing off’ was most unattractive. Oh yeah? Well, now it’s my ruddy job! There were honestly times when I was making French and Saunders with Fatty back in the day, when there was very little difference to being ten years old in my bedroom, rifling about in the dressing-up box, making up silly characters and doing funny voices to make my friend laugh. How did this become an actual job?! Recently I’ve been feeling that because we spent so much time in front of the camera arsing about for so long, I am happy to retreat from so much of the showbizzy jazz-hands attention, and be at home being quiet and writing more. It doesn’t mean that I don’t want a bit of that plugged-in-to-an-audience type of buzz every now and then. That’s why I took my one-woman show on tour for eighteen months, and that’s why I agreed to host a kids’ talent show. Essentially though, my work has changed to suit my life and my family. The best thing of all is that I decide those changes, and that’s the key. Make your work work for you.

  THANK YOU for me NOT having vertigo any more. Oh boy, that was bleddy awful. It started about two months into my UK tour. Something about the adrenalin, the raked (slanted) stage, and the very strong side lighting which we were forced to use (due to having a screen onstage that didn’t work if light bounced directly on to it) set my neuro highways off, fizzing and confused. My eyes lied to my brain and told me that the floor was moving, that all straight lines were wobbly and that up was down. When it first happened, I thought something had ‘popped’ in my head and I felt very unsteady suddenly in the middle of a show in Worthing, on the pier. When the interval came, I told my crew to line up sidestage and drag me off when I toppled over as I felt certain that was going to happen. I asked for a chair to be set on the normally empty stage and I did the second half sitting down, the only place I felt safe. I saw a doc the following morning and hours later, I was inside an MRI machine, checking to see if I had a brain tumour or anything else similarly sinister.

  Hold breath.

  Hang on … might this be THAT moment …?

  Oh God, am I OK?

  Yep, all clear. And exhale …

  Off to ear, nose and throat expert. Off to balance expert. Off to neurologist. Eventually I was diagnosed with Benign Positional Vertigo (not the kind you can cure by shaking your head vigorously, thanks anyway for the advice everyone!). It would remain with me for the best part of a year because the show itself was what exacerbated it. I was allergic to my show. I missed five shows while I was being treated. I’d never done that in thirty years so I resolved to finish the tour, including Australia, New Zealand and the West End. Sometimes I sat down, sometimes I took a walking stick on stage with me so I could steady myself. I constantly felt as if I would fall over, and I had to self-soothe, to talk myself through it. On several occasions, just before curtain up, I sat sidestage in tears, as my world was spinning so furiously that I was convinced I wouldn’t remain upright for the duration of the show. That dreadful vertigo. The thief of my confidence, and of the fun of my show. Six weeks after I stopped performing it was gone, and I took my first deep breaths for a year. Good riddance.

  THANK YOU for Cornwall and the chance, at last, to return home to live here ten years ago. Half of my family have Cornish roots, half have Devon roots, so I am mixed race and proud of it. I now live 200 yards from where my great-uncle ran his shop, thirty mins from my brother, thirty mins from Evil Granny’s childhood haunts, and one minute forty seconds from my BF’s house. Lovely.

  The thing about Cornwall is that if it’s in your blood, it never NEVER leaves you. The lure of it is potent. However much the county has its strife to deal with (and it does, it’s a very poor ward), whoever you are, if you are in Cornwall, you are in the remarkable light. You are near the moors, the coves, the cliffs, the sea and the endless, endless sky. If you allow it, Cornwall will hold you in its gentle embrace, and that spectacular blue light will warm your bones and brighten some of your shadows. I know this to be true. Just as I know that Cornwall is also salty, strange, dark and blustery. I don’t mind that. It keeps us on our toes, equal, nice and sharp. I have come home, summoned by pasties and cream, I have heeded that call. ONEN HAG OLL! One and all.

  THANK YOU for optimism. I realize that, for years, I succumbed to the tyrannical notion that somehow cynicism is cool and optimism is cheesy. I now realize how misguided this is. It’s a malaise. Cynicism, repeated and regular, is corrosive. It’s the MO of snooty, lofty folk who believe that to sneer is to be clever. It’s the place most people hide when they don’t know what they think, or what they’re talking about. I know that, because I used to be cynical when I felt exposed and vulnerable. It wasn’t my true nature, but I tried it on for size for twenty years. It didn’t suit OR fit me at all. In fact, it made me ill. Being snidey is a poison, however funny. And … is it really funny, even?

  I used to curtail my optimism. No longer. Now I endeavour to find the good IF I can. It doesn’t always work, like, for instance, the whole disappointing phenomenon that is the motorway service station. I approach them, actually turn off the motorway, every SINGLE time, with eternal optimism in my heart … what treats await me? What treasures? Perhaps a lovely sandwich? A new flavour of crisp? A hearty soup? A fragrant loo? The perfect coffee? And every SINGLE time, I am saddened, virtually to despair, by the reality I find. By the sheer lack
lustre dullness. By the colour, the smell … the whole tawdry beige, two-for-one shebang. Dammit. I believed in you, Heston motorway service station … and you have disappointed me repeatedly. In your basket.

  Still, despite such traumas, I refuse to cave in. I am endeavouring to stay sunny, focus more on the positive stuff, exercise my optimism muscle, and give the disappointments short shrift – unless of course they amuse me. Then the gloves are off.

  ‘Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious’

  Peter Ustinov

  THANK YOU for dogs (and a little bit also for cats). Honestly, how delightful are they? Forget all the soppy fluffy girlie stuff. No anthropomorphizing. They have their own personalities and that’s that. Dog personalities, not like ours. They have taught us to pander to their needs, not the other way round. I have spent endless hours of my life trying to get a dog to laugh. They do, sort of, but each of my dogs has found different stuff funny. Oh the joy when you discover the particular thing, and then you repeat it daily for fifteen years. The pleasure. The devotion. The comfort. (Don’t bother trying to make a cat laugh, by the way. They don’t stoop so low – they find comedy vulgar.)

  I wish dogs lived longer. A small part of me has died with each one, and I reckon I only have enough of me left for one more dog … and one small cat.

  THANK YOU to Philip Larkin for two things in particular. The first is his poem ‘Born Yesterday’, which he wrote for his new goddaughter. I am fortunate enough to have sixteen godchildren, and this poem truly says EVERYTHING they need to know about how it’s OK to … be. I have quoted it on many occasions and it somehow gets truer.