She had no shame

'COME on Love, it’ll be fun, move your arse!’ Mum coaxes. She’s laughing but I pull a face. I don’t want to go.

Squirming with embarrassment as my mother entertains more drunken women at another 40th birthday party is not my idea of a good time.

I’d rather be at home with my music. One day I want to go to college, but it’s been a struggle.

We had to sell my clarinet when Dad lost his job and the tuition fees are out of our reach. I still study, but now with a clarinet borrowed from school.

‘“Your talent would shine if you were blowing down a bog roll, Amy” Mum told me with customary aplomb.

Dad will be at the party too. He’ll have his T-shirt on, emblazoned with the initials BLUFF – Big Lazy Ugly Fat F*cker – and I’ll wish for the ground to open up and swallow me whole.

I remember that Mum even asked me to wear one once: Mini Ugly Fat F*cker it said – MUFF for short.
Okay I could see it was funny – but it really wasn’t very nice was it? I wouldn’t be seen dead in that bloody T-shirt.

But I still felt bad when Mum’s eyes glazed with tears as I told her to get lost.

As we head for the party, I picture the scene that awaits us.

Mum’ll enter the room, dressed like a lollipop lady, to the sound of Right Said Fred’s I’m Too Sexy.
She won’t be alone. There’ll be a burly bloke squeezed into schoolboy shorts and tie, and no more, at either side.

The women will whoop and laugh appreciatively – like they’ve never seen an overweight man with his top off before.

I’ll look elsewhere as the tipsy party-goers snap away with their mobiles at the ample bellies on display.

Then I’ll smile to myself, thinking of them the next day, cursing at the blurred images they’d failed to nail.

What a joke, I think.Oh yes, the jokes. They always go down well. “How dirty do you want me to be on a scale of one to ten?” Mum’ll ask.

“Ten,” someone will yell, before an “eleven” follows from the back of the room. “Sixty-nine” Dad shouts before anyone realises he’s part of the act.

That never fails to raise the roof. “The oldest ones are the best,” Dad laughs, winking at us, with a twinkle in his eye – obviously having the time of his life.

And so it always begins. The rude jokes come thick and fast.

Mum bats off hecklers with a swift rebuke. It’s men who call out, insulting her, mocking her weight.

And she fires back: “If your c*ck is as big as your mouth, I’ll see you later.” Listening to the bawdy repertoire is no place for a 16-year-old girl.

How’d you like it if you heard your mum utter a gag with the immortal lines: “Can I smell your f***y? No? It must be your feet then.”

Sometimes she picks on someone in the audience.“Boy you’ve got big hands,” she says: “Bet they make your c*ck look small.”

While the women roar, all the men, except Dad, squirm in their seats.It hasn’t always been like this. Dad worked in a factory. He’d been there since he left school.

He was a union man through and through. But those days were gone. I never understood why – something to do with China, but I didn’t get the full picture. I don’t think Dad did either.

Mum had a job in the supermarket in our village. She worked school hours and was always there to pick me up.Then she would listen to me playing the clarinet and we’d plot my future of world domination as an international performer.

We researched scholarships to music college. Still I knew where I was needed. There was no way I could go. I needed to stay and bring a wage home.

Mum lined a job up for me at the supermarket.

“You should be on the stage Shirl”, enthused Mum’s colleagues. They were in stitches as she recounted her saucy tales. She had no shame.

Other people’s mums were cross if they swore. My mum sat on the sofa, farting and giving herself marks out of ten.“Mum..” I’d begin, gearing up to ask her for a pack of crisps or a biscuit.

“Mum’s arse!” she’d answer – years before Jim Royle was on the scene. And so, when Dad was made redundant, she did go on the stage.

She continued to work in the supermarket, she continued to pick me up from school, even when I insisted she really didn’t have to.

All the time the bookings for her act Lady Muck were mounting up.

She had a regular slot at the community centre down the road on Friday nights. Other days, without fail, after I went to bed she tapped away at ‘gags’ on the computer.Dad was proud of her. He went on loads of courses – how to be an IT consultant, how to be a cost management consultant, how to be a herbal drinks consultant – but he couldn’t go the distance.

“Consultancy’s just not for me love’, he sighed and we couldn’t disagree. But he needn’t have worried. Soon he was needed in a supporting role for Lady Muck.

Mum was featured in our local paper: “Roly poly mum cleans up” ran the headline.It was the talk of our school but I didn’t care, I wanted a ‘normal’ mum – one who got cross if I said “f*ck” and one who didn’t look tired all the time.

Last year she won an award. A national arts promotion body gave her £3,000.She was featured in a tabloid. ‘Check out girl licks the competition,’ screamed the headline – and there was Mum, dressed as a lollipop lady, with her cheesy grin filling most of page eleven.

Then people were telling me how proud I must be, I tried to ignore them but it was getting harder. She was still my mum and I loved her – even if she was the female equivalent of Chubby Brown.

Now she’s stopped typing away while I’m in bed. I suspect she’s lost interest. She even went away for a weekend last month.She went without Dad. When I pressed her on where she had been, she mumbled something about ‘an appointment’.

I’m worried sick; Mum’d never had a weekend without Dad and me. I’ve told her she should enough times – she could go away with her mates from work, but she shrugs and says she sees enough of groups of women in her ‘night job’.

’What’s happening to our family? I begin to suspect something is wrong and tonight will be her last gig.
Now I feel guilty, guilty and selfish, my mum has been working herself into the ground to keep this family together.But she loves performing. She says it’s like a drug.

“I may not be Julie Andrews but I am Lady Muck’, she says.“Are you coming or what? Hurry up slowcoach,” she chides as I silently carry her stage gear to the car.

We don’t speak as we head to the venue. No doubt it’ll be another Working Men’s Club, perhaps it won’t be a birthday party after all, maybe it’s a hen night.Those are even worse – women in grotesque costumes made out of bin bags, L-plates and pictures from porn magazines, with snaps of their own heads stuck on by their so-called mates.

But we take a different turn. We head into the city and soon we’re in the ‘arty’ quarter. We pass the music shop that bought my clarinet.I’m pleased to see it’s no longer in the window. ‘At least someone’s enjoying it,’ I think.

And then I forget about the clarinet. We’re stopping outside the TV studios and I am gripped by a strange fear: “Oh God no, Mum’s going to audition for Big Brother, or even worse The X Factor –she wants to be the next YMCA girl.”

“What are you doing mum?” I ask, panic rising in my voice.“You’ll see, now hurry up, we have to meet Dad. He’s gone into town to get a new T-shirt done but he said he’d see us here.”
We are soon outside Studio Three and here’s Dad, waiting. He pulls his T-shirt out of the carrier.It says PAF on it. “Proud as F*ck”, he explains gingerly. “Had enough of BLUFF. Sorry ‘bout the language Amy,” he says.

“I’ve got you one too.”Then he produces another bag – Tony’s Musical Supplies it’s from – and here’s Dad beaming, as he unwraps my clarinet.For a split second I’m lost for words, I just can’t take in what is happening.“This is for you sweetheart,” says Mum softly. “This is what it has all been for, there’ll be no more Working Men’s Clubs for us.”

I take in the sign on the studio door: “Dirty talk with Lady Muck”.Mum tells me she recorded a pilot last month. “Went down a storm,” she says. “They’ve commissioned a 12-week run – it’s going out at 10pm on a Saturday night and I’ve got soap stars and singers as special guests.

“They’ve paid me a few grand up front – and I’ve contacted that music college you’ve set your heart on.It’s enough for the first term – my fees for the series will pay for the rest.
“Where do I change?” I ask for the first time in my life.

Comments

[Kay]

Still think this story and your blog pieces are fab. Glad you've started your blog up again, it's a nice feet-up, laugh out loud read in between working and mummying. keep it up!

[Anne A]

I really liked this. Especially the bit where the headline in the local paper was "licked the competition."

[Kate]

What a lovely story. It's a good job you're a writer or your talent would be wasted.

[Linda]

Not sure if Kate was taking the piss there!

[Andrew Crofts]

Really liked it Linda.

[Steve Sweeney ('Steve08')]

I've just read 'She had no shame', Linda, and it's superb. You truly have a gift for natural, credible dialogue, which in my view is essential in capturing the reader's interest. The humour is brilliant too :)

Excellent read :)

Steve

[Linda]

Thanks Steve, that's really kind of you - I think writing women's magazine features has helped me with the dialogue!

[songbirdwendy]

excellent reading!!

[Rollie]

Thanks Linda! I enjoyed that! :)

[Sky Clearbrook]

Hi Linda. This is fab!
I love those one-liners. I'd love to see a bit more of this.

[Xerika]

Hi Linda,

I finally got round to visiting your site. Sorry for the delay.

I remember reading this story when it was in the first issue of Hardline Magazine (http://thehardline.wordpress.com/) and really enjoyed it.

I particularly like the build-up of the potential embarrassment. I could feel my own toes curling as I read. :)

[Linda]

Thanks Xerika and no need to apologise :) - thanks for the encouragement.

[Sarah Cruickshank]

Love it Linda

Sarah x