Mother's day fails.

How do you celebrate mother's day? I celebrate it by not seeing my kids or my mother, it's amazing. This year for breakfast I had two hot cross buns in bed, while watching netflix #livingmybestlife. Less amazing was being woken up at 3am by our airbnb people coming in and then being woken at 8am (which was really 7am because of the clock change) by our previous airbnb people who came to collect their suitcases.

Over time mothers day has got more and more complicated. First I would just see my mum because she lived with me when she played the role of full time mum to me. Then as she moved from full time to seasonal and casual mum work, I didn't particularly make an effort to visit her that day if I was in another city. Mother's day got shared out with Dan's mum. Normally Dan's mum got mother's day and my family more often got easter. Then I became a mum which meant I could be more demanding on mothers day. But what I really find hard about being a mum is lack of time to myself, and when I get some ... like now because Percy is in nursery and Eric's napping, I spend most of it thinking "is this the best use of my time?" So my chosen mothers day gift is time.

So we've come up with this slightly weird mothers day/fathers day tradition which suits us now in the small kid phase but we probably won't do forever. Dan takes the kids to see his mum, and I have a day to myself. It's win win, apart from for my mum who I never see on mother's day, but I see her all the time anyway.

But this is all boring context: let's get on to the fails. So I was going to have 24 hours to myself, except the clock changing time lords (who I bet are men) decided to shorten mothers day by an hour. On the Saturday evening I was doing some comedy for a fundraiser thing at my new church and I had invited my favourite refugee double act to join me. Graham and Yolav are amazing check them out here.

So they came over for tea before the gig and then Dan left to drive to the Midlands with the boys who were all ready for bedtime in their pyjamas. About half an hour after he left we were about to leave but then we couldn't because I had left my keys in the changing bag, which Dan had taken with him. Worse than this we were actually locked in the house. Now I know I can get out the window because I've been locked in before under worse circumstances, locked in the porch with both boys. That time I had to climb out of the window, run down the street, get a random old man and climb back in the window, then pass the kids out the window to a random old man.

So Dan had to come back with the keys, but as we are comedians and just fun people, of course we might as well have a go at getting out.

Here's Mike (Yolav) trying to get out.
Is that an up turned sofa bed in your porch? Why yes, and it can be yours for £20

The gig was a good laugh. It's a funny one because the first time I did it I did 30 minute of my most church appropriate material. Now each time I'm using more and more questionable stuff. This time I talked about childbirth and racism . Graham and Yolav were great they even did a hilarious completely improvised bit where they got a child on stage.

I spent mothers day doing a bit of chilling but also decorating the kids room, which is going to be space themed. It's not done yet, I want to do a mural, but it's looking very colourful and I'm glad to have rid another room of magnolia textured wall paper.

Dan and the boys arrived back on the Sunday night and I found it hilarious to discover that Dan had forgotten to take shoes for the boys, coats and trousers for Percy. They bought Percy a new pair of trousers and they went to church in their slippers! It makes me feel needed though. It's safe to say I will be in charge of the packing for our up coming holiday!

My mother's day card (Me and Percy)

Thanks for reading. x

A lot of change

A lot of stuff has changed for us since the end of 2018. Financially it's been difficult to keep track of anything because literally every month there was a big change. So in November our income was Dan's job (something about procedures?) my job (making mosaics and murals for schools) and rental income from our old house. We had recently lost my lodger/sister so we were feeling the pinch a bit. Then our tenant said she wanted to leave, and then after having two big work projects I got no work booked in for December or Jan, so we were like arrrgh! sell everything! So we ended up putting our house on the market and putting our spare room on airbnb.  The house sale is going through next Friday. We've lost 10K on it so we'll be trying to make a bit of that back by flogging all the furniture and white goods this week!

By mid January I decided as well that 2 months without work was long enough to need to take Eric out of nursery. However good the previous months were you can't pay £400 a month when you're not earning anything. So I'm back to being a full time Mum. Which I'm ok with. Percy gets free nursery 3 days a week so I only have both of them 2 days a week. It's a million times easier than that summer where I had them both full time and Eric was a newborn and Percy was 2. Ughh that was a horrendous time. Eric is at the peak of cute now. I decided this with Percy but 22 months is the best ever age. We went out to town today on the train to get stuff for our holiday (the holiday we started booking when we though we were richer). I spent £4.60 on 2 t-shirts and 2 pairs of sunglasses for the boys:

We had this holiday in France when Percy was 22 months and I think it's made me idolise that age. He was old enough to communicate, old enough to have so much fun at the beach, off breast feeding, sleeping though the night and generally being adorable. On the last day of the holiday I found out I was pregnant with Eric, so only a few weeks later I was being sick everyday and life wasn't quite as fun.

Summer 2016

So this holiday I'm going to try and have the most fun possible. I'm not planning on getting pregnant any time soon or possibly ever again. We're planning on driving from Nice to Barcelona in a camper van. Theres a lot that could go wrong as Eric has never slept not in a cot before and the sleeping arrangements are 2 double bed bunk beds in a van and we can't afford to stay in actual campsites so were just going to try and wing it. So it's not like one of those holidays where you think "I know this will be relaxing and wonderful" but I guess it might be "memorable" or "character building".

Other major changes that have occurred since January are, we started going to a new church. This was massive for us as me and Dan met at Frontline church and had been going there for 13 1/2 years. I won't go in to all the ins and outs, there was no big drama or fall out, but we just didn't feel like we had found our place in Frontline in recent years like we had done in the past. After over a year of trying to make it work at Frontline we decided to join our very local church St. Stephens, which we really love now. The main thing we enjoy is being 4 of about 60 people rather than 4 of 600 people. And being one of maybe 3 families in our age range makes you feel a bit more special. It kind of makes you want to contribute where you can. Percy has already befriended an old lady called Betty, he challenged her to a race. She said "why don't you race mummy" he said "NO YOU"  and they raced twice. Later I asked him why did you not race me? he said "I knew I would beat her"

Our church looking like it's part of a beautiful village, but if I did a panoramic you would see the world's ugliest shopping centre.

Anglicanism is funny though and not something our kids are used to, like when this lady vicar, or some kind of dog collar wearing woman, (not the actual man vicar of St. Stephens) put her hand out to bless Percy in communion he high 5'd her. He's done it at least twice now ... should I tell him it isn't a high 5? It was some kind of Anglican census thing the other day and we had to tick a box to say we were members of the church, which I did but I sort of wanted to make a new box for myself which would read something like this:

"I'm a dedicated member of St. Stephen's and follower of Jesus, but I just happen to go to this church because I like it, and it's my local. I would never describe my self as "an anglican". I like Jesus and his teachings, I'm fine with most of the New Testament apart from a few bits where I think "that's probably Paul just being a bit sexist because it was the proper olden days" but the Old Testament ... I've got some big issues there. Not sure what to do about that but I'm open to discussion."

Imagine if that was the creed.

I also started a comedy club in Jan. As you do. I've chatted on enough about that on Facebook so I won't bore you with it again now, but here's a link if you want to check it out.

I've been super busy doing comedy gigs though probably a little bit too busy. Some have been awful, some have been amazing, but I hope overall I'm improving.

Theres so much more I could say about life because I haven't made the time for blogging for ages but I think thats enough for today. Thanks for reading.

Best of blogs

Last blog was my decade anniversary blog, so I thought this blog will be a best of blog. I've taken ages scrolling though it all to find the best ones, so I hope you will enjoy this.

2009
I wrote a lot of rubbish this year. I wrote more blogs this year than in the last 3 years combined. That's what happens when you don't have kids to tidy up after or stand up comedy as an outlet. So I just picked one fave:
The story of Han and Dan

2010
What a great year 2010 was. I got a car, I got a real job, there was some nudity, I recorded a rap and got engaged.

My nudity soup exchange  the time I got naked for money, and then made soup.
Naked horse lady when you want to go to see some comedy/art but you accidentally take your friends to see a naked person. - great memories
Patron base rap I'm genuinely proud of this rap I recored about an obscure computer system
Letter to my boss classic poo story
Father's day short and sweet.
7 signs of aging when 24 year old me didn't want to get boring. It's slightly depressing to read now.
Engagement- the official story 

2011
The year I got married and set the goal of trying comedy.

My long term underwear strategy That time when no one was seeing my underwear (the christian thing) but I put more effort into it than I do now that I'm married. I guess there was some in between time when Dan saw me with decent underwear. 2012-2013. RIP nice underwear.
Smoke on earth smoke in hell I'm weirdly proud of this little anti smoking campaign, I feel like if I could be bothered to put it on it could go well on instagram.
The urban cheese awards Hannah tries creative writing.
My unofficial dissertation in 2011 I was studying for a Masters degree in "children and young people in society". I had to write a dissertation and it was about something I can't prove but I just know is true- dyslexics are more creative. I never finished it because I'm too dyslexic/fun to be an academic. Oh well, at least I can do comedy.
Wedding I got married! It was fun.

Tell tale signs the one where I didn't realise my tutor was blind. Embarrassing.
Ode to my Yaris a spot of poetry.
10 things to do before I'm 30 I did 8 of them! Yesterday I even found that piece of laminated ham that I laminated the night before my 30th. Mmm 3 year old laminated ham.

2012
What a dull year this was. We had an epic adventure in 2013, but what people don't realise is that we spent all 2012 saving up and planning and we got robbed. It was all worth it in the grand scheme of things though. On a more positive note I did my first bit of stand up.

My comedy career starts here you can watch the bad quality video. I used a lot of props and did a song because I didn't really know how to do jokes.
Google vs mum who will win the battle of knowledge?
Happy new tax year We were reminiscing about how great this party was just yesterday. I was saying to Dan how our friends would never come over and roll around on our bed for a game called "turnover" nowadays. Never underestimate tax as a party theme.

Racism disclaimer The emergency blog I had to write after everyone thought I was a massive racist, this story is now part of my current comedy set
Kuwait trip We start planning our trip (photos of my grandparents trip 1953)

2013

this year will always be the year we cycled to Kuwait for lols. loved it. Can't remember anything else we did that year.

I love my skin it keeps me in (a short poem)
Entrepreneurs  it's a funny blog this one, especially if you knew that a person I take the mick out of in it actually ended up reading it, oops.
Wibble on the ribble I start cycle training and I realise theres a bit of the M6 that looks like a uterus, check out the pic!
The Bet (part 2) The ginger bet...who can have the most ginger children by 2028, only 9 years left. I need to do an update on this soon, but meet the candidates here.
trip FAQs
Our movies instead of blogging about our trip we did paper diaries and video diaries. I still enjoy watching the video ones and so does our eldest Percy.

Llama or lodger we come back from our trip and try to decide what to do with our lives.

2014
Got a rabbit, got pregnant, had a baby, neglected the rabbit a bit.

Rabbit "facts" experimental comedy to do with my new rabbit.
Baby Jones pregnancy announcement
The adventures of bumpy Pregnant Hannah commits a minor crime
The middle sister a blog about my sister Jo and her hen night. I was very proud of my costume.
Top 10 pregnancy comments This was very funny and became a bit of stand up that I still use now.
The wedding of Jo and Elisha my sister got married! and some cervix maths.
Birth the story of the birth of Percy.

Dear women in Asda mainly a horrific picture of baby poo

2015
Mainly taken up with motherhood, and saying how anti technology I am and then, I got a smart phone about 6 years after everyone else. I also made a spelling mistake in a £2000 mosaic this year. Can you "BELIVE" it.

Lydia Leaves Liverpool Lydia Palmer, what a legend. In this blog she was leaving Liverpool for a boy. This weekend I'm going to her hen do to celebrate the upcoming marriage to the same boy.
Percy's favourite things
My life in cartoon I went through a brief stage of doing a cartoon a day as a diary, it was pretty fun, I should do it again.
Student days I reminisce about my student days 10 years after starting uni. This is now getting on for 14 years ago. :(
My big confession the one where I gave in and got a smart phone.
Percy's new tricks mostly cute Percy stuff but also a bit about the mosaic.

2016

The year I became homeless and then pregnant.

Rachel Greatsall a blog dedicated to my good friend Rachel Goodsall
Extreme where's wally my first go at looking after 2 toddlers at once.
Becoming second homeless the story of how we had to leave our house and had no where to go.
The Langston's homeless shelter where we ended up, we didn't know at this point it would be for 9 months.
The Best Days of Your Life I did my first hour long comedy show! So much fun.
2 years of Percy Jones

Our little lobster baby we announce our second pregnancy
Brexit for babies Trump for toddlers a creative writing piece about Brexit
Pregnant and homeless a sad one to end the year on. but luckily I now know it all had a happy ending.

2017
Started with being pregnant and homeless and ended with being a family of 4 (plus my sister as a lodger) in a lovely house.

The baby cake the gender reveal cake that went wrong.
My friend the muslim immigrant my most read blog post (despite the fact the text doesn't show up on some phones.) it's about the great bits and the awkward bits of making friends with a random muslim immigrant that I met in the park, or as I like to call her "Samar". They have recently moved back to Egypt.
There's no place like home We got a house! We were so happy, I still am.
The birth of Eric Warning it goes into a bit too much detail.

12 days of Eric
Our A&E potty training holiday
House changes my sister moves in
End of an era a blog about my parents leaving our family home and life growing up in a village.
2 kids or 3? if you're considering this question, please read my extensive list of pros and cons.

2018
this year I got a bit of cancer and did a lot of comedy.

6 difficult concepts for 3 year olds
Mental health awareness week my one serious blog in 10 years of blogs, talking about having depression as a teenager.
Job done! I do an hour long show all about parenting
A bit of cancer one of my most read blogs. I had cancer, spoiler alert, it's all fine now. I write about it humorously though because I'm not good at serious.
the operation

beating the frog and cancer I start doing stand up more seriously

2019
Bring it on! Who knows what this year will bring? New things this year are: launching my comedy club and starting doing airbnb which will hopefully give me some comedy material. And we're going on our first family of 4 holiday really soon.

10 year Bloggversary

This 10 year challenge thing has been going round social media. It got me thinking about what I was doing 10 years ago and guess what - tomorrow it's my bloggerversery! 10 years of this blog that I only started because I had a job as a receptionist where you're allowed to use a computer, but not to go on Facebook. So I started this blog, which is really just a series of long self indulgent Facebook statuses. People have been posting photos of themselves 10 years ago
 So this was me 10 years ago

Ok this was at least 11 years ago, but I just wanted to put up a picture of me looking hot. It's not really how I looked in real life though. My blogging photo that I haven't changed in 10 years is a bit more realistic but still a nice one:

Getting up at sunrise is like a natural instagram filter

I've just turned 33 and it is easy to get a bit depressed comparing my present self to my early 20s self.  But I've been thinking about the other ways I've changed in that time, and they are mostly good things.

Confidence

Deep down I've always been a massive show off. I know everyone likes to hide their show offyness with a humble brag but I think some people genuinely don't want attention. Which is odd to me. About age 11 was the height of my showing off I was in a rap band, I went to drama class, when I got together with my younger cousins I made them perform. Classic 11 year old antics. Then I got to 15 and didn't want anyone to look at me, and I quit all my loud showing off and swapped it for sulking. Then was quite a happy time aged 19-23 when I liked to make and occasionally exhibit art, that was a good outlet for a while but I just never really knew how to get back into being a show off again until age 26 when I discovered stand up.

People weirdness

When I was 23 I was still weird about talking to "grown ups" I had only recently discovered that in some contexts a 50 year old could be more of a peer than an authority figure. It's a weird time when you're at uni and you're like an adult in term time and then you go back to live in your childhood bedroom and have your meals cooked for you again, it's kind of like living a double life. And I wasn't enough years away from this at 23 for it all to be normal. When I was 23 I lodged with a family but still didn't manage to crack the lodger tenant relationship. If I was unsure about whether I was allowed to do something I wouldn't ask I would just not do it. I've more recently tried that relationship from the other side when my sister came to lodge, that was a lot more chilled but it's still a weird relationship.

Responsibility

I sort of equally like and hate this one. I don't know if I really want to be responsible, but 10 years ago I was only responsible for my self I owned hardly anything, I had some part time work and some zero hours work, I lodged so I didn't pay bills or cook or anything. Me and Dan were going out but we didn't live together or anything. Now I own 2 houses (we've just accepted an offer on the old one) a car, two kids, I'm married and I'm self employed.

Money

When I was 23 I had virtually no disposable income but until the last few months (when a lot of unexpected things happened) we were doing ok for money. We could drive about wherever without thinking too much about fuel costs and we used to get our car valeted every so often at Dobbies. We spent some money on house improvement stuff, last year our christmas present to each other was a driveway. Well half a drive - we're not millionaires and I didn't see the point of splashing out getting the whole thing done when we only have one car. If you saw our car now you would realise we're making some cut backs, it still has monkey hand prints from out trip to the safari park. I might have to give it a hand wash soon. 

Resilience 

In the last 10 years some bad stuff has happened as well as some good stuff, obvs. I've lived at 6 different addresses with between 1 other person and 9 and a half other people (I was pregnant) I feel like I can cope a bit better with difficult situations now because I've just been through more stuff. Like I had cervical cancer for a bit recently and had to have an operation but that definitely wasn't the worst thing thats happened this decade. The stress of trying to buy a house while living with another family and being pregnant and having a 2 year old was a more stressful overall experience. Even making a spelling mistake on a mosaic and being yelled at by a head teacher was kind of more stressful. When you have cancer everyone comes together to be lovely to you and make meals. Not so much when you've made a spelling mistake on a £2000 mosaic.

Relationships

In the last 10 years I think me and Dan have fairly successfully managed to make the transition from boyfriend and girlfriend to Husband and Wife with 2 kids. It's a huge amount of change and sometimes I wish I was just cycling over to his for an evening of hanging out not having a night of DIY and admin. But I know deep down that he is the least annoying person I could choose to live with and I'm very happy to be doing all this life stuff with him.

2008

2018

P.s Dan just proof read this for me and said I look the same now as the 2008 picture. I said "no I have a fatter chin now" he said "well we were poor and we walked everywhere,  if you want to get your chin back be poor and walk everywhere" I would love to see that as a title for a new diet fad. imagine the book:

"Be Poor and Walk Everywhere" by nutritionalist Dr Dainel Jones.

Funny Quotes of The Year

It's the 3rd year running of me receiving a tea towel with quotes from Percy on it. Throughout the year I tweet things he quotes using the #percyquotes and then I look through them and pick the shorter ones to send to my sister Sarah, who will make it into a tea towel for me. There were some classics this year, but looking at it just now I've realised we missed out the best one!  

"How do you milk a ghost?" He then answered his own question, "I guess you would just chop it up because it doesn't matter if it dies." I do also like to ponder on the question of "Do ice creams don't like snow?"

I think next year Eric will be contributing too, he's got quite a few words now. Over Christmas he just learnt how to say "Percy" but he pronounces it like the phase "per se".

We had a nice Christmas seeing family, it's fun that both boys are at an age where they can't fake a reaction to presents. Percy was utterly overjoyed by a pair of slippers and then crushed when he unwrapped a present that he thought was an empty cardboard box. (It was actually a bike.) But his favourite present was some little Paw Patrol cars I got second hand as stocking fillers.

We've made the decision (and I'm not quite sure it was the right one) to tell him that Santa is pretend. He's now slightly misinterpreted this and is going around telling people that Santa is dead!

We celebrated New Year on 1st Jan, partly because we only have catch up tv and 7pm on 1st Jan was a convenient time for us to welcome in the new year with our boys and partly because we had the lovely Sembuuze boys who had come up to visit.

Bex is my oldest friend from home. We ended up having our first babies 4 days apart. She is now pregnant with her 3rd and her husband has gone away back to Uganda to visit family for a few days, so it was nice to have them up here. 

Otterspool

The dead zoo (stuffed animals at the World Museum)

look carefully and you'll spot Eric

Lola was a hit

Check out our newly decorated guest room. We hope to put it on air BnB soon, but also it's nice to have space for friends and family, and it's going to be free for traveling comedians who are coming up to gig. Which is a way for me to meet people, because I can't really gig in the south or go for drinks after shows and stuff.

This week I'm launching my new monthly comedy night! I'm super excited about it. Please come if you can.

Rant-ander

I hope this isn't the last blog I write of 2018 because it would be a sad note to end on, but I've got a rant to get off my chest. SANTANDER you and your logo of a steaming baked potato are a disgrace.

There are some fun bits in this it's not all a complete rant, but here's some context behind what happened. I'm self employed and I usually get paid by cheque, it's not my favourite method of payment but for some reason mosts schools are a bit behind the times with that sort of thing. So I did two big projects this term this mural:

and this mosaic:

Then I went to pay in my cheques. I got the mosaic one first and paid that in.

The next day, I went to do the food shop and my card was declined, luckily I had enough cash. I checked my online banking. the cheque had been paid in and then gone out again which still left me with some money so, this didn't explain why I couldn't use my card. You'd think a bank would tell you before blocking your account a few days before Christmas. Oh wait they did let me know ... BY LETTER 3 DAYS LATER. Good one.

The next day I phoned the school. They didn't know why it didn't work because there was money in their account. So I went into the bank and had to prove this was a work thing by showing an invoice. They said "oh yes this happens. This time of year there's lots of alerts going on things," basically they just thought this was a bit suspicious. But they said they'd sort it and I just had to wait 48 hours and it would all be fine. I gave them the second cheque to pay in and they they'd put an alert to make sure that didn't happen again.

In the mean time as fate would have it, a twitter friend, middle class rapper @mc_hammersmith sent out this tweet: (warning: there are some swears)

It was pretty fun, I do love tweeting companies. It's a much better way to vent than being on hold to their complaints line and I do have a little soft spot for middle class rap. If you've known me since I was 10 then I'm sure you'd remember "Han and Fran", some of the best rappers to come out of the tiny village of Burton Green, Warwickshire in the mid 90's.

The next day I tweeted this and deliberately didn't tag them because I thought it would all be sorted out soon and I'm not a completely nasty twitter troll. 

Now that (spoiler alert) it is still far from sorted, I'm wondering if I should start a twitter campaign where I get different people to tweet Santander with photos of the backs of thing. If there's one thing I like about living in 2018 its that there are creative complaints options. My most creative was this box that I sent to move residential after they made us homeless in 2016.

So when the account was still not unblocked over 48 hours later I was pretty mad and went in again and was there for an hour. I won't bore you with all the details, but they are now saying that both cheques could be fraud and that I have to phone the schools and get them to phone their banks. (Which I can't do till January.) I can't get any money out, not even the original money that was in there and they can't give me any word on how long it might take. At least Mc Hammersmith had my back.

Whenever you tweet they ask you to email, which I did with all the info and I wasn't even offensive, to which they replied we can't really disscuss this over email we'll have to discuss it on the phone. But if you can't sort it out with me in the branch then I don't have much hope of them sorting it by phone.

Merry Christmas.

Beating Cancer and The Frog

Since my relatively quick and painless battle with cancer I have been pursuing being a real comedian. I have defined this, for now as "bothering to do to a gig when I might not know anyone and bothering to travel outside of Liverpool". 2 weeks in and I've done 4 gigs and it's going pretty well.

I'm in the weird position of having done comedy for years (about 6) but really sporadically and only to the audience of people who go to Mello Mello, and then later on people I've met though The Legion of Doom's monthly gig at Mello Mello. In 2016 I then did an hour long show about my school days called "best days of your life" which I loved and so the next year I wanted to do another, but Eric was only a few months old and still very reliant on my boobs for nourishment, so I had to wait another year. And I'm glad I did't it would have been way to stressful to do it with a tiny baby.

In the run up to that show "Job Done" which was all about parenting, I thought I'd get some performing experience in a few places and that's when I started thinking maybe I should do this FOR REAL. It was a deliberate decision to just do it for a fun hobby before, which felt right at the time. But then I had this feeling of 'what if I could become actually good?' Not saying I'm terrible, but I haven't put the hours in that you need to be the best. It was that or having a third child, and I think this is easier to get out of if you think you've made the wrong decision than a third child. I could do this for a year and then decide to have a 3rd child but you can't have a 3rd child for a year and then decide being a parent of 3 is not really for me.

So in that time when I was ill in bed recovering from having my lymph nodes removed, I booked in a load of gigs and the last 2 weeks has been the start of that. I normally would perform every few months, and 50% of the stuff I did was new. Now I'm trying to do the same 5-7 minute bit anywhere that will have me to improve it. this is how its gone so far:

12th Nov Hot water comedy club Liverpool: Pretty good, lovely audience, slightly stumbled over a tiny bit.

16th Nov charity gig Blackburne house Liverpool: terrible! I went on first and the audience were not warmed up the best they could manage was a tiny titter. I'm not sure what I could have done differently.

18th Nov Comedy Store Manchester: so lovely, they have a dressing room with a leopard skin couch and mirrors with lights round them: I felt like a celebrity.

I was super nervous, this club is a big deal but I felt so good when it was done. See the video here.

19th Nov Frog and Bucket Manchester. if you're not familiar, every Monday night the Frog and Bucket runs a "beat the frog" competition. 3 members of the audience get cards and if all 3 hold them up you have to stop. If they don't then happy music comes on after 5 minutes and you've beaten the frog. Then you go through to a clap off- a pretty unfair way of deciding a winner, but I can't think of a better one.

It was a stressful drive there with my 8 year old sat nav that can't cope with any roads build since 2010. Luckily I'd brought my friend Rachel and she navigated me there. I arrived and was slightly disappointed that the acts just sat with the commoners: where's my mirror with the lights?! The set went so well, the audience were so lovely that I instantly relaxed and ad-libbed a bit. I can't believe I was actually saying the same stuff and on the night where the audience were silent. I came joint first with a guy called Micky Mckay. Maybe if I hadn't have asked my one friend to take a photo of me when she could have been clapping in the clap off I would have won. My prize is to spend more money on petrol and parking to come back in January and do 8 minutes uninterrupted. I'm looking forward to it really.

But more exciting than all of that I have (after much faffing with venues) booked in my own monthly comedy night! The "early risers comedy club" is aimed at parents or anyone who would appreciate a comedy night with a strict end time of 9:45. It's at Blackburne house on Hope street, every second Wednesday starting in January! Please like the Facebook page and invite others especially if you're in Liverpool.

Next gig is Hot water Liverpool 27th November, it's free but you have to book.

Thanks for reading, I promise my next blog will be a bit less up myself.