Is It Just Me? (34 page)

Obviously, MDRC, one of the above is a tad more important than the others. In fact, I’d venture it’s the whole point of this book and it becomes your final task. Can you guess which one it is? Yes, well done. Obviously the whole point of this book is to teach you to:

Shout ‘FLAPS!’ at a wedding.

GOOD LUCK AND GOD SPEED

I’ve had a jolly interesting time here in my writing chair. I’ll miss tapping away at my tome. Amongst other things, I’ve discovered that if you don’t leave the house for twenty-four days (my current record) and the postman comes to the door, you will invite the postman in for a chat. And then offer him the mock Christmas dinner made out of cardboard, which you knocked up while you were writing the chapter on Christmas. Which will lead to him asking another postman to do your street for the foreseeable future, which will be very embarrassing indeed. Sorry, Mr Postman – I was lonely, I meant no harm.

But mainly, MDRC, I will really miss chatting to you. So it’s time to gather for a rather poignant moment, as we turn the page into our very final chapter. Now, please don’t cry. Come on, you’re blotching the pages . . . or ruining your Kindle . . . no, stop it now. On we go.

I
f you get to the end of this chapter, then you’ve only gone and read a whole and actual book. Wowzers. Well done. And if
I
finish this chapter then I’ve only gone and
written
a whole and actual book. Double wowzers. I never, in my short, young life thought I’d say that. ‘I have written a book.’ I can’t say that it’s a dream come true, because writing a book was never on the wish list. It wasn’t on the wish list because I simply wouldn’t have considered it an option. I wouldn’t have considered it was something I could do, ever, not in a million years (you might think it still very much isn’t, in which case, for the final time: RUDE). I’m not much of a ‘words’ person. At school, as we established, I didn’t even read any of the set GCSE English books – I had all the audio-books on cassette. I once choreographed a rather natty dance routine to the final three chapters of
Jane Eyre
but I was not – as a wordsy person might put it – ‘literarily engifted’. But I’d like to take this opportunity to offer a giant ‘NYANYANYANYA
NYAAAAAA’
to any teachers who might have suggested that my lack of word-er-ly talent could have prevented me from writing a book. (My GCSE English teacher, by the way, was called Mr Sentence. Honestly, not joking. True say. I mean, with a name like ‘Sentence’, what else could he do? Even if he’d dreamt since boyhood of becoming an astronaut, it was going to have to be either High Court Judging or English Teacher-y-ness.)

Anyway – MDRC. My beloved, my trusted reader, my faithful St Bernard of a chum. We have now addressed, confronted, lolloped through and gently probed (pardon) a number of important issues together. Like a contestant on a reality television show, we have been on a
journey
. Amongst other things, we now know how to break it to one’s eighteen-year-old self that one doesn’t ever develop a talent for dancing, prime-minister-ship or high culture, and that one doesn’t get married in one’s thirties; we’ve explored the murky depths of the relationship between a woman and her dog; we’ve learned of the dangers lurking deep within beauty parlours, hospitals, weddings and family holidays; and we’re fully up to speed with how best to face down a band of pirates who’ve chosen to invade our cruise ship (NB: we may not actually have learned that last one, I can’t remember).

I’d now like to lead you gently into our final subject: dreams.

I’m not talking about sleep-based dreams. I am not talking about the moment when your flatmate, uncle, partner or mum collars you in the kitchen of a morning, just when you’re about to butter your toast, and says, ‘Oh, I had the most amazing dream last night. Literally amazing. I was in this castle, right? Except it was our flat, but it was a castle, and Paul from my old office – well, it was sort of half him and half a unicorn, and he was playing backgammon with these old ladies who’d missed the bus to go on
A Question of Sport
– or maybe
Masterchef
? Anyway, Paul kept trying to make me toast a crumpet on his unicorn horn, but I wouldn’t do it because his face wasn’t hot enough. It was wicked.’ SHUT UP, NO ONE BUT YOU IS INTERESTED IN YOUR FREAKY SUBCONSCIOUS.

We won’t be talking about
those
kinds of dreams, thank you very much. I’m talking daydreams, goals, ambitions, childhood fantasies. Let’s start with the latter. I love asking people what they wanted to be when they were children. We had such marvellous, quirky plans for ourselves, didn’t we? I know it wasn’t just me. No limits, no sense of what we thought other people might want us to be. Just our big, loopy, childish plans. Cowboy, ice-cream taster, pirate, pirate’s moll, gardener, gardener’s moll, official ice-cream taster to pirates. Whatever we wanted to be, we could be. I wanted to be a farmer’s wife. That was my first encounter with the world of ‘ambition’. Not a farmer, just a farmer’s wife. Spatula in one arm, watering can in the other, a newborn lamb in my apron pocket bleating gently for its tea. No responsibilities, other than whacking a sturdy pie on the table at six o’clock. I built a lovely little dream-farm for myself. We had an Aga, a sheep that lived indoors, and our chickens would lay eggs on the doorstep before curling up at night with the border collie. The cows would live off buttercups. I’d make loaves from husks of wheat. The pigs would all be clean and friendly, and I would become some kind of farm-animal whisperer and know the every desire and whim of each animal we owned.

It’s possible that I hadn’t entirely grasped the challenges facing the modern agricultural family, but there you go. A dream’s a dream.

As I matured into my teens, I stepped away from Operation Farmer’s Wife, and my fantasies mostly revolved around the meeting and befriending of famous people. I’d send myself to sleep with a major role-play involving me arriving at a swanky showbiz party in a posh hotel, causing a stir as people commented on my statuesque natural beauty. David Van Day, Tom Selleck, Kevin Bacon and Patrick Swayze would all fight over me. Emma Thompson and I would laugh about it over a cocktail (no umbrella). And then we’d all go back to Victoria Wood’s for cake where Eric and Ernie would do a dance routine for us.

Fantasy-wise, I’m sorry to say this wasn’t even the half of it. I did fake
Parkinson
interviews in my bedroom (I was always the last guest of the evening, always played in by T’Pau, and they installed a gold sparkly staircase especially for me). I’d have the audience in the palm of my hand, touching Parky’s knee regularly, winking at Jason Donovan who was in the seat next to me. I would then find myself skating at glacial speed round the local roller rink, being hurled around in the manly arms of Christopher Dean. I stood atop my desk and played
Annie
to a packed Palladium, taking a lavish series of curtain calls as my rapt audience shrieked with joy. But alongside all the glitz, I made sure I left room for a bit of do-gooding, a bit of making a difference in the world. And how very
grand
I was about it all.

For your information and pleasure, I’d like to offer you an excerpt from the diary of fourteen-year-old Miranda (who is much like eighteen-year-old Miranda, except a tad shorter and pinker-faced, and wears dungarees):

Do we ever stop dreaming? I know I haven’t. I must have been at least twenty-five when the Spice Girls happened, and I distinctly remember imagining my way into the group. I was going to be the sixth Spice, ‘Massive Spice’, who, against all the odds, would become the most popular and lusted-after Spice. The Spice who sang the vast majority of solo numbers in the up-tempo tracks. The Spice who really went the distance. And I still haven’t quite given up on the Wimbledon Ladies’ Singles Championship. I mean, it can’t be too late, can it? I’ve got a lovely clean T-shirt, and I’ve figured out
exactly
how I’d respond to winning the final point (lie on floor wailing, get up, do triumphant lap of the ring slapping crowd members’ hands, then climb up to my family in the supporters’ box).

It
can’t
be just me who does this. I’m convinced that most adults, when travelling alone in a car, have a favourite driving CD of choice and sing along to it quite seriously, giving it as much attitude and effort as they can, due to believing – in that instant – that they’re the latest rock or pop god playing to a packed Wembley stadium. And there must be at least one man, one poor beleaguered City worker, who likes to pop into a phone box then come out pretending he’s Superman. Is there someone who does this? Anyone? If so, I’d like to meet you and we shall marry in the spring (unless you’re really, really weird and the Superman thing is all you do, in which case BACK OFF).

Superman lunatics aside, I think it’s sad when people stop dreaming, or start losing hope. Because holding onto the bonkers dream might just turn out to be the most marvellous thing you ever did.

MDRC, allow me to be your own personal Simon Cowell for a moment. Allow me to sit back, fold my arms, hoist my trousers northwards and say. ‘YOU.
YOU
are the person this industry has been waiting for. YOU are what this competition is all about.’

If there’s something you want to do, and you have any kind of basic skill or talent in that direction, please, please, please . . .
do it
. Begin. I feel that this is the only life advice I’m qualified to give – GO FOR IT. Keep plugging away. Heave yourself up the mountain, for there’s bound to be a biscuit at the top. Someone’s got to be the new X; someone’s got to be the new Y. Or maybe you’ve got different kinds of dreams. Still not learned to knit? Do it! Fancy yoga? Bend over! Dreamed of walking the Pennine Way? Lace up your boots and BEGIN!

I was recently inspired by a little poem by Langston Hughes (check me getting all cultured in my old age):

Big M, this all sounds very lovely and stuff, but it seems like most of my dreams haven’t actually come true.

That’s because you haven’t been honest about your dreams. You think right now that your dreams and aims are to get married, have children, play lacrosse at national level, perhaps be a PE teacher, do a politics degree and then become a politician. Don’t you?

Those ARE my dreams, thank you.

They aren’t really. They are the things you feel you ‘should’ do. They are the things that other people want for you. They are the things that you know really aren’t at the top of the list. What about those dreams that really make your heart sing? You have forgotten that one of our life-long dreams was to have a dog. You put it on every Christmas present list since you can remember, and now you have one. You have a dog.

But that’s just a stupid little thing.

No, it’s not. Those sorts of things really count. Because your heart singing is all that matters. But if you want a big example, just wait for this . . .

This had better be good, because I am a little down.

I think it’s time you admitted your ultimate dream, Little M. You know, that dream you have of getting into comedy? Being a comedy actress . . .

SHUT UP! I haven’t told anyone that. I am so embarrassed . . . who am I to think that I could do that, for real? It sounds really arrogant to admit you think you could be on the telly.

Well, do you know, I rather wish you’d just have the confidence to admit it. Then maybe you would have done Drama and English for A-Level, done Theatre Studies at uni instead of Politics and focused on what you really wanted to do. It would have stood us in much better stead. Because here is the thing, Little Miranda: we never stop dreaming about getting into comedy. And at twenty-six, we finally started admitting it to people. Even though the dream seemed further and further away as I trundled through my twenties and early thirties in offices, I kept at it. I kept writing sketches in office stationery cupboards, kept trying them out in grotty London pubs, every summer went to the Edinburgh Festival and every September, when back in the office, would do another mail-merge to casting directors. And, get this – we are now a comedy actress. Professionally.