Welcome to the Real World

'I
need more money.' Tilting the glass in my hand, I pull yet another pint of beer.

'Don't we all, man.' My dear friend Carl looks at me through the fog of his cigarette smoke, eyes barely slits. He's propping up the bar opposite me and I smile across at him, mainly because the hubbub of noise in the pub makes it difficult to be heard and I want to save my voice.

Carl is a man out of his timeI'm sure he would have been much happier as a 1970s rock god. His battered denim jacket, shoulder-length hair and tendency to say, 'Yeah, man,' don't sit comfortably with current ideas of personal styling. But Carl and I go back a long way. A long, long way.

'No. I
really
need money,' I say. 'This time it's bad.'

'It always is,' Carl remarks.

'Joe's swimming in a sea of unpaid bills. I have to do something.' Joe is my older brother, but somehow I've become responsible for him. I don't mind at all. He needs all the help he can get.

'You work two jobs already, Fern.'

'Tell me something I don't know.' The till does its digital equivalent of
ker-ching
again and, grinning insanely at the next punter, I reach for another glass.

'How much more can you do?'

Win the lottery? Put on my shortest skirt, strike a pose outside King's Cross station and hope for a bit of business? Get a third job that requires minimum effort, yet doles out maximum pay? I'll fill you in quickly on what I like to call my 'situation'.

Bro' Joe lives on benefits and is constantly robbing Peter to pay Paul. Now Peter has been robbed so much he has nothing left. My brother isn't, however, the media version of a person living on the dolework-shy, feckless or lazy. Joe can't work because he has a sick son, Nathan. My beloved nephew is a five-year-old blond-haired heartbreaker and has severe asthmaand when I say severe, I mean
severe.
He needs constant attention. Constant attention that his motherthe beautiful and brittle Carolynwasn't prepared to give him as she left my lovely brother and their only child when Nathan was barely a year old. And, call me a bitter old bat, but I don't think that could be considered as giving it a fair crack of the whip.

If anyone thinks it's easy to manage on measly government handouts, then think again. If anyone thinks it's easy being the single parent of a sickly child, then ditto. Joe had a promising career in a bankokay, he wasn't setting the world alight. My brother was never destined to appear on
Newsnight
in a pinstripe suit giving his opinion on the world money market, but he was getting great appraisals, regular promotions, small pay risesand a pension to die for. He gave it all up the moment Carolyn departed to stay at home and care for Nathan. And, for that alone, he deserves all the support I can give him.

'You're on in a minute,' Ken the Landlord shouts over at me, giving a pointed glance at the clock.

As well as pulling pints behind the beer-stained bar of the King's Head public house, I am also 'the turn'. I do two half-hour sets every evening Monday through SaturdaySunday is quiz nightsinging middle-of-the-road pop songs for a terminally disinterested crowd. I finish serving the round of drinks and then nod my head towards Carl. 'Ready?'

Carl is my pianist. Again, I think he'd be happier as lead guitaristwhich he also plays brilliantlyfor Deep Purple or someone of that ilk, leaping around the stage, doing ten-minute solos, head-banging to his heart's content. But Carl has bills to pay, too. He jumps down off his bar stool and we head for the small, raised platform that is our stage. A once-spangly curtain is attached by a row of drawing pins to the wall behind us. Despite Carl's rebel, dropout appearance he is the most reliable person I've ever met. He's very low-key rock 'n' roll, really. Okay, he smokes the occasional joint and puts 'Jedi Knight' as his religion on Electoral Roll forms, but I don't think he's ever been moved to bite the head off a live chicken on stage or any such thing. And he's never smashed up a guitar as a display of artistic expression, because he's far too aware of how much they cost. He is also patience personified, spending every evening on that bar stool waiting for our two brief periods of respite when we can do what we truly love doing.

'We could do a couple of extra hours busking in the Tube,' my friend suggests as we make our way to the stage. 'That usually pulls in a few quid.'

I grab Carl's hand and squeeze it.

He looks at me in surprise. 'What's that for?'

'I love you,' I say.

'Cupboard love,' he replies. 'Would you still love me if I wasn't the world's best ivory tinkler?'

'Yes.'

This is a confession now. Carl and I used to be an 'item'. We never did the horizontal tango togethersomething for which I'm truly grateful. But we used to spend hours necking and I used to let him feel my top partsoccasionally even under my jumper. In my defence, however, this was when I was fifteen and we were at school together. And it was a much more innocent era.

Now that I'm thirty-two, I have no boyfriend and no time for one. Not even Carl, who I think still holds a torch for me. Well, not just a torch, a bloody great flashlight, a beacon, whatever type of light it is they have on lighthouses. I feel sorry that I don't love Carl in the way that he loves me, but I got him out of my system years ago and, basically, he's still sporting the same jacket and hairdo that he wore then. Need I say more?

We take our places on the stage, Carl behind his keyboard, me at the temperamental microphone. I wish I had more presence, more va-va-voom, but I always feel so insignificant on stagepartly because I'm only fractionally taller than the microphone stand. There's a slight hiatus in the hullabaloo of conversation and a smattering of disjointed clapping. Without preambleno 'one, two, one, two' as I test the mike, no shout of 'Good evening, London!'we launch into our performance. As this is a predominantly Irish pub, U2 hits feature heavily in our repertoire, as do those of The Corrs and Sinead O'Connor. We usually also knock out a few 1960s favourites and some classic ballads at the end to keep the maudlin drunks happy.

I spill my heart and soul, sliding flawlessly from one song to another, and at the end I take my bow and, in return, receive some muted applause. Is this what I do it for? For a few meagre crumbs of appreciation and an equally few extra quid in my pay packet at the end of the week?

When I'm back at the bar and serving pints again, one of the customers leans towards me and says with beery breath, 'You've got a great voice, darlin'. It's bloody wasted here.'

'Thanks.'

'You want to get on that
Fame Game
programme. You'd beat the pants off most of them.'

This isn't the first time I've been told that. Usually by men with beery breath and no knowledge whatsoever of the music industry.

'That's a great idea!' I don't point out to him that to take part in any of these talent-spotting fiascos, you need to be under the age of twenty-two and possess a belly flatter than your average pancakeneither of which applies to me.

My admirer lurches away clutching his drink.

I give Carl another pint of lager. 'That went well,' he says. 'I thought "With or Without You" was really heavy, man.'

'Yes.'

'I'll come round tomorrow and we can go through the running order. Maybe try out a few new songs.'

'Sure.' We analyse all our performances as if we've just come off the stage at Wembley Arena and, sometimes, it makes my heart break.

Once I was asked for my autograph at the end of the night by a young guy, but I'm not sure if he was taking the piss. All his friends laughed when he showed them the beer mat with my name scrawled on it in marker pen. It still made me walk on air for a week afterwards. I stifle a sigh. Don't think I don't have ambitions beyond being a badly paid barmaid-cum-pub singer. I, too, would like to be Joss Stone, Jamelia and Janet Jackson rolled into one. But, tell me, how on earth do I get my big break when all my days and nights are spent just trying to earn a crust?