Friday, September 26, 2003

I am just packing to go to Belgium. Getting nervous (as ever) because it is still show biz, and that's what show biz runs on - nerves.

Of course, being a street urchin, I am more nervous about being looked up and down by the posh hotel we are staying at. They always know that I don't belong in that world. It's not just my unironed clothes, my homemade haircut or the tendency to treat staff as equals, but the aura of 'street' that comes off me.

W.C.Fields said the same, long after he was a star of Broadway and Hollywood - he said people's dogs still snarled at him, because they could smell the poverty and desperation of his earlier years.....

I immediately think I should go put clean trousers on...just at the thought...rather than my comfortable 'travel' ones that I have been wearing for two days already!

Sad, isn't it? I guess so. But I will never get to feel like a star. I don't even feel like part of the middle classes. I certainly never felt like the white male oppressor! I mostly feel like I am playing at being a grown-up, and always expect to get caught out.

Look at me! In my Twenties hitching and bumming about; in my Thirties wandering about with a suitcase full of juggling and magic, doing street shows; a brief spell in the movies (which is what this is all about); into my Forties on the dole, running away to join the circus and finally, in my Fifties, a 'steady job' in a humble profession (libraries) which has led to being a computer person (improbably at my age).

But I am still sure they are going to catch me out....and spot the kid dressing up and putting on a show....

Be Seeing You!

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