Comedy

Toodlepip, My Loves! It’s Been REAL!!

/ Emma-Jane Austen-Jones / 7 Comments

Want to say a mahusiv thanks to everyone who came to my gigs last week, and for the three people in the whole expat wife community who didn’t make, I’m sure you had a good excuse (like husband away and helper sick). So for you, I’ll put the clip in this post.

I was meant to leave Singapore on Friday, but a series of rather wonderful occurrences occurred, so I thought HEY, why not just stay?! Hotels don’t give you the bill until you leave, right? So all I have to do is stay long enough to make some major cash (somehow), and then I’ll be able to afford the Raffles invoice.

Given that Agent Provocateur (the brand of my trademark sunnies) didn’t come through with the $2bn sponsorship deal I put to them, I’m pretty sure that Chanel (my new glasses) will be up for it. I’m happy to negotiate because hello, this is Chanel we’re talking about, so I could probably meet them at $1.9 or even $1.75bn. I’ll leave it up to them. They seem to know what they’re doing, so they’ll figure out what’s fair here.

That was my plan A, and then… Then I did my second sell-out gig from my sell-out tour of the whole of Asia but only in Singapore, at Chijmes. A lovely audience member tweeted this pic of me extolling the virtues of Grant Property, and now I’m thinking that they would most likely also love the opportunity to sponsor me as an emerging Asia expat (sort of) talent (totes).

Grant Property

 

Armed with Plans A and B, I also realised that I didn’t get to finish my second Tekka Market joke at the Blu Jaz, so I really need another shot at that. Plus, it has been so amazing hanging out in the sun that it just made zero sense to dash back to London.

Then the most incrediblé thing of all happened…

So you know that I met up with Mrs Doom and Gloom Expat Wifey last week, and that she is none of the above anymore, and that I actually started to like her because she has turned into a proper person with sensible values like partying and handbags, but then she said she’s getting her blog published, and mysteriously I didn’t like her anymore and considered throwing myself off the Swissôtel (I’m a complex person, as you know, dear readers).

Well. Crazy upon crazy, she came to my first gig and she brought a friend with her who’s a talent agent, and he loved me!! Not only that, but she showed my blog to her publisher and… He loves me too!!! OMFG!!!

So I’m like WOW, I have at least a gazillion reasons to stay in Singas, and only a few little crappy ones to go back to London, not counting the irritants. They’re fine with Don. He knows where their clothes and schools are, and has apparently hired a housewife I mean housekeeper. Oopsy, it’s just too easy to mix those things up, isn’t it?

Over the coming months, I need to assemblé my past posts into a book, as requested by the publisher, so I’ll be too busy to blog. Hashtag sad face. I’ll miss each and every one of you, and I know the feeling is mutual, despite you missing me more.

I might pop up occasionally, but it’s best I keep a low profile, in case Don thinks I should come back, and what with being on a tourist visa and all that.

I think, dearest readers, that I might be experiencing an epiphanification. I used to believe that I had worked hard to get where I was, to be an expat wife – like my mother before me, and her mother before her. Now that I have suffered the torture of repatriation, and returned to my spiritual homeland of warm nights on roof terraces, weekends in Bali, the peace of separation from family, the eternal transitions and exciting losses, the shopping, the laughter, the wonderful quicksand of the Unknown and Unknowable… Now I realise that this is where I was born to be. Not an expat wife, but a free soul: embracing the now, leaving behind that which no longer serves, and taking lots of selfies along the way. Descartes was wrong when he quotheded “I think therefore I am”. Or maybe not wrong, just not right anymore. Here, today, I have likes and followers therefore I am. There are 7.4 billion people in the world today, but I am somebody. And some people are more somebody than others.

 

This was my diary.

Love love love

EJ xx

IMG_4558

Eyes, lah ; )

 

 

On Non-Awesome Mothers (of the Repatriated Expat)

/ Emma-Jane Austen-Jones / 1 Comment

When I returned from my divine time in Disney, I had to drive straight to Mummy’s Holland Park abode to collect the irritants. From the way she had told me to hurry back to Angleterria, I was anticipating a scene of the utmostest calamity and devastation at her place, but none did I find. All cool: Max hiding in a wardrobe with his iPad so as to avoid his grandmother’s ban on Minecraft, and Milly, somewhat thinner than I remembered (but people always do seem thinner after a sojourn in the northern Americas, don’t they?), half-heartedly doing a jigsaw at the kitchen table, underneath which she held her phone, Whatsapping away with her little friends. They’re so cute at this age. It really is incrediblé how fast five year-olds can type. She has barely learnt to write, but wow can she Whatsapp! That’s my girl : )

Mummy was at the Aga, making juniper berry venison with Jerusalem artichokes and unfeasibly small onions (I do love her cooking! I wish we had more home cooking at my house hashtag sadface.)

She insisted on telling me absolutely everything that the children had done over Xmas and New Year’s – went to Auntie this, saw cousins thems. I wasn’t in the least bit interested, but her focused obliviousosity gave me the chance to message Phil, and to catch up on all the important Facebook news I’d missed during my journey back. I refuse to pay for wifi on planes. Upper Class tickets are expensive enough as it is! I’m not going to subsidise the poors in Economy a penny more than I absolutely have to.

The next thing I heard was Mummy saying, “blablabla-bla-bla-bloo, so you’d be wise to leave now, before the traffic gets bad”.

“Oh”, I replied, “I thought we ought to stay the night. I’m really rather jet lagged, and my chi is flip flopping all over the place, as you can imagine. And you’re doing my favourite sups: juniper berry venison… with Jerusalem artichokes… and unfeasibly small onions. So it would be nice for you if we stayed to keep you company…” –

“Emma-Jane, have you heard nothing I’ve been telling you? I have someone coming round later for dinner. Which is why you’d better get the children’s things together, and go home. You know what the traffic’s like. Or have you forgotten? Not quite the same as Singapore!”

[Ha, like I didn’t know that! I had just spent millennia getting through customs and driving from the airport in the pelting rain. Had it been Singapore, it would’ve taken me half an hour from the time the plane landed to be lying in my rooftop pool with a bottle of Veuve Click. Like I didn’t know!! How totes dare she?? Rub salt in the wound much, Mum-ski?! What a b***h.]

Not one to take things personally, nor blow matters beyond reasonable proportion, I said, “Fine!”, and stormed off to gather the irritants’ paraphernalia, apparently quadrupled in volume due to Xmas presents. They had quite enough stuff already, without people bloody giving them more! There’s nothing for it: we’ll just have to move to a bigger house. I’m sort of running low on money (dunno where that vast sum my father gave me went, though I should really know given that I did an online accountancy course when I sacked my accountant), but I could just get a job or something.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that it isn’t easy to fit three people and shedloads of luggage into a Maserati, but given that needs musted (Mummy was not d’accord with me leaving the gifts or even one of the children at hers), I had little choice, did I, dear readers? As we squeezed into the car, I informed her in a completely not passive-aggressive way that, by demanding our immediate departure, she was risking the lives of two of her precious grandchildren, and her only daughter (apart from the other one, my sister), whilst simultaneously depriving said daughter of much-loved juniper berry venison with Jerusalem artichokes and yes, unfeasibly small onions… Which basically fed into and compounded every other moment of deprivation, disappointment, and dreadfully dire mothering she had perpetrated against my person from conception onwards. As I made sure to let her know.

We said goodbye – well, she said goodbye to the kids – and I sped us home, at least enjoying the roar of the fine engine and the appreciative glances from gentleman drivers. The open road reminded me that I was free, and in spite of Max and Milly’s protestations, I put the top down. With the wind in my fiery locks and Beyoncé blasting loud, I felt myself to be on Orchard Road again (somewhat chillier, of course), recalling the days of cruising from one happy, warm place to another happy, warm place.

Then the car in front came to a halt, as had every car beyond for as far as my azure almond eyes could see. It was really cold. I turned the music down, and flicked the switch to raise the hood. It took almost as long to cross London as it had to cross the Atlantic. I say “almost”, only because I am not prone to exaggeration.

 

Thanks to Mummy’s salt rubbing, I am now missing Singas more than ever.

Leafy Orchard Road

Lovely leafy Orchard Road

 

Bankers on Roof Terraces

Bankers on roof terraces

 

Botanic Gardens

Sunny days at the Botanic Gardens – Hampstead Heath is so much chillier

 

Nikoi

Paradisical retreat weekends on the island of Nikoi, after a long five days of gloriously exhausting social mayhem

 

Fun times

Fun times wid my girlies

 

Laundry

& laundry hanging out of HDB windows in 100% humidity

 

So this was me after last night’s gig in Soho. I’m doing my happy face like a true pro, but inside my extremely awesome biker jacket, my heart was sobbing, “Take me back to Singapore!”

Potential repatriates take note. It’s not great.

 

Blue Post

 

 

Netflix and Chillin’ Wid My Disney Prince Charmin’

/ Emma-Jane Austen-Jones / 2 Comments

What a tremendously long bloliday!! (That’s bloggers’ technical termificology fyi, you’re welcome.)

Babeses (for the Expaterati)/ Dahlins (for the Brits), where to begin?? Xmas was an amazingly spiritual time of giving for me, hence my blogging hiaticus, and it has been a crazybobs delicious whirlwind. The previous occasion when I lay down the annals of my life for you, I was in Disneyland Florida, as you will recall. So I’ll begin with now, work backwards, doing some bits in the middle, then proceed to the end of the beginning bit. Or no, I’ll just start with Disney.

Given that life just made sense there, I decided to extend my stay beyond the kids’, and popped them on a plane back to London with Clara. They were having an awesome time, but Chrimbo is really so much nicer for irritants to spend with their grandparents, isn’t it? In the afore-mentionsed spirit of giving, it felt only right and proper for me to forgo my selfish maternal needs, and that Max and Mills returned to the bosom of the extended family. Plus, an incrediblé thing happened out there in Florida – even more incrediblé than the Burberry and LuluLemon prices at the outlet mall: I met my Prince Charming! Literally.

After a brief fling with a Mickey Mouse guy (it just didn’t work out; there was such a distance between us due to the immenseness of his ears, and frankly his attempts at reassurance, saying, “All the better to hear you with, my dear”, quickly became tiresome and creepy), one day I was watching the parade at the Magic Kingdom for the 87th time, and there was a chap on a float, playing Prince Charming. As our eyes met through the adoring crowd, he held my gaze, doing his charming waving posing thing, and in that moment, time stopped. Suddenly it was as if only he and I existed in the universe, while all around us became just a blur of… of other stuff going on, and stuff.

It must only have been a matter of seconds, though it felt like a lifetime, and then, I knew. So, long story short, I shacked up with Phil, once the irritants were departé, checking out of the resort, as it would’ve been unethical for a Disney employee to be fraternising with a guest, and I didn’t want him to put his character career at risk. My principles just wouldn’t allow me to do that, and also the whole place was booked solid. I located a very droll motel next to a highway, and made that my HQ for the remainder of the trip. It was hilarious because it was just like the motels you see in films, and one half-expected to be awoken in the middle of the night by a Quentin Tarantino villain in possession of a suitcase full of automatic weapons. So fun.

Phil and I had a simply divine time, and it’s extremely true that at Disney, dreams really do come true. We did some serioso Netflixing and chilling, let me tell you!! Mostly Disney films. He’s an actor/ dancer/ singer/ model on a one-way trajectory to Hollywood (of that I am certain, and as you know, I have yet to be wrong about anything), and apart from my British accent and fabulous physical being, he adored the fact that I am distantly related to the Royal Family, and that I have a ton of media contacts worldwide, and a boatload of fans in my own right. We just clicked, you know? Therefore thusly, it was with some considerable annoyance that I received a call one sunny afternoon while he was at work, and I lounged by the motel pool (imagining myself in Gone Girl), from my mother. She rudely demanded to know when I would be flying back to “attend” to my children, which I thought was pretty rich given that she was failing horrendously to attend to my needs as her child, by interrupting this special period in my life. Just like that, I went from Gone Girl to Girl Interrupted. The painful irony was, of course, entirely lost on her.

What could I do, babeses, as a doting mother, but dash back to London as soon as very possible?? So that’s what I did, after a few more beautiful days with Phil. He was just perfect for me: he smiled and waved, and smiled and nodded, and was completely charming all the time. I wondered how my life would have been, had I married Phil rather than Don, all those years ago. Unlike Max and Milly, our children would’ve been (could still be!!) a cosmic combination of my searing intellect and his smiley, wavey charm. How far they would go in this world, with those qualities!

In my excitement, I told Clara about Phil and she must’ve been in a bad mood (why are so many women in such a bad mood all the time?!) because her less than enthusiastic response was, “EJ, do you really think that’s the basis for a mature, lasting relationship?”

Why I had expected her to be happy for me, I do not know. Too often people delight in the misery of others, I observate upon reflection, rather than in their joy, and that explains a great deal about the human condition and the state of the global economy and just goes to show that everything Plato and Buddha said was true. They’d back me up here, no doubt.

Coming back to non-Disney London has been a shock to the system, I won’t deny it, but I’ve been rushed to the bone with my performance work. Thanks for your support, my loves, Expaterati or otherwise. Below are some fab pics  – thanks to these mega cutting edge film peeps for helping me with the stills – of me doing a full-house performance at the London Comedy Store. It was a weird one because how it works is that a whole bunch of freebie comics show up (obviously I’m not a comic, more of an edicator, sharing the message of my glamorous life, but let’s keep that to ourselves) to get judged by the first rows of the audience, and the first rows are the ones who bagged their seats early, so they’ve had some loooong drinking time. Super smart business model, and if I ever wore a hat, I’d take it off to that venue; but I don’t wear hats because they suck the chi from my fiery locks.

So I said some important stuff

So I said some important stuff

Yes it IS

& made some valid points

Tee hee

& it was all going great

Rap

But then I did my Chrimbo rap (available for download as a ringtone, so ping me because you won’t want to be without it next Christmas!)

Seriously??

& suddenly my time was up… Without even getting to the dog in a bikini or my camel toe issues!

Not sure about putting the clip on my YouTube channel, as the compere repeatedly used the C word shortly before my set (not with reference to me, por supuesto), and there’s just no way to stop children getting on the Internet. Could cut that bit out, I guess…

Finally, I’m very excited to say that I’m planning my visit to Singas next month!!!! It does depend on childcare arrangements as I appear to have somehow lost Mummy’s willingness to assist, but Don has turned up… Yes, he has! Will save that for another post, even though I know you’d love to read another couple thousand words from me right now. Sorry!! Delayed gratification is a good thing though, for many people (not me), so I’m doing you a favour.

What with my visit, I am urgently wanting to contact a hot Aussie chap by the name of Jonathan Atherton, as it would be way cool to do some performance while I’m over there. If anyone knows him, feel free to put in a word on my behalf. Just say hi or guarantee him a sell-out night at the Blu Jaz Café, or just hi.

Sending lots of love. Xx