You can have it all. Just not all at the same time.

 Summer 2008

Our Shakespearian midsummer wedding in June 2008 was amazing. Everything fell into place as if by magic. Money appeared, venues appeared, wine and champagne flowed. The church was beautiful. My sisters looked so lovely as bridesmaids and I truly felt like a princess. I was personally fulfilled but financially bankrupt. It was time to sell my flat. The big acting job had not appeared. Or rather it had but then as Sir Patrick Stewart had stated night after night. It vanished into air, into thin air.

We are such stuff as dreams are made of and our little lives are rounded with a sleep.

The flat sold eventually and I paid off my debts. I auditioned and auditioned after the wedding. A T.V. show here, a play there. I was back letting flats for the summer and also peeing on a stick. The Young Vic audition was not successful. Thank god I would not be understudying someone’s mother. Especially when the inimitable Sam Jones herself told me I was magnificent and not to forget it. I walked out of the audition.

I am magnificent!

Me: ‘Did I get the job?’

Agent:’ No, darling they went the other way. Sorry.’

Which way was that? Obviously not my way. So, they thought they might go to London and ended up in Margate.

Later that month smoking again out of the window of our weeny Islington flat I had the urge to pee on the last stick I had in the packet.

  Just to get rid of it. I peed. I went out of the bathroom and lit up another cigarette. I watched the people healthy and virtuous going into the Virgin gym and stubbed it out. Time to check. I stared at the two blue lines. Laughing with joy and fear I texted my husband.

 ‘It is positive.’

We are positive! Life is positive. I threw away the nearly full packet of cigarettes.

 I was not a celebrity.

I was not understudying somebody’s mother.

I was somebody's mother.