The Further Adventures of an Idiot Abroad (35 page)

I can’t imagine anyone ever singing about a British road in a positive way, not like they’ve done in America for Route 66. Americans seem to have a positive attitude
about driving and have the songs to prove it. I’m thinking of Steppenwolf’s song, ‘Born To Be Wild’ for starters. I’ve never got in my car and thought I’ll go
looking for adventure. All I’m looking out for are speed cameras and potholes. Westminster Council have dug more holes in London’s roads than archaeologists have dug in Egypt.

I haven’t always had these feelings about driving though. When I was a teenager my driving test was more important than any other exam I took. I always thought that once I’d passed
my driving test the world would be my oyster and I would finally have control of my destiny. Maybe that’s a bit over the top, but at least I knew that I wouldn’t have to wait any more
at the bus stop for the 261 to Manchester Piccadilly with Mad Rita. Rita was the local nutter who would always ask for help with her pram when she was boarding the bus. ‘You should always
help a woman with a baby!’ is probably what you’re thinking. Well, there wasn’t a baby in the pram, just a bucket with a face drawn on it. The clue was in the name: Mad Rita.
Scruffy Sandra was normally there, too, taking up three seats with bin bags stuffed with clothes from secondhand shops, and John from the care home who sat at the back of the bus showing his knob
to anyone who was interested.

I passed my driving test twenty years ago. It took two attempts. I’ve had seven cars in total, three parking tickets, been clamped twice, got three points for going through a red light,
and been involved in one crash (that wasn’t my fault). I think I’m quite a good driver. I sometimes get annoyed when other drivers are being indecisive, but I’m nowhere near as
impatient as me dad. He has one hand poised on the horn like a contestant and their buzzer on
The Weakest Link
. I’ve covered a lot of miles in the passenger seat with me dad as he
delivered papers or did courier work or drove his black cab. I used to sit on an empty bottle crate in the front of the cab and get tips off his customers. But there was a downside, too. If he ever
gave me a lift somewhere in the cab he’d often pick up passengers along the way who’d want to go in the opposite direction, so it was often quicker to walk. The thing that used to wind
him up more than anything was if a passenger asked to go somewhere and me dad knew exactly where he was going and he headed there – seven miles out of town, or wherever it was – and
then just when we were moments from the drop off, the passenger would say, ‘Just next on your right here, mate.’ And that would do me dad’s head in. ‘I know where it is!
I’ve brought you this far without directions, haven’t I?’ And I’d be sat there thinking, ‘No tips from this one then.’ Me dad takes great pride in his knowledge
of the UK’s roads. He often nips off to the toilet, not with a newspaper like most of us, but with an
A–Z
tucked under his arm. We call it his ‘shat nav
updates’.

The most important thing for me when packing for this trip down Route 66 was my iPod. I like listening to music when I’m driving. For me, it’s music, mirror, signal, manoeuvre. I
also made sure that I packed some pear drops, kola kubes and a hot water bottle (I’ll explain that later). In the end, the only thing I realised I’d forgotten to pack when I reached LA
was my driving licence. Still, at least this gave me a bit of time to explore the place, while Suzanne FedExed it over.

On the first day I went for a walk on Santa Monica beach. For me, the beach is a place to relax, but that wasn’t the case in LA. Women were jogging, men were lifting weights or doing
press-ups or sit-ups. Even the pigeons had bigger chests than the ones in London. A lot of people looked as if they’d had plastic surgery, too. It never looks right to me. Fair enough, if
you’ve been scarred, but that’s the only reason I can understand for getting surgery. I caught the end of a TV programme once where this person had something called mirrored-self
misidentification. Apparently it’s where you don’t recognise your reflection in the mirror. Now, if everyone had this problem then no one would call anyone ugly or make anyone feel
depressed about how they looked, because you genuinely wouldn’t know what they looked like themselves. Sorted. I can’t think of any situations where I’ve had to know what I looked
like. I don’t have to find me, because I’m always with myself.

While I was down at the beach I got a call from Ricky about taking part in an activity that was popular with the young generation over here. It’s called Glee Club. There’s a TV show
that sparked the craze a few years ago involving kids at a high school who smile a lot and have great lives and sing and dance about how great everything is. The show covers kids’ issues, but
nothing heavy like drugs or pregnancy, just how to cope when you wake up with a spot on your neck. It annoys me how many singing shows there are on TV now. We have too many kids growing up wanting
to be professional singers. Nobody wants a normal job. I never hear a kid say they want to be a builder or an electrician or a plumber. When I was having problems with my boiler recently I had to
wait a week before a plumber was available ’cos there just aren’t enough of them. But if I wanted someone to come round and do a dance routine in my front room, they’d probably be
round within the hour.

I guess Ricky had suggested it because he knew I did a bit of dancing when I was younger – body popping and robotics was my thing. I even performed once or twice at the shopping centre,
but mainly it was something I did at home in my bedroom. I don’t dance as much these days. There’s too many 12-inch remixes that go on for ten or twelve minutes. No wonder drugs started
to be used in clubs. I need a couple of Beroccas just to get me through one song, let alone a whole night.

My tutor at the school was a woman called Gail who seemed to really know her stuff and seemed passionate about it. When I was growing up music lessons at my school were never taken that
seriously. There wasn’t the budget to buy proper equipment. In fact, it was probably my school that came up with the idea for
The Trash Musical
, where they use the bins as
instruments. I’m sure it was the only school in the country that taught ‘whistling’, but even that was tricky ’cos so many of the kids were missing teeth. The Performing
Arts weren’t really what our school was about. The main stage was only used once a year for the Nativity play, and that was a joke. There were too many kids in the school, and not enough
roles to go round, so most kids only got the odd line here or there. It must’ve been the only Nativity play that had Seven Wise Men.

Back in Santa Monica, Gail gave me a few lines to sing in one of the numbers they were rehearsing. It was ‘Jump’ by Van Halen. The thought of it worried me.
I’m under no illusion that I can sing. Whistling and humming are more my thing. Plus, remembering words doesn’t come easily either. I only know about three songs off by heart: a couple
of Elvis songs – ‘If I Could Dream’ and ‘In The Ghetto’ – and ‘Ain’t No Pleasing You’ by Chas and Dave. Still, I practised my lines to
‘Jump’, and then Gail said I would also have to remember a dance routine to go with it. I have never done a routine before. My dancing as a kid at the local shopping centre was
basically improvised. I let my body decide what it wanted to do. But Gail wanted me to do exactly the same routine as the twenty other kids on stage. I really don’t understand the point of
this. If everyone is doing the same dance you might as well just have one person doing the dance. The same goes for synchronised swimming. Let everyone do their own thing, that way the audience has
different things to watch.

I rehearsed for an hour while Gail kept reminding me to smile. I struggle with this. Smiling isn’t my face’s default setting. I smile when I’m really happy and only ’cos
that’s what my mouth wants to do. So, remembering to put on a false smile was hard. Gail kept saying, ‘You’re having fun! Let people see you’re having fun!’ And
that’s when I understood why 90% of the kids I was dancing with were wearing braces on their teeth. If you live in a place where smiling is so important I guess you want straight teeth.

An hour later, there I was standing at the side of the stage waiting for my cue. I did the first part of the dance routine fairly successfully, I think. I was a split-second behind everyone
else, but I thought this was OK because if anyone blinked they wouldn’t miss anything. I was sort of providing a catch-up service. I then shuffled off the stage to wait for my singing bit.
But, as I was standing at the side, I realised I’d forgotten my three lines. There was a woman there with headphones on talking to Gail, and I told her that I’d forgotten my lines, but
she was too busy to help me out. I got a right sweat on from the panic and desperately asked all the people around me to help, but they were in their own zones, quietly preparing for their next
bits. And then I was being dragged back on stage by a young girl and handed a mic. The words that came out of my mouth were definitely in the wrong order, but I think I got away with it. And then I
backed off the stage as quickly as I could.

But no sooner was it over than my director was telling me he wanted to do another routine, so that he had plenty of options when he was editing the final TV series. I wasn’t happy about
this. I was properly drained and had pretty much used up all my skills in that single performance. I couldn’t tell if he wanted me to do another take because the first one looked too good, or
too bad. Anyway, I agreed to dance to ‘Everything She Does Is Magic’ by The Police. It was a complicated routine with loads of hand movements. The rest of the kids seemed to do it
smoothly, while I just looked like I was trying to communicate with the deaf.