I Am What I Am, John Barrowman [smart ebook reader .txt] 📗

The pilot pulled the helicopter into a steep, high climb with the nose right up in the air. Then he cut the tail rotor and, for a beat, we were hanging in mid-air, spinning on our axis. The pilot flipped the tail back up, and we dropped forward so fast it felt like we were free-falling on the world’s wildest roller coaster, the ocean rushing towards us with full force and my stomach in my mouth. All of us inside the helicopter did what I think it is fair to say most men would have done in a similar situation: we screamed like little girls.

Our most recent holiday in Barbados was much more tranquil and much less risky.18 In the mornings, I’d get out of bed at around 7 a.m. and park myself in a deckchair at the lagoon pool, which looked out across the beach and the ocean. After that, I’d rouse myself for only the most necessary of physical functions. And as much as I love the active trips Scott and I take, where we explore new places and shop and visit historic sights and shop, I cherished the fact that when I roused myself from my deckchair one afternoon, I realized that I hadn’t been on my phone or checked my email for three whole days.19

Every evening at 5 p.m., a number of families we’d met since we’d arrived at the resort joined Scott and me at the pool bar. The adults ordered mudslides,20 but mine was kept on ice. Instead of drinking right away, I’d take all the kids into the pool and we’d play Marco Polo, or go to the beach and body surf, while all the mums and dads21 got an hour to themselves to sip in the sun. A couple of the children were big Doctor Who fans, and young enough that they truly thought they were playing Marco Polo every night at 5 p.m. with Captain Jack, which, if you think about it, might well be exactly what Jack would want to play. He probably even knew Marco Polo.

Spending this time in Barbados and sharing some of our holiday with these other families made me understand another reason why my parents may have shifted our family vacation from the caravan to the resort at Eastbourne. A resort, especially one that you return to every year, allows families to connect with other families from walks of life that, in your home environment, you’d likely never have contact with. Plus, vacationing at a resort community usually means more friends for the children to play with and more eyes to watch them when they do.

There is also another, very important bonus. I don’t care if you’re at Butlins in Minehead or at Crystal Cove in the West Indies, every resort has a karaoke night – and they’re a hoot.

For the Crystal Cove karaoke evening, I played DJ. I insisted that all of the guests in the bar and main room, adults and children alike, get up and sing, and everyone did. The management told me the next day that my karaoke night was the best and most popular one they’d had since they opened.

I do like a good karaoke or a cabaret night. Always have. Years ago, when my friend from university, Marilyn, and my mum, dad and I were driving from Glasgow to London for my second audition for what was to be my debut in Anything Goes, we stayed at a hotel outside London the night before. The hotel had a piano bar and Marilyn, my mum and I commandeered it and entertained everyone for a couple of hours. We even made a few quid in tips. The next day, as my dad was checking out, the hotel manager asked if he could book the three of us for the following weekend.

The day after the Crystal Cove karaoke, Scott and I rented jet skis. In the mornings, the beach would swarm with entrepreneurial Rastafarians hawking such wares. For a tenner each, Scott and I got the run of our machines for the day. Barbados had very few rules, but the Rasta guy did suggest, for our own safety, that we didn’t venture too far down the coastline … man. Scott and I headed out into open water, and thought, ‘Hell – it’s Barbados!’ and we made a run for it. We drove the jet skis all the way down the coast, taking in the sights and sounds of the beaches and the other resorts as we cruised.

When we crossed back into the harbour, where a number of cruise ships had docked, we started waving to the tourists standing on the decks. Pretty soon, our waving turned to doing doughnuts and figure-of-eights and putting on a little show for the people waving back to us, and then pretty soon after that, a hulking, flashing coastguard boat headed towards us at quite a clip. The cruise-ship captains had notified the coastguard of a possible terrorist threat from two erratic jet-ski drivers in the harbour. Scott and I drove up next to the boat, apologized profusely, and got the hell out of there.

Before Scott and I left Barbados, we heard from our new friends that the place to dine was a restaurant called The Cliff. The problem was that in order to get a table, you usually had to book months in advance; to land the best table (called, naturally, Table #1), a table that appeared to float out over the water, was nigh-on impossible at short notice. This was the kind of restaurant where there are no prices on the menu and they happily accept a second mortgage or your first-born in order to secure a reservation.

However, while we were mudsliding one evening, one of the couples told me that they’d had to cancel their booking at The Cliff because they couldn’t get a babysitter. Since my babysitting services were only available in the