Funny how things turn out

As featured in Lucky Bag: The Victoria Wood Song Book, 1^st edition published 1984 by Methuen, ISBN 0-413-56140-2 (hardback), 0-413-56150-X (paperback).

This song is very long and hard to remember. One of the penalties of being a solo performer is that when you go blank there's no-one to say 'I think I know what you're about to tell me, Colonel Pinky, Moira was seen in the shrubbery just after cocoa'. So when I dry up, it's just embarrassing and there's no way round it. But that's one of the advantages of writing a book, you can't see me. Good job, because I've got a horrible T-shirt on.

Of all the letters that make me ill,
The rates demand, the telephone bill,
The ones that bring me really low
Are the ones from girls I used to know.
The girls at school you didn't like much
Have a terrible urge to keep in touch.
Those of whom you were not fond
Relentlessly wield the Basildon Bond.

Remember Bobbie Field?
I won the Drama Shield.
An embryo actress and terribly thin.
Very ambitious, determined to win.
Auditioned for RADA and didn't get in.

Funny how things turn out.

I got my Equity card.
But the life was awfully hard.
I advertised cat-food for years which was hell.
Did Equus at Windsor, which didn't go well.
And I asked for my key at the Crossroads Motel.

Funny how things turn out.

Though my kids are three, four and five.
I still keep my brain alive.
I've started to write, and I'm making some headway,
With humorous verses for Radio Medway.

My faith in myself is still devout.
Whenever I find I've a minute to kill,
I drive to the hospital up on the hill,
And sing Lerner and Lowe to the mentally ill.
Funny how things turn out.

Remember Jennifer Hill?
I was the first on the pill.
A bit of a hippie, and into 'tie-dye'
Trekked to Morocco, got ever so high.
Then I married a man from ICI.

Funny how things turn out.

We moved to Tufnell Park
With a cat called Muriel Spark.
I came off the pill 'cos it made me depressed.
I hated the cap and the coil and the rest.
So I've three in the infants and two on the breast.

Funny how things turn out.

Now I sit from dawn to dusk
Covered in snot and Farley's Rusk.
I look back on the days of my youth and my passion,
Wishing that loon-pants would come back in fashion

And wondering what it's all about.
The doctor's advice has been largely ignored.
We did try the sheath but we got very bored.
So I'm writing to you from the Labour Ward.
Funny how things turn out.

Remember Brenda James?
I was Captain of Games.
I practised all day till my muscles were sore.
Hockey was super and boys were a bore.
Didn't use Tampax till 'seventy-four.

Funny how things turn out.

At College I read sport.
But socially things were fraught.
I refused to have sex with a man called Des.
He went around calling me 'Brenda the Les'
So I slept with a girl in my hall of res.

Funny how things turn out.

I 'came out' at a Lesbians Ball.
Didn't feel 'glad to be gay' at all.
Whoever said that? Tom Robinson, was it?
I couldn't agree and got back in the closet.

Then saw the light and had no doubt.
I took all my savings and just disappeared.
And found a nice doctor who said, 'You're not weird',
Now I'm Jonathan James with a wonderful beard.
Funny how things turn out.

© Victoria Wood, 1983