Mia Dolan Personal Diary

Mia Dolan Personal Diary Pages

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March 2009
Well. It’s been a long time since I have written a blog - it’s over a year since the last one! I would like to catch you up with what I have been up to…..
Most of the year was spent touring, and most of that was just me and Angie. We have travelled thousands of miles and had quite a few adventures along the way.
In April of last year we travelled to Stranraer, which is a long way from Sheerness. Hundreds of miles away in fact, so by the time we got there we were not in good moods - I felt about as spiritual as a chocolate mousse. To make matters worse the advertising had gone a bit wrong and we only had about 60 people at the show, and a lot of them where saying they only found out at the last minute. From Stranraer we travelled to Cumbria, and by this time Angie has got full blown ‘flu. Once again the advertising had gone a little wrong and we had about 85 people at the show. At both of these towns the people were lovely, but it’s very demoralizing to travel so far, for such small shows especially when you’re being told over and over that so many people would have come if they had known we were going to be there. Anyway it’s fair to say on the drive home from these events our morale was low.
Our next show was in Bath, but before we left Sarah (who had the job of organizing this beast of a tour) phoned me to say that the hotel we were booked in to (the same hotel we would be doing psychic school in), didn’t have any smoking rooms, and the only place she could find us to stay where we could smoke was in a pub. She also said it didn’t sound appropriate, but it was our only choice. Angie and I quickly agreed that we would rather have the pub, and told Sarah not to worry as both of us are working class and have no worries.
Four hours later we where in Bath and finally found the pub. Straight away we realized we had made a mistake. We where shown up to our room, and it was so bad I started to laugh. My feet were sticking to the carpet, and there were large bits of plaster on the floor that had fallen off the wall. I asked where the toilet was, and was shown a small room down the corridor where there was a toilet. Just a toilet. No hand basin, not even a lock on the door. I asked the girl showing us around if we were the only people using it, and she laughed and said the whole building used it.  “How many people are staying here?” I asked with my voice raising in pitch, and she shrugged her shoulders and said .”Don’t have a clue.” then started to walk away. I shouted at her to wait a minute  “There is no lock on the door to our room.” 
The girl turned around and said  “Oh I thought they had fixed that. I will ask Gary to take a look.” and then she was gone. Angie and I walked back into our room, I was starting to snigger again mostly because of Angie’s face. I should point out that Angie is cool about most things, but has a little issue about dirt and germs, and this place was her worst nightmare. Angie walked over to the old basin that was on the wall near the door, at least we have water she said in a quiet voice. I thought I must pull myself together as she was not happy, so I tried really hard to stop sniggering. But then Angie lent on the basin to turn the tap on and the whole basin swung away from the wall, and was hanging by one bracket. That was it. I lost all control and laughed hysterically. It was one of those times when you know you shouldn’t laugh but I just couldn’t stop. Eventually I pulled myself together and tried to make light of the situation, saying it’s only for one night, and we will be out for most of the night at the show etc, and when Gary turned up with a drill and a lock I thought - its OK, we will get through this.
Within the hour, we left the pub and went and found the town hall where the show was being held, and we even had a laugh on the way there. The show went well and we spent quite a while talking to people afterwards and signing books etc. Then we made our way back to the pub. I was thinking it will look better in the dark, the room may even look cozy. As soon as we pulled up outside the pub we realized it had got a lot worse. There was a full blown biker party going on, with very loud, hard-rock music, and it seemed hundreds of men in leathers. As we made our way through the crowds towards the door leading to our rooms, we didn’t see one other female. We breathed a sigh of relief as we got through the door leading to the stairs (did I mention we had 5 flights of stairs to climb) and by the time we got to our room and got our breath back we felt exhausted, and edgy. We put on the lamps (wall lamps hanging at strange angles) and I said “Never mind, we leave first thing. At least we have clean beds and the means to make coffee.” I filled the kettle from the hanging basin as Angie pulled back the covers on her bed, and started swearing  “The sheets are wet.”   she said in despair “They are bloody wet.” I thought she was exaggerating and said  “They are probably cold.” but as I pulled mine back I realized she was right. We discussed our options and decided we didn’t have any. The rest of the night we lay on top of the beds, listening to the party going on and when, around 2am we thought it was finally getting quiet we started to hear loud footsteps on the stairs and landing outside our room. It was only after the noise of heavy steps going up and down the hallway had been going on for 10 minutes that I lost my temper and opened our door to have a go at whoever was causing the noise, only to find the hallway empty. Yet I could still hear the sound of heavy steps going past me. I had to think quick because Angie had taken a little while to get used to phenomena, and she had been saying she could cope with the clairvoyance, but didn’t want to deal with any ghosts thank you!!!  I went back into the room and Angie looked over at me and said “I was expecting you to be shouting out there - what happened?” I couldn’t think of any other excuse, I was too tired, and too fed up, so I just told her the truth expecting her to get upset, but she totally surprised me by saying “With everything else going on, of course we have a bloody ghost as well.”  and so the rest of the night was spent talking quietly, listening to loads of banging and those heavy steps that I didn’t have the energy to deal with and we waited for dawn. We left just after 6am and found a shop selling coffee. It was wonderful to sit in the car with a large latte and a ciggie; it’s very true that all things are relative, as at that moment it felt like a luxury.
So from there we drove to the hotel where we were doing the psychic school, also the hotel we had decided not to stay in because we had wanted to smoke, and as we pulled into the driveway we could see down the long gravel drive this beautiful cream building like a stately home. We looked at each other, but said nothing. After we had parked the car and were in the reception area,  I had to ask about the room we would have had, and the lovely lady behind reception showed us where we had been going to stay, and of course the room was magnificent. Better than anything we had stayed in before, and to top it all, it had a bloody balcony, with seats. So we could have smoked if we had stayed there. I know there was a lot of lessons to be learnt from that experience, but only one of them was good, and that was Angie had got to a place where she wasn’t bothered about ghosts - but would it last?? 

A few weeks later I did a private reading for a lady from the Brighton area. I still only do a few now and again and the ones I do seem to be really needed, even though I don’t know this before hand. Anyway this lady - lets call her Sue - met me smiling and seemingly happy, but very quickly when the reading started I saw that she had been through a terrible time, had recently buried her young son who had been around seven years old. I realized she had deliberately tried to look happy because she desperately wanted a real reading, so didn’t want to give anything away. I did not pick up her son, it was far to early for that, and even if he had been over a few years its not very often that children come back to visit. The reason for this is because when children die, they are not given a choice about going over or not, they are just taken home straight away, and then put into a sort of time loop. A simple way to describe this is, the children think that they have just made some great new friends (as they will be with other children who have gone over) and they think they have a few hours to play until their parents or whoever else looked after them, comes to collect them. So the children do not know they are dead, they just think they have a great few hours to play with some new friends, and then the time loops, without the children knowing and this is how it continues very gradually extending, as they grow up over there and eventually realize where they are. 
So the reading I gave to Sue was just about what had happened and how it had affected her other child and I gave advice on how to survive this terrible time. At the end of the reading I asked (as I always do) if there was anything she would like to ask me, any questions she had that I had not covered and what she asked me made me more angry than I have been for years.
She asked me if her son was OK, was he scared, was he in the dark, and as she asked the tears started to roll down her cheeks. I pulled my chair closer and held her hand and explained what happened when children die, that they are never left behind, and he had just gone home, and I promised her he was OK. Now this is a fear I can totally understand because when I lost my son I nearly stopped the burial, because I had the stupid thought that he didn’t like the dark, and just when they where about to start putting the earth onto the coffin I said wait,….and everyone looked at me, wondering if I was about to lose it. I then realized how silly I was being and said its OK, and they continued with the burial. So I thought I understood why Sue was asking this, but I was wrong. She said through her sobs that she had been to see another psychic the week before and at the end of the reading with this man, she told the man that her son had been killed a few weeks before and just wanted to know he was alright, and this so called psychic said “He is crying for you because he is lost in the dark but I will work on this for you.”
As I listened to this my rage was so great I had to stand by the window for a minute to get myself under control, as it wouldn’t help Sue. I couldn’t believe a human being let alone a psychic could say something like that, how dare he. He obviously has never lost anyone he loved, and most importantly he doesn’t know about the world he is pretending to work in. To think that children would be left behind is to say that God is a monster, and if he had said that to Sue - how many more had he hurt? I spent some time with Sue talking about what I have learnt over the years, and to let that mans words go, because they were just lies. The one thing I do know is that there will be a reckoning, that man will have to account for his terrible lies, and I don’t mean on Earth. But I did get in touch with a reporter I know and sent them undercover to do a expose on this so called psychic, the last I heard was he had left his offices, so let’s hope he gets a different job.
But like normal my life is a mixture of sadness and laughter. The following month the girls and I where invited to the launch of the new album by Supergrass. I have been friends with Pearl Lowe for years and she is married to Danny Goffie who is the drummer in Supergrass, so the invite was for the 4 of us to go to the Café des Paris, in London. A couple of days before the event Angie came down with a bug so couldn’t come, but on the morning Tanya and Francesca asked me to call Pearl to see if there was a dress code. I hadn’t even thought of this, so called Pearl and had a chat. She explained that there was a dress code and it was Burlesque. I said I didn’t know what that meant, and she explained that the history of burlesque came from France and was not about stripping but about tease, so lacy short skirts and garters etc.  Obviously I didn’t think it applied to me, as I would be wearing a trouser suit, but the girls looked a bit concerned as they were going to wear their jeans and tops. I told them they had to join in with the theme or it would be bad manners, so a few hours later we climbed into the car, me in trousers and blouse and the girls, well there is no getting away from it they looked like tarts, but it was fancy dress, and I assured then that loads of people would be dressed the same. When we got there I dropped the girls outside the venue, for two reasons, 1 they didn’t have many clothes on and 2 it was raining. It took me about ten minutes to park the car, and then as I walked to the nightclub I turned the corner and could see the girls standing outside. I thought they must have had trouble getting in, and was going through my bag for the tickets as I walked up to them, but before I could say anything Tanya hissed at me “I cant believe you have done this.” “Done what?” I said . “Its not a bloody burlesque party, its based on Berlin.” I looked at Tanya and Francesca, and thought they must have it wrong. Look lets get inside, I am sure you are wrong, we can check with Pearl, stop worrying. And walked very quickly in front of them thinking oh God this is going to be bad if I have got it wrong, but thinking back to the conversation I had with Pearl I knew I hadn’t got it wrong because we had talked about what it meant. As we got to the bottom of the stairs and entered the club I realized that most people where in jeans and shirts, I didn’t stop or look round at the girls but walked very quickly over to where Pearl was standing. Please tell me I didn’t get it wrong I said to her, indicating to the girls behind me, . “Ah.” said Pearl, . “Its my fault - I thought it was burlesque, but its Berlin, and you’re not the only ones I told.” She indicated to a small group of women huddled around a table trying to pull their skirts down and generally looking uncomfortable. Bloody hell Pearl, what am I going to do with the girls! By this time they had sat down at the table with the other now strangely dressed women. Pearl looked so uncomfortable I realized she had been trying to work this problem out since the other girls had turned up and knew I was going to have to sort this out on my own. So very spiritually I came up with the only solution that was going to work, Vodka, and lots of it. I went and got the two very large drinks, with two extra and as I placed them in front of the girls, I said I would be back soon and that I just had to talk to someone. The real reason was I didn’t want to be near them until the alcohol started to work. As it happens I bumped into someone I hadn’t seen for a while so chatted to them for half an hour and then guilt hit me and thought I had better see if the girls want to go home, as they had looked so unhappy when I had left them. It took a few minutes to get back through the crowds, and when I got to their table they where nowhere to be seen. I quickly left the building nearly running up the steps thinking how bad I had been to leave them when they had felt so uncomfortable, and thought they must have gone outside rather than stay in the club looking like they did. But when I reached the street they where nowhere to be seen, I asked the doormen if they had seen them and as there was no way of missing them. When they said they hadn’t seen them I turned back and went down the stairs again. I spent the next ten minutes checking the toilets, cloakroom, all the quiet tables around the edges of the room, and just when I was starting to feel frantic the crowds parted for a second and there were the girls in the centre of the room dancing, laughing and generally looking like they where having a great time. I walked up the small flight of stairs up to the balcony and from there had a good view of what was going on. The vodka had obviously had the desired effect, not only where they girls looking very happy but they had a bit of an audience and the few paparazzi that had been let into the club where taking photos of them, obviously thinking they must be famous as no normal people would be dressed like that. I smiled to myself thinking another disaster had been avoided and spent the rest of the evening finally relaxing and chatting to Pearl and the other people I knew. There is a saying I use a lot, and its  ‘Try and make a memory every day then the day is never wasted’ and that night a memory was indeed made.
I think I will leave it there for now, that’s six months caught up with, and I will post the other six months of blog soon, I hope you enjoy reading about our adventures, as much as I have enjoyed recounting them. And remember try to make a memory today, as if you do it will last you a lifetime.
Until next time, look after yourselves, and eachother.
Mia xxxxx