I Am What I Am John Barrowman (books that read to you txt) 📖

Move over!

Scott is a travel fidget. He’s the person you hate sitting behind, in front of or next to you, and when I write ‘you’, I really mean me. He stretches, adjusts, pokes, prods, stretches and adjusts, again and again. The annoyance of travelling with Scott is one of the reasons that, as soon as I could afford the extra expense, I paid for us to travel British Airways business class or Virgin upper class: that way, I get my own little pod, with walls and space to spread out, and Scott can’t get too close.

Like many British families, Scott and I plan a trip together every year. Granted, it’s not the only time we may travel together, but once a year we do organize a proper family vacation.

In 2008 and 2009, I made a number of trips to America for work, including to Comic-Con in San Diego. If Scott is available, he’ll join me on these sorts of jaunts. When we’re together in LA, we stay at Le Montrose in West Hollywood. The hotel is in the neighbourhood where I used to live when I was filming Aaron Spelling’s Titans in 2000. West Hollywood is on the edge of Beverly Hills and is home to a number of celebrities, but, more importantly, it has some of the best places for breakfast in the city. Scott and I love to eat a full American breakfast.

Another favourite hotel of ours is the Royalton in midtown Manhattan because that’s where Scott and I began our tradition with the Easter Cat: a small, Beanie Baby-sized black cat with whiskers, white paws and a white face. The Easter Cat landed on Scott’s pillow on Easter Sunday 1996. I was in New York filming Central Park West, and I wanted to create an Easter tradition that would be uniquely ours – so instead of an Easter Bunny, the Easter Cat brought Scott chocolate and a pair of Rollerblades. 3

Scott was much more enamoured of the Easter Cat and the chocolate than the Rollerblades; Scott is decidedly non-athletic, but he’s always a good sport. I’d been living in New York for the better part of a year, and was enjoying tearing round the Big Apple on blades. I’d been raving about them to Scott. So, while I was filming the following week, Scott decided to use his free time to learn how to Rollerblade.

In retrospect, I don’t know what I was thinking, encouraging this behaviour. I think I somehow imagined that he and I could have these romantic rolls4 around the park, weaving hand in hand along the paths, watching the other lovers stroll across the grass and cuddle on the benches. It’d be like our own version of Barefoot in the Park.5 Instead, after three days of practice, Scott turned my Neil Simon romantic-comedy fantasy into a Dino De Laurentiis disaster film.

Scott spent two days going round and round and round the park and falling and falling and falling again. I’d come back to our room at the end of the day and Scott would be draped across the couch or the bed in complete agony, his body looking like he’d gone three rounds with a welterweight.6 I’ve already shared with you how much he can moan when his body hurts. It was a painful experience all round.

On the third day … well, that was the end of his Rollerblading career. Scott came shooting down a hill in the park, completely out of control. His options were limited. He couldn’t figure out how to apply his brake without completely wiping out on the gravel path. There was no open grass to roll onto and drop to a stop, and he was heading at ever-increasing speed into a line of people – innocent women and children, no less.

Scott did the only thing he could. He swerved to his left and careened into a New York hot-dog vendor. The vendor’s cart crashed over, hot dogs spilled out onto the ground, and Scott put both his hands on the hot plate to break his fall, resulting in a series of small burns across his palms. Despite all the stereotypes you may hold about people in NYC, the vendor was very nice about the entire incident. Scott dumped his Rollerblades – along with the forty-two hot dogs he’d spilled (and bought) – in a garbage can on the way out of the park.

Easter Cat, on the other hand, now travels with us everywhere. Scott remembers that there might once have been an Easter Dog, too, and that he always stayed at home, but he says he’s lost track of him.7 The Easter Cat was always more adventurous.

When Scott and I travel together, whoever remembers packs the Easter Cat; and when we travel individually, the Easter Cat is secretly hidden in the other person’s suitcase. When we arrive at our destination, the cat is placed ceremoniously next to the bed.8 The Easter Cat has been to Canada, Cambodia, Turkey, Lebanon, Mexico, Syria, Switzerland, Scotland, the US numerous times, and, most recently, to Barbados.

When I lived in Scotland, my family always took its vacation during the fortnight in July known as the Glasgow Fair, when Glasgow pretty much emptied out for those two weeks and families went south in search of sunshine and sand. For years, my mum and dad pulled a caravan, and for a couple of holidays that I remember during that time, we headed to the Isle of Wight.

I’m not sure what happened exactly to change this, but in the two years before we emigrated to the US, the caravan went by the wayside – literally – and our holiday shifted to an all-inclusive resort in Eastbourne. My guess? My mum finally figured out that caravanning essentially meant she was dragging her kitchen behind her. Plus, as Carole, Andrew and I got older, a holiday with five of us crushed in one room on wheels