My Mess Is a Bit of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety

by Georgia Pritchett

I thought that if you started writing one minute earlier or one minute later, the story would turn out completely

differently (for the budgie) whereas he felt the story was there, waiting for you to excavate it.

I’m not a procrastinator. If anything, I like to get things done early. I had a midlife crisis at seventeen,

When I went to college, I got in with the wrong crowd. Christians.

There was a phone. It was a wind-up phone with a very particular foible. It would only keep the connection if a man was speaking to another man. I’d never heard of a sexist phone before, but the father said he’d demonstrate. He was arranging the next leg of our journey and had to make a phone call. He wound up the phone and dialed and started doing a passable impression of Barry White. But every time his voice went up, when asking a question or sounding incredulous, the line went dead. I realized I didn’t have the vocal range to make my Plan B call. I was stuck.

I’m told I dress like someone whose best clothes are in the wash.

The Russians had a very limited budget but seemed unfazed by this. Unlike other visitors, they took no photos, took no notes, recorded nothing. After they left, we found out why. They stole most of our puppets.

When I worked on shows with other writers, I was always the only woman in the room. But I often felt like I wasn’t there at all. When I was working on a show with five other writers, we would sometimes get faxes with notes on the script. The faxes would be addressed to Paul, Dan, Will, Kev, Andy, Etc. I was Etc.

One day a friend of mine asked me how I felt about something and got so exasperated at my evasive response that she shouted, “STOP MINCING AROUND THE BUSH!” In her fury she had combined “mincing words” with “beating around the bush.” But actually, “mincing around the bush” is the perfect description of how I express my feelings.

Injuries don’t get more middle-class than a legume-based art mishap at a Montessori.

I cannot overstate how incredible it was to sit in a room with women writers who looked a bit like me, dressed a bit like me, had similar life experiences and attitudes and opinions—it was really, really, really, pathetically validating. It must be what it’s like to be a white man all day, every day. Amazing!

Hanging out with the First Lady of America and the First Lady of Comedy was not something I ever thought an anxious girl from Elephant and Castle would do. What’s more, in order to be allowed to work there, I’d had to get a visa. What was printed on the visa was probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me: “Alien with extraordinary ability.” If you’d told me that’s what I’d grow up to be when I was eleven, I’d have taken that.