Stuff I've got wrong about myself

I've been so deluded.

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You know that song Oranges and Lemons say the bells of St. Clement’s? The children’s song. And I think the only children’s song centred around the bells of famous churches in the City of London. And also probably the only children’s song which includes an action of a beheading. (Here comes the chopper to chop off your head. Chip chop, chip chop the last man is dead.)

Bit weird. But most nursery rhymes have a dark side. Ring A Ring o’ Roses - bubonic plague. Mary Mary Quite Contrary - protestants being tortured and murdered. And Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - incest and bestiality.

Anyway. I was once singing Oranges and Lemons to my son. It’s in quite a high key but I was giving it my all. But instead of being delighted by this charming church bells/bloodthirsty execution song, he burst out laughing. And it became clear he was laughing at my singing. He was only the three at the time but he found my vocals so ridiculous he laughed in my face.

And I came to a big realisation. It had been building for a while. But it finally hit home, that despite thinking I had quite a nice voice for the past forty-something years, I really can’t sing.

Looking back, the signs had been there for a while. Up to this point, I had always assumed that my son hated music because when he was a baby he’d cry when I sang and when he was a bit older he hit me in the face when I sang to make me stop. And then when he started to talk he gave a firm, “No!" when I sang. But I just thought he hated singing.

I should’ve known three decades ago when I sang ‘The Frog Chorus’ in an amateur (obviously) production of Sleeping Beauty and a camcorder recording of this held a painful hidden extra: a member of the audience loudly whispering, “She can’t sing.”

And yet, I persisted in this delusion that I was an okay singer. To the extent that when I was thirteen, I auditioned to sing a solo in a school production. (The song was ‘Always There’, the theme tune to Howard’s Way. Another high key.)

Failing this audition didn’t stop me from going on to form two bands in my teens, Medieval Kyriai and Primrose Path, and singing in both.

In my twenties, I had a singer-songwriter boyfriend and made him record me singing Dionne Warwick’s ‘I’ll Never Fall in Love Again’. (Another high key.) And then played the recording to my friends.

And honestly, it was only when my son laughed like I was joking that it finally sunk in. I can’t sing. I kept saying this newly learned fact to myself, almost in disbelief still: I can’t sing. I can’t sing, I can’t sing.

It was very much like the shattering of my long-held delusion that I have curly hair. I was choosing a hair product in a department store when an assistant offered to help. I asked what she’d suggest and she pointed me in the direction of something for straight hair. “But I have curly hair,” I told her with confidence which trailed off as I saw her facial expression change. I might as well have said but I’m albino or medically a giant or have a full beard. She stared at me. And then just repeated back in a fairly neutral expression, the words ‘curly hair’.

For the first time I truly considered my hair which hangs around my face Mona Lisa style and on a good, freshly washed, 90% humidity, day could be at the most called wavy.

I’m sure it was curlier when I was younger. It must’ve got straighter as I got older but my eyes and brain for some reason just didn’t keep up with this information. And I’d been using curly hair products for years, for decades. Shampoos, conditioners, serums, creams, oils, all on only my slightly wavy hair.

I’ve got quite straight hair and I can’t sing. Why did it take me so long to realise these things?

The only thing that makes me feel better is that I used to work with a guy who, in his early forties, discovered he’d been wearing the wrong shoe size for his entire adult life. And he wasn’t out by just half a size. He was out by three whole sizes. He’d thought he was a size 13 but was actually a size 10.

I know it’s hard to get your head around how this is possible but he just said he thought it was normal to have a flappy empty bit at the end of your shoe.

There was probably enough room in there to fit the old woman who lived in a shoe. Who had so many children, she didn't know what to do. So she gave them all broth without any bread. Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed. Different times.

Tell me…

What things have you got wrong about yourself? Have you been reading the horoscopes for the wrong star sign all your life? Have you been mistaken about your eye colour? Have you believed yourself to be the wrong age? Tell me in the comments.