Pink Sauce

Catching Up - Part 1 On 21 December, I, together with 10 other "Queers A Singing" made my appearance in QX magazine as part of their 12 day of Christmas feature. We had got together in Trafalgar Square a couple of weeks ago for a quick photo session. After all the exersions at Selfridges, my voice was starting to feel a bit ropy and tired. That did not stop me however to attend two civil partnership celebration, as previously announced . It was interesting to see how the style of the ceremonies reflected the personnalities of the people involved. One was quite pragmatic and straight to the point while the other involved poetry reading and music. You can read what my usual sidekick has to say about it here . The lesson of this day where just under 1000 couples got united is that, contrary to what we were told, society is still standing and the sky hasn't collapsed. I didn't have the time to attend the parties after the ceremonies however as I had to rush to prepare fo...

For the past few months the blogsphere has been a-buzz with an incredible hype which had been building up more or less all year. Last night I succombed to the hype and found myself one of the first people in the UK to see the already award winning film, Brokeback Mountain . I am, of course, not the only one not to resist the hype. Comparatively (it is only showing in a limited number of cinemas in the US), the film is one of the best sellers of the year, even beating block busters like King Kong and the promoters have had to accelerate the pace of the release, such is the demand. All the critics love the film and it is typed for the Oscars. The far right is obviously up in arms. The cinema was packed something quite unusually I would imagine for a 4.45pm screening on a Friday afternoon. From what I could tell, the audience was fairly mixed; lots of gay guys (including the ubiquitous Chorus member!) but also straight couples. The film is based on Annie Proulx's short story by the...

I know I have been very bad in the past two weeks or so. I was on leave and that usually means I don't get the time to blog. This was even more true this time round. With the Christmas season, several months of hard work with the Chorus finally came to fruition as we embarked on our series of Christmas shows. It started on 14 December when we were whisked away to Birmingham and back on a coach. The first performance of this year's version of Make the Yuletide Gay was taking place at the Symphony Hall ; one of the best concert halls in the world. The venue did not disappoint. The accoustic was truely fantastic even though the decoration with 1950's diner look was a bit too much perhaps. A shame that we managed to fill so few seats. We had already performed in Birmingham in 2003 at the Adrian Boult Hall at The Birmingham Conservatoire. A much humbler venue but there again we had had trouble filling it. I suppose our profile is not that high up there. The Chorus was not in c...

Best Gay Love Stories 2005 , edited by Nick Street Probably not the best choice considering my current state of mind... Enjoyable though. Tags: book , books , reading .

The competition closes on December 25th. Tags: London , Christmas , CD , Choir , competition , Gay , LGBT , GLBT , LGMC , carols .

Kingdom Swann by Miles Gibson . This book was recommended to me by Slightly . I have almost finished it and I can't say I would recommend it to any one. It is mildly entertaining and apparently was the basis for the script of a film (which Slighltly enjoyed). On the whole, I don't think it is very well written and is certainly not memorable... Tags: book , books , reading .

The Observer reported this week-end on figures published by the Department of Trade and Industry assessing the impact of the new Civil Partnership and the anti-discrimination laws recently passed. The article focuses mostly on those major companies finally smelling the coffee and trying to woo the pink pound but the more important piece of news there has probably to do with the fact that we now have an official and seemingly reliable estimate of the gay and lesbian population in the UK. That's 3.6 million people; roughly 6% of the total population. And there are no reasons to believe that these figures can not apply to the world population too... Being a good gay boy and healthily refocusing the story onto my precious little self (*cough*), the news that there are about 1.7M gay men in this country (several hundred thousands of which are porbably located in London) maked me once again wonder what I am doing wrong... Read the full DTI report (pdf). Tags: UK , LGBT , GLBT , gay ,...

Today marks the official end of the route for an iconic player of London life. The Routemaster which have been serving Londoners faithfully for so many decades and can now be found all over the world, has gone into retirement . It had already been become a rare site on the streets of London in the past few months with decomissioning starting about a year ago. I used to hop on number 12 every to go to and back from work before the route was fitted with bendy buses (which have much fewer seats!). Last night I witnessed part of the buses' swan song and I observed in surprise perhaps 5 or 6 routemasters of all areas on route 159 in Piccadilly Circus. Thankfully, we will still have a chance to hope on a Routemaster from time to time as they will remain in service on Routes 9 and 15 as heritage routes for tourists. The main reason for the decomissioning of the bus is it lack of accessibility for disabled people, which has long made me wonder why newer routemasters could not be design i...

Sainsbury's and Woolworth's are not the only major companies pandering to the intolerant right. Ford (together with its subsidiaries, which include Jaguar and Volvo) have decided under pressure for the right wing group American Family Association to stop advertising in the LGBT media and to stop supporting LGBT events. Wells Fargo , under pressure from Focus on the Family , declined to cave in ; just like Kraft earlier this year . The original story is here You can read a lot more on this (including posts on the relation between the two Ford executives who brockered the deal AFA and the Bush administration or on Henry Ford's anti-semitic writings) on AmericaBlog . Finally, you can express your discontent to Ford here . Tags: Ford , Volvo , Jaguar , LGBT , GLBT , gay rights , discrimination , AFA , Focus on the Family , American Family Association , anti-semitism , homophobia

From Equity (the British Actors' Union): You may have read in the press that both Sainsbury’s and Woolworths have withdrawn from sale DVDs of Jerry Springer - The Opera after receiving complaints from the public. This is the same production of Jerry Springer - The Opera which was subject to protests when the BBC screened it. When Equity approached the two companies, Sainsbury's press office said that they had received around 20 complaints but Woolworths would not reveal the number of complaints it had received other than to say it was "substantial". Equity is very concerned about the action of the two companies and General Secretary Christine Payne has issued the following statement: "Equity is opposed to the action which Woolworths and Sainsbury's have taken on two grounds. Firstly, Equity strongly supports artistic freedom and equally strong opposes censorship in all its forms, however offended any individual may feel themselves to be by a particular piec...

Two unrelated snippets give its colour to this post. Yesterday I received an email from my mother. She was telling me about a tree in my parents' garden. As far as I can remember, I have been told that this Walnut tree had been planted when I was born. For many years it had languished in the front yard of the house in a darkish place with not enough earth for it to develop properly. Probably about 15 years ago, my father moved it to the garden at the back of the house. The house is built on some sort of slope, which means that the garden is level with the first floor of the house. There is, however, a courtyard at the back of the house, level with the groundfloor and of a width of about 4 or 5 metres. A dry stone wall keeps the garden where it should be. For some unknown reason, my father who knows about trees (he is a retired joiner) decided to replant the tree almost at the top of the stairs leading from the courtyard to the garden. In the past 15 years or so, the tree has grown...

The Boy I Love by Marion Husband . The last book (Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess) took me a while finish but it was worth it. this book is the next one for my reading group. Visit our website for more details about the group and the book. Tags: book , books , reading .

From today, same sex couples in the UK can register to form a Civil Partnership . The first ceremonies (except for a few exceptions in Scotland and Ireland, I think) will take place in 21 December. This will give people rights almost similar to those of straight married couples. This is of course not ideal but it is a huge step forward. While most people are busy celebrating, a few discordant voices can be heard complaining about the fact that the new law will apparently disadvantage the poorer members of the LGBT community. It seems that because the possibility of the partnership now exists, "unofficial" couples who were, until now, receiving benefits will not be eligible for these benefits any more. My instinctive answer to this is: form a partnership. I understand that another part of the argument is that these couples find themselves forced into patnerships. I am not sure I understand the rationale behind this; or perhaps I understand it only too well. Since entering a ...

As I clarevoyantly predicted last week, the hype surrounding the introduction of the new licensing laws was much ado nothing. I haven't heard anything about it on Radio 4 since it happens and certainly the report of doomsday forecast by so many people. Having kickly googled the subject to find some information, I can report that nothing special happened in Devon , Buckinghamshire or Manchester (although we are warned that the "real test" will take place over Christmas). It was such a none event in London that it seems the Evening Standard has not published one single article on the subject! To compensate my lovely readers from the come-down that is this post, here a round-up of the situation by the BBC and one by the Guardian that links to George Orwell's robust take on the now defunct licensing laws as published in his column As I Please in the socialist weekly, The Tribune , in 1944 (scroll down to the entry for August, 18). Tags: licensing law , smoking ba...

Like most morning I was listening to The Today Programme on Radio4 this morning. They had an interview with Chris Martin the lead singer of Coldplay about fair trade and the what is being done against poverty in the "Third World" in reaction to the possible lack of agreement at the end of the upcoming Hong Kong trade summit. Nothing unusual so far. Nothing unusual in most of what Mr Martin said either to be honest. He talked about how is experience of going to Africa and experience the people's poverty there brought all he had read and seen on the subject to reality. He also insisted that being pessimistic is never a good thing. He mentioned how unromantic fair trade was and that made it difficult for him to write songs about it. He had apparently tried but failed. My thoughts at this were that perhaps it took a better writer to do the job or certainly one a little self absorbed. What was really strange about this interview, was the set of references used by Martin. ...

This week sees what can arguably be called a historic change in the country’s social habits. The licensing laws around drinking hours have been relaxed after years of governmental promises for all sides. As soon as the change was announced and it looked like it would happen this time, voices could be heard forecasting all sorts of evil fall on the country as a result. Of course, it is probably safer to wait until the week-end to see how things pan out but so far, it is very much a case of a storm in a cup of tea (so to speak). Few establishments have actually applied for the extended hours and the first reports say that the civil war announced has not started yet. We were also informed that allowing people to drink longer would mean they will drink more. I am not sure how this can happen. First of all, once you are “legless”, as state people already managed to attain under the now defunct system, there is not much you can do to make things even worse. Secondly, there is an economic fa...

Yesterday turned out to be a busy day indeed but an enjoyable one too. I had booked the afternoon off work to attend the pre-launch of LGBT History Month 2006 (which will take place in February next year), before going to a meeting for the Chorus (my third evening this week taken up by that Blooming Chorus, not to mention the whole of last Sunday!). Thankfully I had brought my own scribe with me which saves me having to toil away telling you about the fun, the momentum (in more ways than one) and the dizzyness of the event. Read it all here . Once you are done, do not forget to go and buy one of the badges designed by Master Slightly by clicking on the picture above. Thanks.

How frustrating it is not to be able to relate to the people around you; people you know are worth knowing; people who seem to want to know you. How so much more saddening it is not to be able to relate to someone you fancy, one of the very few people you fancy, and watch other people (who might feel like you but who probably don't) fare much better than you in relating to that person you admire... Even though you have tried, there is this invisible wall between you and him, between you and them; a wall against which you keep banging your head. This crystalises your feelings of solitude and makes you wonder what you are doing wrong. Not nice thoughts for a bus ride in the early night of a cold, already festively iluminated, November evening.

After all those serious posts I have made recently, I thought I would provide a bit of light relief. For those of you who have never heard of it, the Dieux Du Stade calendars first appeared in 2001. It was made of nude pictures of the Stade Français rugby team and was sold for charity. The concept is still the same by has been extended to French sportsmen in general. Needless to say the calendars have been huge successes, especially in the gay community. Here is a clip of the making of of the 2005 calendar. Tags: gay , rugby , rugbymen , XV de France , stade francais , Dieux du Stade , nude , photography , charity , calendar , pictures

I have blogged about this before when it was only a rumour. I will not repeat my arguments here. It seems this is however getting ever closer to becoming reality although the policy seems as ill-thought and contradictory as it seems when we first heard of it. Of course this is only a report on an Associated Press report of a newspaper report! Hardly first hand information. This means that the information can get diluted and skewed but this article raises more questions than it answers. Why should "men with "passing" homosexual tendencies that were never acted on" be allowed to ordained when "those who support gay culture cannot become priests"? Could they not be themselves supporters of the "gay culture" even if they do not take part in it? Also, how is the Church going to acertain that "they have overcome [their homosexual tendencies ] for at least three years"? According to the paper, the document says gay men can't become prie...

I have received the comment below from my previous post on the subject of the recent riots in France: Zefrog, I enjoyed your article, but it seems to me that there may be an additional problem here,open borders, that is shared by many other countries as well. Perhaps there are many Frenchmen who do not want "Cheap" labor flooding the country and vying for the same jobs they themselves need. When you add to this the tendency of many of these people to not want to assimilate it creates resentment.In addition,because of the high birth rate of many of these immigrants, and the lower birth rate of the French, it is estimated that France will lose it's national identity in forty years. Personally, I feel if a person does not want to become "French", but instead retain his own ethnic identity, perhaps he should remain in his own country and work to make it better rather than immigrate to another mans country and expect them to accommodate his customs. I am very sorr...

I had another email from my new friend last tonight. I had posted details of an event on the Chorus' mailing list (a list he had flamboyantly announced a month ago he was unsubscribing from), for people's information. Not commenting and certainly not saying that I would be attending, which I am not going to. A few hours later, I received this: I'm tempted to warn anyone about going to a social event with you... To which I responded (borrowing from Oscar Wilde): There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. Tags: gay , LGBT , GLBT , diary , blog , blogs , London .

A couple of friends have emailed me to ask for my opinion on the current events in France, so I thought I would share my tuppunce worth with the expecting world as well. After more than 5 years in the UK, I must say I feel rather disconnected with my country of origin. Not only do I sometimes find it difficult to express myself in French, I have very much lost touch with what is happening there. However, I have to say that I am not altogether surprised by what is happening at the moment . There had been (much smaller) outbursts in the past and I think it was only a question of time before a full blown crisis happened. As I am writing, this has been going on for fourteen nights and the State of Emergency has been declared in several cities (including the one where I was born and lived for several year while at Uni: Dijon). Things are finally calming down a little. To be perfectly honest, I haven't been following the events very closely. I got an email from my mother yesterday, li...

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my attendance at a show with other Chorus members. It seems that some kindly soul, probably in the interest of reconcilation and peace, has forwarded a link to this post to one of the persons described in it. Tonight I received communication by email from this person and the following exchange ensued (you will need to refer to the original post to understand what this is about): [Zefrog], Read your rousing blog about our night out at Hedwig. I was so glad to find out how shallow and 'in love' with you I am. Had I not read about my love interest for you (apparently shared by everyone else who came into contact with you), I might have forgotten that you were there at all. No, honestly, no hard feelings. The blog was a good source of humor for me and others who read it. Well, I am off to shop for expensive watches to base my self-worth on, [SL] Shallow, Philandering American xx I am glad to have been of help. Perhaps I should buy a wa...

Close enough (except for the sex bit: Being open-minded in this matter doesn't mean you get lots of it!). The children bit is wrong too but the alternative ending sounds about right. If we needed confirmation, I am a spinster, aka: The Bachelor D eliberate G entle S ex M aster ( DGSMm ) Straight-up. Studly. Congratulations, you are The Bachelor . You're an honest, good-thinking guy, and though you're very sexually active, people don't perceive you as a male-slut or man-whore or guy-dick-putter-inner or whatever. You have a sterling reputation. You're a careful person, perhaps too much so for your friends' tastes, but guys like that in you. You probably don't kiss & tell. And you definitely don't brag. You know you don't have to prove anything to anyone. It's as if you believe in monogamy, so long as it's with lots of different people. Our guess is that you've got some kind of word-of-mouth going with the boy...

This is a message to the Polish twat who has been posting (what is probably straight) porn links in the comments of 27 of my posts. Their IP is router.innet.insite.pl. This is a gay blog. My (few) readers are not interested in your junk. You are wasting your time and mine. You will have noticed that I have restricted comments to registered users and, something you are not aware of, I have reported you to Blogger (the host of this blog). So just bugger off, will you and give us both a break!

I have just added a new blog to my blogroll (on the right hand side). It is an account of the 07/07 Bombings and their aftermath by on of the survivors. It was forwarded to me by Slightly; check it out. Rachel From North London Tags: London , bombings , blog .

Slightly just sent me an email telling he had just been on the phone with IP , a guy he thought he was interested in and sort of dated for a while. After a few weeks of drama , the guy told Slightly he was sort of back with his ex and then that he was dating someone else. From what I can gather, there has been a few since then. I met IP once. Slightly had organise a meeting in town. A visiting friend of IP was there too. He didn't leave a great impression in my mind and added to what I know of how attention seeking he seems to be, I can't say I am enamoured with the guy. The phone call was apparently to moan (read cry) about the ex boyfriend again. It turns out that IP also asked from my phone number and that of another of Slightly's friends because he apprently found both of us cute and wants to take us out for coffee. And what does Slightly go and do, knowing how desperate I am and how used I am to weirdos? He refuses to give our details and tells the guy to call him ...

A year ago today, I created an account on Blogger and posted my first entry on this blog. A year on, I am still not sure what this blog is about. Readership is growing slowly. I enjoy having a readily accessible soapbox even if it is more or less to the wilderness so I think I'll be there next year...

Well, actually surprisingly accurate this time... I took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test and was told that I "feel obstructed in my desires and prevented from obtaining the things I regard as essential", which is exactly right. Click here in you can be bothered to read the rest of the results. via

You are a Tortured Conceptual Artist. Your fellow postmodernists call you an anachronism, but you've never cared much about the opinions of others. After all, most of them are far too simple-minded to appreciate the nuances of your work. They talk, while you are part of a lived tradition. What kind of postmodernist are you!? brought to you by Quizilla . via .

If you want to know what I got up to last night, go to the other side . If you do, please do push the curiosity to read the comments too; there are a few important bits of information added by myself there.

It is almost one in the morning and I can’t sleep; I am still high on the energy built up tonight (and perhaps the alcohol too). It all started quite normally with my having dinner at home and getting ready to join someone for the Chorus , SH, who had organised a night out to see the stage version of Hedwig and the Angry Inch . On my way to Too2much , the ill-named venue (formerly the infamous Raymond Revue ), where the show was to take place, and although I had decided on a different route to try and avoid them, my bus was slowed down by the non-demonstrating cyclists taking part in Critical Mass . I knew Slightly would be one of them and rang him to give him a piece of my mind. I made it to the cabaret in time however. There were 6 of us in all, 5 of which are Chorus members. We spotted another member in the audience. I had been to Too2much once, and have to say I had not been particularly impressed. The place is expensive and pretencious while at the same time a bit shabby. This ti...