Pink Sauce

When I look at the statistics for who visits my blog (note, I am not using the word "read"), I am being told that I get about 40 visitors per week. Half of this will be me check that everything looks ok after a post. I am aware of a handful of persons who regularly come to this blog mostly, I suspect, out of politeness because I asked them to. The rest is a mystery to me. When I lie awake at night a maelstrom of questions whirls dizzyingly in my heated mind: Why do people read this blog? How did they find out about it? What makes them come back to it? What is their the interest in this mish-mash of random cerebral dribble ? Are they really that bored at work? Can they blame their star sign for coming here? Who should be Dennis's best man ? Is the Earth really round ? I mean: really . And finally, quel est l'age du capitaine ? I am expecting answers from you lot, and that includes the people I know about. Please reply not on a postcard but by hitting comments . If ...

I have just read this about the IRA's declaration to stop their armed campaign. Yes, it is great news. Yes, it is probably a historical move. Yes it is something we should all rejoyce in and support. A couple of years ago, I had the privilege of performing with the Chorus in Belfast's Waterfront Studio . It was part of our tour of the Bristish Isles. We had performed to a sold out National Concert Hall in Dublin the night before. The venue was smallish and almost half-empty. What made all the difference and makes this gig one of my strongest memories with the Chorus (stronger than singing at the Sydney Opera House with 500 other chorists or at the QEH several times) was that outside the venue, there was a bunch of 20 or so demonstrators calling themselves Christians Against Sodomy (I have actually blogged about this before ). Those people or their friends were after Belfast's Pride Parade recently; calling for it to be banned. Last year they had created a website whi...

"[...] Religion is a sublime and glorious thing, the bonds of society on earth, and the connector of humanity with the Divine nature; but there is nothing so dangerous to man as the wresting of any of its principles, or forcing them beyond their due bounds: this is of all others the readiest way to destruction. Neither is there anything so easily done. There is not an error into which a man can fall which he may not press Scripture into his service as proof of the probity of [...]" The Private Memoirs and Confessions of A Justified Sinner, (1824), James Hogg, The Cresset Press, 1947, pp 119-120. I am the proud owner of the 1947 edition of this book which has an introduction by André Gide . This is what, together with the title, I must confess, originally attracted me to the book when I saw it in my favorite second hand bookshop . It turns out to be a good hunch on several levels. I bought my copy for £3. Abebooks shows some people are ready to pay as much as £45 for one. M...

Yesterday was my birthday. I am now 31! And to celebrate I decided I would be ill! It had been a very busy week-end with the three performances of You'll Do For Now finally taking place after five months of hard work. This all went fantastically well and I am inclined to say that this was probably the best performance the Chorus has ever put on! The feedback from the audience was tremendous with (like after every big show) some very moving stories which remind us that we are more than just entertainment and give even more value to what we do. I will only quote from what our signer sent us about what happened to him on Sunday: "After the interval [...] a woman approached the stage and asked me in Sign Langauge what my name was [...]. She was in her 70's and had come along with her friend and her husband, both the same age. I asked her who she knew in the chorus and she replied that they knew nobody. I asked her if she had a gay son or friend who had brought them and she r...

...because of things like this:

An interesting article from Tuesday's Times on how people are born with their sexual orientation and nothing can therefore be done about it. Born Gay

A press release from the Mayor of London forwarded to me by a friend. Am not feeling to well at the mo but I might be there tonight... Mayor of London news release Office hours: 020 7983 4070 Out of hours and weekends: 020 7983 4000 www.london.gov.uk GLA/2005/331 Monday 11 July 2005 IMMEDIATE RELEASE LONDON UINTED IN DEFIANCE OF TERRORIST ATTACKS Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, said: 'On Thursday 14 July London will remember all of those who died last Thursday and show its defiance of those who try to change the character of our city through terror. 'At noon millions of Londoners will observe two minutes silence. Every bus in the city will stop, businesses will stop and I want everyone who can to come out of their workplaces and homes onto the streets of London to remember those who died and to show their complete defiance of the terrorists. 'At 1pm books of condolences will be opened in Trafalgar Square for all Londoners and vi...

Since last Thursday, londoners have a new excuse in their extensive arsenal to give when they are late at a meeting or an appointment of some sort: " The roads were block because of a security alert. " Everywhere you hear about how londoners are resilient and resolute in carrying on with their lives (some people even attribute this to Britishness (I think I did just that myself on here at some point), which is probably not quite true considering how unbritish/ cosmopolitan London actually is). On Friday as if nothing had happened, I met up with MFD in Charing Cross and we had one of our usual evenings on the town. The two police vans waiting outside the station and the helicopter hovering over our heads were an obvious reminder of what had happened. Another reminder is the very frequent sound of sirens although their fequency seemed to have diminshed already in the last two days. Apart from that Trafalgar Square looked very much how it usually does. Pigeons milling and touris...

Yesterday's events should of course put all this into perspective but human beings are made in such a way that their small problems will always be more portentous than others' big miseries. Today I am not feeling the usual dejection. I am simply feeling very sad and like I don't want to be either at work, nor at home, nor anywhere else. You may remember that last Saturday, at Pride, I met this rather cute guy who caused some strange stirrings within me. On Monday I texted him and got no reply. This made it pretty clear to me that he was not interested but I got talked into calling him by MFD. I did so on Tuesday evening. His phone must have been switched off because I got to his voicemail directly where I left a rather pityful message along the lines of: " Hi, this is Zeforg, wondering if you are ok. I'll talk to you later... maybe ". This, of course, did not occasion any more reaction on his part than my earlier text so that I now know for sure that despite ...

I wasn't going to blog about this but on the bus, on the way home from work, looking outside the window, I slowly got thinking about the events of this extraordinary day . I first heard that something unusual had happened through one of the BBC's news alert emails I receive from time to time. I did not pay much attention to it to be honest as it mention that the "bangs" in the Tube were due to a power surge. A bit later MFD emailed me saying that a bus had been "ripped appart"! Now, no power surge on the Tube can do that! Very quickly the story started to enfold and I sent an email to all users at work telling them of what I knew before going to another office and discuss things. They already had a radio on when I got there and we quickly decided to go to the conference room to watch the news on TV. As can be expected so early after the event, they weren't saying much and were basically repeating the same thing over and over between interviews with peopl...

When I am tired I often feel mildly depressed. The good thing about today is that I can blame this feeling of depression to something else than just low sugars. First there is what happened this week-end (see previous post). Taking part in the Pride parade is always a very empowering thing for me. The knowledge of a job well done as a steward helps that feeling. This year was no exception. In addition to the fact that I had been "promoted" and managed to pull it off reasonably well, I hope. Due to my social inadequacies, I was slightly worried as to how to relate to my team. The other problem I was anticipating was using of the radio used by the stewards to communicate between themselves. I am not very good at processing sounds (there is a name for that I think) and sometimes have problems understanding what I am told as a result. The quality of transmission on those radios is truely appalling and is made worst by the fact that people generally talk very quickly and without a...

Last week-end was a very busy one for me. On Friday evening I went along with the Chorus to a posh hotel on Piccadilly to sing at the GPA 's ball. The funny thing was that we usually get about only 30 people for those types of gig but the lure of the uniform was so strong that there was about 70 of us that night! I have to say it was probably the toughest audience I have had in my three years with the Chorus. Let's just say that the circumstances were not ideal. They were at the end of a several days long conference, were at the end of (hopefully) a nice meal (with enough to drink!) and had just been through a series of speeches of varied level of interest when we suddenly appeared on stage (they did not know we would be there) and launched into a rather downbeat 30 min performance. The choice of repertoire was, I think, the mistake. The reception was polite but the tables at the back quickly lost interest and the level of applause diminished in direct proportion to the rekindl...