Pink Sauce

I was quite surprised to discover that Phyllis Pearsall, about whom I recently blogged , did not have an entry on Wikipedia . She now has one... Read about her choatic life HERE . Tags: London , history , wikipedia , Southwark .

I can tell that Summer is over. Nothing to do with the cold weather, the rain and the wind we have had for the past week or so, nothing to do with the calendar, nothing to do with the students reappearing on the way to the university on my street, nothing to do with the fact that the guys have started to dress up and don't show so much flesh. Although now that you mention it... What tells me that Autumn is upon us is amount of people joining my reading group this month. I am a founding member of the group. We had our first meeting in June 2001 and by September I had become the moderator of the group; creating the Yahoo! group for the mailing list and a website which I still update monthly. Looking at the record, we seem to be getting an average of two new member a month which means we built up a membership of over 70 now. Thankfully not everybody turns up at meetings and we are usually an ideal group of 4 to 10 people. Some members are I think just happy to get the reading suggest...

Latin Moon in Manhattan by Jaime Manrique Update: This is a book I discovered thanks to the reading group I moderate. To find outmore about the book follow the links to its dedicated page on the group's site. This was the book for October 2005. Tags: book , books , reading .

Phillis Pearsall, known Auntie Pig by last Hong Kong Governor, Chris Patten, his family and others, is the heroine of the book I am currently reading. And a true heroine, she is. Phillys Pearsall, MBE. In 1935, at 29 and on her own, she walked all of London streets (the 23000 of them) and created the now ubiqitous and much loved A-Z guide . She was also an renonwed painter. Daughter of a Hungarian immigrant, she seems to have led a life of solitude but managed to keep her good spirit throughout driven by her will of steel. Today, Southwark Council announced the results of their third blue plaques competitions, , which includes one for Phyllis at the house where she was born in Dulwich. More about Mrs P. and the company she founded. Tags: London , history , local history , Southwark , blue plaques , book , Dulwich .

Some very frustrated news about Visible , the magazine I am trying to launch with Slightly Lost . Althoug we have had some very encouraging and enthusiastic responses from every one we have been talking with about it, it seem the project might not happen for several months now. We have already managed to "sell" the whole of the planned print run of 75000 copies. Last week, we had close to 3000 hits on the website. And this is happening without almost any promotion of the title. That is the good news. The bad news is that the person who was going to sell the advertising space in the magazine, has cried out and has left us in a lurch. This is an essential part of the project as its funding rests upon it. And to be honest with the sort of news I have detailed above, the selling of the space should relatively straight forward. We are now therefore looking (quite desperately) for someone who would have the time, skills and interest to join the team and actually get us that money. ...

The past week has not been a very nice one to say the least. In addition to the fiasco of my application to that secondment position, I have been feeling quite lonely. Slightly Lost who is my only close friend and certainly the only person I communicate regularly with, has been otherwise engaged this week. I have reverted to my old ways (before I met Slightly and we started to meet up several times a week), which means doing things on my one to try and keep myself entertained and save myself from thinking too much about my situation. - Monday was a Chorus rehearsal. - On Tuesday, I went to the cinema to see Yes ; - on Wednesday, I want on a guided walk of the area where I live; I had a meeting on Thursday (which did not happen properly due to other people having lives: we were not quorate and could therefore not take decisions); - I wasted my Friday evening on the internet, staring at my screen, willing people on Gaydar to look at my profile, moving from one chat room to the next; - o...

I have uploaded a few new pics to my online photo album. Please feel free to have a look at them HERE . Enjoy. updated on 18 October Tags: London , pictures , photography .

By email: [Zefrog], You were pipped to the post I'm afraid, and the position has been offered to an outside candidate. You were appointable, and are a reserve if the candidate declines our offer for any reason. You had no major areas of weakness [...], and you did very well at the tests; it's just the other candidate did slightly better. As a tip for the future, you ought to sell yourself more. We all knew that you must have done more, and contributed to improvements more than you said. It would help if you could have given more examples of how pro-active you had been in the past. As I say, the other candidate just gave fuller answers and clearly had been a PA before, and so gained a slightly higher score than the rest. Thank you very much for expressing an interest in the post, it was very much appreciated. Please feel free to pop up if you would like to discuss your interview, or perhaps a forthcoming interview elsewhere, as I am very happy to assist.

Via Republic of T. , comes this silly little test: You Are 50% Boyish and 50% Girlish You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch. Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes. You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them. You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be. How Boyish or Girlish Are You? To be honest, I was expecting to be more on the "girlish" side of things... Am butch after all (well almost!)... Tags: test , gender , diary , me .

As I was getting ready to leave the house this morning, listening as usual to the Today Programme , my attention was attracted by an item on the problems experienced by the touring production of Jerry Springer, The Opera. Stephen Green, chair of the integrist group Christian Voice was being interviewed . I have blogged before on this story (see below) which has been going on for months now. It seems that, in another misguided effort to do a godly deed (why can these people not devote their time and energy to proper Charity work?), Christian Voice has exerciced pressure on the theatres which were planning to host the show. There has apparently been death threats too, although it is not clear who they came from. I do have a problem with the Today Programme interviewing Mr Green. We don't know with precision what his following is (by all accounts it is fairly limited) and giving him air time on what is perhaps the most influencial radio show in the country is giving much more credit...

Today marks the fourth anniversary of my coming to work with my current employer. I was there originally as a temp for one month only. I have been permanent here past two and a half years. Today is also another interview day for me. In a return to a more natural order of things, I will be in the hot seat. I am applying for a secondment position (for a minimum duration of 3 months, "to be reviewed after this period") with my current employer. Although the job title for the position is "Legal Secretary", they are basically trying to get a PA on the cheap. I would be supporting two senior lawyers. Nothing I haven't more or less done already. However there are four other candidates for the position who presumably are fully fledged legal secretaries already. I have done tests already where I did rather well, except for the typing test. My hope is that not so much typing will be required that this will have a big influence on the final decision. I am also hoping tha...

I was a witness to life, sliding past without touching, without being touched, grasping at straws, the sand of time only between my fingers. But inside I am now crumbling. Caving in. Truth has caught up behind the wall of my consciousness  and pushes me into my emptiness. The sun goes up, the light goes down. I am in search of respite. Life slides without me; I lay, aware and hopeless.  Flailing and blind to the road. Immune to salvation. Unanswered question. Moi. Getting in the mood to go clubbing for the first time in months: the wrong way... Originally posted on 16 september, 8.45pm.

I am a bit nervous. Later today, in my new quality of editor for visible , I will be doing my first interview. This time, I won't be the interviewee (that's in job interviews) but the interviewer... My first victim is going to be Sue Sanders , a lesbian activist at the helm of Schools Out and LGBT History Month . The occasion is the press launch of next year's edition of the Month and her receiving an award for her action. I sort of know Sue a bit and she is very supportive of visible so it should be ok. I have a (longish) list of questions ready and hopefully they are not too silly. After that I will have to write the article, which I think will take the form of a narative including the gist of what Sue said with the occasional quote and hopefully sprinkled with a few witty remarks and astute observations. Well... wish me luck...

Even if, as some of my readers pointed out to me, it never stopped me before, not much has been happening recently in my miserable life warranting to be broadcast to the ether. No more lousy dates , no more breath-taking encounters . Hence my now two weeks long silence. Chorus has started again after the summer break and we are gearing up towards Christmas already. We had a new intake of member last week and last night I was assigned to Buddy up with one of the "newbies". I haven't had much of a chance to talk to him but it has transpired that he has had some training as a counter tenor . I shall have a few questions to ask him about this as I am particularly fond of this type of voice. Starting the Chorus again also means meetings to go to. Last night, we "re-launched" the Steering Committee in an attempt to generate more involvment from members. Although it is not exactly how it had been planned originally, I ended up having to intorduce my committee and its ...