Pink Sauce

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 .