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. ...