Pink Sauce

I have to admit I am quite excited by this. Surprisingly so. I am about to be connected to broadband at home. Wireless, 8Mb broadband; no less AND it's free! Carephone Warephone who opened the ostilities a few months ago. While they seem to be struggling a little under their success, other providers are joining in the fun. Orange , my mobile phone provider, are one of the first to do so . Orange is now offering ‘free’ 8Mbps broadband to new and existing customers who pay £30 or above for a mobile phone package. The package, which is the previous Wanadoo offering also includes the Livebox wireless modem and free evening and weekend calls to local and national landlines using the Wireless & Talk VoIP service. Surprisingly, I found myself elegible to the deal and promptly signed up. I received a letter of confirmation yesterday and am now eagerly waiting for the techkie bits to arrive. Please note that I am not yet giving up on my old dial up! Earlier this week, I heard a report...

As mentioned on the other side (with mistakes; see comments), Europride is on its way. The Festival leading to Pride itself started a week ago but for me things really heated up last night. I was singing at the Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH) with the London Gay Men's Chorus and 5 other choirs (City of Brighton Gay Men's Chorus, Rainbow Chorus, Diversity, Pink Singers and Mannenkoorts from the Hague) as part of EuroPride Sings. It was nice for me to return to the QEH since it was where I took part in my first concert with the Chorus, four years ago to the month. During the week, I will make an appearance on the construction site of the Southwark LGBT Network float for the Pride Parade before spending most of Saturday walking along the said float as a steward. Again marking a four year involvment; this time with stewarding at the Pride Parade. Finally, on Sunday, I will be back on stage; at the Royal Albert Hall (RAH) this time to take part in EuroPride 2006: The Show. The Choru...

Tony Cameron and David Blair (and their respective friends) are developing increaqsingly similar political discourses. Recently they said the same thing in support of civil servants. This morning, I had to take a double take at my radio, when I heard that the "conservatives" (It is getting difficult to give them that name these days) are proposing to give caretaker gay couples the same sort of tax relief as straight couples... David Cameron, leader of the U.K. opposition Conservative Party, plans to propose simplified tax relief for childcare, including care by friends and family, seeking to promote his party as family friendly. In a speech to the National Family and Parenting Institute today, he will also say his party may equalize tax treatment for gay couples in civil partnerships with married couples. Bloomberg Tags: conservatives , politics , gay , LGBT , GLBT , lesbian , bisexual , transgender , homophobia , gay rights .

Yesterday I enjoyed one of the percs of being self employed. I slept all day and didn't go to work. As ever it is all Slightly's fault. the night before he dragged me to a solstice bike ride: Wednesday 21 June: Midsummer Madness - dawn of the longest day

 Meet: 2am: Cutty Sark Gardens, Greenwich 
 2.30am: South Needle, London Bridge 
 3am: Bar Italia, Frith Street 
 4am: top of Primrose Hill 4.43am: sunrise! 
 6am: breakfast. The Globe Theatre. Bankside. Summer solstice sunrise on the longest day on the year. Cafe Italia on Frith Street, 3.30am (starring Slightly) I got to his place at around midnight, and we watched a bit of TV, drank some mint tea and got ready. We arrived at the meeting point about 40 minutes early. Slowly, people started to arrive and by the time we set off there were about 30 of us. We rode to London Bridge to meet another group of about the same number of people and crossed the river in the direction of the West End for a pit stop at Bar Italia on Frith ...

Don't you just love those people of the Episcopalian Church, the US branch of the Anglican Church? They seem to be on a crusaid to piss off as many of their bigoted colleagues in the Anglican Church as they can. This also goes for the Catholics. First they appoint a gay bishop and now they appoint a pro-gay woman as their leader. She at the same time becomes the first female primate of the Anglican church. US church elects first woman leader Tags: religion , christianity , gay , LGBT , GLBT , lesbian , bisexual , transgender , homophobia , gay rights .

From the Advocate, cames this incredible piece of new, that a Judge in the UK has ruled that lesbians are not actually homosexual. There isn't much that can be said in the face of so much ignorance and idiocy. This would almost be funny if the repercussions of such a ruling were not so serious. An asylum-seeking Ugandan lesbian now in the United Kingdom is being told by a U.K. judge that she will be sent back to Africa because "lesbians are not homosexuals" and that only gay males in Uganda face persecution. Elizabeth Muhwezi could face deportation to Uganda as soon as Sunday. Muhwezi was set to be deported last week; however, human rights organizations temporarily prevented it. The judge also questioned Muhwezi's lesbian identity because she is a mother. While living in Uganda, Muhwezi was kidnapped from her home shortly after visiting an underground gay club, according to the British gay rights organization OutRage! She was held for five months at a "safe house...

"Almighty God created the races, white, black, yellow, Malay, and red and placed them on separate continents, and but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such [mixed race] marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend the races to mix," This little piece of enlightened rhetoric spouted from the revered lips of Caroline County Circuit Court Judge Leon Bazile in 1958 as he suspended the one year jail sentence against a newly wed mixed race couple; Suspended the sentence, that is, so long as the couple left the state and did not return together for a quarter-century… Talk about activist judges ! Mixed marriages were finally made legal in the US in 1967 after that same couple mentioned above did go into exile to a more liberal part of the country and went to court. This happened 39 years ago, on 12th June; the case was, aptly enough, Loving v. Virginia . The repercussions of this change in the law on the demographic...

For those interested in my oeuvres, here is an article I wrote about the advantages of including diversity to a company's corporate communication for the blog of the now defunct Design for Diversity: When uttering the word “diversity” in the corporate world, you find yourself more often than not being directed towards the HR department. And it is true that any drive for wider diversity has seen the emphasis being put for many years now on equality within the workplace and the only external application of diversity for a company is often limited to monitoring the ethnic background and disability or lack thereof of job applicants. Indeed, there are many consultancies out there ready to help companies with equalities and HR issues; offering training and awareness courses. The D word however encompasses much more than industrial relations and there is no reason why companies should not take this on board and turn diversity into a marketing tool to expand their customer base. It simply ...

My not updating this blog for the past month or so, means that my reading list has not been updated either. Here is a quick catch up in no particular order: * Moi, Pierre Seel, déporté homosexuel , Pierre Seel * The Folding Star , Alan Hollinghurst * Strangers on a Train , Patricia Highsmith * Maître Mussard's Bequest , Patrick Süskind * Hallucinating Foucault , Patricia Duncker * Stop Stealing Sheep and find out how type works , Erik Spiekermann & E.M. Ginger * Tommy's Tale , Alan Cumming * Le pape des escargots , Henry Vincenot * Tea With Mrs Goodman , Philip Toynbee * Frankenstein , Mary Shelley * Tolkein's Gown , Rick Gekoski * Self-made Man , Norah Vincent I have also started to read (slowly) Antes que Anochezca ( Before Night Falls ) by Reinaldo Arenas, in Spanish... Not bad for just under two months, I guess. CURRENTLY READING: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood Tags: books , reading .

The newly re-opened window on the summery heat  is bringing new sounds  to my little nest of a room.  Many sounds have become familiar companions that have receded into the background: sirens, distant traffic hum, a few rare birds, helicopters, at night, the sighs of the Bakerloo line trains as they come to rest or leave to work, school children during the day, the odd unidentified banging.  A couple of days ago, what I assumed to be new neighbours where playing Bee Gees songs quite loudly. This morning, as the day is already heavy with the promise of the heat to come later, a different chant wafted in: a soft, almost apologetic, monotonous chant, rusty with the harsh sounds of the arabic language, slightly distorted by the speaker it was coming through, sang to me of early prayer, of a different, for me rarely heard, experience, of another face, a bearded and dignified one, of our beloved London.

I know I have been terribly remiss. It has been now over a month since I have posted here. Slightly has even received complaints, apparently! My apologies therefore to those of you who are still bothered after such a show of callous indifference. As you may remember, I have left my (horrible, accursed, boring, stultifying) job at the Local Council where I had been working for four and a half years. This to join a new venture (notice the .eu website) with Slightly and a few other people. Since then time has taken a new evanescent quality heretofore never attained. Although I do not have the impression to be working at all, the days just fly by like a gaggle of drag queens in a Saturday night in Soho: barely looked at and disappeared in a flash with no memory of the event. My stint at the Council was wound up on Friday 21 April by a short presentation where I received the traditional signed card, a few book tokens, a box of mints and a bottle of Champagne, as well as the best wishes of ...