Pink Sauce

If you are a regular visitor to these pages, you will know that I am a fairly big reader. Until now, I was content to link to the relevant Amazon page for the book I was "Currently Reading". I have now become a associate with Amazon. This means that if someone follows one of those links and buys the book, I get 5% of the sale. I am not hoping to become rich out of this scheme but if I can make a few bobs while directing people towards interesting reads, why not. On the right hand side, you can also find a link called "recommendations" which will from now on take you to a mini Amazon store listing a selection of books I would really recommend. This link previously called "books I liked", used to direct traffic towards my Amazon List Mania list. Take a look. If you have any questions about one of those books, please feel free to contact me. You can also visit the page directly from HERE . Tags: books , recommendation , gay , LGBT , GLBT .

Time and Place by Alan Sheridan Mark Sheridan, a descendant of R.B. Sheridan's elder brother, and an ancestor of the author, is 'stage-struck'. Though his theatrical ambitions are thwarted by a slight stammer, he joins Beerbohm Tree's company as an unpaid 'walk-on'. He tells the story of his two years in the company and his relationship with Esmond, a young actor. Interspersed with this narrative are flashbacks to his earlier life: his childhood in China; his schooldays in Paris, visits to London and its theatres, his university days in Cambridge, eighteen months in St Petersburg, where he witnesses the beginning of the 1905 revolution. Famous names appear in these pages: Bernhardt and Duse; Irving and Terry; Mahler and Massenet; Melba and Caruso; Gide and Proust; G.E. Moore and E.M. Forster; Isadora Duncan and Stanislavsky; Lytton Strachey and Maynard Keynes. Sheridan brings back to life a long gone world in this elegant and erudite evocation of the turn of t...

The British Fertility Society have released today a statement on social criteria for NHS funding of fertility treatment (word doc) in which they assess access to fertility treatment in the NHS and set out of list of recommended social criteria to help every Primary Care Trust in England and Local Health Board in Wales meet government fertility targets. The statement clearly states that "Single women and same sex couples should be treated the same way as heterosexual couples"; yet BBC news online chose to report on the fact that the BFS recommends that treatment should be refused to obese women , whithout mentioning same sex couple. BBC radio4, in their news bulletins, chose a similar line using the obesity angle as headline and only mentioning single mothers and same sex couples when developing. They did broadcast a clip from an interview of Josephine Quintavalle, the co-founder of Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE) in which she expressed the view that allowing single wo...

Help make those nasty bigoted people at Focus on the Family (a highly homophobic american right wing group) go bankrupt. Wherever you are in the world, get yourself $100 worth of free homophobic material curtosy of FOTF and see their bank account dry up... Here is how to do it . Easy, Simple, Efficient! Thanks to the Coterie for the link. Update - same day, 5.30pm I have just passed my order ( 101 frequently asked questions about homosexuality and 19CDs box set of The Chronicles of Narnia ), worth just under $100. The order went through without a hitch. Will keep you posted of whether I recieve anything... Tags: Focus on the Family , gay , LGBT , GLBT , lesbian , bisexual , transgender , homophobia , gay rights .

On the 16th of August, Simon Fanshawe wrote a piece in the Guardian advocating the need for gay choirs to move away from camp and try and focus a bit more on quality of performance; Something I, as a member of a gay chorus (the biggest in Europe), completely agree with. In the same article, Mr Fanshawe made a few comments about what it is nowadays like to be gay in Britain. I did not agree to this and was not the only one : Far too simplistic, Simon I am fed up with Simon Fanshawe thinking he is being clever by sucking up to his straight friends (Telling tales, August 16). It may be fine for a writer and broadcaster who lives in Brighton to pontificate as he does, but for the rest of us being gay is still fraught with threat and difficulty, as well as joy and love. He needs to expand his gay world view and realise that all is still not well. I would suggest he: try being a gay man who is a teacher, a builder, unskilled, or a professional footballer; a young gay man in one of our schoo...

A long overdue update of my website has now gone live. A selection of poems and other short pieces of prose accompanied with some of my pictures are now available for your unreserved pleasure. You can find the pieces of immortal glory by visiting www.zefrog.co.uk and following the links to the portfolio part or by clicking on the DO link on the right hand side menu of this blog. Enjoy the visit.

While I have reservations on the way Stonewall operate, with their tendency to go solo (not including other community/militant groups) or to claim sole credit for results the achievment to which they have only contributed, I have to say that what follows, taken from their latest newsletter, gets my vote: MESSAGE FROM BEN SUMMERSKILL, chief executive The Times was once regarded as the top people's paper. That accolade is now held, of course, by Heat magazine. But it remains compelling how many people in power are still prepared to talk to the paper. And they often seem tempted to say things they clearly don't think will be subject to public scrutiny, as if they were sharing an offensive opinion in the bar of a London gentlemen's club. Just three months ago, the Archbishop of Westminster disingenuously told The Times that he didn't believe in discriminating against homosexuals. Four days later the upstart Mail on Sunday revealed that the Archbishop had, in fact, recently...

Someone, who can not be named for legal reasons, as they say, has just found himself this most rare of commodities: a boyfriend. In the past few days, I have spent several hours with the new lovebirds, for lurve it is we are talking about, apparently. Holding the candle (as the French say) is not exactly my favourite sport, but the groom is quite personable and friendly and, for my benefit, they seemed to make efforts to refrain the incontrollable urge that for ever pushed them to touch and do those other revolting things new lovers do in public. I am afraid that this might be due to my acerbic tongue and the fact that I tried to be discrete and give them some space to get on with their story. I also felt like a spinster aunt from time to time, benignly looking over two rosy-cheeked children. The fact that I felt at times rather envious of what they have might have transpired too. My impression is that they might have misinterpreted my feelings. I am very happy for them both but being...

Yesterday was a fairly quiet day at the office. Just after lunch, the internet started to die gently, one site becoming unavailable after the other. And then there was none. Slightly decided it was a good time to implement a reorganisation of the studio he had been talking about for a few days and so we set to work. The result is not bad, the place looks more spacious and probably more inviting. However I am in the same position with my back to everybody (something I don't like). All the redecorating however meant that the afternoon was soon gone and Slightly and I ended up ordering a pizza and other bits of highly healthy food to inogurate the new meeting room. Presumably ebbed on by the inebriating influence of this self imposed caloric surge, we soon found ourself in half-drunken confessional mode. After discussing Slightly's current squeeze we moved on to the more serious matter of accounting. That's how many men Master Slightly has had over the years (that's 12 yea...

Lake Wobegone Summer, 1956 by Garrison Keillor I have also just finished Dancer from the Dance , by Andrew Holleran. A nice page turner, if perhaps rather bitter sweet. I read it so fast that I didn't get the time to post about it here. This was for my reading group. Tags: book , books , reading .

I had my first nasty comment on this blog today (attached to the previous post). Someone asking my why I didn't go back to where I am from and including derogatory remarks about my being gay. As always in that sort of situation, the author finds himself incapable of mustering enough courage to reveal his identity and therefore give some legitimity to his words. As for the reason, why I am staying in this country, I could say that it is because I love London, that is feels like home to me. A place of increadible opportunities with a vibe of open-mindedness not to be found anywhere else in my (limited) experience. And this would all be true. But I have now a whole new reason to stay: because it bothers dear Mr (or Mrs) Annonymous... Tags: London , homophobia .

The BBC tells us that tomorrow will mark the 15th anniversary of the World Wide Web (not the Internet, mark). CNN doesn't quite agree . Things have moved along quite a bit since I started to use the web myself (sometime around 1995, as far as I can remember) and will probably keep moving very fast for sometime still. Stopping a moment to take stock, I realise how much surfing the net has become part of my life. I used it to communicate with most (if not all) people I know, I bank online, I buy things online (mostly books), I meet people online, I met my best friend (who is also now one of my business partner) online, and of course I use it to find information. Rarely a day passes by when I am not online. Does that make me a nerd? Tags: Internet , www , World Wide Web .

Secret Lives by EF Benson I have also just finished The Snow Garden , by Christopher Rice. A nice page turner. I read it so fast that I didn't get the time to post about it here. Tags: book , books , reading .