Pink Sauce

As readers will know, he who I call my best friend and my business partner, he who once said that I was like a brother; a member of the family, has found himself a boyfriend and is busy playing house. While it seems normal that his attention should be focused on this new development in his life , I find myself feeling the cold. This is not the first time that this happens; I am pretty sure I blogged about this at the time but I can locate the post for some reason. I visited the happy couple's new place last week. I felt so out of place. Not because I felt unwelcome but because I was struck by the sudden difference between our two lives. For the time we have known each other (almost 4 years now I think), we seemed to be more or less on a par: both more or less loners living in a room without much focus on where we were headed. The difference being that I was being my usual self while he was recovering from some rather disturbing and unsettling events in his life. Being there, in th...

I was caught in a bus accident on Tuesday afternoon. I was in Mornington Crescent, on the side of Koko (formerly known as the Camden Palace), on my way back from a meeting in North London. At this point where Bayham Street and Crowndale Road converge into a one way street. The bus I was on was coming from the right and was starting to move to the left of the newly formed double lane to do a left at the end of the street towards Euston. I was sitting upstairs on the left hand side, towards the back of the bus, listening to the radio and looking out of the window. I saw a white council-type mobility van coming very quickly (visibly too quickly) towards us from the left. The corner of the bus caught the van. As far as I can remember, there was some noise but we did not feel much. I saw the end of the van starting to tip under the shock of the impact. Fortunately, a providential lampost was there to prevent it from tumbling on the pavement. Stoically, the passengers got up, got off the b...

I missed a couple of fairly important anniversaries this week. Saturday marked the first anniversary of the end of my four year stint at "the council" (I had resigned on 30 March , another missed anniversary) and yesterday was the first anniversary of my official start as a partner for Design for Diversity . Since then I have also help with the creation of Live.Play.Ride. and I have become (quite recently) the administrator for the LGBT History Month website (No need to rush there quite yet, I haven't made any blindingly apparent changes there). The others venture, despite some interesting leads are also still very much still in the planning process but there is hope. Still.

While London is running and the English are getting ready to celebrate St George's Day; accross the Channel, a different type of patriotic festival is taking place. Today sees the first turn of the presidential elections in France. From 8am this morning until 8pm tonight, polling stations across the country will welcome people and invite them to decide which two candidates will run for the second turn of the election, in two weeks time. Contrary to the UK, French elections always take place on Sundays. This may be a way to remind the Catholic Church that the business of the Republique is at least as important as that of god. More likely it is a way to incite people to go and vote without having to miss time at work or letting other engagements get in the way. I am not certain how things happen in towns and cities but in the small village where I was raised, election day is traditionally a family business. I don't think it is that different for the rest of the country. Each fam...

Some background to what follows can be found here . Other installments are here . I started this as a way to train at touch typing (hence the title) which I have finally taken up learning more or less seriously. At first I was typing what nonsense came across my mind and deleted it once I had finished. Gradually, it just turned into a diary relating the events (not very numerous) of my life. This has also the advantage of keeping me relatively busy at work when I have nothing else to do which seem to happen rather frequently these days. 11 February 2002 Boy, am I tired today! The weekend, on the whole, went quite well; too well even sometimes. There were also a few more straining moments, which was to be expected considering the situation. As planned, I took the train on Friday evening straight after work and was in Paris around nine. PFM was slightly late as she did not expect the train to be on time (and she works for the SNCF!!!) She guided me to her office were we met some of her c...

Some background to what follows can be found here . Other installments are here . I started this as a way to train at touch typing (hence the title) which I have finally taken up learning more or less seriously. At first I was typing what nonsense came across my mind and deleted it once I had finished. Gradually, it just turned into a diary relating the events (not very numerous) of my life. This has also the advantage of keeping me relatively busy at work when I have nothing else to do which seem to happen rather frequently these days. 08 February 2002 This is the big day. I have eventually warmed up to the idea of this trip and am now rather excited about it. Today at work is going to be a long day I am sure, especially as there does not seem to be too much to do. I am a bit weary though, as PFM seems to be planning to drag me to a lesbian club. I do not know if she realises that they might not let me in. And even if they do, I might not be the most welcomed punter of the club. Satur...

Which European nationality should I be? I scored as Belgian . Belgian 75% British 63% Turkish 50% French 50% Italian 50% Dutch 50% Danish 50% Polish 38% German 38% Molvanian 38% Swiss 25% Russian 25% Irish 13% Spanish 13% Which European nationality should you have created with QuizFarm.com

Some background to what follows can be found here . Other installments are here . I started this as a way to train at touch typing (hence the title) which I have finally taken up learning more or less seriously. At first I was typing what nonsense came across my mind and deleted it once I had finished. Gradually, it just turned into a diary relating the events (not very numerous) of my life. This has also the advantage of keeping me relatively busy at work when I have nothing else to do which seem to happen rather frequently these days. 07 February 2002 I am still feeling quite tired from my week-end; although the fatigue I feel is probably only in part due to this. The bad news is that it is not going to improve just yet. I had a voice message from PFM on my machine on Tuesday when I came back home from work, asking me to call her back as she was feeling down. She has (finally) split up with her girlfriend who has moved out. They had been together for a year and a half but had already...

I don't go out much about town these days so the opportunities to spot c'lebs is quite diminished. However: On Saturday, just before that memorable moment at Duckie, I spotted the author Paul Burston . Yesterday, as I was making my way to deepest sarf London to visit Slightly's new abode, I am pretty sure I saw Patrik-Ian Polk , the creator that great US TV series Noah's ARC . The series is I think coming to the UK very soon. This may be related. I was on the top deck of a bus. He was on the street at the north end of the Old Kent Road.

In October last year, I wrote on this blog about my communications with Sarah Waters ' publishers when I contacted them to invite Sarah to attend a meeting of my reading group and discuss her latest book, The Night Watch . Well today was the big day. The group has been going this June 2001 and we now boast over 100 members. Most of the time however, only about 7 or 8 people turn up at a meeting. Such was Sarah's attraction that we broke all our records of attendance with 19 people turning up to first discuss the book and then meet it author. Sarah was as nice as she is recognised to be and she stayed an hour and a half with us explaining the genesis of the story and the book. We asked questions made comments and we all had a great time. Hopefully she had too. She also told us that the BBC had optioned the rights to The Night Watch , making it the third of her four published books to be adapted for TV. Sarah is the fifth author to attend one of our meetings. The others were La...

Last night a young friend of mine dragged me to my second ever visit to Duckie , a night club at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern catering for the gay middle-class bohemia. That was my friend's first visit. The night of my own first time there, they had contemporary dancing as a show which was quite accelerating to see in the context of what is effectively a gay pub. Last night proved however quite different. A performer calling himself Puta was there in very bad drag (skinny floral dress, stringy black wig over a painted balaklava and topped with a douche bag). He was hiding behind a meter high bit of cardboard which he was pushing around the stage. All along his act, he was chanting first in German then in English to an electronic track. After a while, he cut out holes in the cardboard with a knife before stripping and sticking his legs in the holes (showing his own hole in the process to the whole audience (yes that's a lot of 'oles). He then tried to climb a ladder in that unp...

Some background to what follows can be found here . Other installments are here . I started this as a way to train at touch typing (hence the title) which I have finally taken up learning more or less seriously. At first I was typing what nonsense came across my mind and deleted it once I had finished. Gradually, it just turned into a diary relating the events (not very numerous) of my life. This has also the advantage of keeping me relatively busy at work when I have nothing else to do which seem to happen rather frequently these days. 04 February 2002 Once again I have been very bad this weekend. I have not been able to go running again. Perhaps though I can be redeemed by the fact that I had to take a long walk at a rather good pace in the middle of the night of Saturday to Sunday. It all started on Tuesday, with MPB asking me to accompany her to this birthday party, as she felt nervous about going there on her own. On Friday night, we talked on the phone and decided to meet at Wate...

Some background to what follows can be found here . Other installments are here . I started this as a way to train at touch typing (hence the title) which I have finally taken up learning more or less seriously. At first I was typing what nonsense came across my mind and deleted it once I had finished. Gradually, it just turned into a diary relating the events (not very numerous) of my life. This has also the advantage of keeping me relatively busy at work when I have nothing else to do which seem to happen rather frequently these days. 01 February 2002 Is this really the First of February Two Thousand and Two??? I remember when I was younger, I used to compute how old I would be in the year 2000 and imagine what I would be doing then. It all seemed soooo far away. This year I will be 28 and as much as I used to like the idea of growing up and getting older, the figures on the paper now seem to have run along too quick and not to be related with me and who I am. I feel like I am still ...

Cover of the spring issue of The Journal , the newsletter of the Colchester Gay Switchboard . The picture was taken by myself at the LSE when representatives of the Switchboard presented the Hall Carpenter archives with a set of copies of The Journal . In the same edition, also appears an account of my recent visit to Colchester, a longer version of which was originally published here . Past issues of The Journal can be downloaded here .

Bad lipsinging, half naked butch clones dressed as cowboys, cheesy dance routines, homoerotic undertones, heavy disco, I give you: Skatt Bros. - Life At The Outpost (1979) That made me laugh no end.

Some background to what follows can be found here . Other installments are here . I started this as a way to train at touch typing (hence the title) which I have finally taken up learning more or less seriously. At first I was typing what nonsense came across my mind and deleted it once I had finished. Gradually, it just turned into a diary relating the events (not very numerous) of my life. This has also the advantage of keeping me relatively busy at work when I have nothing else to do which seem to happen rather frequently these days. 30 January 2002 Thanks to the bus or the tube or whatever, I was late at the gallery where I was supposed to meet MPB and her former mother-in-law at 6. The paintings, by Henry Moore, apparently a major British artist of whom I had never heard before, did not particularly appeal to me. They reminded me of a painting I know but I can not pinpoint which; perhaps something by Matisse or an early Picasso (a woman holding a baby). Anyway, I did not really ge...

Some background to what follows can be found here . Other installments are here . I started this as a way to train at touch typing (hence the title) which I have finally taken up learning more or less seriously. At first I was typing what nonsense came across my mind and deleted it once I had finished. Gradually, it just turned into a diary relating the events (not very numerous) of my life. This has also the advantage of keeping me relatively busy at work when I have nothing else to do which seem to happen rather frequently these days. 29 January 2002 Time for another session of touch-typing. Nothing to do this morning, so I might as well train a little more. I seem to be getting slightly more agile and to be making fewer mistakes although the speed is not really there yet. As far as life is concerned, things seem to be brightening up slightly. The weekend was quite busy, which makes a very welcome change from the usual. First there was the Chorus’ Xmas party; slightly delayed because...

Happy Easter...

It's birthday time for the business partner . A time of celebration and anticipation. Birthdays are also a time when people take stock, look back and assess how far the have moved (or not). Probably not too much Slightly can regret from the past few years even if there are a few scares. At 28 (the big three zero is nigh!) though, things are looking good for Master Slightly. He has found himself a new custodian in the shape of a lovely boyfriend soon to become a husband , and in a few days they are moving together to what is apparently a lovely flat in that new hub of sarf London "gayty": Depford. He even receives email requests from people in Poland who collect "photos with autographs from very important people" (that might only be a delayed April's Fool or a way to get his signature for some identity fraud but that made me laugh). Life is moving on full steam for Slightly. I can rest and relax; go back to my knitting and forget about the phone ringin...

Some background to what follows can be found here . Other installments are here . I started this as a way to train at touch typing (hence the title) which I have finally taken up learning more or less seriously. At first I was typing what nonsense came across my mind and deleted it once I had finished. Gradually, it just turned into a diary relating the events (not very numerous) of my life. This has also the advantage of keeping me relatively busy at work when I have nothing else to do which seem to happen rather frequently these days. 22 January 2002 I am tired, hungry and lonely and, yes, I like to moan! And so what? Nobody is here to suffer from all this moaning so I can not see why I should not carry on like this to my heart’s content. I know it is very bad but I am not getting any more patient these days. Be careful, I am just about to start moaning again!!! I suppose this all comes from the fact that I have so little to be satisfied with in this bloody life of mine. Hopefully, m...

I have been trawling through my old files and found these pages of a kind of diary I kept for a few months. This takes the form of a stream of consciousness rambling about events in my life at the time and the thoughts they elicited. There are 15 entries over a period of four months in early 2002. As I wrote at the time: I started this as a way to train at touch typing (hence the title) which I have finally taken up learning more or less seriously. At first I was typing what nonsense came across my mind and deleted it once I had finished. Gradually, it just turned into a diary relating the events (not very numerous) of my life. This has also the advantage of keeping me relatively busy at work when I have nothing else to do which seem to happen rather frequently these days. When I wrote this, I had been working for a few months as a temp. for a Local Council after a stint in the souvenir shop of one of London's minor museums. There I had made friends with MPB, a polish woman who wor...

As hinted a while back when those pictures appeared, on Tuesday I went to the Gielgud Theatre to see Harry Potter's knob Equus with Daniel Radcliffe . By some strange coincidence, I found myself if not in the same, at least in a neighbouring seat to the one, right up at the back of the gods, I had when I went to see Judy Dench in All Is Well That Ends Well a couple of years ago. As a result of being in the "cheap" seats, I found myself with a peppering of obvious Harry Potter fans in their charity shop finery. The play is a dark tale of obsession where Radcliffe plays the role of Allan Strang, a 17 year old stable boy who finds himself having to explain to Richard Griffiths , the psychoanalysist Martin Dysart, why, one night, with no apparent reason, he blinded the six horses he was taking care of. Soon we learn about the Strand familly and its idiosyncrasies but also about Dysart's regrets about his own passionless life. The story, told through Dysart's e...

Human relationships are such an awkward business... yet it must be nice to have someone to call and come home to after a day at work...

Yesterday, I attended part of a concert on the country's biggest Wurlitzer organ. This took place in what is the second biggest cinema ever built in the UK (the biggest one was located in Scotland). The former Gaumont State cinema in Kilburn, north London could sit 4000. The cinema was opened in 1937 but has now been turned into a bingo hall which was also its life line. I can't say I was particularly impressed by the music. The organist was obviously very good but the instrument seemed to flatten everything, making the melody almost undistinguishable from the rest of the music. The characteristic sound of the instrument seemed also incredibly melancholy (even when playing up-beat numbers); although this was probably quite appropriate in the corrupted and compromised grandeur of the remnants of the cinema's past glories. I, of course, took pictures, a selection of which is available here . After the concert, my companion and I, took advantage of the lovely weather and walk...