Pink Sauce

Probably my last picture for 2009

We learn today that two Argentinian gay men, Alejandro Freyre and Jose Maria Di Bello, had to literally go to the end of the world for the opportunity to get married (BBC News, includes video). Becoming the first gay couple in south America to get hitched, they had tried to tie the knot once already but had been denied by some "militant jusge" no doubt! But they have finally made it and all my congratulations and best wishes go to them. Once again, however, religious people are meddling with things that don't really concern them and as is so often the case, are talking through their hat in another desperate effort to keep their so-called moral ascendant. How exactly would that marriage be "an attack against the survival of the human species", as Bishop Juan Carlos of Rio Gallegos worded it, I would truly like to know. Those two men are gay, they are not going to reproduce whether they get married together or not. Furthermore their marriage is not stopping anyon...

A series of pictures of various London landmarks without cars or people, taken on Christmas day between 9.30 and 10.30am, can be found on my flickr account here . A selection of these pictures appeared in Londonist here .

When you enter a cinema showing what is reportedly the most expensive movie ever made, you have a right to expect something outstanding. And in many ways Avatar , James Cameron's latest offering is quite outstanding. Set in the future, on a fictional small earth-like planet inhabited by the na'vi people, called Pandora, the film tells the sotry of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a disabled former marine, sent to the planet to take over his dead twin brother's avatar, a man-made human/na'vi hybrid body used to make contact with the indigenous people. The humans have discovered mineral resources on the planet that they intend to plunder but the na'vi people, who are highly in tune with their ecosystem, are in the way. Sully finds himself stranded with a na'vi tribe and gets to learn their ways and finally becomes one of them. Soon he has to choose between humanity and his adoptive people. The plot is to a large extent fairly conventional: the hero finds his true sel...

After reading some of the despicable comments left on the edition of the BBC's Have Your Say asking "Should homosexuals face execution?" (see previous post on this here and my complaint to the BBC here ). This "brilliant" piece of investigative journalism comes in the context of the debate around Uganda's proposed bill that would have enshrined death penalty for homosexual acts in law and also encourage people to snitch on others for fear of being prosecuted themselves. Although it seems that the people involved are now backing down and will remove the death penalty element from the bill in favour of "a more refined set of punishments". Without going into what is wrong with the very fact that the BBC should feel it appropriate to ask such question - Should blacks face execution?, Should Jews face execution? - I would like to answer one of the recurrent arguments I have seen (not just on the BBC's site) in that debate in response to the inter...

More seriously though , here is the text of my complaint to the BBC: How utterly heartless, disrespectful and depressing that you should think it appropriate to ask your reader if homosexual should face execution. The BBC is supposed to be a bastion of quality and I am afraid in this case the urge to give in to sensationalism has been the stronger. I trust you would never dare publish a similar request for "debate" about Jews and balck so why did you judge it legitimate to be asked about gay people? You too can complain here .

I would like to publicly congratulate the BBC News Online team for being so daring and forward thinking in setting up the edition of Have Your Say asking people if homosexuals should face execution . By doing this, the team shows how at the cutting edge of true journalism it really is, valiantly flying in the face of any moral or ethical consideration (and the fact that death penalty will probably be removed from the Ugandian bill the tabling of which started the whole story) and going straight(!) for subjects that really matter. In the same spirit I would like to suggest to you a couple of other subjects for future editions of the page which will no doubt help further and enhance your reputation as fearless seekers of the Truth. How about: "should blacks face execution?" and then I would follow up with the always popular "should Jews face execution?". I trust the team will embrace those subjects too and I am very much looking forward to reading all the enlightened...

"Everyone of average education considers it inadmissible, ill bred, and inhumane to infringe the peace, comfort, and yet more the health of others for his own pleasure. But out of a thousand smokers not one will shrink from producing unwholesome smoke in a room where the air is breathed by non-smoking women and children." Leo Tolstoy, "Why do Men Stupefy Themselves?", 1890 as an introduction to a book by his medical brother in law, Dr S P Alexeyev, Drunkenness

My pictures are here on flickr (with the photopool to share yours here ). My report for Londonist is here (please give it a star if you like it, thanks). Enjoy!

Picture illustrating the paper version of this article in the Guardian. In a fast-changing digital world in which most traditional media are struggling to adapt, BBC Radio 4 has bucked the trend, posting its highest listener numbers for a decade over the summer months. [...] Today – which has refreshed its presenter line-up over the last 18 months with Evan Davis and Justin Webb joining the breakfast programme team – gained 95,000 listeners on the previous quarter to reach 6.6m an average each week, an increase of nearly 500,000 on the same time last year. Today's 16.8% share was its highest ever. [...] With Moyles losing 679,000 listeners over the same period, his audience of 7.04m put him 718,000 adrift of Wogan compared with a 213,000 gap in the second quarter. Chris Moyles, who presents the morning show on BBC Radio 1, has made several homophobic comments on air. Evans Davies is the gay presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4.

On Friday 25th September 2009, Ian Baynham, 62, and his friend were subjected to homophobic abuse in Trafalgar Square, London. When Ian challenged this unacceptable behaviour he was assaulted by three youths: two women and a man. He later died of his injuries on 13th October. On Sunday 25 Ocotber, James Parkes, 22, an off-duty trainee police officer, was set upon by a group of up to 20 teenagers in the heart of the gay quarter of Liverpool. James was with his partner, another man and a woman when he was attacked. One of his companions was punched in the face. James is now fighting for his life with multiple skull fractures and other injuries. Ian and James are sadly not alone; They are two among thousands of people who have been victims of hate crime. In London alone , 1,192 homophobic offences were reported in the year to September 09, up from 1,008 the previous year - a rise of 18.3%. That's an average of almost 3 per day! People from all communities are invited to come together...

It's all a bit hazy now but as far as I can remember, sometimes in the late 1990s, after I finally got an Internet connection (pay as go dial up, no doubt) at my parents' house in the middle of nowhere, I started looking at building my own website. Using publisher I put together a couple of pages both in French and in English and looked at a way to put them online. Lots of animated GIFs ensued... I quickly came across Geocities and Angelfire which offered webhosting for free. I am not even sure those few webpages made it online and there have been several attempt at creating my own site. In August 2001 when I took over as moderator of my newly founded reading group, I decided that a website would be useful and once again I turned towards Geocities. The site has been online ever since, though it underwent a much needed redesign in 2005, loosing the black background and the GIFs that had been the canons of amateur webdesign a few years before. For over a decade, Geocities were ne...

I spent the last two days in a computer room on the second floor of the London College of Communication (LCC), at the Elephant and Castle, a good 10 minutes walk from my garret. Having started a new job a couple of weeks ago, I am being sent to various training courses (amazingly all within walking distance of what I call home). This week's was entitled "InDesign, the fundamental". Unexpectedly I found myself seated next to one of my former colleagues at VisitBritain. Small world and all! We learnt how to create shapes, apply all sorts of rather amateurish (in our hands at least) effects (shadows, glows and embossing) to our documents, create business cards, master pages and style sheets, tables, lay out some text and insert images in the desktop publishing software that seems to have become the new professional tool (replacing Quark). We were made to collate our efforts into a sort of booklet which we then turned into a pdf file. The results of my own efforts (albeit sli...

Yesterday and for the second time this week (the first time had to do with Trafigura, and the PR-illiterate law firm Carter-Ruck trying to gag The Guardian and then Parliament (no less) around the publication of the Minton Report), Twitter and other social networking sites flexed their cyber-muscles and ostensibly made a difference in British public life. It all start with a despicable article by Daily Mail hack Jan Moir about the recent death of Stephen Gately. The article was originally titled "Why there was nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gately's death". Within half a day, a Facebook group had been created (counting close to 23,000 members at the time of this update; that's more in three days than in the past five years!), the article was retitled "A strange, lonely and troubling death..." at the same time that all adverts were removed from the page, the Press Complaint Commission's website had crashed from receiving over 21,000 complaints,...

just uploaded: my 3000th picture on flickr! View the rest of this set (an art installation in a former tram tunnel) on flickr here .

Several people expressed curiosity about that delicious concoction I invented for my pasta, so here is a little piccie so that said people get a better idea. ok, it looks more orange than pink, here but that's because I didn't put quite enough cream in (it's normally shrimpish pink). Give it a go... go on, you know you want to. (for those wondering, the yellow rectangle at the back of the plate is Emmental)

It was announced this week that Gordon Brown has officially invited Pope Ratzinger to visit UK. This he will do next year. Already, protests are announced ( in Brighton, tomorrow ) against the invitation and a Facebook group has been created for longer term action. Today Tanya Gold has published a damning summary of the Catholic Church's actions in the Guardian. Ignore the bells and the smells and the lovely Raphaels, the Pope's visit to Britain is nothing to celebrate. Gordon Brown is 'delighted', David Cameron is 'delighted'. I am 'repelled'. Read the full article here . In the meantime, the Vatican has come out with a little gem of hypocritical bad faith (!), stating "that the problems with clerical sex abuse in other churches were as big, if not bigger." I suppose that makes it ok, then. right?

(Part of) the view from my window: Palace of Westminster's Victoria Tower in the sunset

As of tonight, my blog Aimless Ramblings of Zefrog , that "place where I can vent my frustration, express ideas and generally open my big gob without bothering too many people" which will be 6 in a couple of months, becomes Pink Sauce . While the URLs zefrog.blogspot.com and www.zefrog.eu are still valid to access this page, the main URL now becomes www.pinksauce.co.uk. There is a vague plan to create a proper website for www.zefrog.eu to which the blog would be linked. Why Pink Sauce , you may ask. It is both simple and complicated. For several years, I have grown out of love for the name of the blog. It felt a bit cumbersome and clumsy. That said, I never really looked into changing it, seriously. Tonight, for dinner, I had pasta with a special pink sauce of my concoction ; single cream and ketchup. I know most people while feel nauseous at the very though of the mixture but trust me, it's gorgeous. Don't knock it till you've tried it. After having had my platte...

Something extraordinary happened on the way to Oxford Circus yesterday, and in my life. I got there first! At the end of May, my contract with VisitBritain came to an end (it had been originally a six month contract and had already been extended). Since then the hunt for a new job proved rather unfruitful and sometimes frustrating . In the first three months, I was only invited to one interview, for a small charity based in Shoreditch. Although the feedback was very positive, I wasn't hired. I had only come second. Not the first time this had happened to me for an interview. Unusually perhaps, though that was certainly welcomed, I was recommended by this first charity to a second one that was looking for someone in a similar position. I duly submitted my application and was invited to an interview. This took place on Tuesday. Though that was apparently unplanned but not unforeseen, a second round of interviews had to take place to differentiate between two remaining candidates. And...

The following has appeared in PinkNews under the title Comment: Brown's apology to Alan Turing is not good enough . The readers of this blog, who know how militant and political I can get, may be surprised to hear that I did not sign the widely publicised petition for an official apology to Alan Turing . Of course this campaign is in many ways a very positive thing. It brought a dark page of the history of the LGBT community to the forefront, making the wider public aware of what some of us (many still alive today, no doubt) have had to endure from their own country. It also served to highlight the way LGBT people have been treated by historians simply because of their unorthodox sexual orientation; how they have been prevented from taking their rightful place in the history books and have instead been firmly kept into the historical closet, regardless of the scope of their achievements. As the news that Gordon Brown has taken the highly unusual step to actually grant the demanded ...

We all know (or hope) that flea markets will offer hidden treasures. And sometimes they just do. A lucky find in Deptford market, a couple of years ago, has made me, for the grand old sum of £5, the happy owner of a photo album with some very interesting shots. Although there are virtually no annotations in the album, it seems that the pictures were taken between 1930 and the late 1940's. Some may even be earlier. Most the pictures are of groups of young people involved in camps and excursions organised by the Crusaders Union but some show views of the Queen Mary and sailing boats, of Stratford Upon Avon and other unnamed places, and of steam trains. Those about London - there are only seven of them recognisably of London itself - can be viewed in the Londonist gallery dedicated to them here .

This is the full-length version of my review for Londonist . Regular readers will also know that this is my first book review. Imagine looking at a picture of a place you know well in a mirror. Everything you know seems there but somehow it's not quite right, it's not quite the same. This is how it feels reading Up West by Pip Granger. The street names and the landmarks are all there, though many have also now gone. The busy and diverse crowds are also livening up the streets but the colours have gone and everything has the drab greyness of post-war Britain and its pea-soupers. The smells are different too. Stronger and earthier. As Granger points out herself, there has been many books about the area, some are general histories, some are focusing on certain communities living there. Many are about the famous "boozy chums" of the author. "At once a history, a memorial and a love story" (p21), Up West is all of these things as it draws on the lives and testim...

People opposed to gay marriage or Civil Partnership always claim that these undermine traditional marriage. We may be able to believe them should ever manage to explain how this is actually happening. They never do. As far as I can see, straight couples are doing a very nice job of undermining marriage themselves. And in any case, how can giving more people the opportunity to join in something undermine it? Well it seems that we now have the proof that not only gay marriage does not destroy marriage, it actually help support and strengthen that institution. Gay marriage has been legal in Massachusetts for the past 5 years. This means that we now have 4 years of data allowing us to judge the extent of the damages wreaked on that poor state by gay marriage. Well, guess what: according to the latest figures from the National Center For Vital Statistics, Massachusetts is the US state with the lowest divorce rate of all, and that rate is about equal to the national divorce rate... in 1940....

As I was about to board the bus that would take me to Tesco yesterday afternoon, I spotted a rather attractive guy, already on the bus seated in the first few seats at the front. I looked at him a couple of times and it seemed to me he was looking back. I got on the bus and went to stand in the open space opposite the exit doors and waited for my stop. Before this one arrived however, the bus got the guy's stop. As he stood up we exchange another glance. It felt like a typical "cruising" situation. I had very little doubt that the guy was gay - I know that my gaydar is not great but it's not that bad. The guy however started mumbling under his breath, looking at me square in the face and with a pained expression. He was speaking in West Indian patois and I didn't get what he meant other, perhaps, than the word "bumboy". Whatever his exact words, the purport of his speech was quite clear: he wasn't happy. I just stared at him with on interrogative loo...

One of my pictures, used to illustrate an article on Wikipedia , has been used by Manchester Pride to advertise one of their events .

Click on the image above for more information.

On the day where we learn that the number of jobseekers as gone up once again to reach over eight million, it is probably time for an update on my experience with JobCentre and share a few more nuggets. I still haven't found an answer to the question I first posed back in June , other than that they are there to administer people's claims. In the past couple of months, I have not received one bit of advice from them on looking for a job. The only advice comes from friend and from a kind recruitment agent who took an hour of his time to explain to me about what I think are called "functional CVs". I will certainly give those a try. It's not like I have anything to lose. Last week I went to sign at my scheduled time and was informed that I would have to attend a compulsory group session the next day. When I queried the very short notice, I was informed that they normally give a week. I also had the opportunity to explain to the clerk how email job alerts work. Shoul...

In October 1993, at 19, I started university. Although I was still going back to my parents', about 50km away, every week-end, this was for me the real beginning of true independence. I had been spending my weeks away from home (at the French version of a boarding school - i.e. nothing posh about it) for the past four years but this was different. From my room in a student residence, I was more or less free to do what I wanted. Within a few months, having finally realised that I was neither straight nor bisexual, I had been to my first gay club, had met my first boyfriend and had started to come out to my closest friends. I also started to find my own sartorial style. This was not a particularly rosy or successful time and I don't look at it with fond nostalgia, wishing I was still there, but it was an important stage in my life. Part of this metamorphosis involved the purchase of a silver ring. Something cheap (the equivalent of £7 (70 Francs), as I remember) but I thought it...

After finally managing to track an email address for Rev James Tallach of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland , on the Isle of Lewis, I sent him the email reproduced in this earlier post , challenging his alleged attribution of the reason for a tornado on Lewis to "god's warth" at the first celebration of a Civil Partnership on his island (as reported in this article on PinkNews). His first reply was as follows. Although, I have asked him permission to reproduce his emails, my request has remained unanswered. I have decided to publish anyway, since I am sure the Reverend is a man of integrity who would stand behind his own word publicly. Dear zefrog Thank you for your thoughtful email. During my interview about these matters I was asked whether I saw the tornado as a judgment for the breaking of God's commandment. I said specifiically that I did NOT make that connection and spoke of changing weaather patterns.This was correctly reported in at least one account....

Published on BlueRidgeNow.com : Sunday, August 9, 2009 at 4:30 a.m. To The Editor: Twenty-five years ago we discovered that one of our sons was gay. We loved him, but I was afraid of what the future held for him in a society that did not accept him. Therefore I began to pray that God would change him. One day as I was praying, I got a message from God that God did not work that way. So instead of God changing my son, God changed me. God changed the way that I viewed homosexuals, and gradually my understanding of Scriptures. From that moment on I began to accept my son as he was. Eventually God led me to PFLAG (Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) where I met other parents who were like me. There I found the courage that I needed to come out of my closet and talk openly about my son, not only in PFLAG meetings but also in the church and community. Since that time God has blessed my family in many wonderful ways by bringing not only a wonderful partner for my son into our li...

Since Reverend Tallach of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland , on the Isle of Lewis, can not be reached by email (the two addresses for him, I could find online bounced), I will post this email on my blog, hoping that God will guide the Reverend to it (see this article on PinkNews for details of Rev. Tallach's comments). Dear Reverend Tallach, I was very interested to read in the press about your pronouncement that a recent tornado over the Isle of Lewis was the result of God's Righteous Wrath for allowing civil partnerships. It is indeed quite wonderful to be able to find God's work in nature everywhere. I couldn't help thinking myself recently that the forest fires and earth tremours that plagued California at the end of last year and the beginning of this, and so reminiscent of the Biblical fire and brimstone, were indeed God's way of telling the inhabitants of the golden state that they should not have voted for Proposition 8 which made gay marriages ille...

The National Portrait Gallery has gone a bit queer this summer. Beyond the perennial portraits of gay, lesbian, bi or trans (LGBT) people that the initiated can spot around the gallery, there is a selection of colourful portraits of George Melly by his friend Maggi Hambling on offer. The pièce de résistance however is only a few butch strides down the corridor. The soft-lit, aubergine confines of the Gay Icons exhibition huddle together a selection by 10 prominent LGB figures of 60 photographic portraits they personally deem significant... Read my full review of the exhibition on Londonist here . Images - left to right: Joe Dallesandro by Paul Morrissey 1968, k.d.lang by Jill Furmanovsky 1992 & Joe Orton by Lewis Morley 1965 all courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery

One of the many pleasures offered by London is that of discovering quirky places no one seem to know about and seemingly held in some quaint timewarp. The Sands Films Studios in Rotherhithe are just one such place. Housed in some unprepossessing Grade II listed former granary, Sands Films Studios were founded in the 1970's and offer film production facilities as you may expect but also a cinema club (free) and a renowned costume-making workshop. You will have seen their creations in such films as Little Dorrit (1988), Vanity Fair (2004), The Phantom of the Opera (2004), Pride and Prejudice (2005) or Fingersmith (2005) and many others. The quaintest and most interesting part of the complex however is without a doubt the adjacent Picture Research Library. Neatly tucked on the ground floor of the oldest part of the building, its ceiling supported by 18th century reclaimed ships' timbers, imagine a giant scrapbook of thousands of images, photographs and other magazine clippings bro...

This picture was used by Londonist to illustrate an article about "dog crimes" in Camden Town .

A cropped version of this picture was used to illustrate several articles about the event is depicts (Sue Sanders receiving an award for her work from the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) and the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) on 10 July 2009). First on the LGBT History Month blog here and then in PinkNews here .

Last month the Diocese of Plymouth (southern England) sent out letters to its priests advising them to stop offering wine at communion in a bid to help fight the swine flu epidemic. The Plymouth Diocese has 93 parishes stretching from Penzance and the Isles of Scilly in the west to parts of Bournemouth in the Dorset. The step was apparently taken in response to the World Health Organisation upgrading the seriousness of the epidemic risk. According to the BBC, at the time, there were no cases of the flu in the area covered by the Diocese and only 18 cases have been diagnosed since then ( source ). This morning, the chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, told BBC Radio Four's Today programme that, at present, swine flu appears to be less severe than previous pandemics and "broadly similar" to seasonal flu - which kills between 5,000 and 7,000 each year. There have so far been 17 swine flu-related deaths in the UK. All information both at the time of the Diocese's le...

This year, like last year, I spent the parade at Pride on the open top of a bus. As it passed in front of Selfridges on Oxford Street, a friend remarked that, unlike last year where they had some half-naked guy or other handing out stuff, nothing seemed to be happening there to mark Pride. We didn't think about it much at the time. When I got home however and started checking out the pictures of Pride uploaded to Flickr ( here ), I quickly found out the reason for this change. Selfridges had teamed up with Calvin Klein to hire a bunch of skimpily-clad models to take part in the parade itself, carrying a banner and handing out flyers, as can be seen in the picture above (courtesy of RealMen ). Selfridges and CK are obviously not the first non-gay commercial organisations to take part in Pride (British Airways or BT come to mind). And it is obviously a great thing that parts of the wider community should want to reach out and support the LGBT community. That they should decide that, ...

Today marks nine years since I moved to London. How time flies!

last week I was waiting for someone at a corner on Old Compton Street when I was approached by a young man and took my picture. Before your overworked imaginations start going on overdrive, I must add that he was a "journalist" working for Boyz magazine (one of the free scene rags in London). He explained that the National Portrait Gallery was about to have a new exhibition (now open) called Gay Icons , gathering 60 pictures showing what 10 prominent member of the LGBT community view as their icons. Boys was doing a voxpop to see who people would nominate. It seems that the editor of Boyz felt that the icons featured in the exhibition were not quite current enough. And so I was asked to nominate my own gay icon and to say why. Well, Boyz, the results are in and as usual I stick out like a sort thumb. A look at the scan of the incriminating page of Boyz No 931, below, should be ample proof.

And that's another one done! My (not very good) pics of the event can be found on flickr here . The flickr photo pool for Pride 09 is here . One of my pics was used by Londonist (along with a selected few) to illustrate the event. View it here .

My newly-finished placard to take on the opentop bus of the Southwark LGBT Network at Pride London on Saturday.

40 people gathered yesterday afternoon (Sunday) outside the London Schools of Economics (where the first meeting of the Gay Liberation Front UK took place in the 1970) for a march marking the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots that took place on 28 June 1969 in New York and are considered as the beginning of the modern gay rights and gay pride movement. The march which went through Soho (one of London's gay quarters) finished in a club called Central Station (King's Cross area) where a free afternoon of cabaret performances had been organised. More pictures are available on my flickr account, here . details of the event can be found on this Facebook page . The picture above was used by Londonist to illustrate their short article about the celebration, here . I may blog more extensively (and specifically) later about my feeling towards yesterday's event...

Having never registered as unemployed I had only a very vague idea of what the Jobcentre can do for it customers. That's until I registered with them earlier this month. Now I have no idea whatsoever of the point of this organisation. In my naivety, I imagine that a Jobcentre was there to help people find a new job, providing all sorts of services and facilities to support jobseekers in their quest. Not at all. I now know that Jobcentre does not offer CV surgeries where people can get advice on how to improve their CV. I am assuming that interview technique advice is also out of the question. It also seems that the centres do not provide jobseekers with the facilities to print out documents (such as CVs or job applications that can only made by post - yes they do exist still!) or make photocopies. Jobcentres are also not there to process your benefit claims or event track their process and make sure that they have been made properly with all the required documents. On Saturday 20th...

Jean Racine is, together with Pierre Corneille and Molière , one of the three major French playwrights; all from the 17th century. Still, while I have read some of Corneille's stuff and endured the study of some of Molière's comedies at school, I have never actually explored Racine's works in any way. Therefore going to the National Theatre to attend a performance of Phèdre, with Dame Helen Mirren in the title role, presented several levels of interest. Before talking about the play, I would like to have a good moan about the quality of the seating in the theatre. Cozy doesn't even start to describe it. There is barely enough place to fold one's legs and certainly none to change position, which can be an issue when watching a two hour play with no intermission. The back of the seats are also too low in my view. I am sure that actress Fiona Shaw, who had the misfortune of sitting right behind this 6'1 hindrance, would also have had something to say about the se...