Pink Sauce

Like last year, I spent some of my Christmas day morning cycling in central London, taking pictures of the eerie deserted streets. This year, the expedition was made all the more easier by the lovely Kenny Farthings aka Boris Bikes. No need to borrow a bike for a flatmate I no longer have. Click here to view this year's batch (Elephant and Castle, the Southbank and Covent Garden mostly) and here for last year's (Westminster and the West End).

It's the end of the calendar year and with it comes a strange need to stop and take stock of the year gone by. This impulse is augmented by that melancholy and contemplative Sunday evening feeling most of us seem to experience. Tonight I am sitting on my six-month old sofa, looking at the lovely urban view I am sharing with you below. And I look back on 2010... A year ago at this time of year I was in the last throes of the Christmas session with the London Gay Men's Chorus (my 15th season with them - eight years). After three performances at the Cadogan Hall at the beginning of December, and an invitation to the Mayor of London's Choral Service at Southwark Cathedral, we only had a few performances left on the stage of the Royal Festival Hall as guests of Sandy Toksvig's show, before packing up the tinsel for another year. This year, I wasn't part of the Christmas show, having taken the season off after the summer concert at the Roundhouse and a visit to a defiant ...

I was almost home. So close that I could actually see my building but there was still the new T-junction in the southern part of the Elephant and Castle to negotiate. The ride from Shoreditch had gone well and the bike was one of the smooth and responsive ones. There was a bit of a jam at the light but they had just turned green and traffic was moving on. So was I at the same speed not blocking anybody's way. Or was I. As I was about to pass the lights, going straight in front of me down Newington Butts, a white van came rushing to my left clearly trying to overtake me to turn down the Walworth Road on the left, cutting my way and forcing me aside. Earlier on Tower Bridge I had seen a 141 bus trying to do the same to another cyclist for about a quarter of the bridge, the driver using his horn to express his displeasure at the impudence of the cyclist who rightly was refusing to give way. Not such behaviour would happen if the bike was in fact a car. Already slightly riled by the br...

Last night I attended a lecture by local historian Stephen Humphrey who discussed the general history of the Elephant & Castle, focussing more particularly on what he called its heyday (between 1850 and 1940). This is part of a week-long art project ( The Elephant Project ) hosted in an empty unit on the first floor of the infamous shopping centre, aiming to chart some of the changes currently happening to the area. When an historian starts talking about the Elephant and Castle, there is one subject he can not possibly avoid, even if he wanted to. Indeed my unsuspecting announcement on Facebook that I was attending such talk prompted a few people to ask the dreaded question: Where does the name of the area come from, for realz? Panoramic view of the Elephant and Castle around 1960/61. Those of us less badly informed than the rest have long discarded the theory that the name comes from the linguistic deformation of "Infanta de Castille", a name which would have become at...

The following was written at the end of September 2010 but due to a mix up with the scheduling system of Blogger, this post has been waiting in limbo ever since. Here is it now. Two months more or less to the day after I moved into my know flat, I have finally got a landline that is working and an the Internet connection I needed it for. I must admit to suffering from a bad case of suppression of what exactly happened since my previous post on the subject. All I know is that further phone calls, each bringing its own story and contradicting the previous one, took place. I also remember spending another off waiting at home for an appointment with an engineer that did not turn up, like the first one. When I talked about compensations for clearly not delivering the service I had paid for I was more or less told to forget about it (I had already been given a free month rental, if you remember). And there is also no real complaint procedure other than getting in touch with Customer Service...

Last night I attended the evening part of the pre-launch event of LGBT History Month 2011 which was taking place at Twickenham Stadium. The Month is focusing on LGBT sports for the next two years, leading to the Olympic Games. The day was a busy one with many things happening, including the 3rd UK LGBT Sports Summit. The evening leg of the event included a Judjitsu demonstration, various speakers and a panel discussion chaired by Jane Hill and bringing together out LGBT athletes Gareth Thomas, John Amaechi and Clare Harvey. My pictures of the evening can be found in this flickr set here . Some of them have appeared on Gareth Thomas' official Facebook page .

The following email was sent to ken@buckforcolorado.com earlier today with the subject line: "Homosexuality". Dear Mr Buck, I was very interested to hear your recent comments (includes video) about the fact that gay people have a choice. While I would agree that people can accept or refuse to be who they are and decide or not to have same-sex relationships, I am more than a little concerned that you should imply that sexual attraction is a matter of choice. As gay man, this is clearly not my personal experience. I would also find it quite surprising, as you surely will too, that so many people would chose to be gay thus opening themselves to all sort of violence and discrimination (and I am not even mentioning the various countries around the world where such people could be given a death sentence by the state). In any case, if we follow your logic, I think we should all start asking ourselves the question: when did you yourself decide not to be gay? At the end of the day, w...

On Saturday, between 12 and 20000 people gathered in the street of London to protest against the state visit to the UK by Pope Joseph Ratzinger. A demonstration of what Ratzinger had called the day before "aggressive secularism" which looked to me more like a pride parade with a political message. Famous faces spotted on the march included John Waters (above) and Ian McKellen. The speakers at the rally the blocked Whitehall after the march included Richard Dawkins, Johann Hari, Dr Ben Goldacre, an openly gay Catholic priest, among others. My pictures of the event can be found on flickr here . A photopool is available here .

Last night I was given the opportunity to go to the top of Strata SE1 and i certainly grabbed it with both hands. I took the opportunity to take pictures of the amazing views over central London (from Wembley Stadium to the Olympic Stadium via the Emirates) from the view terrace on the 42nd floor but also some of the power plant one level higher. The picture above (of the Elephand and Castle) is a slightly doctored version of one of those pictures, using the fake tilt shift technique. All the pictures can be found here .

I thought that to provide some light relief from my recent rants about the Cycle Hire scheme I would treat you to a post on my woes with BT. As some of you may be aware, I have recently moved to a nice newly built building complying with all sort of yet to be enforced standards in construction and very much ready for the future in matter of telecommunications. I therefore found myself under the misguided impression that it would be a cinch to get a phone line connected for my Internet access. How wrong was I! You see, I am getting a fairly good deal on broadband from my mobile phone provider and I almost never use the landline for calls (I am infact considering not even giving out the new number once I have it), so I am only interested in renting the line for Internet access. This right away discounted my previous provider who, as I have learnt, are using using a technology called local loop unbundling (LLU). Apparently this means that they can offer cheaper deals but it also mean tha...

I am rather pissed off this morning. One of the few items on the list of things that can make me angry is my time being wasted by other people's ineptitude, in other words, people not keeping their promise. So far and despite the various problems I have already encountered with the Cycle Hire scheme, I have been willing to relaxed about it and ascribe all those problems to teething problems as people call them (incidentally, I am still waiting for that callback I should have received on Monday). However the scheme has now been live for almost two weeks and I do think that most of those problems should have been sorted by now. It is becomeing apparent that the systems behind the schemes are not ready and should not have been launched, even if that meant waiting until next summer to ensure at least some fair weather for people to enjoy the ride at its inception. This morning, I blithly walked to the second closest docking station from where I live (the closest was not operational al...

Tory Troll has posted a helpful little table first published in the Evening Standards which provides figures of comparisons between the Paris and London cycle hire schemes. Strangely the ES manages to claim that the London scheme compares favourably with the Paris one (the biggest such scheme in the world). Judge for yourself. Velib London Cycle Hire Number of bikes Initially 10,648, now 20,600 6,000 Docking stations 1,451 315 (400 originally planned) Area covered 90Km2 in 20 arrondissements 44km2 Bike weight 22.5kg 23kg Subscribers in 1st year 198,913 As yet unknown (30,000 in 1st week) Funding €90m from JCDecaux (about £75m) £140m from taxpayer + £25m from Barclays sponsorship Annual subscription €29 (about £21) £45 (I have added/amended some of the info). Still according to the ES, and because obviously too much positive bias towards Boris wouldn't be on, the " French prefer our ‘stylish and beautiful’ Boris bikes to Velib ". Personally, I can see very little differe...

Well, I would have been too good, if things had gone smoothly after all the problems I have had so far . On Friday, I cycled back from work and when I got to my local station (off the Elephant and Castle), there was no space to leave my bike. I had to cycle to another one. I had been told that there was a way to get an extra 15min free in case this happens but I haven't been able to find a mention of it and of how it works exactly. It seems in any case that there is a problem with this station (I have reported it) since it remained full all week-end and people were not able to take bikes from it. I couldn't either when I tried this morning. In any case I have heard and experienced what will no doubt become THE major problem of the scheme when the non-members can start using it at the end of the month: the repartition of the bikes during the day, with some station being either packed and not allowing people leave their bikes or other station being without available bikes (note t...

Another proof that I am probably a closet extrovert or just a weirdo? Itunes had thrown up Kirsty MacColl's song In These Shoes and, being a bit bored, I started dancing along. Soon I was digging out the shoes I had bought over six months previously for my first attempt at drag on the occasion of a friend's birthday cum leaving party. The rest is not history but the picture before your eyes. As seems to be the case of most of my impromptu self-portraits, it has turned into an exploration of appearance and, in this case, gender representation.

This is day four in my "report" of the trip I made to Warsaw with the London Gay Men's Chorus for Europride between 15 and 18 July 2010. The days leading to the trip, the journey itself and the first evening in the city are described here . The second day can be found here . The third day is here . Pictures of the day . On the Sunday, the last day of the trip, I started the day (after breakfast and checking out) by a quick visit to the swimming pool of the hotel before joining a small group of people in the visit of a controversial exhibition on homoerotic art at the National Museum. The exhibition gathered some lovely moving pieces and I enjoyed it but when it seemed to want to highlight the universal and timeless appeal of the theme, the exhibits themselves seemed to focus a little too on Polish artworks. My favorite piece was called love and consisted of two white shirts hanging in the air and stuck together at the chest. On the way back from the exhibition to the hote...

I can't remember if I have mentioned it on these pages but for months now, I have keenly been waiting for the cycle hire scheme that was implemented on Friday in the capital. I think it is a fabulous idea and Ken Livingstone should be applauded for starting the process that sees it come to life now. Yes, the "BorisBikes" were Ken's idea, let's not forget that. Online registration to the scheme opened on Friday 23rd at 6am and at 9.35am, I was one of the first to register. Unfortunately, this is also when my travails started. Despiste three attempts with 2 different cards, my payment could not be processed. Although the website's log page looked like my bank accounts could possibly have been debited 3 times (They have a very confusing way of showing transactions called the "Oyster Maths" apparently). I had to ring the call centre where the otherwise friendly operator didn't seem to quite know what to do. Finally we had to go through the whole paym...

This is day three in my "report" of the trip I made to Warsaw with the London Gay Men's Chorus for Europride between 15 and 18 July 2010. The days leading to the trip, the journey itself and the first evening in the city are described here . The second day can be found here . Pictures of the day . Having set my phone alarm but forgotten to turn it on, it is only after about 10min to get ready that I errupted out of the hotel to see the old banger of a communist-era coach that was going to take us on another tour of Warsaw leave the curb, on that second morning. Thankfully, the tour people had a second smaller vehicle for overflows and I jumped into that. It was just me and the young driver who rattled on in an overexited way until we joined the main group on Constitution Square, a vast ensemble of autere building dumped in the middle of the city without care for the existing street plan. This was apparently mostly a show piece where official demonstrations took place. Fro...

This is day two in my "report" of the trip I made to Warsaw with the London Gay Men's Chorus for Europride between 15 and 18 July 2010. The days leading to the trip, the journey itself and the first evening in the city are described here . Pictures of the day . The first night in Warsaw, in the luxurious room I had all to myself (it's about the size of my flat!), felt unfortunately quite short, after the previous night's extended meal and meanderings in the unknown city. It was at a time not unlike that of a usual working day that I got up, got ready and went down to breakfast before joining a walking tour of the old town (the area where we were the night before). Meanwhile, others in the Chorus were being packed into an old-fashioned bus for a different sort of tour. More about that later. Warsaw has, of course, a long history but one mostly marked by conquest, destruction and domination by a foreign power. This is particularly true of the last 200 hundred years....

What an eventful and varied time, the past week has been! So much so, that the oldest details are already fading into a mist of oblivion while the present doesn't feel quite real either. Most of Saturday was spent vainly trawling south London in search of floor varnish to protect the wooden floor of my new flat. It's not until Monday that I was finally able to find (Ironically in the shopping centre across the road!) the require products in the required shade and start the process of staining and varnishing the floor. On Sunday I attended a meeting of my reading group to discuss Gypsy Boy . We were lucky to be joined by the author himself and had a very interesting and enjoyable afternoon. Tuesday saw a trip to Ikea (where I bought a sofa ), more floor activities and a final dash at packing my stuff (mostly books, of course) in preparation for the move itself on Wednesday. The effective ministrations of Rocket Van meant that the all business was over and done with in 1h30. Sad...

On a wet Saturday afternoon outside the Malawi High Commission in Hampstead, north London, about 250 people gathered in support of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, a Malawian couple sentenced to 14 years for being in love. The chants included: '2 4 6 8 spread the love not the have. 3 5 7 9 they should not be doing time.' 'True love is not a crime, why should they be doing time?' and "we are standing in the rain cause homophobia is a pain." As we got home we learned that they had been pardoned by the Malawian president. Not that there should be anything to pardon. More pictures are available on my flickr account here . Several of these pictures were used in this youtube video

A couple of weeks ago, as I was walking on the SouthBank with a friend, we walked into the Gallery@oxo to take in a bit of art. The exhibition, organised by Affordable Art, was of London Printmakers. There were many lovely and colourful works there but the prints by Martin Ridgwell were the ones that caught my eye. While some of the images go perhaps a little too far in the artist's internal life for my taste, I enjoyed the superb craftmanship and the obvious queer sensibility. The pieces are beautiful but also playful and witty. And I went home with the one above: Chicken...

On 14 January, following a slightly convoluted series of events, a friend of mine referred me to attend a focus group session for a housing association wanting the gather the views of the gays on marketing themselves to the community. At the event I heard about an organisation called Housing Options which has been tasked by the government to administer affordable housing in London. I also learnt that I would probably eligible for the shared-ownership scheme in which one buys a share of a flat and pays rent on the rest until one can afford to buy more of it or the totality. And so on 6 February, I registered. Today, less than four months later, I had a meeting with a broker, organising an application for a mortgage to buy (45% of) my very own one-bedroom flat (featuring a triangular bedroom!). And it's not any old flat either. It's a flat on the 9th floor (see picture) of Strata SE1 ; the tallest residential building in London (42 storeys and 147 metres high) and the first in t...

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good. -W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

Today the Guardian has published in its Comment is Free section a piece by Nick Herbert, openly gay Tory candidate and shadow justice secretary until the desolution of parliament, entitled The Tories are embracing gay rights , in which he defends his party's stance on gay rights and explains why his much-trumpeted visit to Poland in July is not tokenisitic. Between bouts of laughter, I have penned my own comments which I posted below the article. Since they amount to a blog post, I bring them together below. My first reaction was a follows: "I have to say I am a little confused. For months now the Tories have been telling us that their lovely friends from Poland and Eastern Europe in their new political group are not homophobes. Repeating this till they are blue in the face (see what I did there?) despite all evidence to the contrary. And suddenly two weeks before an election and as the party's support within the LGBT community is melting like snow in the sun (apparently n...

Earlier today, I took delivery of a painting (the first I have ever bought and the second I own - the other one can be seen here ). I was going to keep it under wraps until I sort my room out (it's been tarted up and I have just moved back into it - it full of boxes that need unpacking). I couldn't resist though. I had to unwrap it and share it... So here it is. May it be the first of many. Nuthurst Woodland by David Grinaway, oil on canvas, 30 x 17 cm, 2009

On Friday and Saturday, about 2000 members of the public were given the rare privilege of walking the Thames Tunnel and back before the reopening of the (extended) East London Line which normally runs through it. I was one of those people. To quote wikipedia : "The Thames Tunnel is an underwater tunnel, built beneath the River Thames in London, United Kingdom connecting Rotherhithe and Wapping. It measures 35 feet (11 m) wide by 20 feet (6 m) high and is 1,300 feet (396 m) long, running at a depth of 75 feet (23 m) below the river's surface (measured at high tide). It was the first tunnel known successfully to have been constructed underneath a navigable river, and was built between 1825 and 1843 using Marc Isambard Brunel's newly invented tunnelling shield technology, by him and his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel." Photos of my visit are available on my flickr account here .

The article/post I could have written, had I taken the time and had I the talent: The BBC is caving in to a Tory media policy dictated by Rupert Murdoch Mark Thompson is jumping from the second storey because he fears a new government may throw him from the roof Jonathan Freedland The Guardian, Tuesday 2 March 2010 I also had that theory at the back of my mind: The BBC's big PR stunt - why 6 Music is the new Wispa It is the ultimate social media PR trick. A company threatens to pull a brand and then sits back and watches as fans start huge Facebook/Twitter/blog campaign to save it. Ashley Norris Posterous, Wednesday 3 March 2010

As expected the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has delivered a whitewash for the Daily Mail after receiving 25,000 complaints against the Jan Moir article on the death of Stephen Gately. The PCC's adjudication is available here . Interestingly the PCC seems to have ignore the complaints from the public and to have only focused on that by Gately's husband, Andrew Cowles. The PCC is founded on the principle of self-regulation; this means that the press adjudicates on what the press does. Let me rephrase that: the accused decides if the accused is innocent or not. More over and despite the claims of unacceptable censorship used to justify yesterday's decision, it seems that the only sanctions that the PCC has power to inflict on a guilty paper is to get it to publish the adjudication. This from the Editors' Code of Practice (pdf file): Any publication judged to have breached the Code must print the adjudication in full and with due prominence, including headline refere...

Due to a misunderstanding, the kiss-in (for the organisation of which I have been called an "extrèmiste sodomite" - article in French on a fundamentalist blog: you've been warned!) did not take place but the protest it was a part of did go on and was indeed much fun. Many friendly and familiar faces were there and it was in the end about 300 people who took to the wintry streets of London (between Westminster Roman Catholic Cathedral and the Italian Embassy in Grosvenor Square) to voice their opposition to the undue influence of the Pope and the Vatican in European and British politics. It was interesting to note that despite the wider purport of the protest, a vast majority of the participants seemed to come from the LGBT community. My pictures of the event can be seen in this set of my flickr account. (Image above: Peter Tatchell speaking against the Pope outside the Italian Embassy)

I have done it again. I find myself organising a protest, albeit a small one part of a bigger one. And one to which I can't take part(!) The Catholic Chruch is supposed to be spreading a message of love. Yet more and more it's message seems to be going from this towards something more sinister. On Sunday, a demonstration will be taking place outside the RC Cathedral in Westminster (Victoria Street - not the Abbey) before moving to the Italian Embassy. We suggest that straight and gay couples come together for a Valentine Day kiss-in to remind the Church what love is really about. The Kiss-in will last about 5min before the protest moves on to the Italian Embassy. A similar event is taking place in Paris this week-end. There is a Facebook Event for this. Find out more about the main protest here (also on Facebook). (note: the organisers of the main protest have given assent to this) Press coverage: - Protestors will tell Pope to 'snog off' , Pink News - Valentines Day ...