Pink Sauce

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 .