January 27th 2003 - February 2nd 2003
Sunday Ice-lolly
Saturday Calling it a day
Friday Cottaging UK
Thursday Egging
Wednesday Suspects
Tuesday Buttons
Monday 31 Songs
Sunday 2nd February 2003
Some months ago, after a particularly ghastly night on the town, full of drunken secretaries vomiting on pavements and fuddled trainee estate agents trying to pick up their text messages on empty beer-bottles, I forswore going out on a Saturday night. Too bridge and tunnel, darling.
So, of course, every weekend since, I've been bombarded with alerts from friends telling me of their complex plans for the night and I've had to reply: still at work, not sure when we'll finish, bah.
With equal predictability, on the rare Saturdays when I've not been working, I've been the one working the phone - only to haul in a dull shoal of: nah, getting a curry, got a video, staying in.
But not last night.
Andy texted to me to say he and Kevin were going to The Two Brewers; David and Marcus responded positively to my suggestion that we might go to Queer Nation. Admittedly both these venues are on completely the wrong side of town for me, at a season when you really don't want to end your night in the cold and wet, waiting for the bus that will never come, but hey.
Despite the 2 Sewers being one of the first gay bars that I ever patronised on a regular basis, I've never liked it very much - something about the men it attracts always managing to have sufficient attitude to be tedious without somehow summoning enough to be challenging - but last night was made glorious by an almost constant tide of friends and acquaintances coming through the door: Karl, Andy and Kevin, Luca, Gerry, Guy and several familiar faces from the Tavern.
A little later, at Queer Nation, I found David, Marcus, Janne, Pano, Chris, Patrick - and a skiny black guy who caught my eye and then stuck his hand down my trousers (while his flatmate stood alongside muttering "If you take him, you keep him!")
Later still...but discretion draws a veil (keyword: ice-lolly).
That's all I ask: one Saturday a month spent in the company of friends.
(Plus every Sunday at the RVT, every Wednesday and some Fridays at The Swan, the odd mid-week outing, some visits to The Spiral, the occasional late-night health club.)
Saturday 1st February 2003
Hans Blix's uncertain grasp of the subtler nuances of the English language has already given us the concept of a gun that smokes before it fires (and led at least one commentator to advise "Never trust a foreigner when he's speaking English").
This week he brought us new joy in uncertain times when he spoke, appropriately enough, to the Today programme:
Friday 31st January 2003
More about the proposed Sexual Offences Bill another day but in the meantime: am I the only one who's noticed who is Google's first choice for cottaging uk?
Thursday 30th January 2003
This just in (from yet another correspondent who really really needs to get his own blog):
"Was outside the RVT on Sunday chatting to Byron et al about 9pm, about 10 of us in all fairly near the front door, when there was a whizzing noise past my ear and a splat sound behind me.
"Ruled out the first thing that came into my mind as the cause cos I wasnt horizontal, looked round and saw this whitey yellow gunk dripping down the walls.
"Double-checked I wasnt horizontal, and then noticed smashed eggshells in the mess. A drive-by egging!!
"A box of size six mediums (spose it was too much to hope for free-range) had been hurled at us from a car...and totally managed to miss a bunch of ten strapping lads from close range.
"Spose it goes to show that bigots are so blind they make lousy shots."
Wednesday 29th January 2003
Salutary interview with Bill Hughes, Director General of the National Crime Squad and the man responsible for Operation Ore.
His police officers are constantly trawling the net. 'We need to be aware of what is going on but we try to do as little as we can get away with and involve as few officers as possible, because it's so traumatic.'
He realises that a handful of police officers surfing the net is never going to stem the tide. 'We can't police the internet, but that's also the beauty of it, it's open to all. The internet service providers need to help.'
The article continues: "Until these suspected paedophiles are proved guilty, do we need to know that they include two hospital consultants, a classics master, a former deputy headmaster, a director of a big construction site and a famous newspaper columnist? Did someone really need to speculate that there were senior judges, two Labour MPs and more celebrities involved?"
Compare and contrast with this from (I think) The Star: "The list is said to include the ex-boss of a well-known drinks company, a millionaire colleague of one of Britain's best-known entrepreneurs and a top City public relations man who liases with the Government."What, no pop-stars?
Tuesday 28th January 2003
Walking from Old Street tube to Shoreditch at half past midnight last night, I spotted a brightly illuminated display through the window of an otherwise darkened art gallery.
From a distance, it looked like the silhouette of two dancing tennis rackets, and I imagined something somehow constructed from two of those temporary bus-stop signs, each about four foot high and ingeniously made to wobble by the timely addition of loose springs.
Drawing closer, it seemed clear that the wild way in which these shapes were moving had some kind of logic behind it, a certain planned chaos in the way they would incline towards each other and then spring apart, or chase each other across the screen.
But looking through the window revealed a room entirely empty except for a slide projector pointing at the wall. No tennis rackets, no bus-stop signs, nothing.
And then, looking closer at the projector, peering into the tiny space between the lamp and the lens, one could finally see the brightly illuminated source of all that hugely heated motion: two shirt buttons hung on threads, dancing in the draught.
Brilliant.
Monday 27th January 2003
Blogadoon doesn't go in for those lists of favourite toons that other bloggers seem to find so useful when called upon to fill an empty afternoon.
Mostly because, as is well-established by now, when it comes to toons, Blogadoon doesn't know its arse from its elbow. ("What? This is the Ketchup Song? But I've enjoyed dancing to this for weeks now! The shame!")
Meta, however, we can do.
So how about a review of Nick Hornby's latest: 31 Songs?
......previous week