June 9th 2003 - June 15th 2003
Sunday -
Saturday Thatcher's farewell
Friday Cricket, grasshopper
Thursday Behind the curtain
Wednesday Bullshot
Tuesday Lords a-lying
Monday Predictable
Saturday 14th June 2003
Scurrillous rumour has it that a Google news-search for further information on last night's incoming story about Mrs Thatcher's husband being whisked into hospital would have yielded, for one short glorious moment, a story headlined:
Second most disliked Thatcher on his way
Friday 13th June 2003
It's fun, it's fabulous, it's...cricket?!
(Not quite cricket.)
You say: I see David Beckham has been given an OBE
I say: Anything for Peter Tatchell?
Thursday 12th June 2003
Absurdly for England, it's been so hot lately that, if I want to stay in bed to read the paper whilst ratcheting up my caffeine levels when I wake up, I have to open the french windows onto my (six square feet of) balcony to let the air eddy in and out, gently wafting to and fro the knotted nicotine-stained sheet that serves to shield the outside world from the shredded squalor of my bedroom.
The unseen life of the heat-hazed street twelve feet away is remarkably vivid when transmitted from behind the shifting sheet - like a particularly sharp stream of urban radio reportage, with eerie gaps of silence punctuating the rattling arrival of a delivery van, the muffled car-stereo hip-hop pulsing in passing, the steady diminuendo of a shopping trolley clattering away across the broken pavement. And, every so often, the quavering hail and response of two pensioners as they meet on the way to the local shops:
A: Hello Cissy! Enjoying the nice weather?
B: HORRIBLE!! I hate it...
Wednesday 11th June 2003
As if: US runs short of bullshit
Tuesday 10th June 2003
"Show me a gay man who's never gone cottaging and I'll show you a liar," they used to say.
I'm not so sure that's true these days, but for those of us with at least some experience of this arcane leisure activity, here's a link guaranteed to raise the hackles: the House of Lords debate an amendment to the Sexual Offences Bill - designed to ensure that cottaging remains resolutely illegal.
Read it, and weep.
And then consider: how many of the contributions to this debate are founded on actual experience rather than an imagination run wild?
(Like: there's nothing guaranteed to empty a busy cottage faster than the arrival of a child - it works even quicker than a plain clothes policeman, I'm told.)
Monday 9th June 2003
The epic chorus of stifled yawns that greeted the deeply belated announcement by Richard Chamberlain that he is now and has ever been - quelle surprise - gay is enlivened (only ever so slightly) by the additional information that his long term lover was 'flamboyant astrologer' Patric Walker.
Cue Uranus.
......previous week
