October 13th 2003 - October 19th 2003
Sunday Eeuw
Saturday Oops
Friday Don't...
Thursday Bah
Wednesday Perception
Tuesday Pyjama games
Monday Quiz
Sunday 19th October 2003
This week, in her column for The Independent on Sunday, Janet Street-Porter boldly follows Germaine Greer into the thorny jungle that is the defence of the love of boys:
It's perfectly OK for me to find Macaulay Culkin unforgettable - it doesn't mean I want to rip his little white underpants off and leap on top of him,
says she, raising a regrettably vivid mental picture.
Saturday 18th October 2003
Logical spelling error of the week:
"Eastbound trains currently not stopping at Bermondsey due to de-fective doors"
Freudian typo of the week
"..appearing with chatsow host Oprah Winfrey"
Solution-is-right-there-in-the-headline of the week
"Tea plantations go to pot"
Friday 17th October 2003
Thursday 16th October 2003
Mardi Gras? Bah.
Call me a pervert, but I shed no tears on hearing that Mardi Gras is unlikely to happen in Hyde Park next year.
Indeed, I can even claim to have done my bit towards ensuring that the sums just don't add up: I resolutely refused to go to Hyde Park this year. Why? Because the sums just don't add up: £25 for a single dance tent, a stage full of B-list pop-drones and beer at three quid a pop? Paying through the nose to be kicked in the arse is not my idea of fun, no matter where it happens.
But if not for fun, then maybe solidarity? Commitment? Celebration, even?
Perhaps there are still young (or even old) men and women for whom the idea of a park full of poofs is a revelation, as it was for me back in the Seventies. But they have gay snogs on Coronation Street these days, the tabloids tell me. And, God knows, Graham Norton's everywhere. So much for the love that dare not tell its name.
Which is not to say there aren't still battles to be fought, and won. But the glory days are gone: Peter Tatchell was initially refused access to the stage at this year's Mardi Gras - no-one knew who he was. Either that, or they just assumed he'd want to complain.
And who would blame him? Gay Pride? What's that then? It's a thing we believed in way back when, before they invented the perniciously pink pound.
But even now, when a simple high-priced pint will buy you more company than you can deal with, there remain the solid simple joys of celebration, a communion re-enacted - in this metropolis at least - on every single night of the year in bars and clubs whose names at least still adumbrate the inclination: Fluid, Flirt, and Fruit Machine; Rude Boyz, Man Bar; Growl and GAY.
Mardi Gras? What's that then?
Like all the best people, next year, like this year and the year before, if I have to nominate a single celebration - or call it calibration, if you will - my pink-letter-day will be pencilled in for Brighton Pride, a not-for-profit, all-inclusive, fun-filled fiesta where, hopefully, I shall yet again celebrate my sexuality by, ahem, having sex. (Plus maybe the odd silly hat.)
Wednesday 15th October 2003
All I want to do is create a clear perception in public opinion that the real battle is not between Israelis and Palestinians but between people who are willing to accept a pragmatic compromise, and people, on both sides, who are not willing to accept that.
- Amos Oz
Tuesday 14th October 2003
Pyjama Update
In one fell swoop Oliver Letwin, shadow Home Secretary, manages to destroy his party's efforts to align themselves with mainstream Britain (up to and including courting the Rastafarian vote) (as if there were one) by asking, in all innocence: "Doesn't everybody wear pyjamas?"
Monday 13th October 2003
News Quiz
Who is this somewhat hunky forty-one-year-old, and what job does he start tonight? (Clue: it's certainly not Charles Moore.)
......previous week
