October 26th 2003 - November 2nd 2003
Sunday Fancy
Saturday Dark days
Friday Death toll
Thursday Invincible
Wednesday Crawling
Tuesday Fluffy
Monday Barrackroom Bertha
Sunday 2nd November 2003
Does everyone have a natural entitlement, a quota, of fancy-dress parties they will attend in their lives?
As a highly socialised, mainly metropolitan, artistically inclined, gay man, my allocation should be set quite high, wouldn't you say? I feel somewhat hard done by.
With the exception of a couple of New Year's domestic-scale banquets (banquettes?) at which we were all required to -quote- dress up -unquote- in order to give Barbara an excuse to squeeze herself into a series of mildly hideous heirloom frocks, and for which I (pathetically) tied, knotted and pinned together a series of heavily-patterned fabric samples such that I looked like -quote- an explosion in a Turkish carpet factory -unquote- I realised recently, with mixed emotions, that I've never actually gone out in costume.
Mixed emotions because, as my fuck-you attitude to the banquette-ruling indicates, I'm not entirely sure I get fancy dress.
For one thing, I realised long ago that I don't like accepting challenges unless I think I have a pretty cast-iron chance of triumph. And doing costume really well requires tremendous resources. With the possibility of being carted off by men in white coats if you take it too far.
For another thing, doesn't having everybody dressed a somebody else rather spoil the dynamic of a party? Great fun to find yourself in the middle of, no doubt, half-drunk and immersed in a multiple prespective of alternative realities - but that early bit, the stage of the party where everybody stands around whispering about each other's costumes, or sobbing quietly to themselves because they just knew Little Bo Peep was a bad idea..?
And then there's that time-honoured advice Never to Accept an Invitation that Requires a Change of Clothing.
And yet, and yet: nothing was going to stop me accepting an invitation to David'n'Jason's Hallowe'en Party. And, look, it says here, dressing-up by no means de rigeur.
And, of course, it was great.
David opened the door dressed as the tallest, thinnest pall-bearer you ever saw, so effectively disguised that it wasn't until we were halfway up the stairs that I realised who he was.
Jason was a Mexican wrestler, so damn scarey in his proto-Spiderman mask that it cut through any doubts about just where exactly Mexican wrestlers fit in the Hallowe'en canon. (A Day of the Dead reference, no doubt. And no more perplexing than the friend who'd come as a shape-shifting bunny-rabbit cum astronaut after all.)
Andy and Kevin stayed up late for several nights perfecting their papier-maché Frankenstein foreheads and painted themselves green (a make-over that, under the darker lighting conditions later prevailing at MeMeMe at the RVT, made them look uncannily like two twin African heads of state, but we didn't tell them.)
David completely shaved his head and dribbled blood down it, simple but effective. (And then went out in the rain and complained that his blood was melting.)
Guy did absolutely nothing at all, and looked uncannily like the nice-guy sophomore hero of Scream Academy III, the one who turns out to be a complete psycho. (So no change there then.)
And moi?
Well, I did have a pretty lame fall-back plan, which at least had the advantage of requiring nothing more than a last-minute trip to John Lewis for four square metres of black cotton sheeting (where the dowager assistant in charge of fabric-measuring just grunted when I joked about having a bit of a run on black fabric this Friday).
My idea was simply to cut a diagonal slot in the middle of the sheet and throw it over my head, leaving four pointy black corners to drape and dangle, adding (I liked to think) a degree of erotic intrigue by removing most other items of clothing.
The plan was to rush to John Lewis, buy the fabric, get home, cut the fabric, throw it on, stand in front of the mirror, frown, mutter 'well at least I tried', throw the cotton in the corner, put on jeans, and leave.
But the queue in the store was so long that I really deserved a drink, and I bumped into Peter in Comptons, so one drink turned into two, and my judgement was affected and...well...you know if I cut a few more shreds into the corners, like this, and wear that black shirt underneath, like this, and, yes!, put on a red tie and turn up the collar, vampire-fashion, like this, with the black sandals..aha!
So bring on the costume-party invitations: I think I can pass muster. Especially if I pick up one corner, and drape it over my head, whereupon I look eerily reminiscent of that woman from the Scottish Widow adverts (except I dare say she doesn't show her pants when she turns her back on you).
Saturday 1st November 2003
Damn bad planning of somebody to launch Michael 'Something of the Night' Howard's leadership bid over the Hallowe'en weekend: dark days for the Tories, coming out of the shadows, his career rising from the dead, various wings of the party, something to get his teeth into, etc etc etc.
Friday 31st October 2003
Updated: Death Tolls to reflect the latest downward revision of the number of victims at the World Trade Centre, now standing at 2752.
Thursday 30th October 2003
So, farewell then, Invincible Duncan Smith. (Never could get that name right.)
Wednesday 29th October 2003
Tuesday 28th October 2003
Interviewed for the Observer piece Ben Summerskill, Director of Stonewall says "Most gay people's experience is that they have to be 20 per cent better than other people to get on. In journalism, for example, gay people are patronised - asked to write fluffy features or fashion stories. Hardly any gay people work in news."
I wonder what he'd have made of the Independent yesterday? Unable, presumably, to find an evangelist who could cogently explain why we should be bound by Biblical injunctions against homosexual behaviour whilst ignoring those that forbid us to wear mixed fibres or charge interest on loans, the decidedly gay-friendly paper settled for interviewing the pastor at the centre of the gay bishops row, Gene Robinson.
So far, so good. But what's this, just three paragraphs in?
Sigh.
Monday 27th October 2003
Starting at the bottom of the page
Trebly beleaguered by leadership crises in the church, the palace and the party, the Mail went into overdrive to defend traditional values on its front page this weekend.
Above a snatched shot of Paul Burrell's wife (who "appears to be crying" - or complaining, or suffering from flu, or simply pissed off at the irony of being pestered by paparazzi), the paper brandishes a classic Mail headline that manages to combine an outmoded political concept, tawdry sentiment, and a vulnerable woman brought low by ambition: Traitor's wife shows strain.
We can only speculate as to how Burrell himself feels about this latest pseudonym. In his book he admits that he was known (to Princess Margaret at least) as 'Small Paul', to distinguish him from a taller colleague.
Further into the Mail, Princess Diana's discontented former chef reveals another name for the less-than-bashful butler.
"I am so angered and disgusted about his lies, shameless distortions of the truth and despicable peddling of her most intimate confidences for money that I feel honour-bound to speak out," claims Darren McGrady (who writes rather well for someone who lives by the pan, wouldn't you say?)
"Burrell likes to portray himself as a family man with a wife, Maria, and two sons, but he was a promiscuous bisexual who was known in the Palace as Barrackroom Bertha because of his endless homosexual affairs with young guardsmen."
(No old guardsmen then? Phew.)
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