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Sympathise with my weather:
via a local webcast

º March 26th-April 1st 2001
Sunday Hope
Saturday Home
Friday Swan-upping
Thursday Unsomnia
Wednesday 2 let me cum
Tuesday Overdone
Monday Overhung

º Sunday 1st April 2001

I forgot to point out the only funny line in the report of the closing down of Home: "The police also reported that some dealers were offering drugs for free."

Call me a cynic but, heh, I don't think so.

Out and about this week, I must have mentioned to four or five people that I was a bit messy last Sunday.

And with one exception, they all replied "Yes, we heard." Oops.

The exception? Someone who said "Yes, I know. I was there." Ooooops.

April Fool's Day - one of the few traditional dates in the calendar that Hallmark hasn't colonised, Pancake Day being another.

(If someone does make Pancake Day cards or April Fool's cards - don't tell me, I don't want to know.)

Happy birthday, Dave!

Not Home but Hope - the monthly Saturday-nite serviced by the two leading DJs from the Vauxhall-Sundays, hence many familiar friendly faces (inc David, Dave and - welcome home - Rob).

It's a great venue, tarnished only slightly by it's location a fair walk south of Brixton, which means at least two night buses home for those of us who live north of da river.

And I notice they have quite a bit of outside seating (more beer-tarmac than beer-garden) which should make it especially attractive once the weather gets a bit more clement - nice place to watch dawn percolating through, I'd guess.

Re-entry from outside is conditional on a hand-stamp, which explains the following one-side of a conversation with security that I heard as I stood waiting to dry off:

"I have a stamp..."

"It wore off: I've been sweating a lot..."

"What nite is this anyway...?"

"I think I've come to the wrong place."

º Saturday 31st March 2001

In 1988, when Parliament rushed through the Public Entertainment Licences (Drug Misuse) Act in the wake of Leah Betts' death, it was widely regarded as the Clause 28 of the clubbing scene - something that could be held over potential owner's heads but which would never actually be used in court - a view that was confirmed last year when a Home Office Minister confirmed that the law had not yet been used.

Today, however, comes the astonishing news that London's Westminster Council has revoked the license of Home, the 2,000 capacity 'super-club' in Leicester Square. Police said that the they'd advised the owners of the club (which has only been open for about a year) of a drug-dealing problem, and had been ignored. Home now has 21 days in which to convince the licensing authorities that their license should be restored.

Coupled with the news that police in Brixton will talking a more relaxed attitude to cannabis possession, the word on the street is that this heralds a concentration of resources on class A drugs in the capital's clubs.

You have been warned.

F 1730: wake up
F 1750: leave for work
F 1810: arrive work
S 0130: leave work
S 0215: get home
S 0230: net
S 0530: dinner?

º Friday 30th March 2001

F 0423: arrive home
F 0430: put dinner in the oven
F 0515: take dinner to bed
F 0530: pass out
F 0930: wake up
F 1000: blog
F 1200: try to plan a strategy that will give me at least another four hours sleep between now and when I have to leave for work at 1730. Realise that I have found myself one of the few part-time jobs that gets me out of the house and pays well yet nonetheless suits my crazy hours, and I still run the risk of over-sleeping. Realise I have VAT form to fill in. Realise that, hey, nobody's gonna deal with it on a Saturday anyway, so I probably have at least another day.

Another Tory arsehole claims that immigration is diluting the national stock. But this one has a metaphor:
If you pour enough water on a double scotch, it ceases to taste like whisky." he says, thereby losing the ninety per cent of the population that
- know better than to put water in their drinks
- don't drink scotch
- can't afford doubles, or
- don't drink.

Now if he'd said vodka and Red Bull, his argument might have had more crowd-appeal.

But he'd still be an arsehole.

Andy says the nicest things: "You burn the proverbial candle at both ends and then try and set light to the dripping wax as well."

True enough. I wonder if anyone has noticed that I haven't said anything concrete about the White Swan for a fortnight? What with it being pay-day, with a tube-strike to follow, things were especially hectic this week:
 
- Norton's cute friend, whom I encouraged to strip last week, and then bought a Bacardi when he did, wasn't there, shame.
 
- John, whom I was beginning to fear fancied me, introduced me to somebody as "...don't fancy him, but he's a really nice guy." That's a relief. I guess.
 
- John didn't improve things when he added, by way of apology, "I only like really masculine guys." Well fuck you too, Mary.
 
- Adam (another Adam) surprised me by revealing that he sets the quiz at Bow Quarter every week. He also claimed that I did him a favour by making his mind up for him one night when he couldn't decide whether he fancied someone enough to ask them home. Apparently I said "Well, it's either that or watch the EastEnders omnibus you taped."
 
- In fact it was Chris, much missed, when I explained that I respected him too much to, you know, who said to me: "Your loss. Cute boy naked in your bed or EastEnders omnibus." (I hadn't cared to explain that, ectually, I thought he was altogether a bit too stoned and I wasn't sure I could bear listening to him ramble on, naked or not. Not that that stopped me. Eventually.)
 
- Louis was there but I didn't get much of a chance to speak to him.
 
- Garry (Black Garry) nowhere to be seen.
 
- Steve and Garry (White Garry) eventually turned out to have been there all the time.
 
- Alan and Russell, two exceptionally cute boys whom I, um, met last week, said that next time I could come home and operate the video camera.

Caite comes to the end of her stint as Vaughan's stand-in at wherever you are, and concludes: "It's been hard work."

You got that right, girl.

I gather Blogger is down again? Dommage.

I guess I should update Blogmarks to show which blogs use Blogger and which don't. Or you could always check out my other links. Or crease a brow at the death-toll list (recently updated to include 58 school-children dead in an arson attack).

And the archives are especially good today.

T 2030: wake up
T 2230: could meet Andy and Charles at Barcode but, hmm, Tube strike
T 2230: a late drink starts to sound good
F 0130: arrive Spiral (after half-hour in minicab office)
F 0230: leave Spiral with John
F 0400: leave Joiners Arms
F 0423: arrive home

º Thursday 29th March 2001

I'm not an insomniac, as such - but I definitely have a problematic relationship with sleep and sleeping.

I think it's mostly because I really can't be arsed to lie around in the dark, waiting for sleep to come. This may be because I'm frightened of the thoughts that come to an unoccupied mind, but I don't think so: I'm pretty case-hardened in thinking the unthinkable.

(In fairness though, I should mention a period at prep school when, after lights-out, my fellow ten year olds would wind each other up whispering horror stories into the darkness. I would try to block my ears, and fail.)

So, for whatever reason, once I get to bed, rather than just turn out the light, I tend to pick up a book, and start reading, and wait for the book to fall out of my hands.

Given that I work for myself, and have very few commitments to be anywhere at any particular time...if the book doesn't drop till, say, six am - then so be it.

I like eight hours sleep a day, sometimes more. So the next night the book will drop at seven am than six - and so on, till I find myself crashing out around noon and not waking up till mid-evening. As recently.

Of course, if I worked nine to five, or had a lover who actually required my conscious presence for more than four hours a day, or (eek) if I was a parent, I suppose I could apply some self-discipline and live a regular life.

Someone that bought me a cup of tea in the mornings would help (or they could follow my father's bizarre example, and start hoovering outside my bedroom door soon after nine o'clock. Bastard.)

And if I wanted to be really hard on myself, I guess I could use even use an alarm-clock. But an institutionalised childhood spent being summoned by bells has ruined me for that.

(At my public school, on a rare free-afternoon, I would sneak up to the dormitory for a nap, until Matron would come and roust me out. Am I the only person who still gets a sneaky pleasure from slipping under the bedclothes and falling asleep fully-clothed?)

But self-discipline has never been my strong suit. And besides: sleeping in daylight, clothed or unclothed, still gives me a minor frisson of illicit pleasure.

It's not without its problems, however.

I'm quite a light sleeper, so even my answering machine taking a message usually wakes me. The walls in our flats are not particularly robust, and my harridan neighbour's kitchen is just a thin partition's width away from my bed: our relationship is not healthy, since she takes exception to my taking exception to her having yelled conversations with her child at eight in the morning. ("Whaddya want for ya breakfast?!!!" "Some fucking silence would be nice!")

Most days, I ignore any callers at the door - so my meter goes unread, and before I order anything by mail-order I have to stop and be sure it will fit peacefully through the letterbox.

Currently they're digging up the road outside my window: I've toyed with staggering out in my bleary dressing-gown to complain but, hmm, that's not a good look.

It's all got a great deal worse with the advent of the internet, of course. Not only are calls so much cheaper at night, but if you want any kind of real-time interaction with a mass of English-speakers, you're much better off keeping to Eastern Standard Time, which (for my preferred modes of interaction at least) tends to peak around 6am our time.

At worst, I tell myself I'm a fuck-up. An interesting fuck-up, but a fuck-up nonetheless.

But at best - hey, watch me: I am your future. The 24-hr society starts here and, y'know, it's not so damn bad...

On second thoughts, don't bother sparing a thought: you've had quite enough to cope with and I'll be asleep anyway.

º Wednesday 28th March 2001

Camp Jonathan needs to read Marvellous Michael Bywater:

What is happening, I think, is that I am turning slowly into Quentin Crisp, entirely against my will. My hair is becoming bouffant instead of flat, cropped and somehow chiselled, like Men's hair. Last night I was (pathetic, I know) chatting up the pretty receptionist at this Aberdeen hotel and I felt my wrists begining to flap, like the early onset of some camp ataxia, possibly Parkinsonette's Diseasy-weasy...

Who knows where it will end? While telling the Men about about how to investigate horrible nasty tacky icky incidents where terribly brutal explosive machinery suddenly blows up, shriek flap scamper, I found myself not actually in ANY WAY AT ALL fancying the Manliest of the Men, but...well, I suppose, speculating on what it must be like to fancy people like that.

If Bywater is doing this, and confessing to it in public, I guess all those stories about the recent blurring of boundaries must be true?

Guilty as charged: Defendants will be able to admit guilt by e-mail.

Homosexual sailor slayed two

A ROYAL Navy petty officer was described as a potential serial killer yesterday when he was jailed for life for the homosexual murders of a young naval rating and a barman.

This, the first paragraph of a story today from a newspaper that shall remain nameless, begs the question: what, exactly, is a "homosexual murder"?

All is revealed in the second paragraph:

Allan Grimson, 42, whose career in the Navy spanned 20 years, was described as a "serial killer in name if not number" after the court was told how he gratified himself by torturing and battering his victims after luring them back to a flat in Portsmouth.

Good to have that explained.

The BBC online coverage of the story uses just one h-word and that's not until past half-way through the story, and as part of a quote. They certainly don't call it a "homosexual murder' - just as, I imagine, they don't describe yardie shootings as "black murders".

I'm looking forward to going to the Stanley Spencer exhibition some day soon, not least because I've always had the hots for one particular born-again body (possibly modelled on Spencer himself) almost lost amidst the gentle joys of The Resurrection, Cookham

I wouldn't mind seeing My Fair Lady either, if only to be the only one sniggering as Eliza, not exactly a feminist icon, stares up at her mentor and intones: "How kind of you to let me cum."

I see that The Independent have remodelled their site. Not before time, imnsho. Their search engine's still crap though.

º Tuesday 27th March 2001

Oscar speeches; Oscar frocks.

You'd think that having spent Saturday night working at a newspaper office, I might have noticed that the clocks were going forward that night, but no.

So waking up on Sunday afternoon at 5:30pm (the last possible moment to leave and still get to the Vauxhall for at least some of the show) was actually waking up at 6:30pm, so...

But David hadn't gone either, so we spent a pleasant few hours at the William instead. And then the alcohol told us to go on for the last hour at The Black Cap, a venue where I have yet to see one single man that I fancy, bah.

After that I went on to 333, for their LA3 night, which seems to be going from strength to strength. It's still not a patch on the old London Apprentice, though, despite some familiar faces (including Skinhead Barry, Alex and Andy, Trevor and Maverick, Jason and, yesss, Miss Ibiza).

The couple of hours I spent at 333 were notable for allowing me to chalk up another first - my last first? - but I'm not going into that here, OK?

And then, God help me, onto the Spiral for more familiar faces, including Leke, Sean, etc, as well as The Man Who Could Break My Heart (accompanied by some cute Malaysian student, grrr) and a man who has already broken my heart, grrr.A very, umm, relaxing evening.

I thought about going to Up on Saturday night, after work, but decided I couldn't be bothered, especially as I don't think I know many people there.

How annoying, then, to discover that both Dave and Jonathan apparently each made independent decisions to be there.

º Monday 26th March 2001

I have a hangover. Go away.

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