June 14th 2004 - June 20th 2004
Sunday Moth
Saturday Whoa there
Friday Bennett
Thursday Not saying
Wednesday Purblind
Tuesday Nekkid
Monday Diamond geezer
Sunday 20th June 2004
Tip
The next time you need a scapegoat, try muttering "I blame it on the Mottled Umber Moth".
It won't shift the blame one iota. But you will enjoy saying it.(Almost as much as "Well butter my bottom and call me a biscuit".)
Saturday 19th June 2004
Arrrrrondissement
Thanks to a last-minute decision to join David in a late-night after-work visit to Dirty Dishes at Sub South last night, I now know exactly how long it takes me to fall for an unknown attractive foreigner who's prepared to sit at the bar and be interrogated in sentences of increasing length and complexity even though he doesn't understand even half of what I'm saying although the degree to which I'm, like, looming might provide just a little clue to the fact that there is a certain degree of attraction going on.
Ten minutes, tops.
(And when I asked him if he had a job, and he answered "Ceramic restorer", did I really say "Wow! That's so-oo sexy!!"? Mm.)
Friday 18th June 2004
The dry wit and self-deprecating demeanour of Alan Bennett have long fuelled well-meaning curiousity concerning his sexuality, a subject he himself has never shown much inclination to discuss publicly: when Ian McKellen asked him if he was gay, he replied that the question was somewhat akin to enquiring of a man crawling across the desert whether he'd prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
Bennett rarely gives interviews (though extracts from his diaries are published annually in the London Review of Books), so when the New Yorker reported in 1993 that he'd been having a relationship with his cleaning lady for 10 years, many went "Hmmm."
Several years later, when it quietly became public knowledge that he was living with Rupert Thomas (the editor of, hello, World of Interiors), others went "Aha!"
Bennett himself, having successfully opened his new play The History Boys, took to the stage of the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night as part of this year's Meltdown, organised by Morrissey, whose own ambiguous tastes are reflected in the festival line-up that includes Jane Birkin, The New York Dolls, and Nancy Sinatra.
And who was it came out and said, "Perhaps they thought, 'Well, we've got one ageing Nancy, why not get another?'"
Alan Bennett.
Thursday 17th June 2004
I don't imagine you assume Blogadoon documents every aspect of my life; there will always be certain experiences that defy detailed description - especially this week, viz:
An explosive evening in Victoria Park
An unexpectedly revealing encounter with Jonathan
An Amateur Strip Night contestant who shocked everyone by ostensibly and overtly breaking the eligibility rules, twice.
A brief visit to what used to be The Cock and Comfort to see if it was still at least just a little bit gay. (It wasn't.)
A somewhat longer visit to The Royal Vauxhall Tavern to see if I'd been missing anything. (I hadn't.)
An entire evening at The Joiners Arms during which I managed to insult at least three people, including a young Indian guy whom I know only vaguely and at whom, to my alarm, I heard myself throwing the question, "What's with the Bollywood hair?!?"
Wednesday 16th June 2004
I know what it means; I know what it ought to mean
Purblind: - the manner in which lovers become so wrapped up in the pleasure of each other's company that they have no attention left for their friends.
Tuesday 15th June 2004
Tom Wolfe is generally credited with inaugurating New Journalism in the early Seventies; since then the idea that a reporter could, and should, incorporate an account of his or her own preconceptions into every piece that they create has become something of a cliché, especially in features writing and most noticeably in interview pieces.
Sometimes, indeed, journalists are so keen to communicate their own reactions that one is left wondering quite how they got to be sent on the job in the first place.
As with Marcus Warren's visit to black crime writer Walter Mosley:
He blurts it out as though it were the most natural thing in the world. "Usually, I don't wear anything. I'm naked," he says and, clearly sensing that the point needs to be made again, "I write naked."
He doesn't feel uncomfortable without clothes and fails to understand why anyone else would: "Why would you?"
He is scrutinising me now. "Do you feel self-conscious when you take your clothes off?"
It's nothing to do with prudery, I suggest, adding that few people are narcissistic enough to feel absolutely at ease with their physique. To myself, I think that Mosley, while not bad looking for his age, is still 52 years old. But he won't let the matter rest there. No one can see into his apartment from outside, and he feels no shame in walking around in the nude.
"Don't people do that?" he asks. "Not you, I guess."
Monday 14th June 2004
I was going to write something sarcahstick about Euro 2004 and how I was finding myself sucked into being interested despite every cissy nerve in my body screaming no, no no.
I was going to write about the ironies of our national team being led by a Swede, and how, when asked what he would say to the team in the dressing room before Sunday's match against France, he replied, "I fill tell them to keep their heads cold."
I might even have lowered myself to write about our 2-1 defeat at the hands of the cheese-eating penalty monkeys (not that I actually watched the match: I'm homosexual, I have an exemption) and La Beckham's heart-warming drama-queenery in defeat.
But then I read this quote:
Eriksson explained: "What do you say to Steven Gerrard? That you don't play the ball to the goalkeeper. He didn't see Thierry Henry. That is human.
What do you say to David Beckham? To put the penalty in the other corner? If it was a tactical problem I would talk about it but there is nothing to say about Sunday other than congratulations for the performance.
I am very proud of the performance and of the players. They did exactly what we asked of them.
Swoon.
I wish Sven was my boss. Or my dad, even.
(Now, take me through it again: what exactly is this diamond formation?)
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