July 5th 2004 - July 11th 2004
Sunday Bellwether
Saturday Cross1
Friday Unshackled
Thursday Mississauga
Wednesday Back
Tuesday Even more pride
Monday More pride
Sunday 11th July 2004
Google defines bellwether as "A stock whose performance is indicative of the overall market direction."
Once in a while you stumble across a bellwether headline: how do you react to Pregnant soldiers sent home?
Saturday 10th July 2004
Ten Stages of Cross
I'm toying with an exercise in psycho-geography to fill the summer lull. Let's ease ourselves in gently. Even strangers to London will recognise this distinctive riverine loop. My life focusses on the three eastern-most tube stops:
Friday 9th July 2004
Reasons to love Michael Bywater, part 276
It has been said that the dying of sexual desire is like being unchained from a madman: a scene I always picture in my mind as taking place on Clapham Common, towards nightfall, in a small perpetual Clapham Common rain, as the lamps are being lit.
I picture the madman as a naked, capering satyr, inexplicably vegetarian, scampering off into the dusk, while the newly liberated man - tall, grey suit, looking curiously like Graham Green - peers, momentarily bewildered, at the loosened shackles about his feet; stares around him uncomprehendingly; then, with a hoarse shout of alarm, chases after the madman crying "Stop! Wait!" into the gathering mist.
Thursday 8th July 2004
Mississauga Goddam from the Hidden Cameras
1. Doot Doot Plot
2. Builds The Bone
3. Fear Is On
4. That's When The Ceremony Starts
5. I Believe In The Good Of Life
6. In The Union Of Wine
7. Music Is My Boyfriend
8. Bboy
9. We Oh We
10. I Want Another Enema
11. Mississauga Goddam
Wednesday 7th July 2004
Tuesday 6th July 2004
Leaving Jonathan to trudge north to Finsbury Park, I headed home for a disco-nap (another innovation invented, I think you will find, by and for gay men).
Then off to the Elephant for Duckie's annual Gay Shame party, held this year in a big old converted cinema, with fairground stalls scattered liberally hither and yon. (I hesitated outside "Confront the Cunt' - it was probably now or never, after all - but decided against it.)
I spent a lot of my time upstairs in the gods, where the original seating remains. Right in the middle, a man sat painting on a screen, inviting all and sundry to publicise their most shameful stories by having them projected out onto the main screen, all of 40 foot high.
Given that every letter had to be painted backward, he was remarkably deft. I particularly liked the little cartoon illustration he added to "I rubbed minge in my crack and let my dog lick it" though "I let my boyfriend bugger me with my mum's kitchen roll holder" ran it a close second.
Now and again, I sauntered downstairs for a mingle. Which gave me a chance to enlarge on the previously-logged "shouldn't you be at Duckie, shouldn't you be at the Swan" colloquy. You know who you are.
Monday 5th July 2004
Predictably, our crowd (or as much of it as was still coherent) turned off from the march when we reached Piccadilly Circus and headed straight to Soho to do our bit for the traditional informal Let's Pedestrianise Old Compton Street protest held every year on this occasion.
As we stood outside Compton's, booing the odd bold taxi that tried to drive amongst us, waving at familar faces, our intensely idle chatter was interupted by a pleasant young man offering us free tickets to the party in the park.
One thousand of these, we heard, were distributed on Saturday afternoon. How many of them actually got used, I do not know - only that I found mine crumpled in my bag several days later.
Jonathan and I made our way to Trafalgar Square, and the rally - where I was particularly keen to cheer Wesley's turn on the podium (and, even better, to see his face, as big as a bungalow, projected on the screen at the side). Shortly after his turn, I spotted him back wandering amongst the late afternoon crowds around the fountains. "I'd rather hoped no-one I knew would make it to the rally," he said.
Ha.
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