January 23rd - January 29th 2006
Sunday Towering
Saturday Istanbul
Friday Lowri Turner
Thursday Got well
Wednesday Watlington
Tuesday Condign
Monday Informed
Sunday 29th January
Another cold but sunny day yesterday so, just as last week, I ordered myself out from under the duvet and onto the streets with my camera.
After a delightful troll around the walls of the Tower, I (uncharacteristically) opted to dive into the Starbucks at St Katherine's Dock whose offer of caffeine, nutrition, warmth and a toilet proved irresistible.
Andy tried to ring me whilst I was there but, as I texted him by way of reply, "There is no way I'm talking to you, on the phone, in a Starbucks. And besides, the guy opposite me is quite cute."
I must say it was all very Starbucksy: the girl two tables away frowning at her laptop, the not-uncute guy sprawled reading a glossy magazine with quite a few words in it, the three young women at the next table discussing their mothers.
Ironically, when not sneaking glances at Mr Notuncute, I was mostly immersed in a rather dense article in the London Review of Books (I was trying to blend in, okay?) which, although ostensibly about Marx, spent a large part of its space arguing in favour of globalisation's inbuilt tendency towards the propagation of diversity ("Identity politics is fate, not affectation").
From there, I hurried to Borough Market just in time to buy cut-price bread, exotic vegetables and what purported to be 'alf-price fish (does cod really retail at £26 a kilo?). Followed by this conversation at the Monmouth Street coffee shop:
"Can I help you, sir?"
"You had an organic Brazilian with an unpronounceable name..?"
"Baixadao?"
"That'll be the one."
"I'm afraid we're out of stock just at the moment: it comes to us as green beans and it hasn't made it out onto the shelves yet.."
"How do you pronounce it again?"
"Bazh-ad-ow-oo"
"Mmm. Wouldn't you just want to have that whispered in your ear late at night?"
"We have South Americans in house who teach us how to pronounce the names."
"Yes, I was flirting outrageously with the guy who sold it to me last time..."
"That'll be the one."
Just as well the conversation stopped there: the acceptable substitute she sold me comes from Fazenda Santa Terezhinha, and I was this close to asking if it would have me in ecstasies.
Saturday 28th January
Istanbul, Winter 1993
Friday 27th January
Say what you like about Simon Hughes' dramatic retraction of his claims to heterosexuality, but it's certainly kept the homophobes in column inches.
(Up to but not including the Telegraph's Tom Utley, who says that "when the news broke that Mark Oaten had admitted to an affair with a rent boy, I cannot have been the only journalist whose first thought was that somebody had made a terrible mistake, and named the wrong leadership candidate.")
And I admit I laughed, albeit guiltily, at the Sun's tag-line: Another one bites the pillow.
In the Western Mail, one Lowri Turner opines:
However much I love my gay friends, I don't want them running the country
This week, not one but two candidates for the post of Lib-Dem leader have been revealed to bat for their own side.
Personally, I have to say that I don't think gay men make good party leaders or Prime Ministers. This has nothing to do with what they do in bed but everything to do with their lives in general.
Before I am accused of prejudice, I should say that not only are some of my best friends gay, but probably most of them are. I work in the media, for goodness sake. It is precisely because I know such a lot of gay men that I can say that I don't think many of them are capable of representing the interests of the vast majority of people.
Their lifestyles are too divorced from the norm. They are not better or worse, but they are different.
Gay men face challenges of their own, but they do not face those associated with having children which is the way most of us live. I have gay friends whose biggest headache is whether to have a black sofa or a cream one. If they have a child it is a dog.
My gay friends have not sat in accident and emergency with a small child. They have not had to make the decision over whether to give them MMR. They have not struggled to get their child statemented or gone through the schools' appeals process.
Without these experiences at the sharp end of our public services, they do not know how they function. This makes them completely out of their depth in administering them.
For a moment there, Ms Lowri almost had me nodding my head in agreement. (Gosh, maybe she could help me choose a sofa.)
But then my baseline sense of outrage returned, and I reconsidered.
In an ideal world, I don't want someone running the country who hasn't had to sit in a waiting-room waiting to discover whether they've tested positive.
In an ideal world, I don't want someone running the country who hasn't spent three hours sitting in accident and emergency holding the hand of a friend whose jaw has been dislocated in a vicious homohobic assault.
I don't want someone running the country who believes that breeding children is the be-all and end-all of civilisation. (Did you hear about Einstein's children? Mozart's children? Michaelangelo's children? Thought not.)
Above all, I don't want someone running the country - or, for that matter, even writing columns about who should be running the country - who thinks that only those who have experienced a problem can deal with it sympathetically. (Now there's an idea: let's send all our MPs to serve in Iran.)
But then again, what do my views count? I'm just one of the poor single suckers who pays a small fortune in taxes to keep breeders in babies.
Thursday 26th January
Happily, I was alerted just in time that the card I was about to sign was not a leaving card but a get-well-soon card, for a colleague who is quite seriously ill.Otherwise he might have been slightly alarmed to read that I wished him luck wherever he found himself next, and that I hoped he'd do his best to keep in touch...
Wednesday 25th January
Watlington, Spring 1993
Tuesday 24th January
I know what it means; I know what it ought to mean
Condign: - Hiding malevolent intent beneath a surface glamour [from Dr. Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State]
Monday 23rd January
We all got an email at work today. Talking about the need to improve internal communications. Can't argue with that.
The email promises that the company intranet will be updated more regularly, and with more germane information (i.e. something meatier than what's on offer in the canteen) (not that it's difficult to find something meatier than what's on offer in the canteen).
It also lays out a new policy, whereby one person from each division will be responsible for making sure that information gets disseminated.
Only problem is: the guy who's nominated to bring light to our litle corner of the work-sphere is someone I've never heard of.
So I asked around, and nobody else knew either.
I did eventually identify him, though.
He's our new boss.
......previous week
