February 6th - February 12th 2006
Sunday South Bank
Saturday Underlit
Friday Film '06
Thursday Boccaccio 98
Wednesday Who?
Tuesday Swarbrick
Monday Flamingoed
Sunday 12th February
South Bank, Winter 2005
Saturday 11th February
If you're a photographer (by which I mean if you're somebody who likes to take photographs), one of the most dispiriting things about living in London is the sheer bloody ghastliness of the weather.
Photo, graphos, writing with light: how the hell are you supposed to write if ya ain't got no light?
One answer, I guess, would be to investigate the whole concept of Grey: turn the weak lighting thing on its head and deliberately seek out those peachy pale lemons and washed-out blues, the lilacs, the taupes, the khakis that characterise an English winter.
Not such a bad idea if you live in the country; not so easy if you have to work in an urban landscape where chemically-bright cars and over-brash hoardings dominate the visual environment.
Or perhaps I could concentrate on some black-and-white work? I don't know though: monochrome photography seems almost perverse these days. (Perverse in a bad way.)
Another approach is to say "To hell with daylight" and work only at night.
Oh, but just a minute, I do that anyway. I mean to hell with taking photographs by daylight, let's see what happens if I resolve to use only articial light.
The first thing you see is that, doh, artificial light is nowhere near as powerful as the real thing. Which means you're going to be working with severely reduced shutter speeds. Which means that, unless you have the grip of a Titan (and I so do not), you're going to get some very blurry pictures.
So use a tripod, right? Well, no, not really.
Leaving aside the sheer bloody cumbersome-ness of current tripod technology, and the utter absurdity of the sight of my two inch high camera screwed onto a five foot high structure, toting a tripod tends to take the spontaneity out of picture-making (i.e. its too much of a challenge when drunk).
The monopod I occasionally favour is slightly more user-friendly, but only slightly so, and not very reliable. So we're back to real basics, and bracing the camera against some solid level surface. Thankfully the streets of London are rich in such surfaces. (And I know, because I've fallen onto many of them.)
The price you pay for this tactic is that your views are limited to what can be seen from the nearest level surface, most of which seem to be either three feet or six feet high. (You also tend to get a foreground filled with an extensive plain of brick or metal.)
Alternatively, it turns out to be just about possible to brace the camera flat against a convenient wall, provided you're prepared to devote most of your body-weight to pinning the device to the surface whilst simultaneously twisting yourself out of view - a pose not recommended in busy venues.
In this manner, without benefit of flash or tripod, I've been steadily accruing a body of some two hundred (fuzzy, contingent) photos over the last four winter months.
The best 36 of them are now available as a Flickr set, here.
Friday 10th February
Stop me if I've mentioned this before, but many years ago, reluctantly spending Christmas with my parents in their seaside necropolis, I insisted that my father use of his three VCRs to record a film on Channel Four that I was reluctant to miss.
Much huffing and puffing on his part - whilst I sat there silently wondering why bother having three VCRs if it was this much trouble - culminating in his exasperated cry that "You only want to watch it because it's got sub-titles!"
An accusation that now, ten years after his death, I'm prepared to concede has a grain of truth in it (though it omits the larger part of my motivation, which was simply to be as annoying as possible. Then as now.)
On the other hand, as a rough rule of thumb, if a network chooses to screen a sub-titled movie (the dialogue of which, by definition, most viewers will not be able to understand) rather than simply simply hook out yet another 100 minutes from the turgid ocean of home-grown or trans-Atlantic product... that has to be some kind of useful validation, nu?
Still more so when a network screens a whole three-part introduction to a sub-titled movie sub-culture: many thanks to Jonathan Ross and his Asian Invasion for introducing me to Twilight Samurai, Spring Summer Autumn Winter And Spring and Ping Pong, amongst others.
All of which by way of applauding this week's news that FilmFour is to abandon its subscription-only access and move onto Freeview.
You have a Mac but you don't have Freeview? Buy this now. Unreservedly recommended, as is Amazon's rental scheme.
Thursday 9th February
Death tolls page updated to include the approximately 1000 people who died when the Al-Salaam Boccaccio 98 sank in the Red Sea last Friday.
Wednesday 8th February
I think, on the whole, I'm delighted to have never been the subject of that time-honoured dating gambit, 'My friend rilly fancies yew". Until this week.
In your twenties that tactic is, at best, profoundly embarrassing: you'd run from the room rather than watch a chum approach your object of desire. In your thirties, even given an added dosage of tongue-in-cheek irony, it is still mildly shaming: you wouldn't run from the room, but you probably would allow yourself to drift away.
In your forties (or, ahem, thereafter), you finally get to be so case-hardened that, after a few ineffective protests, you stand your ground and simply watch as your - drunk, well-meaning - friend crosses the dance floor to where the - not uncute but entirely out-of-your league - young man in whom you - passingly, casually - expressed an interest stands, all unsuspecting.
What, after all, is the worse that can happen?
To his credit, the young man in question didn't actually shudder when I was indicated. Nor, to my relief, did he stick his tongue down my friend's throat.
The worse that could happen, such as it was, happened: my friend eventually returned, grinning widely, and muttered, "Not interested".
That was last Friday, at The Swan. On Sunday, at Horse Meat Disco...
There's this guy, ok? I see him around quite a lot, and I've always been surprised to find myself drawn to him, despite his not fitting directly into what these days, are my clearly drawn parameters of desire. (Hey, it's easy enough to define a dream; it's dealing with what you actually get that's difficult.)
Whenever I see This Guy around and about, I turn to whatever friend is closest - as you do - and point him out. The friend in question - as they do - replies that he's never noticed him before.
So far, so utterly normal. But This Guy and I have, most unusually, spoken. Several times. Flirting may even be said to have occurred. Push, however, has never come remotely close to shove - possibly because both of us have to be close to blind drunk before we can get round to actual conversation.
He was there on Sunday. He may have given me a brief nod across the crowded room. I will have just carried on staring, in that alarming way that I have. I'm fairly sure I pointed him out either to David, standing on my left, or Pano, standing on my right.
And the night wore on.
Until later, much later, making my way across the dance floor (a touch on the shoulder here, a light hand on a hip there) I discerned This Guy standing smiling at the edge of the arena.
With David talking into his right ear, and Pano talking into his left.
We approached each other, David and Pano melted away, we spoke. ("I think I remember the last thing I said to you" "Oh yes?" "Try Harder!!") The brief conversation somehow drew to a close. (I don't think I said anything especially repellent, but it's not impossible.)
In the cool light of day (well, twilight), as I attempted to reassemble the evening in my head, you can be sure that finding out what on earth David and Pano were saying was high up my list of things to do.
And the predictable response?
"Don't know who you mean."
Tuesday 7th February
Obituary Watch: Nicholas Swarbrick
Monday 6th February
Speaking as one who frequently gets up on his high horse over the question of gay versus homosexual (gets up, stands upright, turns handstands on the saddle), I was mildly tickled to read the latest reports of male on male action from the animal kingdom.
After all, if you do wake up queer, how much nicer, how much cooler to discover you're a flamingo rather than, cough, a penguin.
What started as a mere pedantic whim on my part ('Repeat after me: these penguins are homosexual. They are not gay. Penguins do not shop at Ikea") has now developed into a full-blown quibble: homosexual, in my book, is a clinical term describing a sexual inclination towards others of the same sex; gay, a much less scientific term, identifies a social self-perception (and thus, to a certain extent, a lifestyle).
Simon Hughes has been widely pilloried for initially answering the orientation-question (in an interview with the Independent) with a straight "No, I'm not" and then, a few days later, when confronted with the Sun's possession of evidence that he'd phoned a gay chat line, admitting he had "had both homosexual and heterosexual relationships in the past".
Whilst many rushed to condemn him for lying, others (up to and including Peter Tatchell, against whom Hughes fought a often viciously homophobic by-election in 1983) took a more emollient view.
Some suggested he was closetting his sexuality in order to protect his elderly mother. Others debated the arcane difference between bisexual and homosexual behaviour.Hughes himself, after apologising for giving "a reply that wasn't untrue but was clearly misleading" has continued to campaign for the leadership of the Liberal Democrat party, apparently unabashed.
Few, if any, commentators chose to focus on the clear difference in wording between what they take to be a denial and a subsequent confession.
Hughes initially said that he was not gay. He later said he had had homosexual experiences.Consider the penguins.
Hughes may well be, to some degree of another, homosexual. That does not necessarily make him gay - especially when you consider the degree of self-identification arguably implied by the definition.
Given the lamentable paucity of man-on-man action in my life lately, you might argue that I'm hardly homosexual at all these days. I am however (as you may have noticed) still very gay: largely, loudly, often tediously so. It's an important part of who I am, and I devote a large part of my life to fostering it.
Hughes, however, has other fish to fry. Even before he began his leadership bid, he has led an extremely active life as a politician. He is also a committed Christian ("My faith comes first, my politics second'). He's a Millwall supporter and a patron of the Southwark Playhouse.
Gay? No: he's too busy being a penguin.
......previous week
