July 2nd - July 8th 2007
Sunday Hobby horse
Saturday GAY PRIDE, LONDON 2007
Friday Alan Johnston
Thursday Regent Street
Wednesday Vultured
Tuesday Regent Street
Monday von Bismarck
Sunday 8th July
Musing the other day on the question of whatever happened to wholesome pastimes like making model airplanes and collecting stamps, it wasn't a long step to the conclusion that, these days, most of the gay men I know have just one hobby: sex.
Saturday 7th July
GAY PRIDE, LONDON 2007
[click for 54 pix]
Friday 6th July
I owe Alan Johnston, the BBC reporter-cum-hostage, a mixed debt of gratitude on account of his release being (carefully?) timed to coincide with the going-home time of most British newspapers - thus leaving me and mine, left behind as ever, to scuttle together some web-only coverage and earn ourselves some valuable kudos in the process.
So I felt especially graceless as I contemplated raising here a question that occured to me whilst watching his homecoming, welcomed home by his friends, his family but.. no wife? no girlfriend?
Hmmmmmmmm, as we say.
Lucky then, even though I imagine he has no immediate plans to return to less-than-gay-friendly Gaza, that I can report that - au contraire - he is simply a straightforward bachelor (and, according to my friends at the Beeb, a very nice man to boot.)
Thursday 5th July
Regent Street, Summer 2007
Wednesday 4th July
It takes no research at all to realise that the recent floods in the north of England, however tragic their outcome, bear very little comparison with watery holocausts in other parts of the world.
Nonetheless, I found myself idly musing about the prospect of UN emergency assistance, and whether the good citizens of, say, Bagladesh would find themselves jollied into contributing to a British Flood Fund.
A dream given an added jolt when I spied the Sunday Express headline : Vultures prey on flood victims
Tuesday 3rd July
Regent Street, Summer 2007
Monday 2nd July
Obituary Watch: Count Gottfried von Bismarck
Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies.
When not clad in the lederhosen of his homeland, he cultivated an air of sophisticated complexity by appearing in women's clothes, set off by lipstick and fishnet stockings.
By the late 1990s von Bismarck was working for Telemonde, Kevin Maxwell's troubled telecoms firm based in America, with responsibility for developing the business in Germany; the company collapsed in 2002 with debts of £105 million.
Although described personally as quiet and impeccably mannered, von Bismarck continued to live high on the hog, hosting riotous all-night parties for his (chiefly gay) friends at his £5 million flat off Sloane Square.
It was at one such event, in August last year, that von Bismarck encountered tragedy for a second time when one of his male guests fell 60 ft to his death from the roof garden.
He never married.
......previous week
