February 25th - March 3rd 2002
Sunday Nil by mouth
Saturday Queer Nation offer
Friday Music and noise
Thursday Hi James
Wednesday Tutoyant
Tuesday Sophie's trousers
Monday First draft
Sunday 3rd March 2002
Given that the English routinely express their affection for each other through the ritual purchase of alcoholic beverages, one of the few downsides of having a large social circle is that it's ver' ver' easy to end the evening a lot less shober than when you started.
The more friends you have, the more you drink.
And I have a lot of friends.
So, when I get a moment to myself, I fret - in a minor key - about whether I might not be brewing a debilitating (and expensive) dependency that will ultimately spiral out of control. (You could point out that the energies thus deployed might be better spent rehearsing the phrase "Not for me thank you." And, who knows, you might be right.)
Jonce put it a nutshell when we were discussing the issue one night. I was boasting, facetiously, about not having had a drink the day before ("Not a single drop!") and he recalled saying much the same thing to a nurse he knew, who replied, in that annoying nurse-like fashion, "Ah yes. But when was the last time that you went two days without a drink?"
Which pulled me up somewhat short, given that I couldn't actually remember the last time I'd done that. Um, 1991?
Don't get me wrong. I rarely drink at home, or during daylight. (Pshaw: I rarely do anything in daylight these days.) And I'm not hiding empty vodka bottles behind the sofa, or mugging orphans to fund my habit, or anything like that.
I simply enjoy drinking beer, anything between three and six pints, four or five nights a week. I enjoy the short-lived flush of enthusiasm that it brings to my cheeks. And, by and large, I enjoy the company of others in a similarly uplifted state.
Given, however, my obsessive-complusive tendency to pursue any well-oiled pattern of behaviour right through to its logical conclusion and then way beyond, I do worry. A bit.
Hence the fuss I've made, here and elsewhere in the world, about spending last week on a course of anti-biotics whose little brown bottle bears the clear, capitalised instruction: "DO NOT DRINK ANY ALCOHOL".
An instruction I obeyed. By and large.
Climbing down off my temporary wagon with a loud thump (thump-thump) at Queer Nation on Saturday night, I concluded that I rather regret not having completely cleaved to the letter of the law.
Modern medication is in a pretty sad state if it can fall foul of four pints of shandy over five days, but that's not the point.
The point is.... I'm sorry, what was my point?
Saturday 2nd March 2002
Are you gay? Do you have a blog?
Would you like to be guest-listed for Queer Nation this week, and every other Saturday this month?
If you write to me at QN@iansie.com, I will forward your name to Patrick Lilley, the QN promoter, who will then put your name (plus one) on his little list.
Blogging about what a great time you had is not obligatory (but - hint - Patrick sometimes has a few drinks tickets too.)
Tonight, regular Queer Nation DJs Jeffrey Hinton and Supadon are joined by London House pioneers KCC. There's also a PA by überdiva Lisa Millet ("Bad Habits". "Soul Heaven", "Sleep Talk") who raised the roof when she appeared at QN last year.
If you'd like to join me there this evening, e-mail me (with your name and the address of your blog) by 5pm this afternoon.
(Offer subject to all sorts of unforeseen complications and communication failures but, hey, what have you got to lose?)
Friday 1st March 2002
I don't seem to listen to much music these days.
I'd like to think that's a reaction to a trend in recent records that was exemplified by one of the last albums I bought (was it The Avalanches?) that made me think "This isn't music, this is noise."
(The rot had already set in during the techno-techno-techno years. All those hoovers are great if you've popped a pill, but I'm so over that these days: mid-week comedowns hit a hell of a lot harder when you live alone and don't have a full-time job to distract you.)
But I can't pretend it's an entirely aesthetic reaction; a lot of this lack of music has to do with the sea-change in my lifestyle over the last few years.
I can't bear to wear headphones, and these days I don't really travel outside the house enough to make a personal stereo or an MP3 player worth the hassle. I don't potter around the house in any kind of manner that would make MTV or the radio a worthwhile option. And - sob - I don't have a boyfriend whose inane conversation needs to be drowned out by sticking a CD in the slot.
But I do like music. Or, more accurately, I have done. Next to me as I write is a dusty rack of - let me count - more than 300 CDs. How come I never listen to them any more?
To be honest, a lot of those CDs represent shopping opportunities rather than adventures in sonics. In more prosperous times, I liked nothing better than the guilty pleasure of sailing into a record shop and sailing out again an hour later with a dozen or so immaculately cellophaned mystery packages. ("Ooh, I liked their last one.. Ooh, I think I read about that one.. Ooh, nice artwork..")
But perhaps the simplest reason for the relative lack of music in my life is that I haven't had any programming work for a while. I used to find that lyric/ rhythm/ harmony/ melody went very well with copy/ paste/ rewrite/ test. Nowadays, when I sit down at a computer, it's usually in order to read or write: the last thing I want is yet another layer of words or tunes to distract me.
Or, then again, maybe it's as simple as the fact that I no longer smoke as much dope as I used to?
Whatever the reasons, I find myself increasingly less sympathetic to the musical decisions imposed upon me when I venture out in public. And, as you know, I venture out in public a lot.
Cheerful, meaningless, happy-clappy pop is absolutely fine (even if I find myself increasingly embarassed that I have not the faintest idea what I'm listening to : "Oh, so this is Pink"). The first few hours at The Vauxhall, the gay-musak you hear at Comptons, Bar Code, The Swan - no problem at all.
But venturing further afield, as with last night's group expedition to The Jazz Bar in Dalston, tends to make me edgier. Not about the content - I can croon along to Louis Armstrong and Perry Como with the best of them - but with the way in which it's delivered.
The Dalston Jazz Bar is one of those slightly strange, post-squat, let's-do-the-show-right-here venues that you see more and more of in arty up-and-coming areas.
What looks suspiciously like an ex-corner-shop has been transformed by a raid on a skip to mimic a flat shared by post-graduate students: lots of mismatched chairs and sofas, carpet-tiles, bare walls and a sprinkling of industrial objects repurposed for domestic use ("I thought we could keep all the booze together in a bunch of bread-crates?" "Officer thinking, Miggins!")
What with all that klunky-funky post-décor décor, there's not a lot of standing room left to mill around in. So if you come in a group, as we did, all eight of you are going to find yourselves racked on a series of sofas like books on a shelf.
Getting to talk to anyone other than either of your immediate neighbours requires an officious re-ordering, or an astute re-shuffle whenever anyone gets up to go to the loo.
Matters are not made any easier by the concrete ceiling and the plate-glass windows - the sharp acoustic absorbs all the bass, the DJ turns the volume up to compensate, and you can barely hear your immediate neighbour, let alone someone at the far side of the shelf.
There were moments, a lot of moments, when I felt dangerously close to a parody of my father, bursting into my bedroom to yell: "I'm sure this is all very good, but Do We Have To Have It SO LOUD?"
Seeing as we had him out on a rare trip to east London, David and I insisted on dragging Marcus to The Spiral after midnight, a decision we rather regretted when we discovered the karaoke duties distributed amongst no more than a dozen, rather dull, punters.
Once again though, I found the volume levels excruciatingly loud. Excruciating karaoke at an excruciating volume is not music; it's noise.
So I sloped off to sit at the upstairs bar where Max, the proprietor, clearly not in the best of moods, was sounding off to anyone who would listen (or could listen) about the new legislation that will limit public noise to 85 decibels.
"And that wouldn't even let us get up to the noise levels we're making now," he shouted.
"Bloody good thing too" I heard myself thinking, and blushed.
Irritable Male Syndrome? Probably.
Thursday 28th February 2002
You'd think that Amateur Strip Night at the White Swan would be some kind of acid test of the ability to cope without booze, but as far as I can see it made precious little difference, inasmuch as I:
Still managed pleasant conversation with people I vaguely know (Hi Peter! Hi David!).
Still managed to initiate a conversation with someone I vaguely know - but have learnt to steer clear of - because I confused him with someone I vaguely know - but fancy the pants off (Hi David!).
Still managed to meet somebody new and wonderful who fancied my friend (Hi Trigger!).
Still managed to ponder on how a drag queen with a thinly-disguised bad-attitude a mile wide manages to be such a good host-ess (Hi Rose Garden!).
Still managed to find the preliminary hula-hoop contest an unlikely turn-on (Hi, 18 year old skinny-as-a-stick James!).
Still managed to think 'Why the hell am I here' and 'That's why I like this place' within the space of 60 minutes (Hi, 18 stone naked Bob!).
Still managed to fall unsuitably in love with one of the volunteer strippers, not least because having fought with his boyfriend for the right to get naked in public, he then preceded to hula-hoop naked for at least three minutes (Hi again, 18 year old skinny-as-a-stick James!).
Still managed to just not quite make an absolute twat of myself over somebody at 5am in the Limehouse Health Club afterwards (Sorry bout dat, 18 year old skinny-as-a-stick James!)
Still managed to have a mild headache and look like shit the next day (Hi mirror!).
The imponderable, of course, is how much better or worse any of the above might have been with the addition of four or five pints of beer...
Wednesday 27th February 2002
Courtesy of my anti-biotics, I confined myself to a single pint of shandy during last night's Pop Quiz. What a hero, eh?
Thankfully the evening was otherwise enlivened by the unexpected presence of yet more gay bloggers - one of whom has to remain anonymous because his mother didn't, and doesn't, know he's out. Bless.
One of the early frustrations of learning French was the way they use the comparatively cosy second person singular ('tu') when talking to a single, well-known 'you' but employ the more formal second person plural ('vous') when speaking to either a group, or a single relative stranger.
In the sixth form, I delighted in knowing that the French even had a verb ('tutoyer') to describe the act of addressing somebody in the second person singular.
Later in life, I cherished something that I'd read somewhere: that all French mountaineers automatically start to address each other with the more familiar 'tu' once they reach a certain height up the mountain.
And now, at last, I think I may have discovered why.
High Altitude Flatus Expulsion innit?
The higher you climb, the more the outside air pressure falls. And the more you fart. The journal, High Altitude Medicine and Biology, reports that uncontrollable, pneumatic flatulence kicks in above 11,000ft.
That would break the ice.
All of which allows me to unload another factoid I've been carrying around, from no less than Hegel, in which he described the state-sponsored religion-substitute introduced in the wake of the French Revolution as "The exhalation of a stale gas."
It's a phrase you may wish to keep handy as we draw inexorably nearer to the not-entirely-Divine Afflatus that is Mrs Queen's Golden Jubilee (of which, no doubt, more later - all of it sprinkled with spleen.)
News you may have missed:
Man killed by cup of coffee
Suspect jailed for shaving off eyebrows
Politician says: Kill all cops
Half of cannabis smoked by Britons is homegrown
Gay theatre director marries woman
Journalist steals bin Laden's underpants
Tuesday 26th February 2002
The How well do you know me? fad takes on whole new dark twists and turns when you discover that someone has already set a quiz in your name...
Luckily, I still got 100%. (And who's Liam?)
And the moral of this story? Don't take your iguana to the pub.
Major hissy-fits, filmed visiting his mother - is it just me, or does Martin Sixsmith set your gaydar going off? (And I don't mean 'bing.bing.bing.' I mean 'whooop!-whooop!-whooop!")
Frances Hewson, the former housekeeper at Eaton Hall, is suing Britain's richest landowner, the Duke of Westminster for wrongful dismissal. The duke and duchess, for their part, accuse Mrs Hewson of gossip, gross misconduct and, ahem, "manipulating the butler's instructions".
Mrs Hewson has no complaints about Their Graces themselves, insisting that "it was a pleasure to work for them" despite the fact "If they engage you in a conversation you can reply and give your opinions but [otherwise] you are not supposed to engage in conversation." (No asking the Duchess if she's having a flutter on the lottery this week, then.)
Most touching of all, however, is Mrs Hewson's account of her responsibilities, which concludes: "It was her duty last thing at night to pull back the covers on Their Graces' bed. She once pressed a pair of trousers belonging to the Countess of Wessex."
Mrs Hewson now works nights as a cleaner at Chester Business Park. I like to imagine here sitting around during a late night break, regaling her comrades with stories of the Countess of Wessex's trousers.
The Countess of Wessex, of course, is Sophie - the PR woman whose marriage into the royal family was quickly followed by a series of PR disasters on a titanic scale, culminating in her miscarrying a much-needed royal baby.
Faced with the demands of the tabloid press, Sophie's clearly playing way out of her league.
Proof, if proof were needed, came at the end of a small story a few months ago, touchingly headlined "Countess keeps her promise to nursery".
The visit was clearly intended as a demonstration of the woman's tragic fortitude in being prepared to mingle with small people just one month after losing her baby. Sadly, however, the story does not have a happy ending:
"Sudit Roy, who is nearly two, gave the countess a shell. She gave him her fawn handbag in return before asking: 'Why don't you have your shell and I'll have my bag.'"
Monday 25th February 2002
The tactics used by salesmen attempting to get people to change their gas and electricity suppliers reach new lows every day. Until this morning, I could hardly believe some of the horror stories about concealed agreements buried in phone sales chatter, deemed consent and so on.
But I've just closed the door on a man who anounced himself as 'from the Gas Board', took a brief look at the meter and then started filling in a form, asking me for my name, address and phone number.
Distracting me by telling me I looked like a young Dustin Hoffman (intended as a compliment presumably), he then handed me the form to sign.
Given that momma didn't raise no rutabagas, I took some time to read it - whereupon it became clear that it was actually a request to change my nominal gas supplier from British Gas to London Electricity.
For all I know, it's a good deal. But I'm buggered if I'll sign up with somebody that attempts to deceive me on my own damn doorstep, or who sends me salesmen who will only go away after multiple mantra-like repetitions of "You are trying to get me to change my supplier. I do not wish to change my supplier. You are trying..."
Outrage.
The world and his wife know that the Beckhams named their first child Brooklyn, after the city in which he was conceived.
And now the world and his wife are wondering what the batty couple will name their next child. Sawbridgeworth?
Personally, I couldn't care less. But I do have a suggestion. Forget the city-schtick and commemorate instead Beckham's new deal with Marks and Spencer.
Hope for a girl, give her a chainsaw as a christening present, and name her: Eminesse.
Dear God,
Thank you for arranging that utterly unplanned and rather fabulous snog at the Vauxhall last night.
But I hope you won't feel offended if I make some constructive suggestions about how to organise things a little better next time. (If, of course, there is to be a next time.)
When he asks me to take him home and I haul him down the road to Dukes instead (paying for him to get in and buying him a pint), that line about "Can we go and sit over there, I feel everybody is staring at me here" sounded a little suspicious. Needs work, I think.
The running away from Ethiopa riff is quite cool, though I'm not so sure about the bit where he says I really didn't want to know about what kind of man his father was - slightly alarming when you're already wondering whether you'll wake up in the morning to find your credit cards missing.
Having him stalk off, claiming that I'm "too clever" for him is appreciated (so much nicer than "too old" or, indeed, "too poor") but it might be better to have him leave the pub entirely, rather than go off and play pool? Just a suggestion.
And when he leaves the pool table a little later to come across and ask me to buy him another pint? I guess that's an interesting touch. But does he really have to help himself to my last cigarette as he does so?
Oh, and one last thing: that line you give my friend at the end of the night, where he says "I knew it! I said to Marcus, I bet Ian comes over all clever and it doesn't work out." I'm sorry, but that line really has to go.
But enough cavilling from me. I reiterate: the snog itself was excellent. Thanks.
I look forward to the next draft with eager anticipation.
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