thebrick

2004-05-17T18:39:00.000Z

Glass Mirror
Went to see Shattered Glass ... an everyday tale of lying cheating journos. Before Jayson Blair at the NYT, there was Stephen Glass at The New Republic. He made a name for himself with articles on boozy Young Neo-Conservative conventions and hackers geting paid off by big tech corporations ... but was more in line for the Booker Prize than the Pulitzer. Then he gets found out by a holier than thou editor who naturally hated being duped. But the actor Peter Sarsgaard just keeps reminding me of someone ... Can't think who.

Piers Morgan

Peter Sarsgaard

2003-12-20T14:35:00.000Z

Happy Christmas

2003-12-15T22:02:00.000Z

I shouldn't have giggled, but ...
Everyone running around like mad in the office cos they found some Lord Lucan lookalike in hole in the ground outside Baghdad (why didnt they just seal him in?!?!?)

Our design boss is a very nice German girl with a bit of an accent. Editor had obviously ordered some spunky grafix outlining the crimes of Saddam Hussein, leaving the design desk obviously spoiled for choice from the plethora of torturing, gassing and mass-murder.

Strange to hear a German accent wafting over the office declaiming: "Vich var crimes is he talkking about."

Tasteless? Durrrrr, I'm a journalist, arent I.

Christmas Shopping
Having a huge ~~family~~ clan, launched a policy that my siblings get nowt and only the 11 nephews and nieces get something stuffed in their stockings better than 10 smelly toes.

The standard we have to live down to is my uncle who used to produce gift-wrapped packets of M&S socks for us on Xmas morning and on one famous occasion a chess board for my brother ... no pieces just the board, so expectations aren't too high.

Usually tend to get small but bizarre things that strangely they seem to like. Coupla years ago I just hit Covent Garden East big time and got a pile of Chinese hats, sarongs, chopsticks and such like. Took days for my brother and his wife to get my nieces out of their "costumes".

Variation this year is books. Okay the really small sprogs (6 months to 4 yrs) got messy wet things that their parents will hate me for for 12 months, but the older ones (6 to 14 yrs) got books. And because we always buy things we would really like ourselves, I got them MY favourite books (from when I was their age ... have to compromise): so variously The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (love fantasy books based in real places), The Magician's Nephew (loads better than the super-pious Lion, Witch and the Ikea Hanging Rail) and for the oldest The Master and Margarita(just cos I like it).

Bit harder for the girls so got one His Dark Materials (but might have to nick it to read myself later) and in sexist mode got another one a cookbook called Recipes to Put you in a Good Mood. She's not particularly moody, it just looked a nice book. My sister-in-law will of course think it's revenge for when she bought me St Delia's Cooking for One when I was a student and I immediately renamed it Cooking for People With No Friends

2003-12-09T23:07:00.000Z

Why's a gay bar like a big family?
... cos it's loud, crowded and rather uncommunicative

2003-09-26T03:27:00.000Z

Up and Down
A fucked up few weeks hit their low point on Tuesday: an exhausting, faffy, frustrating, scream-inducing day at work. Got home in a foul mood, exhausted, missing some one I wished was there to tell how shit it all was and basically cried myself to sleep.

But that explosion seemed to clear my sytem out ... Wednesday was a weird fun day that left me with a huge smile on my face.

Had a biz lunch at work so no jeans, t-shirt and chain ... had to wear a suit. So a day of "Job interview?" jokes, accusations of "selling out to management". Did I get any one saying "You really suit being dressed in a suit" ... did I hell!

The lunch was with a bunch of Japanese execs. Lots of bowing, painfully polite small talk, swapping business cards, all conversation going through interpreters even though they spoke (and we KNEW they spoke, and THEY knew we knew they spoke) better English than their interpreters. Utterly bizarre. But managed to get through it without bursting out laughing or telling my favourite after-dinner jokes. But I was biting my tongue so much, it hurt.

After a few more "class traitor" jokes (hell, I hadn't polished my DMs, for gawd's sake!!!) , headed for town. Barcode has had a really bad idea of selling cocktail shots for £1. Ran into a bunch of mates by chance, and we hit the drinks menu ... after a tequila, something (dunno what) with strawberry liqueur in it, and a Long Slow Comfortable Sofa against the Wall etc etc staggered home.

Had got a free lunch in a foreign language, had been chatting all night feeling so out of place suited-and-booted in Barcode, met mates I hadn't chatted to in ages and even managed to talk to someone I had been convinced for ages was a total arsehole and turned out not to be.

Nice

2003-09-26T03:02:00.000Z

Hmmmmmm
Saw this and thought of someone

"One sees a picture, reads an anecdote, starts a casual fancy, and thinks to tell it to this person in preference to every other - the person is gone whom it would have particularly suited. It won't do for another."

2003-09-22T22:08:00.000Z

Dib Dib Dib
Me and work mates have been working our proverbials off on a new project at work for the last three months. Only problem is as soon as we show we can get over one set of new hurdles, the powers that be reckon "Oh they managed that, we can try something else now!"and slap another new "good idea" on us.

For an arch-capitalist organisation we seem awfuly addicted to Trotsky's permanent revolution.

And in return ... pay rise? Yeah right! Time off? Do me a favour! In return for wrecking our nerves and social lives we officially have BROWNIE POINTS!!

So what exactly is the exchange rate for a brownie point? How many to the pound? Are they rising against the euro? If you get enough can you get some luncheon vouchers? Can you even tot them up like a schoolboy's gold stars? Personally I'm hoping for a wood craft badge, or something for rubbing two boy scouts together to start a fire or sumfink. Unfortunately, doubt we'd even get a complimentary Starbucks coffee with them. What we have effectively got is a pat on the back from our betters.

Brownie points? Puh-lease! I only even managed one day in the cubs, for gawd's sake ... though maybe the brownies might have suited me more ... Gin Gan Gooley Gooley Golley ... I'm writhing along on the chest of a slave and the cum is in my eye.

I'm gonna start calling my desk head my Sixer and the editor can be Akela and I shall be wearing a woggle to work in future.

2003-09-18T23:36:00.000Z

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Brick
Just seen Pirates of the Caribbean, Johnny Depp doing a Rory Bremner of Keef Richards in a bandana. So happy to learn that today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, so I shall be heading into the office swirling me sabre in me velvet pantaloons and checking out the exchange rate for doubloons before running the boss through just cos I can.

And whaddya know, Im the cabin boy!

Belleville Rendezvous
Quiet night so went the pics. Missed Terminator XXVII, half an hout to wait to see Julie Walters in the nud, so paid my £8.50 to see A CARTOON? Go see. Bizarre, surreal, daft as fuck ... but never thought a bicycle, a stretch 2CV and a clubfooted grandma could be so funny. Merciless but affectionate.

Section 28
Royal assent to its abolition last night, consigned to oblivion by the wave of a queen's hand appropriately

2003-09-16T21:56:00.000Z

Brick Back
Repointed, refurbished, replastered and repainted. Think of me as part of a retro Victorian fire place ... or then again ...

Miscommunication
Standing in the ticket queue at Oval station in rush hour. The girl in front of me utterly failing to get her point over to the bloke behind the grille despite the loop microphone. They have no idea what the other one is saying and the volume keeps on rising. Two wrong tickets, a fair bit of mutual verbal abuse later, she gets her single to Turners Green and stalks off, eyes rolling in frustration. Me next. Walk up to the ticket window, and blokey is shaking his head in disbelief.

Sez he: "Nobody don't talk proper no more, innit."

2003-07-16T23:54:00.000Z

Dirt
When we were kids, we had a little-woman-who-does to come round and do things like hoovering and dusting .... but my mum would always make sure the house was pristine before she arrived to do what she did. God forbid anyone would think our house was untidy.

Got Alex the builder coming round in the morning to rip out my cupboards and look at putting in new floors for me. He's gonna make a helluva mess - layers of sawdust and old plaster everywhere.

So what am I doing tonight? Hoovering, dusting and scrubbing. So the dust has a clean surface to land on?

I AM TURNING INTO MY MOTHER!

2003-07-14T22:43:00.000Z

Now, where were we?
My absence has had nothing to do with hitting a minor landmark anniversary ... suffice to say my age in Roman numerals now sounds like "excel". Oh I could write those mottos in the middle of greetings cards, couldnt I.

Of course it also looks and sounds just like an oversized tshirt.

Hey, it's a man-made number. In binary I'm 101000, in Fahrenheit I'm 104, in mental age I'm .. ok, let's not go there. Not hugely hung up on hitting 40, but thanks anyway to those people who expressed/politely feigned surprise that I wasthat age cos I didn't look/act it.

Not keen on birthdays ... Continental idea of name days is much better. You get to celebrate being you, not necessarily being one year older. And since my name day is the day before my birthday, it fits quite well. Ok if we followed that system then there would be a lot of people with hangovers the day after St John's Day, and and anyone called Stephen had better get used to hearing: "We thought we'd get you a joint Xmas-Name Day present."

So spent my name day being myself around some favourite places and finally ended up looking after a rather worse-the-wear friend in (No We're Not Going To) Chemistry and thinking: "God, young people these days."

No, it's just been a worky few weeks since I got back off holiday. Body clock is still not convinced 7am is anything more than some sick existentialist joke. Q: "If a leaf falls in a forest at 7am and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a noise?" A: "Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz."

Doing this job on a kinda part-time basis was a piece of cake, cos I really just dived in and dived out again - the real responsibility fell on someone else. Now it's all on my shouders. Keeping my head above water, but no fun starting out just as the silly season starts and you dont work for the kinda paper where crop-circle stories are particularly acceptable. So knackered/wound up by the time I leave the office. Spose I'lll roll into it.

Not even had as much time to do stuff for TAC as I wanted to. Missed the last meeting cos I was popping in and out of the office on me day off. Double shame that cos I missed meeting Wolfgang Tillmans, who turned up, and I had just seen his Tate exhibition. Yes I know that's not really the point of TAC, but I don't get particularly impressed by meeting celebs, and he's one person I would like to talk to. Espy since I missed out on meeting Nelson Mandela the week before.

The Tate display (god how many tangents are there in this entry?) is pretty good: photos and light displays ranged from the beatiful, the banal, the erotic, via a coupe of belly laughs to "What the f**k is that?" Highlights for me: a darkened room with a flashing blue screen and a bit of techno that just made me think of the second dance floor at Melt (sure some queens have bopped around in there); the discreetly taken snap of a male lap in an airline seat with the tray down, airline meal waiting to be eaten, and a semi-erect cock sticking out of his fly; a montage of clubbing scenes mixed up with church congregations.

Things I've learned ...
... now I'm older and wiser

Never go to bed with someone who has just made a meal involving freshly chopped chillies.

2003-06-25T00:07:00.000Z

Harry Potter

Got it (at 12.20am on a balmy Saturday morning).

Did ponder joining the huge queues at Waterstones in Piccadilly, but thought better of it as I staggered out of Barcode ... might have been the thought of screaming kids all dressed up (too much like Rupert Street). Got home to Oval and was wandering down towards chez Brique. We have one of those randomly placed bookshops near my flat, the kind that always look interesting but never have anyone in them. This one at that time of night DID have people in. A queue of about 20 all waiting to buy discounted copies of You Know What .... and judging by my gayadar, they were mainly "sisters".

Finished it (at 12.30am on Tuesday morning)

And apologies to the miserable uncommunicative bugger I was while reading it EVERYWHERE.

Loved it. And god bless Ms Rowling for getting a country reading together

My Day Off
Morning. Found a drain-ey smell in my kitchen, a damp carpet in my bathroom and a toilet that wouldn't flush properly. Straight into the Yellow Pages to find a plumber to stick his rod down my manhole (sorry, couldnt resist).

He lifted an access port under my bathrom carpet, poked around and said that was okay. We found the manhole outside my flat and lifted it to view a cave underneath half-filled with You Know What (and I dont mean copies of Harry Potter unless you're a really nasty critic).

Ran a hose from my kitchen to his van to fill up the reservoir for his high-pressure hose, turned on the tap and watched the hose running through my living room spring so many holes it was like a garden sprinkler. Hey ho, the carpet's going very soon anyway.

Turns out after much hosing, sluicing and splashing that the problem wasn't acctually in just MY flat, but in the pipe that takes the sewage from all the homes in our row to the victorian sewer under Clapham Road ... I was just the first one to see the problem (and so the one to pay £150!!!!)

As he packed up I suddenly thought: "Did we put the access port back in the bathroom?" Eyes wide, I ran back in and found ... enough water to fill my bath, only it wasnt in the bath!! Hey, ho that carpet's going too now. He knocked £50 off the bill.

Evening. Joined an AIDS organisation (can't call it a charity just yet cos we ain't sure if it will be .. might be simpler just to be a voluntary organisation).

The Treatment Action Campaign is a South African charity trying to get generic anti-retroviral and other drugs into S Africa where the government and Thabo Mbeki in particular denies a proven link between HIV and AIDS and claims it's a plot by the pharmaceutical companies to get money.

A friend of mine has started a Friends of TAC group and this was the first meeting. Aims: set up the group, elect the usual committee members and sort out just what we want to do/achieve. Ultimate aim is to raise money to get drugs to S Africa and help develop HIV health services.

I've put me hand up to help with the media stuff (busman's holiday), see what we can do at a S African trade fair in a few weeks, and get a message to Nelson Mandela when he visits London next week to attend a £3,000-a-plate dinner at the Savoy raising money for his foundation. No we're not going to hijack it, or anything Tatchell-ey (we're saving that maybe). Mandela has worked with TAC in his own country and we are trying to get one of our supporters who knows him to have a word while he's staying in London. For publicity? Indisputably. As a morale boost to what is still a baby organisation? Also probably true. Got to start somewhere.

It was a very English revolution.

2003-06-18T22:33:00.000Z

To Blog Or Not To Blog
Sometimes you have too much to say and not enough time to think about what you want to say.

We apologise for the lack of entries and normal service will be resumed as soon as I get 29 minutes 27 seconds to myself.

Blogs Coming Soon
o Being in a gay bar in glasses.
o Liverpool: City of Culture (this will be a looooooong one).
o Promotion ... a really bad idea.
o Why NEVER to have an argument with a mate by text message (and definitely never be with one of antagonists while the argument is going on).
o The Victoria Line shouldn't be pale blue, but slightly pink.
o Why I hate technology ( with a very long footnote on why mobile phones seem to automatically delete the numbers of tall slim Danish lads you really really fancy ...especially just after you've plucked up the courage to get their number off them) ... with a special section on why I'm not really bitter MUCH.
o Split infinitives ...What's your problem?

... and many more.

2003-06-13T10:53:00.000Z

Email from Work Colleague
"Just had a spam mail from a company advertising anti-spam software."

2003-06-12T22:58:00.000Z

Family Stuff
A few years ago, my younger brother got pins and needles in his fingers. Maybe he'd fallen asleep on his arm, at worst a circulation problem. Turns out he had multiple sclerosis and instead of becoming a doctor he now lives between his wheel chair and being bed-ridden.

Ask any doctor a question about MS and the answer is usually: "We don't know." Considering about 1/1,000 people have MS to some degree, scarily little is known about it. Even with advanced scanning techniques, the main form of diagnosis is by "syndrome": ie if you get more than three off a list of symptoms (eyesight problems, loss of motor-neurone control, loss of sensitivity in your hands and feet etc) you've got it. For definite-ish, all they know is that it's probably caused by an over-active immune system that starts attacking the body, specifically the myelin that lines the nerve endings of your spinal cord and conducts the messages from your body into the central nervous system. It's also to some degree genetic. My brother has it so severely they could write text books about him. It shouldn't run like this.

Found out today my elder sister has also been diagnosed with it. How severely we don't know yet. She has three kids, a husband and a career.

Haven't been able to speak to her today, need a few hours to let it sink in.

Bizarre that two of us have immune systems in danger of eating us alive, and one has an immune system in danger of shutting down.

2003-06-04T21:51:00.000Z

Job
For the last six years I have been working nights (well 4pm until 1am usually). At first it totally roughed up my body clock, and put paid to a normal social life. Friends would ring at 8pm and ask if I wanted to go out: "Can't! I'm still in the office." Felt like they thought it was my fault. S'pose it was since I chose this career. But I eventually slipped into the rhythm of a tomcat and got used to going out after work and finding one of the benefits of working in London is the late dives. I started enjoying the lie-ins in the morning after a night on the town, avoiding the rush hour crush going into the office and seeing others sweltering in a suit while I lounged over an afternoon espresso. I had daytimes and late nights free and got to appreciate it.

Now the bastards have promoted me!!!

I have to be at my desk at 8.30am bright (yeah right) and breezy (not before three cups of coffee). That means being in bed nice and early with a cup of Horlicks and my teeth out. Got my evenings free for the first time in yonks, but am gonna have to re-learn how to be civilised.

2003-05-30T00:27:00.000Z

Everest

Bored of Hillary and Tenzing and the blanket coverage of the 50th anniversary of the first confirmed climbing of Everest half a century ago today? Think on the man who might have really been the first, George Mallory.

Known to most as another glorious British near-success, Mallory was more than a mountaineer. Not only did he climb higher than any other human before him and help pioneer rock climbing as the mainstream sport it is now (and without the nylon ropes and protective gear they have nowadays ... think tweeds and hemp ropes and no carabiners), he was a Cambridge Adonis, a friend of the Bloomsbury bunch, possibly a lover of Lytton Strachey's brother, an inspiring teacher, a pretty good writer and loads else. A biography The Wildest Dream shows how Everest might have been the climax, the ultimate obsession, of his life, but only the final part of it.

Did he and Andrew Irvine make it? Those who went after him believe it was technically beyond the climbing ability of a 1920s mountaineer; but in 2003 people can almost jog up in 12 hours what would have taken Mallory 4 days. And if he did make it to the summit, he never made it down again, which kinda means you can't call it in any way a successful climb. He and Irvine were seen by telescope climbing through mist near the summit, but there has always been doubt about how close they were. They found Mallory's mummified body in 1999, broken on an ice cornice below the summit ... but they didn't find the camera he always carried with him, which might have provided some proof either way. Irvine's body has never been found.

Did they make it? Were they on the summit of the world 30 years before the accolades and knighthoods of 1953? I want to think they made it. Even if it is said it was technically beyond Mallory, he helped set the standard for climbing techniques to a point unimaginable before he started, so who knows how far he could have got if pushed.

To George and Andrew.

2003-05-27T17:31:00.000Z

Is Blogging Killing the Art of Conversation?
Chatting with a non-blogger who checks up on what I write on here: "Guess what I did last week" ... "Already know, read it on yer blog" ... "Oh, well next week I'm ..." ... "Know already, read it on yer blog."

So maybe when bloggers meet face to face in future the conversation will go something like: "May 15" ... "Yes but April 24" ... "You can't say that after February 28" ... "Well you obviously missed March 19 then"

Lakes
Same as after the French trip, not going to bore you with all the details ... so just the selected greatest hits.

Gay B&Bs
Found an ad for a sympathetic hotel in Windermere online: "Young, gay and fun," it said. Turned up and it had apparently changed hands some time before and gone straight (so why was the advert still running on GaytoZ?). The word "family" appeared a little to often on all the notices: family rooms, family friendly, family meals, family trips organised. Were the new couple trying to exorcise the former owners? Nothing againt families, even belong to one meself, but was kinda glad before the family with seven kids arived on Saturday.

Sca Fell
In a masochistic mood decided to hump my way up the biggest bump in England. Started from Langdale under grey skies and by the time I had slogged my way up Mickleden beck the wind felt like it was hitting me from both sides simultaneously as it swirled around the bluffs at the end of the valley. Then the rain started as I hauled myself up the iron-oxide-painted scree of Rosset Gill, so heavy that the path and the stream merged into one waterfall. The wind at this point was right behind me so my back was soaking and my front bone dry.

Finally passed under Rosset Pike and over the ridge to Angle Tarn, an apostrophe-shaped lake in the bottom of a huge scoop taken out of the rock of Bowfell Butress. The wind chose this moment to change direction and whacked me straight in the face as I came over the top. The water of the tarn was being whipped into waves that wouldn't have disgraced a sea shore and the cloud base above me cut of the tops of the fells like a saucepan lid on the hollow. Black rock, white water ... so monochrome, so eery. This is one of the most popular walks in the Lakes, but I saw no one, even the sheep had buggered off. The only noise was the screaming wind rattling my eardrums.

The wind dropped off. For a few moments it was utterly silent. The water of the tarn went smooth and mist dropped from the heights like a high-speed elevator. As the mist touched the surface of the lake 100ft below me, small movements of air brushed a series of faint ripples across the water, like a hand stroking cat fur. I just stood there gob-smacked at the switch from tempest to stillness ...til the wind kicked back in and slammed into me, punching me off-balance.

I had come three-quarters of the way and climbed 600 metres out of the 1,000m up to the summit, but gave up here. I'm not stupid and I'm not Edmund Hillary. Score one to the mountain. Staggered down the fords and waterfalls of Langstrath and back to the Dungeon Ghyll Hotel bar over Stake Pass.

2003-05-26T12:38:00.000Z

Home Again
Back in my little Sarf London cellar after two weeks of not standing still for a moment. My laptop battery ran out scarily quickly oop north so I've been offline for days ... god I'm so addicted and been getting withdrawal symptoms. But gotta fight it and do some real-life things like clean the flat, do the washing, head for the garden centre while I still have a car and get my head around London again (which means geting pissed in Composts and Bracode tonite probably).

Got so many blogs to catch up on and will have to take a leaf out of Iansie's book and file a week's worth of entries in one huge e-splurge.

2003-05-19T23:05:00.000Z

I'm Back
There's nothing quite so boring as having to plough through other people's holiday snaps and videos with them wittering on about how good a time they had, so I'm just gonna give selected highlights (but I DID have a f***ing good time).

Bergerac International (?) Airport
The arrivals terminal is a tent. This is not a derogatory comment, it IS a canvas structure. The departure terminal is a sardine can of a shed with 200 suitcase-laden, baby-carrying people heading home from their weekend gites packed into the space of a living room with about 20 seats. The baggage carousel is a hole in the wall that they hurl your luggage through. Stephane has lived round there all his life and had trouble finding the place. The Ryanair coach-class shuttle is about the only flight in and out all day. An experience of bi-plane standard travel in the supersonic jet age.

Cod
When you've been knocking back home-made plum brandy all evening, the last thing you need is five huge inflatable cod suddenly appearing in front of your eyes and bouncing towards you.

As well as the grape stuff, Bordeaux produces loadsa salt cod in a massive drying plant. So every year it has La Fête de la Morue, a cod extravaganza involving cod, music, alcohol, cod and errrr more cod!! Cod fritters, cod cake (I'm not kidding), cod pate, cod crepes etc. I even managed to assemble some cod and chips to the amusement of the snail-eaters, but could I find any decent salt and vinegar? Could I cod's roe!

The music was fantastic. There's a strong green element to the whole thing, cos the area they hold the festival in is a real left-wing part of the town and cod quotas and the declining fish stocks are a major issue. So the festival draws bands from all over the place. Best lot was called the Bakelite All Stars, kinda rock-steady with a big Latin influence and a cheesy brass section. Cool girl singer (who played flute as well). Think Miami Sound Machine meets Madness.

It was pissing down with rain, it was two in the morning in a draughty rugby stadium ... but who cared.

Pilgrims
Near Stephane's house is a mini-chateau with a statue of a mediaeval pilgrim outside it cos Bordeaux is on the old pilgrim's road to Santiago de Compostella in Spain. Travellers hungry for a taste of the divine would go trekking off through Europe on a kinda religious package holiday, and their symbol was/is the scallop shell. Saw this statue, kinda thought "Oh that's interesting", and shoved it straight to the back of my mind. But it sorta started a theme that ran through the entire week.

We nicked the family car and went driving off down the river valleys south of the tourist traps of the Dordogne. In an old Roman town called Cahors, we saw a bunch of sweaty hikers stop on an old bridge and noticed the scallop shells hanging from their ruck sacks. "They're still doing it?" we thought. Not that this particular bunch of pilgrims looked fit enough to get to the next town, let alone 1,000 miles to Compostella. And all along the Lot valley we kept seeing scallop shells attached to people and buildings. We were doing the pilgrims' route, only backwards and in a Renault Twingo. Another strange habit of the Europeans and not for us Brits, I thought, until I remembered my O-Level English and this.

Looking for a bed on the final night of our motorised retro-pilgrimage, we just wandered by chance into this tiny village ... no shops, no bars, just a preserved priory, a church, a river bank, a few farmhouses, steep cliffs all around and sheep! It was so gorgeous, so peaceful, so isolated. When we saw the sign for a hostel we just grabbed our bags and headed straight for it ... and found a scallop shell on the door. The hostel was meant for pilgrims walking the route, and there were a few ruddy-cheeked ladies in sensible shoes already settled in for the night. Stephane blagged our way in, tryng to look earnest and religious (Sunday worship at the Vauxhall Tavern is about the closest he gets usually).

Something about this pilgrims idea appealed to us. Yeah, okay, I now it sounds a bit pretentious back in the hard reality of a cloudy, rainy London, but it seemed more than just some over-the-top metaphor. Stephane has spent the last year bouncing around between Spain, Tenerife, Brazil and Bordeaux and is off to Malaga next week to try and find whatever makes him content and though I'm still in London I've been getting restless and thinking about where to go next, not just geographically but work-wise, scene-wise and okay I hit 40 next month. Add to that the fact that we've both had a bit of a mental trek to get through in the last 18 months. At least the real pilgrims know their final goal. Now, where are my boots?

Speaking Foreign
My French is a pile of shite, but there's something about knocking back a few bottles of wine with friends and sinking even more plum brandy and a bit of this funny apple-ey liqueur and yes I will have more plum brandy thank you that improves communication at 3am in a big argument about politics. Sod the grammar, empathy works better. Sort of: "I have no idea what you just said but I'm with you all the way to the barricades, man."

Next ...
Back in Kennington with my mind full of holiday thoughts, the first thing I did was ring the office and book three more days off. Hiring a car and heading up to the family in Liverpool in the morning and then up to the Lakes. Real life can hang on for a bit.

2003-05-11T22:04:00.000Z

Derniere Post
C'est mon last post pour un while, parce que je suis off to la belle France in the matin avec mon bloody cher Ryanair billet. Oblige de se reveiller at SIX AM et j'espere que le Tube est running properly a ca ungodly heure. Je reviens apres une semaine loaded down with fromage smelly and vin cheap.

Alors bonne nuit

2003-05-11T21:48:00.000Z

White Van Man

The iconic symbol of London ain't the red double decker any more .... it's the white transit, usually driven by a burly bloke sporting t-shirt and tatooes, with a similarly sized wolf-whistling mate in the passenger seat and for some reason a much smaller lad squeezed in between the two hulks (prob to make the tea once they get to whichever building site or plumbing job they are heading for.) The windscreen is usually festooned with St George's crosses and tokens of their fave football team (rarely Spurs, funny that), and you just know the contents of the back of the van would give Del Boy Trotter orgasms.

So this weekend I thought I would try on the Zeitgeist to see if it fitted and have become white van man.

Okay it was fairly half-hearted ... substitute the burly tatooed bloke in white t-shirt for a skinny, spekky puff in a Gap assemblage with a pierced ear; the dodgy rear contents for a John Lewis sofa; and forget the football stuff - I'm a Liverpool fan in sarf London and want to live! The wolf-whistle is a shy smile at the tall lad on the zebra crossing, but that's just cos I cant really do butch with conviction.

Andy has just bought two new sofas so was unloading his old one on me for my semi-furnished gaff (see!! WVM talk that!). Hired what I thought would be a small transit/escort van and turn up to find I've got a huge VW transporter. And me who hasn't even driven a car in over a year (and then was in a crash). I went pale. I could see in my head the pile-ups I was going to cause.

Edged gingerly from Oval up to Islington without collision, even on the Elephant & Castle roundabout. Managed Andy's narrow double-parked cul de sac. Phew. "While you're here, we can take some stuff down to the dump," sez Andy. Half his house seemingly goes in the cavernous back with the sofa underneath. Then have to reverse out of the street with Andy doing the lad-at-the-back act waving at all the Upper St Mercs, and 4WDs to stop (He could do that cos he DID have the white t-shirt and jeans on). Off up to Ashburton Grove to the Islington dump to find that it is only open to the public from 6pm to 10pm. So this is how the well-heeled spend their evenings. Couldn't face taking all that stuff home again, so Andy goes to speak to the bloke at the desk to see if he would let us in if we said we were commercial waste. To be honest I didn't hear the conversation, but have this vision of Andy walking up to him and going: "Hello, I'm trade!"

Ashburton Grove is to be redeveloped for the new Arsenal stadium and somehow it was very satisfying chucking all that rubbish over what will soon be the hallowed turf of chez Wenger. (Sorry Arsenal fans ... actually I'm not.)

By this time, I'm hurling the VW round like a racing car, revving that throbbing diesel engine hard, window down, elbow on the window shelf and Heart FM (it was the only station I could get to work OK!!) blazing away. My proudest moment was doing a U-ey on the Old Kent Rd. Would have felt so "white van man", but I was off to B&Q to buy ceramic pots for the patio.

2003-05-08T23:30:00.000Z

He's Back
Salam Pax is filing again, piggy-back blogging via one of his links and hunting down an internet cafe. Spent an hour at work tonight reading through the last few weeks of his life in a war zone with bombers overhead and tanks at the end of his street. I've read acres of copy on this war, but when the dust has settled, the troops gone home, and the Pulitzer Prizes handed out for covering the war, it's gonna be this lad that sticks in the mind.

Ryanair
Was checking through prices for flights to Bordeaux this afternoon (yes I do manage to do some work sometimes), and found that since Buzz got taken over by Ryanair, low-cost flights to Bordeaux airport just 20 mins from chez Stephane have been pulled. The nearest airport is now Bergerac about 50 miles away in the middle of the Dordogne (bit like having a London airport at Chipping Norton). Fine, sez Le Frog, I'll just come and pick you up. Now when I looked at prices at about 6pm tonight, the outward flight on Monday morning I wanted was £50 give or take a euro, but I didnt have time to actually book it (See!! I do work sometimes!!). Got home two hours later and logged on to book it ... the price had gone up £40 in 120 minutes. It's still cheaper than the BA flight direct to Bordeaux ... but not by much. Total trip plus taxes will be not far short of £200 ... and that was taking the cheapest convenient option I could find. And not even a plastic meal in flight. The cabin crew had better be bloody cute!

I'm so hacked off I'm not even going to link to their site ... they can do ther own marketing. So there!

2003-05-07T02:20:00.000Z

Blogging Runs Into Real Life
Luca raised the question of what has happened to Baghdad blogger Salam Pax, who has not posted since a few days after Shock and Awe and a few squadrons of B52s hit the city. It could be the phone lines are down, but the publicity his site gained in the build-up to the conflict may mean something worse.

Overly pessimistic? In neighbouring Iran, a journalist and blogger Sina Motallebi has been arrested at least in part for the content of what he posted. Other Iranian bloggers and ex-pats have started a petition for his release. And there are signs that other regimes are suddenly realising the importance and implications of such easy access to the web for their citizens and are cracking down on it.

Sina's rooznegar.com blog has been taken offline by his family cos they are worried about publicity and messages of support being posted on it damaging his cause. I take the point, but still signed the petition.

Got a lot of thoughts burbling round in me head now about blogging, journalism, conscience ... but it's 3am so need some sleep before sounding off again.

2003-05-07T01:30:00.000Z

Stephane
Buzzing like crazy. Spoke to my ex Stephane tonight and I'm off to visit him and his family in Bordeaux for a few days next week. Sorts out the sunny place for my holiday. He's been away travelling round Spain and Brazil for almost a year and just got back. Tonight was the first time I've had a chance to speak to him since December and just about the first thing we sorted was me going over. So happy.

Some people reading this might have met him in the RVT when we were going out (splitting up with him was one reason I stopped going for most of last year), and some may even have been bored to tears by my going on about him all the time. Tough!! but thanks for listening, lads. Think tall, skinny, skinhead with glasses that steam up when he's clubbing, and a langourous body that doesn't sit on barstools - it kinda wraps itself round them.

Don't think we'll ever get back together as BFs but he means so much to me. We have been through some brilliant times, and held each other up through some real shit. He showed me my own adopted home city in a new way, and I hope I showed him things he would never otherwise have seen. We have to be two of the most indecisive people in the world ... even going shopping would be a two-hour marathon that would end with us leaving the store with just a bottle of shampoo (and that involved smelling every brand we could find). We think up some grand Plan A for something to do ... then finally end up with Plan Z miles from where we are meant to be. If anything hapens to me, he's the first person I want to tell. And his being X,000 miles away and incommunicado has been so hard.

Now, where's the Ryanair website.

2003-05-06T01:08:00.000Z

D'oh
Busy but brain dead at work so a bunch of mates online did the Test the Nation IQ quiz. Seventy brain-teaser type questions in five sections in about 20 minutes. An educational psychologist once told me that IQ was what was measured by an IQ test, which always seemed a bit circular so am not sure how much bollox they are, but mine measured 125 (supposed average of 100) ... only got 9/12 on language which pisses me off and my worst was 7/12 on numbers which is NO surprise at all ... full marks for memory and perception which is f***ing amazing. Tom got up to 140, but as the youngest of us he has the advantage of age being a component of whatever calculation they do.

Our results are now churning round with the rest of the nation's, which have found:
if you were a fat baby you score higher;

London/derry is the most intelligent town in the UK;

pop and dance music listeners do not do well;

if you drink, your IQ goes up (okay I know that's a bit specious but I like it);

and the killer ... the more you earn the lower your numbers. Non-earners score on average 107, below £20,000 you are at 104, £20,000 - £30,000 would give you 101, heading into the higher rate of tax at £30,001 - £50,000 you fall below the average IQ and must be happy with 99, and the fat cats earning more than £50,000 may have the dosh but they are missing the brain cells and probably can't even count to their score of 93 and have to get their accountants to do it. Okay, can't see your average FTSE 100 chief executive logging on to do this test, but that progression is amazing if true.

Won't mention the male - female comparison cos Blue Witch will drop a real brick on me.

2003-05-06T00:00:00.000Z

I Spy With My Little Eye ...
Sitting outside a cafe on Compton Street with Will, willing the sun to stay out a bit longer before I headed for the the office. As we watch the world amble by, Will says he thinks it's quiet for a nice-ish bank holiday afternoon, so I suggest a game ... what's the longest gap gonna be between seeing people we know or we recognise: there followed a procession of Vauxhall regulars (one wandered past twice), gym partners, drinking mates and faces we could just pick from the crowd from various pubs. The longest gap? About two and a half minutes. Yup, it was fairly quiet.

2003-05-05T01:23:00.000Z

Fag Ends
There is a way I know if I'm stressed even before I recognise it in my head. I flick my cigarette so hard the tobacco comes flying out. Don't think I've been able to finish a single Marlboro Lite this weekend without having to relight it or throw it away when it sudenly becomes a smouldering empty tube of paper.

Work is a pain at the moment. We have just been through a redesign, that looks fine visually, but has been done by an outsider who has no idea how the paper is put together. The last week and a half has been spent correcting basic things that never occurred to the design guru or our own high-ups. I seem to have been co-opted as the desk's own expert on the redesign and it feels like I haven't edited a story all week cos I've been explaining to people who earn a load more than I do how you produce a newspaper.

Bank holiday? Not for me ... I'm back in the office on Monday and really enjoyed watching mates planning their heavy Sunday night's partying while I had just my duvet to look forward to.

My ex boyfriend's best mate is back in London after travelling round Spain and Brazil with him. Met for coffee in town this afternoon and it was really good chatting to her about Rio, Carnival, coconuts and it's great having her round again. Missed her no-bullshit directness, amazingly tangled love life and luscious French swearing. But talking to her just brought back how much I miss Stephane.

Went out Saturday night with Sef. We tried the new-look Viaduct called Fire and both of us felt like dancing til our legs fell off. They have put a lot of effort into transforming a fairly grungy railway arch into something a bit more "classy", but it looks very Ikea/Habitat: soft furnishings, plants in vases and pastel-shaded panel lights behind the bar. Music was hard Renegades/Trade kinda stuff and quite liked it. But the look and the music just didn't seem to gel. Pretty busy, plenty of lads with tops off, kinda sweaty but somehow always felt chilly. The staff were the friendliest I've ever seen in a gay club, not a sour attitudey look from any of them. So why didn't I enjoy it? We were out after an hour and a bit, feeling like we had been "in a club" but not clubbing. Will have to give it a second chance, but we left a wee bit frustrated.

And now I can't find the lead to connect my digicam to my laptop.

Got one more week at work then two weeks off!!! Bliss. Will be the first real break in over a year. A week up north with the folks and up in the Lakes, then a week somewhere sunny, dunno where, dont care where. Just need it.

2003-05-01T23:28:00.000Z

My Life is a Joke
In Composts tonight chatting with Alan from Glasgow, Neil from Portadown, Andy whose family's from Abergavenny and there was me from Liverpool.

There was an Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotsman and a Welshman ... the punchline was someone poured a pint of beer over us from the balcony.

2003-05-01T18:12:00.000Z

Democracy Inaction
Local elections all over the rest of the country and the May Day protests in London. A chance for some political upheaval? Bollox.

The May Day protests, as we go to press, have consisted of: a bunch of protesters shouting at the Lockheed Martin offices on High Holborn so wimpily that a mate of mine in an office down the road had no idea they were there; a pelaton of cyclists riding in environmentally-friendly circles round Trafalgar Sq and Oxford Circus; and a march that went up Strand, across Trafalgar Sq kinda headed towards Soho, then changed its mind and went back to dance around a bit under Nelson's Column ... and errrr that's it. There was a bloke of "middle-eastern appearance" nabbed by the cops screaming up in cars Sweeney-like outside the Bank of England because he was carrying a package in a suspicious manner ... but they let him go after a bit.

Baboons could do a better job.

Almost makes the local government elections look kinda interesting .. ok let's not get overwrought. But voting for your local candidate Big Brother-like by SMS or touch tone phone, as 6.5m people have been able to do this time, could be kinda fun. You try to pay your phone bill and end up voting BNP!! But it does seem to have boosted turnout (can we call it turnOUT if you dont have to get your arse out of your own sofa?).

As a Londoner, I'm disenfranchised this time round. So miss out on my usual ~~row~~ discussion with the poor teller sitting in a near-deserted school hall all day about what constitutes a spoiled ballot. The law doesn't say it has to be a cross, it says it has to be a definite mark ... so far i've submitted various emoticons (depending on the quality of the candidate ... this is not a spoiled vote apparently), filled in the box in solid black pencil (this might be). Did think of just sticking my pencil through the sheet last time and see what they made of a hanging chad, but the candidate was fairly ok so he got a smiley. Making a mockery of democracy? At least I turn up.

2003-05-01T17:23:00.000Z

Found It!
Thanks to Mike I didn't have to wait to run into the DJ again to find my mystery funky disco track: Tutto Mattu, Peace ... Trying to work out a way of saying their name that doesn't sound like Two Tomatoes.

Told the Swedish Chef about my difficulties identifying the track, and he said: "Use Shazz." I said: "????" So he's given me this number to dial on my mobile, then I point it at the speaker playing the song that has me confused and I supposedly get a message back saying what the tune is. First thoughts: yeah right!!

Karaoke tonite so gonna try it on the songs Neil plays between singers ...and if that works I'll see if it can work out the difference between Macy Gray and DJ Moley singing Macy Gray.

2003-04-30T18:35:00.000Z

Lest We Forget
Is it really four years since the Admiral Duncan bomb? Remember thinking my BF was in there at the time; the flowers on Soho Sq; the vigil on the Sunday afternoon; the FT using a gay reporter to cover the bombing (we can be cool sometimes); the police arresting Copeland on the Saturday and me thinking "Why not 24 hours earlier?"; meeting a lad I knew a while later and finding he had lost his leg and to this day won't go down Compton Street.

2003-04-29T21:33:00.000Z

Hear Sell
How much do you eavesdrop conversations in the lift? In the supermarket queue or at the bar, smiling surreptitiously as you pry into others' life stories, edging a little closer to get all the details? Alan Bennett seems to have made a writing career out of other people's conversations. So it had to happen. An advertising agency is using our innate nosiness as a marketing tool.

To support an alcohol awareness campaign from the Portman Group, a couple of actors are being sent round town centres (Reading first I think, then others), faking conversations in places they'll be overheard about what outrageous things they got up to the night before while twatted on WKD, Carling or turpentine. Apart from supposedly shocking the eavesdropper into instantly going on the waggon in horror at what these hedonists did, the lubricated thespians will drop the campaign's slogan "If you do do drink, dont do drunk" in as some kinda punchline before throwing up all over the other lift occupants/queuers.

The sarcastic bit of me brain thinks: if you really had a hangover could you say that slogan? and any of my mates who overheard a conversation like this would either just think: "Top night!" or turn round to the fake lushes and say: "Oh that was nothing compared to ..."

Could this catch on? This campaign is selling a negative, could you sell a positive the same way? Bit labour-intensive having to hire all the actors needed for a mass ad campaign ("Darling, what's my motivation here."). But an analyst mate of mine had to do some research into where people got their information from and how much trust they placed on various sources: newspapers, documents at work, TV, internet. The two surprise high-placers were pillowtalk and chance conversations, any source people felt gave them info they felt they were getting unofficially, cos they felt it gave them an edge.

Dunno if any other agencies have tried this route, but I feel an experiment coming on: me and a mate in a lift in Canary Wharf (nice long lift journeys) sounding off to one another about this AMAZING bar with great cocktails and a cool atmosphere we found in, god I dunno ... Vauxhall would be tempting but Hoxton more convincing. Soddit, Dukes it is ... but dont tell anyone cos we want to keep it select. A few times up and down in the lift mentioning its name and passing the message on. Then pop down the Duke of Cambridge for a couple of nights to see if the clientele gets any more upmarket.

Muscular Christianity
Well I knew Jacob wrestled an angel.

2003-04-28T22:48:00.000Z

Help
Heard a track being played in a pub the other night that had just about everyone jumping up and down in their seats and tapping their glasses on the bar. Went to ask the DJ what it was and he said he had downloaded it. The track was called Peace and the group he had written down as Tatto Mattoo (sic). Didn't look right, but he insisted that was how it was spelled. Tried Kazaa ... nothing. Tried various spellings .... nowt. Tried Google .... no mention.

Anyone heard of it? ... otherwise I'm just gonna have to wait til I run into the DJ again, which might not be a for a few weeks.

2003-04-26T00:22:00.000Z

Home Sweet Home
Diamond Geezer has found a site that lets you slag of your home town ... so I have done just that. Hull is winning at the moment, Peterborough is holding a well-deserved spot not too far behind, but I'm plugging for St Helens.

I'm totally amazed!!!! Nominations for Rainhill and Ormskirk, but not for the swamp that lies between these two oases of civilisation ... St Helens (Sintellin it's called if you have to live there). Its claims to fame have included being the birthplace of Sir Thomas Beecham (he got out) and of the first PM of New Zealand (he REALLY got out), and also for being the TB capital of Britain. I could spell emphysema and pneumoconiosis before I could write my own name cos of all the coaldust in the air before You Know Who closed the mines down.

Ummmm it's actually hard to say anything really bad about the place, but then it's hard to think of anything at all to say about the place. Sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester, the two cities have sucked just about all the life out of it. Though with a perverse pride, Wooly Backs insist on maintaining their superiority over all the towns around: Liverpoool is full of car thieves and they play football not rugby league, Manchester just don't come into the reckoning, and don't even mention Wiggin, that other rugby league obsessed town lying on the other side of a hill that's such a pitiful excuse for a hill everyone calls it Billinge Lump. The greatest insult ever paid the town was when it was included in Merseyside.

What might have been a nice town centre once (Victorian cast iron market hall, the ubiquitous 18th Century Friends House you find in every northern town, and a parish church designed by the same architect that built the Millbank Tate power station) has been ring-roaded, superstored and shopping-malled to death.

Major landmarks: the M62 (aka the way out), Asda (the ultimate shopping experience), the slag heaps (even a landscaped bike-tracked slag heap is still a slag heap), when I lived there, there was ONE bookshop for 200,000 people .... oh and the glass museum cos we invented float glass.

But I can't escape it no matter how hard I try, no matter how far away I move. It's there whenever I go into a pub and try to find
forgetfulness in a pint. When you peer into the bottom of your beer glass and see a strange abstract kinda Nazi-looking bird-shape trade mark, think of St Helens ... especially of the Ravenhead glass works where that glass and millions of others were made.

St Helens: the town stopping your beer spilling all over the pub table.

2003-04-25T10:37:00.000Z

Oh You Muppet
Me and Sef are the Statler and Waldorf of Dukes, and our little culinary Nordic mate is

Unfortunately Gary the barman has left, thus depriving us of Oscar the Grouch

But which muppet are you?

2003-04-25T02:24:00.000Z

Zing Went the Thing on my Flies
Oh Bugger!!! Went to the toilet in Dukes tonite, opened my jeans .... and a metal Ben Sherman stud went pinging off Mr Crapper's finest enamel and flying across the floor. Dr Sophie told me I had put on weight (ONE STONE????), I just thought her scales were fucked. Lifestyle change needed. Lettuce anyone. With a pork pie dressing of course.

Lounge Lizards
Sef stretched his under-used silky tonsils tonite and blew them away at karaoke, and is through to the final of the camp-ego-queens-with-a-voice contest (repertoire: It Had to be You and I've Got You Under My Skin). Final's in June at Dukes, so we all have to get down there in tuxedo to fit in with his smooth dashing vocals. I want a cool-chicks-style Robert Palmer-ish Addicted to Love backing group ... he wants drag.

And next Thursday in Dukes I have finally promised, as threatened, to do My Way in French.

2003-04-23T22:40:00.000Z

Net Smoking
I've been back on the weed. Why is it that every time I try and give the foul stuff up, I hit a stress period. Well that question's easy to answer, I'm f***ing good at finding excuses, that's why. But that little, tiny insignificant espresso just demanded a ciggie with it. That Merlot wouldn't have tasted so chewy without just a little puff (story of my life in one phrase there). If you're in a bar waiting for Mr Right (or at least Mr Not Too Bad) to turn up, a fagless man looks like Billy No Mates; a man with a Marlboro Lite ain't hanging round pointlessly, he's having a fag, he's busy, occupied, socialising on his own with a tube of incendiary tobacco. You're never alone with a piece of paper wrapped round nicotine, tar and saltpetre.

OK I'm a sad bastard!!!

Annnnnnnnnnyway, in the interests of honesty, I've customised the Quitmeter to reflect the current state of affairs.

Bitful, total respect to ya! I'm just weak, WEAK I tell you. Need a fag after all that.

2003-04-23T16:58:00.000Z

Daily Telegraph v George Who?
The Old Lady of Canada Square has really done it now ... a five-page rip-out on Tuesday morning nailing George Galloway for taking Saddam's dirty dinars followed up by a lengthy dyspetic leader.

The story itself first: For the last umpteen years, the Telegraph has been accusing Saddam's regime of being a bunch of lying, mendacious, devious towel heads prepared to twist the truth any way they can that no one can trust. All the documentation they handed to the arms inspectors was a pile of pants. But Charles Moore has finally found an Iraqi document that he's prepared to believe, found, if you please, miraculously untouched in the gutted wreckage of the foreign ministry and pertaining directly to their latest bogeyman George Galloway.

Speaking to Galloway, who was in "a secret location" (or Portugal as every other paper apart from the Telegraph seemed able to find out), they got a lengthy rejoinder from said bogeyman. But he still seems set on suing them. Cool. Can't wait to see this get to court.

The Telegraph will have two possible defences: Justification and Qualified Privilege. Justification basically claims "It's all true m'lud." But the burden of proof will be on Moore to show it's true. How is he going to defend like that? Call Mohamad al Sahaf to the witness box? Or how about the intelligence officer who signed the accusing document? "Oh sorry we can't read his signature." The idea of the Telegraph calling in aid to the regime it's been slagging off for so long would be amazing.

Qualified Privilege is a funny shifting sands kinda defence. It's supposed to allow coverage of things like public meetings and some official documents that might potentially be libellous but need to be aired but don't get afforded the safer protection of Absolute Privilege (which covers court cases, public inquiry evidence and Parliament). The "qualification" is that you show some kinda public interest, the target has to have a right of reply (hence the long interview with Galloway) and you have to have made all best efforts to make sure the documents are true. This last bit will be important cos qualified privilege falls apart if the plantiff can show malice, which can mean having an axe to grind (the Telegraph? Surely not!) or just being reckless with the facts.

Galloway's problem might be that the law of libel exists to protect reputations, and you need to have a reputation to protect in the first place. A murderer would have a job winning a libel case against someone who accused him of theft. And Galloway's utterances since the war started may get in his way.

But sod the story. The Blimpish leader has left me incandescent. Leave aside the little line half way through it: "If the allegations in these documents are borne out .." IF??? IF??? You just spent five pages crucifying the bloke and bemoaning the fact that death penalty for treason has just been abolished and now you say IF! You steaming hypocrites!

Then he starts on the anti-war movement: we are "well-meaning" but "culpable", "vicious anti-Americans", we "marched in support of the kingdom's enemies .... following Galloway's lead". Our "convictions are beyond argument" (I actually kinda agree with that last bit, but not in the way the Telegraph means).

Well if we offered support to the kingdom's enemies, does that make us traitors too? Wonder how Charles Moore would feel about 1.5 milion libel writs landing on his desk. Might get a bit messy on Tower Hill if he has to execute all of us. I went to the first peace march, marched in the second and would have gone on the subsequent two if I hadn't overslept (feel a bit of a failure as a traitor for that) and far from following Galloway's lead I saw neither hide nor hair of him. If you'd asked most people on that march about Gorgeous George, MP for ~~Glasgow Kelvin~~ Baghdad Central, they'd have said "George Who? MP for where?" I marched cos I thought the war was a reckless gamble with the post-WWII world order that undermined the UN, I didn't trust the motives of Bush, I wasn't convinced by Blair's arguments and I didn't want to see Iraqi civilians blown away as collateral damage ... and I still feel the same way. Galloway didn't come into it.

For the record I think Galloway is an offensive twat, Saddam Hussein a vicious murderer who should have been overthrown years ago, and Charles Moore a politically motivated hypocrite who makes me ashamed to belong to the same profession. And if any of them want to sue me Bring It On! I'll claim Fair Comment.

2003-04-23T02:16:00.000Z

A Good Night Out
Define "a good night out"! It's when you come back home feeling a lot better than when you went out.

My first day off in god knows how long, went into town and felt like a total lemon. So wanted to be somewhere else (my head already was somewhere else). Went down to Dukes for Gary the Barman's last night before he takes over his own (straight) pub in Camberwell-ish, feeling like a duvet might be a better idea. Met Simon just back from the sticks via New St station, cheered up, then Sef turned up too. A few pints and tequilas later wandered off, met Mike back from south-east Asia - chatted, drank, talked utter bollox, chilled, tried not to wake the flat mates, etc. Home with a smile on my face listening to Mariza.

A good night out

2003-04-23T02:04:00.000Z

Template Trouble IV
Hmmmmmm it all seems to be backto normal down there (I'm even able to read Blue Witch again) ... watch this space

2003-04-19T22:33:00.000Z

Template Trouble III (The Blog Witch Project)
Obviously Blue Witch has been muttering curses against me since she couldn't access my blog for a few days. Cos now I can't access her!! She's coming through like a download, and if I try and download her ... a dead end. Even if I try a bit of lateral thinking and link via another blog, same problem.

Fully expect my cow to start giving sour milk and a three-legged owl to fly widdershins across my palm and then shit on my head tomorrow.

2003-04-19T22:16:00.000Z

Second-hand Blogging
Sef ain't been posting much lately, and by rights HE should be posting this, but it involves me so what the hell.

Ring him the other night and he tells me he's found a flat-mate. "Cool," sez I, "Who is he?" He tells me a name that rings a bell. Then he adds: "He's coming round in a minute with his BF who lives in [address provided]." The address rings an even bigger bell PLATONICALLY!!

So I tell Sef what his flat-mate does for a living and what his flat-mates's BF does for a living.

Stunned Sef sez: "How the hell do you know that?" ... "Two degrees of separation, hun."

Feel an entry coming on on gay numerology

2003-04-19T21:41:00.000Z

I Hate God
Spent all Friday stuffed in the office while the sun blazed ~~apart from sneaking the odd fag outside~~. Lancashire and Surrey were playing at the Oval, and I was keeping an eye on it on the wire service. Two red-rose centuries in one day and set for a cracking day two with an interesting declaration coming up against another great batting team (did I ever mention my straight side?). That's my Saturday planned, thinks I. Working Sunday and Monday, but a day sitting in the sun watching flanneled fools, with a couple of cans and the excuse that it's kinda sporty, my team on top, peroxide studmuffin Chris Schofield ready to come on spinning and the summer ahead of me. Almost heaven. Would almost make up for my crap work rota this Easter.

Wake up this morning ready to pack my ice box and .... feels like minus 10 outside, grey skies and a howling wind. Back to February. SAD ain't seasonally affective disorder: it's Sodding Arsehole Deity!!

2003-04-19T14:05:00.000Z

Happy Easter
Eggs at Boiling Point

2003-04-18T09:53:00.000Z

Template Troubles II
What is going on? Not only is my template still a bit wonky, but Blue Witch is ending up here every time she tries to visit me. Would ask if anyone else is having the same problem, but if you can read this then you obviously aren't.

2003-04-18T01:02:00.000Z

RIP
John Paul Getty ... art lover, cricket lover, and what a life ... he needs some peace now, bless him.

2003-04-18T00:41:00.000Z

Intros You Shouldn't Write
"I reached Paris in the summer of 1939, at the age of twenty-one. All my life I'd dreamed of coming here. A thousand times I had pictured myself as I was then, getting off the train at the Gare St Lazare. Now that the moment was finally here, it seemed to me even more glorious than anything I had imagined . This lasted about ten seconds ..."
Paul Watkins, The Forger

I used to like Paul Watkins as a writer. He chose off-beat subjects and was a good tale-teller. He could write about lumber-jacking in the Yukon, an SS volunteer in Prussia, a New England fisherman. All kinda macho Hemingway themes, but without the hormone-overload: he could carry it off by a direct writing style and an off-beat attitude. (okay a cute PR shot helped too!!) But bought his latest today and this is cliched bollocks. It is SOOOO shit. I'm so unhappy. What a waste of £5.99. In fact, sod the £5.99, I've wasted that before, what a waste of a writer. I've already seen Moulin Rouge , thank you. Sort of first paragraph that makes you think: "I could write better than that." Imagination: nil.

contd: oh god, he's even got a mad artist (a genius of course) with a Russian emigre name!

2003-04-17T22:46:00.000Z

I'm in Love with a Woman
An ex turned me on to music that dont go at 150bpm (hence previous mentions of Claude Francois, Negresses Vertes and Manu Chao), so yesterday I did what I used to do in libraries when I was a book-guzzling teenager: I ran my finger blindly along the World Music shelf in Virgin (too lazy to go as far as Tower, which has a better global selection) until I felt a twitch and grabbed the nearest thing ... got a Portuguese fado singer called Mariza. Amazing hairdo, eyes that say "I know what YOU were doing last night" and a voice that's hitting something so low down I don't think I go there very often. It's SO Celtic folk music (the real stuff ... FUCK the Dubliners ... THIS is keening) with hot Latin sunsets over pounding Atlantic storms. How can a voice be so virginal and so dirty at the same time? On the CD she has this really irritating piano accompaniment that she does NOT need. She has a voice that can do it on its own. The live second CD is mind-blowing.

She just went top of my "People You'd like to Spend an Evening With" list. And dont you dare listen to the conversation. She is SO sexy. Madonna with singing ability.

France
We don't publish on Good Fridays, so no work on Maundy Thursday. Traditionally me and my work mates all fuck off to Calais for the day to hit the restaurants, bars, and shops. Was so looking forward to a boozy day of guzzling those funny uncooked things French people eat, cheap wine, fresh coffee and packing my backpack with as much smelly cheese as any sensible customs bloke would let pass.

Got home early Wednesday night, got ready and ironed. Planned what I would wear (ok, 1. Im gay, 2. it's France!! I may have no morals, I DO have standards) Set the alarm for bright and early at 5am, jumped between the duvet covers. Closed my eyes. Couldn't sleep. Got up, faffed online, went to bed. Couldn't sleep. Got up, cleaned the flat, went to bed, couldn't sleep. Finally dropped off at about 3am, I reckon. Did I hear the alarm? Did I P&O!!! Either it never went off or I whacked it off and rolled over to go back to sleep. Woke up at midday. Literally missed the boat!! Gonna take me while to live this down. Better than when one girl at work on the same trip, an experienced traveller round East and Central Asia who would think nothing of popping from Bali to Vietnam for the weekend, couldn't get from Dover to Calais cos she'd left her passport on her mantlepiece in Streatham.

In recompense I have sat in the sunshine, drunk espresso, got quite drunk, met mates, and am now nibbling on the fat juicy leaves of a fresh Jerusalem artichoke ... hey, it's Passover, aint it? But not the same.

Bloggers of Mass Destruction
Met a professionally tecchy-minded mate tonight and told him I was a blogger.

"Oh!?!?!?" he goes, as reluctantly as a cherry-picked choir boy.

"Wassup," sez me, "Thought you'd appreciate blogging being such a tech-head."

Sez him: "Well, it's just that we regard bloggers the way Christians look at fundamentalists."

So who am I? Osama bin Brick?

2003-04-15T20:11:00.000Z

Template Troubles
'Ere, sumfink's gawn pear-shaped wiv me template, innit.

Entered the link to Sneaky DJ wrong last night (that one's right), and went into template to fix it. But it's all defaulted or something back to the way it was about a month ago: about six links are missing and the quitmeter ain't there either. But the fullpage looks fine. Tried adjusting a few things and saving the changes and republishing, but nothing happens. The template seems to be stuck in one dimension and the page in another. Oooooh, s'like an episode of Blog Trek! I'd zap my PC with a tetrion particle beam, but I'm out of batteries.

2003-04-15T01:30:00.000Z

A Different Take
Seems to be a thing lately about making highly complex bits of film in one single take.

For one there's this mad inventor car advert (from David cos I haven't got a TV so I haven't seen it live yet) which took 606 takes in a Paris warehouse and £750,000 to get right, mainly it seems cos the windscreen wiper wouldnt go properly.

Then at the weekend went to see Russian Ark at the flicks. A sumptuous wander through 300 years of the Hermitage in St Petersburg and done in a 90-minute single take. If it was just wandering through a bunch of galleries okay, but this takes in a load of historical scenes that include dancers, soldiers, the odd tsar and the occasional falling German bomb with a cast not far short of 1,000. The camera wanders through a writhing mass of mazurka dancers and seems not to hit anyone or get barged out of the way, zig-zags through ranks of Napoleonic-era soldiers without anyone saying "Ooops, pardon me, was that your foot, mind the bayonet comrade, get that lens out of my face". No idea how many rehearsals it took, but the filming, according to the blurb, took place on one day. It takes away from the film a bit, unless you're tecchy-minded, cos you keep thinking: "How are they doing this?" Blimey, if one of the dancers right at the end had tripped over her crinolines, she would NOT have been popular: "Sorry, bout that, can we do it again?"

The building itself is amazing, sweeping staircases, imperial reception rooms and candle-lit dance floors. The credits at the end included 13 wigmakers!!

The plot? Not sure there is one. A kinda ghost story. The anonymous invisible modern narrator (the eye of the camera) escorts a bizarre 19th century European diplomat through the palace, neither sure why they're there, not sure how to get out. Sometimes people see them, often they are unseen or unnoticed, explaining and commenting on what they see. Errrr that's it. There is a kinda sub-text on Russia's relationship with Europe, starting with it opening up under Peter the Great and ending just before the fall of the Romanovs, portraying the Europeans as arrogant and patronising, but it's so dream-like it doesnt really matter.

2003-04-14T19:31:00.000Z

Mainlining on Headlines
Seem to remember I told someone over the weekend I would put this on here - the best headline I never had published. It's from when I was working as a sub on a Yank newspaper in Prague, but it offended the sensibilities of our editor so we eventually after much whingeing went for something more prosaic.

Story was: a Prague businessman was off on a trip to Brno, the Czechs' second city, but died while he was there. There starts an almighty row between the family, the city authorities and the hospital over who comes and gets the body for the funeral: family saying "Well he died in Brno so you bring him back to Prague", Brno pointing that in fact "It's your man's body, he's taking up space in our morgue so you come fetch him!"

In the end, the city gets sick of this and just cremates him, prompting a new argument over what happens to the ashes. So the city eventually just wraps the urn in brown paper and string, writes the family address on it, sticks on a stamp and whacks it in a mail box. The package gets lost.

The headline: The Czech is in the Post

A few weeks later I tried to take into account our editor's predilection for dead straight headlines when a murdered man was found outside a church. He didn't like this one either: Corpse found in Graveyard but had to tie himself in loops justifying why not, falling back on the old "Cos I'm the editor!!!" ploy.

Never come between a copy editor and his headline if you value your life: they are our chance to put a bit of creativity in our lives and cause some of the bitterest rows in newsrooms. A headline should sell the story, make you want to read on, even (especially?) if its 750 words of inconsequential, badly written knob cheese about spot rates of the Polish zloty written by people much better paid than the copy editor. (oooops, do I sound bitter?) We have to read this tosh. At least the dear reader has a choice. The headline is our chance to have some fun.

One boss on my current paper was in a "This is How it Should be Done" mood and took it on themselves to write some headlines. On a story about 3G mobile telephony in Mediterranean countries, they managed to get Italian and WAP in the same headline. I switched it before it got printed and have preserved the page proof, despite the boss practically chasing me round the office to get it back.

2003-04-14T18:40:00.000Z

Gum Counter
Been masticating the same piece of Extra gum in my mouth for four hours now. Zero taste; as a way of freshening breath think it may even be counter-productive by now; and I may have even managed to chew out all the stickiness as well. It's as near dead as a piece of tree extract and aspartamine can be. But I'm still chewing. It's so clay-like in my mouth, I'm fashioning it into little shapes with teeth and tongue: done the little ball, the long thin tube, the really thin flat shape and just managed a little bow-tie thing ... moving onto Michelangelo's David next.

Four hours may be a record for me. Might have done it longer when clubbing, but usually manage to swallow it in mid-pogo after just an hour or two.

Have a challenge ahead as I'm just heading for the canteen in a tick ... now do I keep it in while I eat or am I allowed to stick it under my keyboard while I lunch? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

2003-04-14T00:20:00.000Z

Correction
After my musings on my immigrant boyfriends last week, I have been asked by one of my readers to point out that I have in fact been out with TWO Germans. The Brick wishes to apologise for this confusion but in his defence would like to know why said Teutonic complainant never pointed this status out at the time. Anyone else wishing to claim a previous relationship with me can apply at the usual address providing evidence.

Bush's March to the Sea
William Tecumseh Sherman marched through Georgia (torching Atlanta and most of the South on the way) to the sea, effectively ending the American Civil War and simultaneously writing the plot for Gone with the Wind.
Now George W Rumsfeld seems intent on repeating this coup and marching through Syria to the Mediterranean. After accusing Syria earlier of ferrying high-tech equipment to Baghdad, the latest charge is that they are harbouring fleeing Ba'athists and Saddam's nearest and dearest. Dubyah has now hurled his Iraqi casus belli in the face of Damascus: "You've got WMDs."

Is his millennial cabinet on some kinda war high? Are they thinking: "We missed out on Baghdad in 1991, we ain't going to miss Damascus in 2003."?

Lawrence Eagleburger, part-time Secretary of State to Bush Mk I and deffo no bleeding heart liberal, has said George II woud face impeachment if he tried to take on Assad head to head. Pissed off that:
1. I'm finding myself on the same side as Eagleburger, and
2. I think he's wrong.

2003-04-11T14:04:00.000Z

Lazy Entry
German court orders brothel to refund sex bill
BERLIN, April 11 (Reuters) - A German court has ordered a brothel to reimburse a man charged for sex he could not remember having, after the establishment failed to provide an itemised receipt for services rendered.
"The brothel failed to provide concrete documentation of the prices and services provided," said court spokesman Vera Huth in the western town of Duesseldorf on Friday.
"They should have, for example, listed two sexual intercourse sessions at 600 euros, oral sex at 300 euros or anal sex at 400 euros a go,"she said.
The man told the court he had been too drunk to remember what sexual services he may have ordered at the brothel in Kaarst. The establishment charged him 9,000 euros on his credit card. The brothel owner testified he had ordered the "full programme".

So Far I've Saved ....
.... enough for a salami ciabatta toasted sandwich and a black coffee at Cafe Italia.

2003-04-10T22:22:00.000Z

Will Power
Two left in a pack of Marlboro Lites. In the bin with them and pour some coffee grounds over them so I can't go sneaking back in to the kitchen to pull them out (addicts can be soooo sneaky). Open the Nicorettes. Peel off the tacky backing. Roll up sleeve and SLAP. It's on. Realise it's only half an hour to bed time so peel it off again. I dont want nicotine dreams. Try and neatly replace the tacky backing til morning in case some poor clean-living fly lands on it and ends up with a raging fag addiction.

I reached the point again where I wasn't getting any enjoyment out of smoking. All I was getting was morning breath at 5pm. So giving up again. Getting good at it.
The fag counter is courtesy of bitful so I can calculate how close I am to being able to afford those loose covers.

How long will I last this time? Place your bets

2003-04-10T00:11:00.000Z

Proctology 101
Checking my hits, I found that one Yahoo search that pulled up my name had been looking for "Military Bend-Over Exam". Blimey! What kind of people are reading this?

In my defence, "military" came from my entry on Gulf War jargon, "bend over" from my treatise on inadequate barmen's jeans, and "exam" came from me talking about Sef's college life ... cos I wouldnt talk about things like that, would I!!?

Think maybe this nightmare was what they were looking for ... if this is true (hmmmm?), I have a whole new respect for those lads in the Gulf.

2003-04-09T00:50:00.000Z

Long Distance Relationships
Anyone who knows me knows I have a thing about foreigners as boyfriends. Maybe it's cos I'm a glutton for foreign languages, maybe it's cos there's nothing like seeing your own city through such other-focussed eyes, maybe it's a fetish for difference, or maybe I've been lucky and met some really sweet people who don't happen to share the same nationality as me. A Czech, an Irishman, a German, when I lived abroad I had to go out with an Englishman. And one totally unique French man! All of them have shown me new things, all have made me a different person (whether in good ways or bad ways), all have increased my lexicon of swearwords (putain bordel sa race de merde!!).

But since me and Stephane split, there's only been three men who have expanded my irises: an Irishman who lives in Dublin, an Englishman who bogged off to Kuwait three days later and a Belgian from Antwerp. My new chat-up line: "Show us yer passport, big boy!"

Why aren't my hormones governed by my tube pass?

2003-04-09T00:26:00.000Z

Told You I'd Do It
Me messaging Fellow Blogger: Might go out, might stay in and clean the flat.
Fellow Blogger: Surely you should have someone round to clean for you, after your earlier admission.
Me: Which admission? I make so many!! Confession is good for whatever soul I have left: was it the "my flat's a total tip and I cant be bothered doing anything about it cos Im a lazy t**t" admission, or the "I would really like a little Czech house boy" admission.
Fellow Blogger: You'll be glad that none of those have gone into the comments box too ;)
Me: I'll do it then *heheh*

2003-04-07T22:51:00.000Z

Does he Mean Us?
Old joke: The Times is read by the people who run the country, the Telegraph is read by the people who used to run the country, the Guardian is read by people who know how the country should be run, the FT is read by the people who own the country, and the Sun is read by peope who like big tits.

Despite being just about everything the Telegraph despises (Irish catholic Scouse gay leftie), I love it like I love the granny in that ice cream advert: "He's not yer dad! We never knew who yer dad was!" It's like an aged and slightly incontinent relative trying to keep up with modern life, despite being a wee bit out of synch with everything around it, and oozing repressed anger and frustration at the fact that no one is listening to its sage advice.

It was the first paper I read cos my parents had it delivered (in their defence they veered between the Telegraph, the Times, the Express and the Grauniad ... but loathed the Mail). I love the obits of incredibly brave WWII officers who laboured under ridiculous nicknames. I love the broadsheet pretensions that run alongside its tabloid nose for sensational gossip. One ex flat mate carried on an increasingly angry email exchange with the letters editor about some of the more extreme homophobic views expressed on his pages, espy one that said gay-bashing was our fault cos we were so uppity and always demanding rights. Letters editor said he was just reflecting readers' opinions (though he never published one of my flat mate's missives). I just reckon it's nice to know what the enemy thinks.

But the front page of a scabbed early first edition of Tuesday's Telegraph is a classic. Its splenetic militaro-phile defence guru Sir John Keegan rails in big friendly 24pt letters against his fellow hacks: "The brave young servicemen who have risked their lives to bring down Saddam have every reason to feel there is something corrupt about their home-based media."

Meanwhile, the width of an m-rule away: Major guilty of TV cheating

... and just noticed
Its front page pic (used by other nationals this morning) is a bunch of Doughboys hanging out chez Saddam, one lounging in a Louis Quatorze fauteuil (or sumfink from Baghdad Ikea). Now maybe its just poor reproduction (the picture NOT the chair!!), but it looks like the seated one has got one fag dangling from his lounging right hand while he takes a drag on another. And look at the expression on his face. They're passing round a spliff! Goooooood Mooooooooooorning, Baghdad!

2003-04-05T23:36:00.000Z

Kelvin's Night
Friday night went to the charity do at the RVT to raise money for the Bodley Scott cancer ward at Barts, which treated Kelvin before he died last year. So good, but was so knackered (even fell asleep in the bath after work before I went down. But miss this night? No Way!). Only half packed as a usual Sunday (poss because QX forgot to put the advert in). Maybe better like that for those there, but could have been more. Ran into a few RVT ex-regulars who have stopped coming cos it has gotten so out of hand, but they turned up espy for the night. Talked about Kelvin, got a bit moist at one point, but mainly had a great time.

Edna was better than I've seen him for so long ... voice-wise and gob-wise. "Bodley Scott Ward was named after an aged queen working on the ward who passed away one night from shock after one of the patients said 'thank you'." There was Karen, there was Dusty, there was Robbie, there was Edna playing his groupies like a violin ... there was vocal pyrotechnics that had people shaking their heads as to why Jonathan is still playing a (and I say this lovingly) total dive in a sarf London backwater.

Some eejit tried to out-heckle him and even threw water on stage!!! Suicidal. Jonathon can base entire acts on hecklers off the top of his head like Venus Williams sending back Anna Kournikova backhands. The scene ended with a plebiscite of the audience, who threw heckler out ... the only sour note of the whole evening.

All door money went to Barts and the bar staff agreed to match every pound we made on the gate ... 'spect.

Benn asked by a couple of people for a snap of Kelvin. Got one from Byron, but it's a scan from a QX pic from the RVT 18 months ago in some strange format. I can't convert it to go on here cos our grafix boys at work are so tied up with some war going on I can't get within Cruise range of a Mac. But it's available on request by email.

Zeal of a Convert
OK I'm still relatively new to this, but I'm shocked to learn via Mike that as a good (ex)Catholic boy I never realised the Vatican was trying to find a patron saint of the internet. At last. I had been reduced previously when trying to download Java on Windows XP to praying to St Jude, patron saint of lost causes. Now I know there's going to be a heavenly Help Desk to go to. Errrr, somehow that doesn't fill me with divine inspiration!!

"Dear Lord, we your children beseech you to intercede in this time of conflict for peace, harmony and universal love"
"Have you tried rebooting it? ...I'll log your call and we'll get back to you. Sorry, were you Mac or PC?"

The Vatican seems to have three potential downloads in mind for this post, but is still haggling with the Almighty over which is compatible):

We have St Isidore of Seville, the establishment candidate and a boring twat by the looks of it with a huge Reuters terminal handbook on his lap in that pic; St Clare of Assisi in the middle, a nun believed to have seen visions on a wall, so the K candidate there: and St Gabriel as a fancied outsider, the bloke who turned up to a virgin one night for a divine shag then fucked off never to be seen again - the Gaydar candidate.

2003-04-03T14:46:00.000Z

Naff Line of the Night
Mate: You fancy a falafel?
Me: I thought you were monogamous.

2003-04-03T02:56:00.000Z

The First Blogger Casualty of the War? (and the last I hope)
Producer Stuart Hughes was covering the war in Northern Iraq for the BBC. He has been injured but his cameraman was killed.

Also heard nothing from Salam Pax in a week since the Coalition started hitting Baghdad infrastructure rather than just military targets. Hopefully it's just the phone lines gone down.

2003-04-02T16:54:00.000Z

Kelvin
This is such a cool idea. The RVT is having a charity night on Friday in memory of Kelvin Woolacott. Proceeds from the night will be donated to the Bodley Scott Cancer Ward, St Bart's Hospital. He died after contracting cancer at just 34 this time last year. Possibly the smiliest, cutest, sweetest, friendliest, Prague-lovingest (and on occasion one of the most RVT'd) people I have ever known. He used to stand right at the front of the stage trying to peer at the play list Edna had blu-tacced to her speaker then mouth the next song title at me. It'll be Sunday DJ regulars and Edner-er on stage - 9pm until 2am.

After his funeral last Easter (gay vicar and lots of Kylie), there was a wake at the Tavern. Jason cleaned the place up, put out tables with white tablecloths on and little finger buffet sandwiches. His family, work friends and Vauxhall friends (and the gay vicar in a tight blue Tshirt) all packed in there. Mike his boyfriend held it together for a very moving speech and his dad spoke well too. Then Edna sang three of his favourite songs ... the last one was her every-week encore, Dusty Springfield You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, at which point I had to go an sit on telly-tubby hill for a bit. And there was dancing.

Some people are just brilliant to know and it's sad you never knew them better. Nashle, Zlato.

2003-04-02T16:31:00.000Z

Decongested Bank Account
Just had a letter from work telling me I'm getting a nice little £400 pay rise to cover the expense of the congestion charge. Do I have a car? I do not! Environmentally friendly suggestions on how to spend this needed.

2003-04-01T19:20:00.000Z

Marlboro Heavy
Dunno if anyone has noticed but I've not been mentioning giving up smoking for a while. This is because I've been puffing away like an emphysemic traction engine for the last few weeks. Even staying with my non-smoking family didn't help that much. Didn't help at all really, apart from the fags being cheaper up there.

One mate tells me, as I blow smoke in his face, that I'm doubly weak - weak for giving into the nicotine-fascist health-maniac lobby in the first place, then extra weak for lapsing again.

But I have my box of patches at the ready, I'm cutting down on my vists to the office smoking room and packing my sports bag ready for the gym (okay, let's not take this too far).

Then I grab a horse out of the Grand National sweepstake at work. Wanted Youllneverwalkalone ... inevitably I end up with Malborough!! Top handicap cos he'll have to carry 11st-12lb, so hardly Marlborough Lite. And he fell at the first last year so I'm gonna be in the pub on Saturday anyway.

2003-03-31T20:40:00.000Z

In Code
Already registered my irritation at sanctimonious American codenames: Iraqi Freedom, Provide Comfort; Uphold Democracy, Get the Oil etc.

First off, it turns out the Brit soldiers don't call the war Iraqi Freedom, they call it Operation Telic - an obscure ancient Greek word meaning "aim" that shows classicism ain't dead in the upper echelons of the military. And over the crackling UK radios you will hear reference to Operation James and code names Goldfinger, Blofeld, Pussy Galore and Connery - showing that further down the ranks they are not reading Homer.

2003-03-31T20:18:00.000Z

Barmen's Jeans
Being a plastic Paddy, I've been known to respond to the question: "How was your night out?" by answering: "It was good craic." Sometimes a better answer might be: "It was good crack."

Builder's bum is as iconic an image as the saucy seaside postcard (and about as tasteful), but never thought of hod carriers as being fashion gurus. Yet half the staff in my fave gay bars seem to think it's a look. So every time they bend over to pick up a glass or yank a bottle of Bacardi Breezer from that oh-so-low chill cabinet you get an eyeful.

The discreet look: just the band of a pair of Calvins peeking coyly over the belt;
The grungy look: really baggy jeans half way down their arse revealing about 6 inches of knitted boxer;
The undercover commando look: just enough flesh at the top of the belt to tell you the wearer ain't wearing anything else;
The crack of doom look: enough cheek above the belt for the whole bar to know he ain't wearing anything else;
The starfish look: nuff said.

One Sunday barman in Dukes has been know to veer uncontrollably between the last two, with the occasional mitigation of wearing a jock strap instead of undies, like that's going to hide anything in a crisis! It's gross but fascinating watching him trying to hoik them up constantly, and seeing if they will eventually just slip that final millimeter too far and just tumble round his knees. Think someone might have had a word with him, cos last night he was fully zipped up.

Was John Major a gay barman?

2003-03-31T19:51:00.000Z

Rumsfeld-ism of the Week

I missed this while I was away, but wanna get it down anyway:

"There are no knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns - that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know but there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns."

Marvellous.

2003-03-30T21:07:00.000Z

Chez Moi
Lugged me luggage out of Euston station after three hours wondering whether the cutest of the four laddites next to me was gay, and found Euston underground closed ... too knackered to even wonder whether it was a strike, Sarin nerve gas attack or just a jape by Tube staff at my expense. Schlepped over to Warren Street, home, slamed door, emptied rubbish bin that had been festering for five days and showered.

After a week of ultimate straightness and wondering why half my nephews and nieces think I'm scary and the other half think Im a mad loon, I'm off to drag Sef away from his exam books (poor lamb) and head for Dooks to see if the barman's jeans actually fall down this week.

More later, and I apologise in advance for the drunken spelling.

2003-03-28T00:59:00.000Z

Children
Thank god they've finally gone to sleep, little !"£$%^& darlings. I am now officially Walter Matthau.

I've spent the day tripping over carrycots slapped down in front of sinks and portable dinosaur-shaped see-saws cluttering up passageways. I've been told to keep quiet unless I wake them with no thought that they're gonna wake me up at 4am and no one's gonna tell them to shut up. My younger sister has spent the day ordering me round in that "I'm a mother and you don't understand if you haven't got kids" tone of voice. Me pointing out that I was her older brother and could still claim the right to pull her hair did not cheer her up. I finally snapped to her husband: "You married her, why is it ME getting the flak?" Oh god and there's three more coming on Sunday.

It's far too stressful at the moment to enjoy being dropped right back into the middle of my own family's gene pool. Dad should be pinned tomorrow.

2003-03-27T01:59:00.000Z

Back Home
After a while if not estranged from my family then certainly semi-detached, I'm back in the middle of the domestic stuff. Got off the train at Runcorn and was squeezed into the back of me sister's Golf with her two young ones: an attention-seeking two-year old with no volume control and a two-month-old baby with the hardest stare I have ever seen. and his attention was fixed on me!! "You're the most interesting thing in my limited field of view," he semed to be saying, "and Im gonna be amused by you until something more brightly coloured and fluffy comes along or until i decide to start screaming ... I may even puke over you." Thought they couldn't focus until they were older ... this one can!

Went straight to Whiston Hospital to see dad. What a dump! Had to find a wheel chair in A&E to ferry my mum around in, and it was in a state. You know those bits of furniture that people leave outside their flats on the off chance that someone might swipe them ... looked a bit like that, frayed, battered and scratched. At least it moved in a fairly straight line. My sister says some of them go like demented shopping trolleys.

He's on a trauma ward with five other people: one young lad in a half-body cast (dunno what happened to him ... yet), two behind closed curtains, and two older blokes having their own personal conversations with God. The state they were in it looked like they had better start breaking the ice with Him as soon as possible.

Dad is fairly doped up with pain killers .... and we aren't talking paracetamol. He's never really been sick since his ulcer 25 years ago and not seen him in a hospital bed before. Is there an antonym for hyperchondriac? That's him! He wanted to get up and walk around! I know he's getting on, but it's sobering seeing someone so strong laid out like that. Actually it's not sobering, it's scary. Have had more than my fair share of hospital visits in the last two years, but even the closest friend on a ward doesn't have the same impact as seeing a parent in NHS green pyjamas.

He was slipping down the plastic-lined bed and I was having to help him push himself back up to get comfy. Not a nurse in sight and I'm no expert on moving people with fractures. From what i could see, the nursing staff could happily work in a London gay bar ... probably Rupert Street and I'm not talking about their looks.

Hopefully he'll get his leg pinned Friday and be on his feet again next week. Sounds optimistic to me but that's what people tell me

After the car trip and seeing dad, I shot straight to the hospital shop to get a pack of 20. Guess what ... dont stock them. Felt like chewing on a patch.

2003-03-26T03:34:00.000Z

Introducing ...
Dead Naked Butler ... aka Sef. I've persuaded someone to join the blogging community so get linking and you'll end up with his version of our adventures.

Also ...
wanna link to Salam Pax (as seen in Monday's Guardian). I know some think he has an agenda of his own, but people who I trust since I first read him from a link from Troubed Diva credit what he says and any alternative view has merit. Plus as a professional word-person, it's f***ing hard to keep up a verbal persona that intensely that long.

2003-03-24T19:55:00.000Z

Family
Blogging might be a bit infrequent this week on account of my dad having a fall and breaking his leg two days before my mum goes into hossie to have her hip done. So I'm off up to Liverpool (with laptop).

Dad was fishing a plastic bag out of a tree with my mum's walking stick (WHY??) while simultaneously chatting to a neighbour and he slipped. Now he's gonna need to borrow my mum's stick for a bit. Dr Mum gave me some tecchy medical explanation of what he's done, but it's basically the knobbly bit at the top of his femur has been "impacted" down on to the straight bit of the bone underneath. It's not moving around so it's not hurting too much apparently. It's going to be pinned and he'll be out in a few days.

Mum's hip is a long-standing thing and will be hip number two. This will not be pleasant and she will be immobilised for at least three weeks. She's very wound up about it and I was going to be heading home this weekend anyway. It should be "routine", but when you're 70-plus is there such a thing as "routine" major surgery? On the other hand there's nothing worse than having a doctor for a patient so I have a fair bit of sympathy for the nurses once she's come round.

2003-03-24T17:48:00.000Z

Age of Enlightenment
Thousands of visitors to the Tate Modern are left ooohing and aaaahing at what a wonderful idea it was to convert Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's power station into an art gallery ...

... until a power cut shut it yesterday.

2003-03-24T01:36:00.000Z

Three Punchy Syllables
So the war's gonna be officially called Operation Iraqi Freedom ... but what we're gonna remember in 10 years' time is Shock and Awe. Unhappily it looks like I get my "three punchy syllables".

On Friday night the whole newsroom froze while we watched the Baghdad blitz, not out of purely cynical we'll-watch-anything curiosity ... we were gobsmacked by the intensity. One impact threw up a huge flash and mushroom cloud. We didnt think it was a stray nuke - the cameraman was still filming rather than incinerated - but it caused a few gasps and at least one sob.

And now the first journos appear to have died ... shot by their "own side"? From what I hear, the crews out there are going round in heavily marked cars and don't really resemble T-71 tanks. The Americans especially have been making some nasty indirect threats to those reporters not embedded with the miltary, along the lines of: "If we mistake your satellite broadcasting signal for an Iraqi anti-aircraft radar beam and we drop a cruise missile on you, it ain't our fault!" If they catch you where they don't want you, they might arrest you and take away your accreditation - which would mean the next flight home (if there were any!).

Over the past 10 years it's estimated 366 journalists (and that's only until 2002) have been killed in the line of duty worldwide, 134 of them in Europe and the former Soviet Union. Of these journalists, 26 died in Croatia and 21 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. One colleague, Sander Thoenes, was shot by the Indonesian army in East Timor.

Shocking and awful.

????
Just listening to the Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri being interviewed on the World Service in Egypt ... with I Will Survive blasting out of what sounds a club speaker behind him.

2003-03-22T21:46:00.000Z

Sounds of Compton Street
Sitting having a coffee in the sun, I hear:
- The traffic cone bugler: this homeless lad unable to afford a comb and hankie or more traditional instrument has grabbed a traffic cone and plays a selection of camp classics (Go West, Abba) and Tijuana Brass;
- Some busking opera singer blasting out an aria somewhere;
- Two hard-looking skinheads complete with cherry red DMs, half-mast tight bleached jeans and Fred Perry's sit down next to me. Sez one to the other: "You wearing lipstick?" Sez the other: "Yeah, but its mostly rubbed off now."

2003-03-21T02:49:00.000Z

I mention my mate Sef quite a bit, but in case you've not met him (or me) , here's a snap of the two of us in Dukes, passing comment on the world as it passes by.

2003-03-20T19:31:00.000Z

No More War
One final word on You Know What. War has overtaken sex, Britney and travel as the most well-used internet search word, says Freeserve. So much for war making men of us.

2003-03-20T18:46:00.000Z

Branding the War
This new-born war needs a name. Something to boost morale, put fire in our bellies for the fight ahead ... yet not make us burst out laughing at self-righteous US propagandising.

Gulf War One was Desert Shield morphing into Desert Storm. Headline writer's dream: three simple punchy syllables like Overlord. Afghanistan was dubbed Enduring Freedom (after Infinite Justice was vetoed on the demarcation grounds that infinite justice was god's responsibility not Dubyah's): doesnt really stick in the mind so much, too wordy. No news I've heard yet on the logo for Gulf War Two.

Codenames were originally meant to keep secret what the military were up to in case the enemy were eavesdropping ... now they are practically marketing tools. When the US invaded Panama, the original code name was Blue Spoon. It was changed at the last minute when it was realised it might not be nice for a bereaved mother to say her son died in Blue Spoon. It became Just Cause and the Pentagon started to take seriously what it called its wars.

The Pentagon actually has guidelines on choosing codenames: names must not "express a degree of bellicosity inconsistent with traditional American ideals or current foreign policy"; not be "offensive to good taste or derogatory to a particular group, sect or creed"; not be "offensive to allies or other Free World nations"; and not employ "exotic words, trite expressions or well known commercial trademarks".

Working on the ideal three punchy syllable rule, any suggestions on operational names: Where's the Oil? Get Saddam? Sand, Sand, Sand?

... and Brand Blair
Of all the naff surveys that pile up in newsrooms, this one is a bit special. Asked by the Brand Council to match up famous people with well-known brands, a survey group put David Beckahm with Adidas, Delia Smith with Oxo and Tony Blair with ... Anadin

2003-03-20T04:33:00.000Z

It's all started - the air campaign anyway. The war is 90 mins old. Already rung work, but they don't need me to go in. Wish they had cos there's no way I'm going to sleep now. At the moment I would just make the tea. Got a colleague in Kuwait, and a friend cruising round the DMZ ... thinking of them both.

2003-03-19T17:28:00.000Z

Green Fingers
With the sun out and a day off looming, finally turned to the garden. Hardly looked at it since I moved in three months ago so it's had a winter of accumulating dead leaves and crud.

It's mainly a paved patio with a small flower bed and a shed, not huge but all mine. Plan to cover it in pots and gro-bags reay for the barbecue season. So out with the brush and cleaned up all the muck so I could see what was out there: couple of rose bushes, some brambles, a green spreading thing I can't identify, tonnes of ivy, a huge pile of roofing felt, several cruddy items of garden furniture, 10m wood-lice and a crack bottle!?!?!?! If that was chucked over the wall, maybe there's something I should know about my neighbours, or maybe the previous owners of my flat were more "interesting" than they appeared. No more clearing until I get some very heavy duty gloves in case of any more pointed surprises.

Got one little burst of colour - a single daffodil sticking out of the green morass of undergrowth so I'm clearing round it to keep it there as long as possible. Need to hit the garden centre at the weekend to get a hoe and a few gallons of weed killer.

2003-03-19T15:35:00.000Z

Short Stories
Sick of those John Grisham novels that could prop open doors? Don't fancy spending the rest of your life ploughing through an oodleplex of pages by Proust? Think Stevie Smith once got away with a one-word candidate for the world's shortest poem for those living life in a rush, but
Augusto Monterroso seems to have got story-writing down to a headline writer's art.

The Dinosaur
When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.

Interesting plot, character development leaves a bit to be desired.

2003-03-18T18:49:00.000Z

Food Fight
Pissed off by the intransigent cheese-eaters in the UN, the US House of Representatives' canteen renamed French fries "freedom fries" (Followed by freedom letters? Freedom toast? Freedom kissing sounds fun) by planning to send George W.Bush pretzels. They want to dispatch a massive parcel of the snacks that caused Bush to choke and faint last year.

Self-confessed junk-foodie Chirac will then presumably be bombarded by special forces armed with Pop Tarts.

2003-03-17T22:27:00.000Z

So stuck in Crash with all those tops-off sweaty lads, bobbling up and down to the "upfront, uplifting house" when a naggingly familiar melody started coming over the beat. Turned to Sef: "Human League?", "Yup!", "Love Action?", "Yup!", "Cool!"

2003-03-17T21:25:00.000Z

Chemical Reaction
Decided not to go to Chemistry last night, even though I've ended up in there every Sunday since it started after a few drinks in Dukes. And Sef agreed it would be a VERY bad idea.

"Just a quick drink in Dukes! We are NOT going to Chemistry"
"Dead right. No way am I going this week!"
"Not after last week, no chance!"
"And Ian, Jan and Peter aren't going either!"
"It took me all week to recover!"
"I'm low on cash and working tomorrow"
"Is the barman giving out free tickets?"
"Yeah, I'll get some shall I?"

2003-03-17T21:18:00.000Z

Newspaper Wars
In the last Gulf war, Peter Snow had his Newsnight sandpit to leap around in: "Here's the 1st Armoured Division SWEEPING up the Basra Road, while the Tornadoes will be going low over Baghdad just there, and here's my bucket and spade ... whoops!"

Dunno if that particular icon is gonna be resurrected for this war from its berth in the Imperial War Museum (I'm not joking), but we have just got the equivalent in our office: three photocopier-enlarged sheets of the Times Atlas map of Iraq on sandy-coloured (ok FT pink then!!) A3 paper. Bring on Saddam! We've got this hi-tech warfare thing sussed!

2003-03-16T08:30:00.000Z

In Praise of Bacon Butties
You're just in from clubbing. Your ears are tingling from the music, your knees are wobbbly from the dancing. What do you do first? Grab a shower to get rid of the dancey sweat? Hit the sack to rest those tired contact-lens-welded eyes? Put on a nice bit of funky jazz to chill out to?

Nope! You run straight into the kitchen, whip out the frying pan and lash in three rashers of smoked back bacon. Hack off a few slices of doorstep-thick fresh white (deffo not brown) bread and smear them with brown sauce. Turn the bacon and put a few slices of tomato on top of them so they'll warm through and just start to go soft and sweet. When the bacon is just shy of going crispy, slap the rashers on the bread and grind on loadsa black pepper. Then squash the bread so the dripping oozes out the sides of the crusts. Eat. Big mug of tea optional. Repeat as necessary.

Next week: chokkie bikkies as a hangover cure

2003-03-15T21:33:00.000Z

Sorted
It was the template I was using from Enetation, presumably one sent in by a subscriber by the looks of it, either corrupted or booby-trapped. Changed the template and suddenly I'm back in touch with the world. So now I've picked a new one and gone all pastel shades of violet ... a bit pukey but at least it's mostly working. Anyone who wants to click on Comment and tell me what a load of botox I'm writing, please feel free.

2003-03-15T15:17:00.000Z

No Comment
My comment thingy has gone haywire ... anyone trying to leave me a missive finds that whatever they write is changed when they hit the post button into "People I love."

I swear this is not me being all touchy feely, just a tecchy fuck-up somewhere .. but the original of the source code that I thought I had saved in my emails has disappeared (ie I deleted it in a clean-out I had last week probably). Trying to get Enetation on the case ... but it's silence for the moment.

2003-03-12T01:10:00.000Z

Rambling Sid Rumsfeld
Despite living in fear of getting categorized as a Category One blogger, I feel like starting an occasional series on the sayings of the Secretary of Offense, starting with his thoughts on Tony Blair's difficulties with his elected representatives:

"[The UK's] situation is distinctive to their country and they have a government that deals with a parliament."

I'm sorry, I must have dropped off somewhere ... so when did they abolish Congress?

And who called modern warfare impersonal. Here's that snap of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam.

Im sorry but this begs for a good old fashioned caption competition. Or maybe someone did it already with Low humour:

"The scum of the earth, I believe" ... "The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?"

I'm in a mood okay!!

2003-03-11T20:59:00.000Z

Wearing T-Shirts is (Usually) not Enough ... Pt 1
This story got a li'l bit of global publicity last week ...

A shopper at a mall near Albany, NY, was arrested and charged with trespassing because he refused to take off a T-shirt he was wearing that bore the messages, "Peace on Earth" and "Give Peace a Chance." The T-shirt was purchased at a kiosk in the same mall from which he was punted, reported the Albany Times-Union.

Steve Downs, 60, was sitting in the food court of the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland with his son Roger, 31, (who was wearing a T-shirt that read "Let Inspections Work") when they were approached by two security guards. The father and son were told to either remove the offending attire, leave the mall or face arrest.

Roger, an ecologist, removed his T-shirt. Steve, the Albany director for New York state's Commission on Judicial Conduct, declined to do so. Guilderland police were called and Downs was arrested for "trespassing" in a public place, handcuffed and booked.

WTSI(U)NE Pt 2
There followed major protests outside the shopping centre and so the management sacked the security guard, reports the Albany TU ... only for it to appear he only did it under orders from his manager.

Sez the security guard: "I was just going to follow orders. I guess that when it comes down to it, it's the people who sign the paperwork who get the blame, not the people who told you to do it."

Think we'll be hearing that line a bit more.

2003-03-10T20:08:00.000Z

Section 28 Vote
Sure everyone knows the result by now, but exactly which one of this pictured lovely couple is Margaret Thatcher?

Scary, Scarier & Scariest
I'm old enough and ugly enough to realise that there are plenty of people out there who take exception to my "lifestyle" and that a lot of them have access to a keyboard and a broadband line and some even have the brain cell needed to operate them. But stumbling across these three "sites" in the space of the last couple of few days has set me thinking about the difference between the various types of online homophobia they seem to fall into.

There are the rabid churchies; then comes the
mad loner; and discreetly bringing up the rear is the
pseudo-professional.

Of the three of them I find the last one, the most "respectable", the scariest. The first two I don't dismiss, they can do a lot of damage and cause a lot of pain, but you can see them coming. They both also raise the question of how can people who say they hate fags spend SO much time thinking about the mechanics of gay sex.

But the third? After reading the fake rationality, the psycho-babble and the gentle-sounding jargon delivered with a nice, family-doctor bedside manner, I felt a lot more disturbed than by the fire-and-brimstone hate of the others. While they try to intmidate you into submission, this one tries to persuade: but his world view is as cliched as theirs. "And no one - not even a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, sexually insecure "homophobe" - is nearly so hard on him as he is on himself." And who says YOU aren't just a homophobe in a suit, my dear doctor.

Blast from the Past
A Labour government about to fall apart led by a right-wing-ish PM with a reputation for cynical manipulation, America getting involved in neo-colonial adventures in far-off inhospitable places, trying to drag the Brits in with them and having rows with the Russians, and peace marches everywhere ... it must be the 1960s.

And in the interests of this retro feel, thought I might disinter another Sixties echo, Tom Lehrer. Prob most famous for stuff like the Vatican Rag and the Masochism Tango.

But the lyrics to Send in the Marines could be run as a soundtrack to some of the pics on Newsnight lately. And then there's this one, while this one has nothing to do with war but I just like it.

Can we book him for the next march please??

Word Love
Neil in Kazbar: If there's such a thing as paedophilia, Im a paedophobe cos I cant stand kids.
Me next to him: If there's such a thing as homophobia, then would homophilia be different from homosexuality?
Neil: Yeah, it means I like you, but Im not going to have sex with you.

2003-03-08T15:19:00.000Z

The 9.15pm Puzzle, in
honour of Diamond
Geezer's Birthday

How many years of its sentence did this Salvador Dali painting serve in high-security Riker's Island jail, New York, before making a break for freedom last weekend?

Answer

Radio Waves
Saturday afternoon. Nice lie-in after a knackering but nice week. Just chilling out with a coffee, a keyboard and the sound of the washing machine behind me. Also got the radio turned on and am starting to learn the beauty of radio plays. There's a Radio4/American version of On the Waterfront and I'm gripped ... slow to get going because you have to turn your imagination switch on and you need a different concentration from seeing it through your eyes, and it feels more low-key from the Brando/Steiger "I could have been a contender" histrionics of the Elia Kazan film, but just heard the priest's "crucifixion" speech (Bruce Davison from Longtime Companioninstead of Karl Malden) and it made my afternoon.

My Way-ish
Got a bet with some mates in Dukes that I will one day do karoke ... My Way - but in French (You had to be there!). I've heard the original Comme d'Habitude by Claude Francois a coupla times, but heard the music rather than the words so I downloaded them last night. Wow!

The Sinatra words fit the melancholy tune and the upbeat defiant ending more neatly, but the French lyrics are bizarre, about longing, a dead relationship and the dead hand of routine. Where Frank's "I took the blows" climax is like a shout against the world of "I will go on", Francois's "We will pretend, We will make love, We will pretend" is more like an explosion of frustration and anger against the singer himself and another person shouting "I can't go on".

Comme d'Habitude
Je m' lève et je te bouscule, tu ne te réveilles pas comme d'habitude sur toi je remonte le drap
J'ai peur que tu aies froid comme d'habitude ma main caresse tes cheveux
Presque malgré moi comme d'habitude mais toi tu me tournes le dos comme d'habitude.
Alors je m'habille très vite, je sors de la chambre comme d'habitude tout seul je bois mon café
Je suis en retard comme d'habitude sans bruit je quitte la maison
Tout est gris dehors comme d'habitude j'ai froid, je relève mon col comme d'habitude.
Comme d'habitude, toute la journée je vais jouer à faire semblant
Comme d'habitude je vais sourire, comme d'habitude je vais même rire
Comme d'habitude, enfin je vais vivre, comme d'habitude.
Et puis le jour s'en ira moi je reviendrai comme d'habitude, toi, tu seras sortie
Pas encore rentrée comme d'habitude tout seul j'irai me coucher
Dans ce grand lit froid comme d'habitude mes larmes, je les cacherai comme d'habitude.
Comme d'habitude, même la nuit je vais jouer à faire semblant
Comme d'habitude tu rentreras, comme d'habitude je t'attendrai
Comme d'habitude tu me souriras, comme d'habitude.
Comme d'habitude tu te déshabilleras, comme d'habitude tu te coucheras
Comme d'habitude on s'embrassera, comme d'habitude.
Comme d'habitude on fera semblant, comme d'habitude on fera l'amour…

Perfomance date may follow.

2003-03-06T22:50:00.000Z

Long-distance emails
Just got an email from Stephane, the first since he arrived in Brazil over a month ago, but then if you're south of the equator for Carnival I suppose an internet cafe is a way down your list priorities. Gone all gooey inside. Ex's!! What can you do with them!

He's in a place called Salvador de Bahia north of Rio, the place that invented the samba, the lambada (god punish them) and just about every musical style that came out of Brazil. Loadsa colonial architecture, narrow almost mediaeval streets and some grinding poverty. He's smitten by the place, I think. Well it's 30 degrees every day, you can dive into the sea to keep cool, and him and his amiga are sleeping in hammocks presumably strung between palm trees ... hey, what do I care, I've got Kennington!!

Rapid Ageing
I've got a lot of time for my immediate boss: pushing 50 but doesn't act it, he used to run a pirate radio station from above his student flat in Liverpool, total Capt Beefheart fan, rides a 600cc motorbike, got married last year to his long-term partner on a Caribbean beach with sand between their toes and their teenage sons as best men. He's kinda cool.

But today he spent a chunk of the day turning rapidly into a curmudgeon.

Took him nearly an hour to send an SMS: "I cant' find the "u" ... how do I send/save/delete it?" And as if the impression of my own dad wasn't bad enough he then starts on about the youth of today not knowing they're born and don't know the value of work.

Is there some "Victor Meldrew" gene in the human body that lies dormant for years then sneaks out and turns us into grown-ups!!! I feel very scared suddenly.

A Little Bit of Blasphemy for Lent
Check this out, please check this out. I want the soccer one SO badly.

2003-03-05T14:38:00.000Z

Damn Saddam
Aint it always the way ... you meet someone cool and then they bugger off to Kuwait for some lousy war!

Dinner Update
What a coupla whimps! Had a major inspiration for what to cook tonight. Two lecky rings, Stephane's old restaurant-sized cooking pot sitting on both elements, and a big bag of mussels ... just add shallots, garlic and a bottle of wine and steam away. Double-checked with Graeme and Darryl if that was ok with them and they went "Urgh we might get food poisoning!" Cheek ... I haven't given anyone food poisoning in ages.

So they're getting pasta!!

Another Brick in the Wall
thebrick ... now with added comments. Come and get your two penn'th in, lads

2003-03-04T15:41:00.000Z

Dear Delia ...
Having my first dinner party in my new flat tomorrow night, so got a safe guest list of my ex-almost-boyfriend Graeme and his current Darryl. Only prob is due to the squat-like nature of the place at the moment I only have a Baby Belling-type two-ring electric cooker to whip up something simple but stunning for three people. Rejected salad as a cop out. Take away would kinda defeat the object. Could get them so pissed before the starter that they dont mind beans on toast.

And Today is ...
the day the Australians do things like this

The Germans do things like this

Not to to mention the Brazilians doing this

And the Brits do this

2003-03-03T20:15:00.000Z

The Brick Builds Up
Ta David for showing me how to stick a list of links on the side panel. I managed to work out how to put a hit counter on by meself just about. Unfortunately Haloscan has stopped taking new sign-ups, so comments will have to wait a bit. Patience.

Lumpen Lent
Neal writes: "Unfortunately, this weekend I was being really boring and so I didn't go to the Vauxhall. I was curled up on the sofa with my cats and cocoa, listening to Mahler. Why is it that as a metropolitan, gay man, I feel guilt at having an
enjoyable evening at home, rather than being in a club downing pints?
"Fortunately Lent starts on Wednesday, so as an act of penance, I'm going to give up such domestic pleasures and spend forty nights out on the town. Gym, cinema, opera, theatre, clubbing. Anything really as long as it's not staying in. It's how Our Lord would have wanted it.
"As a good Christian boy, experience has taught me that the commonplace abstinence of drink, drugs or television invariably fails by the first weekend. Instead, my most successful year was when I gave up celibacy. I set myself the challenge of doing forty men by Easter Sunday."

Had been having the same conversation about quiet-night-in-phobia with Sef on Sunday night after a quiet drink in Dukes ended with us staggering out of Marvellous after some serious pogo-ing. Decided that gay men are just scared of missing something: the next man who walks in the bar, the next round, the newest club, the latest item of gossip. More. More More.

Horst Buchholz
Oooops, metioned the Magnificent Seven a few days ago, then this happens.

2003-03-02T11:15:00.000Z

Bridget Brick's Diary
Cigarettes: 20 Marlboro Lite
Alcohol units: ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm let me get back to you on that one, still counting
Calorific intake: one MSG-laden sweet and sour chicken with noodles eaten on the run so prob about 2,500cals
The GayPlan diet

I Do Exist
.... and what's more I'm not alone!
Typed my name into here and found there are five other people with my name in the UK somewhere, making my name "rarer than a wombat's wing nut".

2003-02-28T19:50:00.000Z

I Don't Exist
Stuck my boss's name into Googlism and discovered she is "a licensed and certified massage therapist who specializes in Swedish" and "no longer there".

Stuck Iansie in there and never realised he was "director of coaching for the countryside youth soccer association in clearwater" and "throwing the hardest and you can tell by the sound of the ball hitting leather". So why was I always the one answering the pub quiz sports questions?

Stuck me in and got .... zilch!