Darren's post today has reminded me of an episode from six years ago...

During the final year of my degree a field trip to New York was organised. I'd never been to the States, and I'd always wanted to go to New York, so I signed up for it. My long summer of working nights at B&Q had paid off, and I had enough money to pay for the trip, and have a good time. We stayed in the West-Side YMCA next to Central Park, visited the museums and art galleries during the day, and clubs and bars at night.

One night, a large group of us headed down into Greenwich to check out some of the more exotic nightlife. After a while the group got to be too unwieldly, sticking out as we did like a bunch of limey students, and so me and three of the girls ditched the others and sneaked off. One of the girls had been to New York before, and fairly expertly navigated us to a tiny gay piano bar set in a tiny triangular building created by the intersection of grid lines and old indian trails.

The four of us soon got into the swing of the place, ordering $6 whisky macs and tipping heavily. The drinks seemed expensive until we realised that the measure of hard liquor was about twice the amount of mixer, and after two or three of them we were well and truly having a great time.

The bar itself was an amazing place, piano set up in the apex of the triangular floor-plan, and a waiter who would sing a couple of numbers at the same time as keeping everyone in booze. After a while, a guy came into the bar, wandered over to the pianist and handed him a loose-leaf book of sheet music. The pianist tinkled away, and the guy belted out a few numbers in a voice that would have put Old Blue Eyes to shame.

Around about this time, I began to notice that there were a number of other Brits in the bar, and I started to have a look round. On a bench opposite was a small guy wearing a baseball cap, cheering on the performers in a theatrical tone. I turned to my girlfriends. "Hey, doesn't that guy over there look familiar?"

We all turned back to look at the little Brit.

There, sitting opposite us in the teeny-tiny gay piano bar, set in a teeny-tiny triangular building, was teeny-tiny Wayne Sleep.

We collectively pissed ourselves laughing, that of all the famous people we could see in New York, we had to get a camp frizzy-haired ballet dancer. The night carried on, and got increasingly surreal as a girl who claimed to be Elizabeth Taylor's grand-daughter got up to sing, groped wildly for her register, then got heckled mercilessly by the rest of the bar. All except for Wayne, who tried to shout over the bourbon-sodden jeering, trying to let the poor girl have her go. No-one was having any of it, and the pianist launched into a few bitchy-camp renditions of Disney tunes - Ariel from The Little Mermaid singing about her alarming lack of genitalia.

The night ended with me getting chatted up by a native New-Yorker called Siler Black (no-one believes this bit - but it's all true, I swear!), and taking him back to my room in the Y.

And that's the story of how I almost had sex with England's foremost celebrity dancer and rat-wrestler.

Update after a quick look around on Google, and cross-referencing to a map of New York, I'm pretty sure the bar we visited was The Duplex on Christopher Street. If you ever get the chance, go!

posted at 4:27 PM •

Oh crap...*sniffle* - I've got those 'tearful tuesday' blues. You know - where you start blubbing at the silliest of things at the drop of a hat. Johnathan has posted a link through to this ad on commercial closet, a site devoted to surveying representations of gay, lesbian and transgendered folk in advertisements. I've seen the ad before (on the site - it was never broadcast after the tabloids got wind of it), but for some reason today it's got me all moist-eyed.

Maybe it's the tortured twang of Tammy Wynette - or maybe it's the look of weary love on the aging twink - or maybe it's because it makes me realise how much I love my own domestic slave.

I love you big bear!

posted at 5:03 PM •

I never saw Her Royal Highness Regina Fong perform, and now of course I find out too late how much she was loved and admired. Last week's cover of QX was a beautiful image of Regina, composed with the elegance and poise of an Aubrey Beardsley illustration. I just wanted to do my own little thing to commemorate her passing, and thank her for leading the way for other drag acts, like our very own Dame Edna.

posted at 1:48 PM •

Just found this montage of frames from an upcoming episode of The Simpsons on that Yahoo bear board I mentioned the other day. It seems Homer is starting to get a bit of a following from the 'bear community', and the creators of The Simpsons haven't failed to pick up on this. In another recent episode, Homer is seen talking to Smithers in Springfield's gay village (apparently Springfield has one!), when a group of guys walk by, and one of them shouts, "Hey Waylon, who's the bear? Woof!".

Whatever next? Flintstones lesbian slash fiction?

posted at 6:14 PM •

First day back at school and they've re-varnished the floor and moved all the desks, but it still smells of boiled cabbage.

Actually, it doesn't feel like I've been away that long - but I do feel as though my brain has been dry-cleaned. So far I've not had a ton of work dropped on me, but I think there might be something heading my way pretty soon. Ah yes - a meeting has been called!

Just time then to wish many happy returns to David! How many steps did you do last night Dave, and have you found the mince setting yet?

posted at 12:05 PM •

Ah, the gleeful enthusiasm of the noviciate blogger. Back in the day (January 2003), my ace life was full of awe and wonder at the new world I was exploring. Blogs were discovered and linked to, and I glowed with the thrill of my first reciprocal link.

Oh, how quickly things changed. I think like a lot of bloggers, I reached blog saturation point - the sidebar became one in, one out, no trainers, no guestlist mate. It became harder to find something I wasn't getting from the blogs I read, so even when I came across a new blog, it very rarely shone enough to make it a regular visit. Oh, and also I got really lazy, and pruning the sidebar became a bit of a chore.

Although my sidebar is a pretty stable place, there are a few glaring ommisions - the first is the gorgeously visual oddverse, which I try to read as often as I can, but haven't got round to adding yet. The second is newcomer thebrick, another Vauxhall Tavern regular, who I just today worked out I'd already met in real life. As the sidebar is mainly there for my convenience, I need to have a serious sort-out of my permanent links.

While I'm on the subject, I'll just say I'm so proud to be part of a great group of bloggers. You're all a fantastic bunch!

posted at 11:50 PM •

Nearly the end of my two weeks sanity break. I'm not sure how much more sane I feel, but I am a lot more relaxed. Relatively speaking...imagine an afro which has been relaxed down to - say - a Leo Sayer level of frizziness. It's still quite curly, but a lot less than it was before.

Blog output will probably return to previous levels next week, which just goes to show what exactly I do at work all day. Give me some time off and I really can't be bothered to trawl the net or think up funny things. Unless I'm in a gay sauna that is.

My last weekend coming up, and I'm two minds as to what I'm going to be doing with it. One mind says stay in, the other says go out - wait, this was supposed to be a sanity break, and here I am debating with myself. And having an imaginary conversation with an imaginary audience. OK, the conversation isn't imaginary - is it?

Anyway, the age old condundrum that has plagued man since prehistoric times...do I stay in tonight or go out? My bank balance says stay in, but my dancing shoes say go out. I may find some way of compromising, by going out just to the Tavern on Sunday, but going home after the show. Or maybe one little dance. I could stay until Dannii has been on - but no later.

I'm trying to prepare for a weekend in by getting back into my Playstation2. I've bought a new game (from Computer Exchange - second hand, economy drive you see - that's me, not the Playstation2) - Ico - with the intention of giving me something to do instead of going out. Instead it's a really good game, and I think I've only got about 4 hours play left to finish it. If you're at all familiar with video games, you should have heard of Myst - well, Ico is pretty similar. Tricky puzzles, lots of lateral thinking and the odd bit of skill - it's my favourite type of game.

Off out to the White Swan tonight with Better Half - should be fun. Would be nice to bump into Dame Ian, but I'm not sure whether he's really a Friday night sort of guy. Not keen on SClub, is our Ian.

Which reminds me - following the lead of their 'grown-up' seniors, now it seems SClub Juniors are rumoured to be splitting over creative differences. They couldn't agree whether to use crayons or felt-tips for their new album cover.
I wrote that...

posted at 8:23 PM •

It's my last few days of holiday, and I thought I'd go do something a bit - um - different. So, today my ace life is coming to you live from Chariots sauna in Shoreditch. According to Peter, apparently this is a family blog (you must have a very open-minded family Peter), so I shan't tell you what's going on around me. Well, not that I've been doing anything other than the wholesome activities of jacuzzi-ing and sauna-ing - though I reckon I saw a couple of guys shoreditching earlier.

Anyway - maybe I'll make a theme of this - blog entries brought to you from - how shall I put this - unusual locations. Or maybe it could be the latest meme - gay blogs posting from saunas and bathhouses.

It's just as well my mum isn't around to read this - I'd be worried about my sister or family reading it, but hey, it's a giggle isn't it!? Right - I'm off for a 'steam'.

posted at 6:25 PM •

Spotted this ad in this week's QX Magazine. Would someone mind pointing out what exactly does Chris mean when he says he has 'distinctive skin head hair'? How is his skin head any more distinctive from every other poof's skin head? Does he have it in a different place to the rest?

And for that matter, what on earth does he mean by 'Met in September, shoreditch or just friendship'? Is shoreditching some sexual act that I've been unaware of up until this point? Yeah mate, fancy a quick shoreditch? Phwoar, not 'arf...

posted at 10:29 PM •

Bit of a messy weekend here folks. The pressure to have a great weekend was just too much, and of course, it all turned sour. Trying to cram too much in, and then getting imbroiled in a friend's splitup anxieties. Think I'm going to take a few weekends off and recuperate. I wasn't really in any mood to blog yesterday, but I'm starting to feel a bit brighter today, so I'll see what I can dredge up.

I've been having a bit of discovery on the music front of late. First there was Dannii's Neon Nights, which set the mood for the last couple of months' partying with the SLAGS. Next came The Cardigans' Long Gone Before Daylight, which although is a great album, is not the sort of thing you want to listen to if you're feeling anxious or having relationship stress.

I caught a track from Moloko's Statues on my first ever visit to H&M, and was instantly hooked. I downloaded a track or two, and decided I was going to have to get the album. And what a corker it is. The sound isn't too different from Things To Make and Do, but as they say, if the formula ain't broke, don't fix it. At times it's like something you'd hear in one of the funky seventies' cantinas frequented by Lieutenant Starbuck and Captain Apollo in Battlestar Galactica, managing to be both futuristic and retro at the same time.

I also got Badly Drawn Boy's Have you Fed The Fish, which I'm finally getting round to listening to properly. There's a lot of fine quirky BDB tracks - daft lyrics, folksy twanging with a smidgeon of David Byrne creeping in from time to time.

I'll get round to changing my sidebar playlist when I'm back at work next week - I tried changing the template once from my PC, and the whole blummin' site broke.

posted at 11:38 PM •

This is a pre-recorded post. Steve is not here right now - well, his body is, but his brain is in a different time-zone. Obviously with this being a very important religious weekend, he's been out and about in the parish of Vauxhall, contemplating the death and rebirth of our Lord. Well, OK, he's been getting ripped off his tits in sleazy gay nightclubs, but it's much the same thing. If you'd like to leave a message, do so after the beep.
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*BEEP*

posted at 12:40 PM •

Time for a visit to reading corner. I just recently de-lurked on a particular Yahoo group I'm a member of. It usually has posts of big hairy beary men, interpersed with a bit of 'lively' chat. Actually not the sort of thing I go in for - the chatting on message boards thing, but then someone happened to mention one of my favourite subjects - Steampunk.

For those of you not in the know, Steampunk is this teeny micro sci-fi genre. It was coined at the same time as Cyberpunk and a lot of the ideas were formalised then, but it's history can be traced back to Jules Verne and the fantastical art of William Heath-Robinson.

The genre was formalised around one book, written by William Gibson (the father of Cyberpunk) and Bruce Sterling. The premise springboards off the stuttering birth of computing, and Charles Babbage's attempts to build a mechanical calculating machine. His first machine, the Difference Engine, was used to compile mathematical tables and was successfully built. He went on to devise a second machine, the Analytical Engine, which would be able to perform any kind of calculation*. The machine was never built, but in Gibson and Stephenson's book, The Difference Engine, they suppose that not only was it built, but it brought about the start of the Information Age about a hundred years early.

What you end up with is a chaotic mix of high technology, imperialism and social values in a massive state of flux. Steampunk follows other alternate history science fiction genres, blurring history, fact and fiction to create a world that is both familiar and alien. I don't know what it is about this kind of fiction that I love - perhaps it's the irreverence and mischeviousness. Steampunk plays hard and fast with fictional characters, placing them in real historical situations and changing the outcomes. As a historian, John absolutely hates it - maybe that's another reason why I like it so much.

posted at 12:27 PM •

Girls! My girls! Refreshments Alfresco!

Watched The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie last night for the first time. Truly a jaw-droppingly intelligent film. Dark, deep and profound, although the magnificent performances are a little let down by the lack-lustre direction and photography, which steers too close to portraying the Edinburgh of Greyfriars Bobby.

It's a Scotland I have rooted in my early childhood memory, having spent three years growing up in Elgin, Morayshire. My headmistress at Seafield school for little boys and girls, Mrs Jamieson, was a bit of a ringer for the headmistress in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, all starch and sharpness. The frost melted every end-of-term however, as the whole school congregated in the assembly hall to watch a film. I think it might even have been Greyfriars Bobby one year.

The accent of Elgin is a little broader than the manicured vowels of Edinburgh, but slap me in a group of scots and I start rolling my r's in seconds.

One thing I couldn't help but notice the similarity between Maggie Smith as Jean Brodie and John Hurt as Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant. What do you think, surely this has been noticed before?

posted at 12:45 PM •

I was chatting to Blue Witch the other day about dreams. She confessed that she almost never remembers her dreams. Not so with me - my dreams are a huge sprawling soap opera, rich in colours and sensations. The themes that recur most often in my dreams are houses and shops, and the thing I experience the most is a sense of space, of my physicality as it relates to it's surrounings. My dreams do the "...and then my cat was actually my Aunt Petunia" thing all the time - objects and people shifting seamlessly between states and memories. They usually end up being very surreal, but very rarely disturbing.

A few times my dreams have overlapped into 'reality'. The memories of dreams flow into my memories of waking life and I get confused as to what was real and what wasn't. I've had one dream that I think was vaguely precognitive, and one dream where I told myself where to find something I had lost. I've had countless dreams about my parents after each of them died. Although generally I'm not a particularly supersitious man, I prefer to be open-minded and not draw too many conclusions from life's mysteries.

Quick change of thread...I just finished reading Blue Witch's post from this morning. And it's left me feeling like I'm missing something.

Anyone who visits me a lot knows that I've been talking about the amount of stress I've been under. The thing is - I don't think I really recognised how stressed I actually was until this week, when the stress has finally started to lift. I wasn't going to mention this for a while, but the reason I'm off work is because of stress. I broke down at work last week, and my bosses finally believed that I was serious when I told them I was burned out. Nearly a year and a half working by yourself on one project, with little in the way of support or praise, in a very antisocial environment, at the same time as coping with the loss of your mum tends to do that to you. When I got to the end of the project, and they refused to let me take a hoilday, throwing me straight into another tight-deadline project, it was only a matter of time before I exploded, imploded or just stopped. I ended up doing a mixture of all three.

During the last few months of my stress, I started dreaming of the day ahead. I would go through everything I had planned, over and over, planning responses, actions and routes. I would wake up after this dream dress rehearsal exhausted, and force myself to do the performance for real. I would sleepwalk through the day, disconnected from reality, then stumble into bed and start again.

And then yesterday I started feel the stress lifting. Time on my hands, time to think, time to recover. Bit of a blast on the bike, a wander through Hyde Park in the sunshine, clothes shopping, making a new friend. Normal things. My dress rehearsal dreams have stopped, and I'm back to my normal schedule of spaces and people.

I met Blue Witch after a lot of emails and chatting. She's been wonderfully helpful and supportive over the last few weeks/months, but I think I'm now moving into an area where the only person that can help me is me. I need some proactive action in my life, and I'm not great at proactive. I'm a reactive person - I see the world as a series of problems to be solved rather than opportunities to be exploited. I feel like my dreams are trying to tell me something, trying to show me an opportunity, but I'm not sure what it is.

Well, I can sit here feeling confused about it, or I can throw myself at the world and see what happens.

What am I missing then?

posted at 12:05 PM •

Happy Maundy Thursday everyone.

For those of you not in the know (do I have any Jewish readers after my promotion of Mecca Cola...?) - Maundy Thursday is the Thursday before Easter. It's remembered as the day of the Last Supper - though really, a dinner party on a Thursday? How unfashionable. You can read more about it, fashionable or not, over here at BBCi.

According to the slightly incorrect report on news.bbc.co.uk, on Maundy Thursday the Head of the Church of England washes the feet of twelve people to symbolise Christ washing the feet of the disciples. Of course, the Head of the Church of England is the King or Queen, and the last monarch to do the foot washing thing was James 2nd, who was the last Catholic monarch. Since then, the King or Queen has elected to give the twelve commoners a bag of cash instead of scrubbing. And who can blame them really? I can't really imagine Brenda on her hands and knees asking Phillip to pass the pumice stone, 'cos one of the needy has rather bad corns...

The ceremony has been brought back after 400 years though, with the furry Dr. Rowan doing the duties. Meanwhile Brenda handed out the purses of money to the needy old folk - a grand total of 77p each.
Won't be much of a last supper then will it?

posted at 4:54 PM •

The current heatwave has been commented about all over the place. It's no wonder that us island folk are obsessed by our climate when you get a flurry of snow one week, then scorching sun the next - but I love that aspect of our temperate weather - it's so unpredictable. Unfortunately, it seems like the weather won't hold until the weekend - but of course you never know - a butterfly could do a funny little aerial samba in Guatemala, and we could have more baking sunshine.

I was looking through my January archives, and remembered that just over 3 months ago, London had a beautiful covering of snow. So if you get too hot over the next day or so, just think of these pictures.

posted at 9:54 AM •

There's nothing more fascinating than examining cultural values from different countries through their interpretation of consumerism and the market economy. Before Chris Tarrant hit it big with Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? (which, I'll add, we don't watch in our house - ITV) - one of his many faces was the presenter of Tarrant's Commercial Break. I always imagined a vast dungeon of researchers being forced to watch hour after hour of foreign tv ad breaks, hoping Charlie Bucket-style to find the golden ad that would bring them glory and perhaps a coffee break. Cheap funny tv, but with a glimmer of educational value.

One of my favourite finds from a while back is - wait for it - the website for India's top-selling brand of butter, Amul. They've just recently had a spiffy redesign, so I thought I'd finally get round to blogging it - I've been keeping it back as a rainy day entry, but I'm in the mood to post it now.

One of the stand-out facts from the site reads like the Goodness Gracious Me sketch with the uncle proclaiming everything is Indian. Superman - Indian - wears his underpants outside his trousers*. The ad campaigns for Amul nearly all feature the same cartoon girl. She's been unchanged for 30-odd years and is still drawn in the same sixties style, huge brown eyes and pudding bowl hairdo. She has no name, but has always been known as the Utterly Butterly girl. From the Amul Topicals Story:


The 'topicals' as they are called on the Amul site are periodic ads brought out to tie in with a particular current event. Where Western advertising would fear to tread on any topical ground, Amul rushes in. Everything and anything is game for an Amul topical - film star tantrums, cricketing scandals, wars, everything is reflected through the cheerful gaze and licked lips of the Utterly Butterly girl. My absolute favourite ad is one of the earliest they have featured on the site, from 1976-1977...




Arguably the most objectionable policy from Indira Ghandi's premiership turned into an advertising slogan. I wonder whether you got a free radio with every pack of butter?

posted at 12:49 AM •

More photography...

posted at 11:24 PM •

posted at 1:28 PM •

I've not mentioned that I'm off work for two weeks. I'll do the full story in a couple of weeks when I'm back at work, but for now I'm just going to have to be enigmatic about it. But here I am, two lovely weeks of r'n'r, and not a clue how to fill them.

I was thinking of trying to get away next week for a few days, but I just remembered that my passport ran out last October, so if I want to get away, I've got to run around trying to get a quickie application sorted. Not impossible, but will cost extra. I can't really afford to get away either right now, but I could probably stretch my finances to a few days in Spain or somewhere similar.

In the meantime, I have a hundred and one little things I want to get on with, and I've made a start today. Firstly, went for a bit of a bike run to visit a friend. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say who it is - but the person in question will let me know. Got back home, and I made a start at cataloguing a load of stuff I want to put on ebay. Mostly stuff that I've had lying around for years, and no longer want, like old Dungeons & Dragons manuals. I'll put the ebay links up once I've got them done if anyone is interested.

Tomorrow I was going to get up early and go over to Billingsgate Fish Market to do a bit of photography. I organised it with my next-door neighbour Shiny, who along with her boyfriend Chris are total shellfish freaks. However, Shiny forgot and made another commitment, so I'm now without a partner. I may just go up by myself, but it wouldn't be as fun.

I also want to get over to the V&A and see about doing some research on Produkin-Gorskii, and make a start on a bit of an online cv cum portfolio. Hopefully I'll get some of this done - I'll keep you all posted as to how I'm doing. Feel free to nag, nag, nag.

posted at 11:25 PM •

So - those video dancing games huh? Seems I can't go past a video game arcade without seeing a couple of Japanese spiky haired kids jumping manically around on them. Walking past the arcade on Wardour Street yesterday, saw this huge big fat kid thumping away. He'd drawn quite a crowd outside the window, staring and pointing. Well, at least he was getting some exercise.

And you can too...courtesy of Phones4U.

posted at 11:38 AM •

My ntl woes are getting worse. I noticed that the email problems were reportedly fixed according to their errors page, but I still couldn't access my accounts, so I phoned up ntl customer 'support'.

Eventually, after two calls, I got directed to the 4p a minute tech line. The surly bloke there checks through my account, and informs me that my email addresses are no longer active. Of course - what I had originally suspected, that because I'd closed the dial-up account, they hadn't bothered to tell me that any email addresses attached to the account would be cancelled.

On hold, no-one can hear you scream.

I phone back Customer Services and tell them what technical support have told me, that the account needs to be reopened, and then the email addresses can be migrated over.
It Should All Be So Simple™.

NTL 'helper' 1: Oo, I can't do that. I'll have to transfer you.

NTL 'helper' 2: I understand you're having problems with your broadband account.
me: No, I want my email addresses back.
NTL2: Oh, well I can't do that.
me: So why am I talking to you?
NTL2: I'll transfer you back to Customer Support.

The line goes dead. Cut off. Try putting the phone down & picking up again - still cut off. Unplug phone from the wall, reconnect - I get a line. Try again. This time I've moved from the Welsh call centre to Scotland - mildly less irritating accent at least.

me: I want my email addresses back please.
NTL 'helper' 3: You can't
me: Why not?
NTL3: That account is closed, you closed it, you can't get the email addresses now.
me: But, but...
NTL3: When you registered, you must have said you didin't have a dial-up account in the login screen.
me: Why would I do that? I did have a dial-up account.
NTL3: Well, that's what you've done. If you'd done it correctly in the first place, you wouldn't have this problem now.
me: But, but...can't you reopen the account, like the guy in tech said?
NTL3: No, I can't and I won't.
me: Look, can I speak to someone else please?
NTL3: Why? No-one else will help you. What are you going to tell them?
me: I would just like to speak to someone else.
NTL3: Well I have to give them a reason.
me: I want to complain about you.

NTL 'supervisor': HellohowcanIhelpyou!!?
me: Where are my bloody email addresses?
NTL super: They're gone - gone forever. Those email accounts will never be yours again. HellohowcanIhelpyou.
me: But, but...the tech guy said all you had to do was reopen them on a pay as you go account, then migrate them.
NTL super: Oh, did he? I don't know about that, but I'll speak to tech and see what they say. I'll call you back later. HellohowcanIhelpyou.

And - of course, I'm still waiting.
It might be time to do a post on nthellworld.com, but it's all just so depressing.

posted at 11:02 PM •

David obviously didn't watch Parky last night. If he had, he wouldn't have said there's nothing on telly tonight. Paul Merton was looking almost bearish with the face fuzz that he seems to grow every so often. Almost. He really really suits his beard (there, I said I'd get back to butch things), but you can't get over the fact that it's, well, still Paul Merton underneath the bush.

Jerome Flynn was absolutely incredible. He's playing Tommy Cooper in West End stage version of his life on and off stage, and he absolutely nails the performance. It's spot on - he even looks like a young Tommy Cooper. Spoony Jar!

Didn't hurt to sit through these two, waiting for the main attraction, the White Swan's very own Dame Ian McKellen. John and I hang on the man's every word. And didn't he look almost sexy, slightly ruffled and gaunt, steely glint in his eye, pursed lips contorting into a smile as he growled and minced through his 'biz-ness' anecdotes and an hysterical impersonation of Maggie Smith.

Splutter, cough, as Parky (oo Paar-ky), begged to see Ian's fellowship tattoo. It's up on his shoulder, the elvish character for 'nine' - except as Ian pointed out vampishly, from his upside-down perspective it almost reads 'gucci'. I tell you - if I ever saw him in the White Swan, I wouldn't be able to contain (or stop) myself from throwing myself at him.

Staying In is the new Going Out. I've been listening to Moloko - Statues, fantastic stuff, especially the first track Familiar Feeling. Can we please please please have it at Slags? Andy? Wayne? Pleeeease? I'm getting to grips with the rest of the album, watch out for other tracks - it's going to be the soundtrack to summer 2003

Also been going off the beaten track on the interwebnet, and managed to find all sorts of delicious things, like a full mp3 of Towa Tei and Kylie's German Bold Italic. An amazingly bizarre off-the-wall effort from weird sub-top-40 period Kylie. Hello, my name is German Bold Italic. I am a typeface. Gut ja?

posted at 12:02 PM •

God bless the internet.

God bless MC Hammer.

God bless this man.

posted at 12:16 AM •

What is it with straight blokes and aftershave? While most normal, well-adjusted homos are eschewing scents like nobody's business, it seems our 'red-blooded' brethren have yet to pick up on the trend. These days on the gay scene you don't get nowhere darlin' if yer stink like a whore's bood-waar. Natural smells are in. Gaydar profiles of the macho and with-it variety specify "no aftershave" - men should smell like men, or oil, or dare we say it, even a little bit sweaty. I find it pretty weird if I put on something smelly - I ran out of my lovely botanics deodorant a week ago, and I've had to use an old tin of Lynx, and I feel like I positvely reek.

Designer scents are just so damn nineties darling. It's not unique, it's not your signature, it's not a lifestyle, it's just a horrid cocktail of chemicals that smell like toilet freshener. But still the straight lads persist in splashing it all over long after their bottle of Old Spice has passed it's sell-by date.

I passed two blokes in the West End today that were just humming of some godawful Calvin Klein concoction. Lordy, lordy, no wonder there was no pretty girly on their arms - the poor wench would've needed a 'weapons of mass destruction' grade chemical filter gask mask to get within twenty feet.

An hour later in Bishopsgate I saw a poster for Queenie McQueen's new scent, 'Kingdom' (probably pronounced in gammy Ginola-ese frangalis - Keeng-dumme). Oo dear love, missed the boat on this one haven't we? The idiotic marketing blurb gushes:

So, you'll end up smelling like a brick lane curryhouse mixed with a teabag then.

Note: my ace life will return to it's normal schedule of pretending to be butch very shortly. Incidentally, I've shagged someone who knows Alexander McQueen (yeah, me and the rest of London) - and I wanted to curl up and die when I found out... after we'd done the deed. He smelled of man-smells though.

posted at 10:44 PM •

Bloody ntl.

Bloody email server.

Bloody regional call-centres.

Bloody bloody welsh people.

Aopologies to welsh readers - I know I'm doing an 'Anne Robinson', but wait, I'm not consigning you to Room 101. My main home email accounts are down, and NTL have been fixing the problem for over a day now (good god, how long does it take - the engineers must be getting paid by the hour). Also, I just found out that I've been paying for a dial-up account that I don't use for six months now.

Anyone who's with NTL, watch out for this one. I had a legacy dial-up account from Cable&Wireless that NTL took over. Then six months ago I upgraded to broadband. What they don't tell you when you upgrade (and it may be because I was on one of C&W's old accounts) is that although it's perfectly obvious that you don't need your dial-up anymore, they don't cancel it automatically for you - you have to specifically request for it to be cancelled. I only found this out when the installation of broadband didn't go smoothly, and I had to resort to using dial-up. Oh, yes, your dial-up is still active, we don't cancel that unless you ask us to.

So I made damn sure that I asked for it to be cancelled - or at least I thought I'd made sure. The sneaky thing is that there was no record of it on our service bills. An email was arriving once a month, amidst a flood of spam, telling me that my account was to be debited ten pounds. And of course there it was on my bank statement. To be fair, I should look over my bank statements more thoroughly - well, I should actually open them once in a while.

So I've been on the phone to little Gareth Pugh in NTL's regional call centre somewhere in deepest darkest Wales. Now I don't totally hate the Welsh - I have some Welsh blood in me somewhere after all. But it gets annoying that whenever you phone services these days you'll be sure to get a 'friendly' regional accent. Market research may well bloody show that people find these accents friendly and trustworthy, but to me it seems like the worst case of London-centric collonialism. What's more, I now have a pavlovian response to the welsh accent that makes me recoil in fear and loathing and check my bank statement.

posted at 12:35 PM •

I've just been looking through a few bits and pieces of mine my sister brought over from the Isle of Man. There was a box of coins that I was given over the years as a kid. My Uncle John used to send them to me - he worked in a bank on the Island, and I got all the commemorative crowns when they were released. It's just one of those collections I've always had, and never really given much consideration to, apart from knowing they were always there.

Well - times are hard at the moment. Money is tight, as both myself and John aren't getting paid on time, and it's causing us quite a bit of stress. So, just looking through this box of old coins, I thought I'd see whether they were worth anything.

I found a coin valuation website, but it seems that there's not really much money in money. One coin I thought might have some value, a Crown from 1965 commemorating the death of Churchill is only worth 75p - poor Winnie. The most valuable coin is a 1970 boxed crown depicting a manx cat, which seems to be worth about £6. So, my fortunes have not been found.

But you know, in a funny way, I'm glad. I'm pleased these things that I've always had aren't so valuable that I feel I have to sell them. I'm glad that no-one really wants this tatty old coin with a picture of a cat on it. Because it's always been there in the background of my life. To me it represents my past, my childhood, growing up far away from an island that seemed so exotic and wonderful.

I'm glad it's worthless to anyone else, because to me, it's priceless.

posted at 1:14 AM •

Congratulations go to Green Fairy for correctly answering yesterday's quiz question! Pentagon Press Secretary Victoria Clarke is colour-blind, and has a tendency to wear the most hideous outfits during press conferences. In a world where credibility is king, Victoria is the PR equivalent of a court jester.

Here you can see (actually a mockup, I think the media have had a blackout on this jacket) an outfit she was wearing a couple of weeks ago. It's like two different chanel jackets stitched together, creating an effect like eighties coloroll wallpaper. I forget what the press statement she was making was about, as John and I were absolutely stunned by the sartorial mis-speak. If ever a woman was in need of a makeover, it's Victoria.

An empty bottle of Mecca Cola will be winging it's way to Green Fairy!

posted at 11:20 AM •

In honour of the liberation of Baghdad, I'm offering an empty bottle of Mecca Cola to the first reader who can answer the following quiz question...

What disability does Donald Rumsfeld's Chief Press Officer, Victoria Clarke have - and how does it affect her during press conferences?

Please note, this competition is not open to employees of the Pentagon or Mecca Cola or their families. No purchase necessary, answers must be posted in the comments box for this entry. No coughing to indicate answers will be allowed, the editor's decision is final and abitrary. No more drinking stupid, drink with commitment, drink - Mecca-Cola!

posted at 8:31 PM •

A couple of random connections on the interwebnet I've made in the last week. It's a small small world you know!

During last week's contre-tout I was having a good old trawl to see where opinion lay in blogland, and stumbled onto this post on mad musings of me, referring to the blog of Labour MP, Tom Watson. Sudden click in brain, as I remembered that John has an MP mate he went to uni with called Tom. I quickly checked, and golly gosh - they're the same chappy! Go check out Tom's blog - it's a really good read, and a possible future shape of governments to come, where all representatives have their own blogs?

The next connection is through a wee bit of google-snooping. I'm always trying to see if I can find a few people from my past - one in particular is my first ever boyfriend, Tim. I have a look every other month when I'm in the mood, but it's a fairly common name and I've never been able to pin him down. Until today. I'm pretty sure this is his site... I've fired off an email to see, but there's a couple of details in the site that leave me in very little doubt.

Take that Kevin Bacon.

Addendum While I'm on the subject of spooky connections, I'd better just say hi to my mate Redmond who's been reading for a while now and only just realised he knew me! I'm having one of those periods of lots of coincidences at the moment - wonder if that means anything?

posted at 2:00 PM •

High pressure again at work, so I don't have time to post what I wanted. Also, I desperately need to do a bit of housekeeping, and it just ain't happening today - hmm, there's an idea - cleaning ladies for your blog.

Instead, here's a few makeover links that I've trawled together.

posted at 11:51 AM •

Look what I saw on the tube last week. Maybe there is something to be said for camera phones after all...

posted at 7:38 PM •

Theme weeks are all the rage these days. Continuing on from yesterday, this week's vaguely asserted theme is makeovers.

I probably read somewhere once that the makeover is one of the twentieth century's truly novel artforms. Sure, cro-magnon woman was daubing her lips with mammoth blood and teasing her tresses into a Farah flick before the dawn of time, but it wasn't until recent times that this practice was truly institutionalised and democratised. Suddenly everything was about glamour, and the transformation was the most important part. Take a dowdy young spinster, before, add make-up, hair, a new wardrobe - and shazam - after she's a movie-star.

And the core driving force behind the makeover was of course the movies. Hollywood knew that the key to selling it's dreams was that Ms. (and Mr.) ordinary wanted to buy the lifestyle, to take them out of their dreary workaday routine. The makeover became central to movies, mostly of the Rom-Com variety - the message was "you're dowdy, but we can make you better".

The message itself isn't new; proto-makeover princess Cinderella ditched the rags and got the prince, and Eliza Doolittle gets dragged from the gutter and polished to perfection. Here's a run-down of some of my favourite makeover movies.

Tootsie
My all time favourite makeover moment. Poor Michael Dorsey, a failed actor desperate for work - coaching his neurotic girlfriend for a plum role as hospital administrator Emily Kimberley. She doesn't get the part, but Michael decides he might just have a chance. One makeover montage later, and Dorothy Michaels is born. Funny, farcical and fabulous, the makeover is so successful that his co-star's widower father falls for frumpy-glam Dorothy. The reverse makeover denoument as Dorothy reveals her secret live on-air at the end of the film is a classic cinema moment.

Grease
Olivia Newton-John as dowdy bookish Sandy Olsen was classically wholesome. She was sweet and demure, but there was no way Danny Zuko could be seen out with her. You'd better shape up though Danny, as Frenchy and the Pink Ladies back-comb and lipgloss her to within an inch of her virginity and she sizzles her way through that spectacular fairground routine. Electrifying!

Working Girl
From brassy office temp to classy power-broker, Melanie Griffith swapped her snakeish boyfriend Alec Baldwin for suave Harrison Ford. The makeover moment is fantastic as Joan Cusack remodels the shockingly big hair into a stylish (but still big) simple bob, then throws a couple of valium down her neck.

Any other favourite makeover moments?

posted at 11:47 AM •

Bar a pair of jeans, various items for wearing to pubs/clubs and biker gear, I've hardly bought any new clothing in well over a year. I'm totally lazy when it comes to selecting outfits, and usually just have one or two pairs of trousers and tops that I switch between. Partly this is because I don't need to or want to make an effort for work, and in any case, there's only a few things that go with leather biker jeans.

With the change of weather though, the sweaters I've been switching between are starting to get a bit too heavy, and I've suddenly realised that my wardrobe is horrendously out of date. Most of my clothes are worn and stretched out of shape, and nothing really seems to suit me any more. I have this really bad habit of buying clothes that don't fit me - clothing dysmorphia. Where the temptation with a lot of people is to buy clothing a size too small and then try to squeeze into it, I always buy clothes that are too big. A small??? I can't be a small - I'll buy large - it'll probably shrink some anyway.

So here I am with a wardrobe full of clothes that are years old, baggy, stretched and ugly. It's definitely time for a closet clearout and some new togs. Problem though - I popped into Gap a couple of weeks ago, which was where I always used to get clothes from, and there was nothing that I remotely liked or could see myself in. I'm just not "man at Gap" anymore. The changes of the last eighteen months need to be reflected in the way I dress - maybe a bit more grown up, a bit more adventurous, a bit more homo-masculine... Yes, I need a makeover!

I've had a couple of suggestions so far as to where I should explore for a new look - starting with Topman and H&M. Now I just need the time and money. And a styling consultant I think.

Saturday at Nan's was really laid back. My sister was there too, and my step-Aunt (is there such a term?). Nan got to meet John, which was all very laid back. John was on his best behaviour, although depite being instructed to specifically not mention my smoking, he managed to slip up referring to my usual breakfast of coffee and two fags. Nobody said anything though, and it may have just been dismissed as a jokey comment. She's the only person that doesn't know I smoke, and really I don't know why I don't just tell her, apart from the fact that she would have a go about my health.

The rest of the weekend was spent clubbing and not getting enough sleep. Suffering for it today in every possible way, so excuse me now while I go collapse in a corner.

posted at 3:01 PM •

Off to my Nan's today for her birthday party - see it's not all drugs and poofters! As my Nana is desperately unlikely to find this entry in the intervening couple of hours it takes me and John to drive to Hampshire, I'll tell you what she's getting: An art Monograph of Monet's garden in Giverny. Usually Nan is pretty difficult to buy for, but when I phoned her last week (from the RVT grassy knoll), she told me she's going to Giverny next month with my Auntie (actually first cousin once removed and Godmother) - beginning to worry that this is all sounding dangerously home-counties.

Oh, and this is the first time Nana will have met John. Gulp. Well, you know, coming out to your Gran - difficult thing to do really - I mean, she calls me Stevie...

Still dreaming in technicolour, but they're starting to get less anxious. Last night's last reel was cool. I was at a Cardigan's concert, and got introduced to Steven Fry. So far so ordinary - I'm listening to The Cardiagn's new album lots at the moment, and I saw Steven Fry on Old Compton Street on Thursday, walking along chatting to a woman. Back in the dream though we were introduced, and had a good old snog. Steven had a tongue piercing too - not sure about that one. Still, I certainly wouldn't mind snogging Steven - I've always admired him; he's a great comedian - but certainly never found him particularly attractive. Funny how TV does that. In real life he's nowhere near as gigantic as he appears on the screen (must be surrounded by short people).

posted at 7:38 AM •

Cor! An honest-to-goodness Blog imbroglio going on as I watch.

Green Fairy has somehow found herself in the midst of accusations of hackery and general conduct unbecoming. A US Blogger has had his site maliciously hacked, with a Zorro-style calling card left at the scene of the crime claiming responsibility by GF. Said US Blogger is calling for all sorts of heavy objects to be dropped on GF, her sash and tiara from the Guardian Blog awards to be stripped, and Judge Judy to wag her finger sternly in her direction.

I don't personally know GF - only through her blog, and well - it just really really doesn't sound like her style. My own judgement notwithstanding (and apologies to GF here), but she seems to be a blogger of average technical savvy, certainly no hacker-el-supremo. She's only just installed Moveable Type, and there were a few hiccups at Casa el Green Fairy while she figured it out - hardly the actions of someone who would know how to destroy someone else's blog.

Here's hoping this gets sorted out pretty soon. If not, the "Green Fairy is Innocent" campaign starts here. I should go design a ribbon...

posted at 2:20 PM •

When I started the previous story last week, I had no idea I would take so long to write it. I've got a load of stories from adventures I had with Sally, and they've been buzzing around my head, trying to get out. I had a sudden desire to do something different last week, so I just started writing. I consciously decided to break from my previous format of writing, and serialise the story with images that didn't necessarily illustrate what I was writing.

Incidentally, the images are all from a trip to San Francisco last year. Mr. Jet-Set Darren identified the Hotel Utah Saloon in the first image, the second was a beach hut in Chrissy Fields, and the last three were all from Alcatraz island. The first image set the style for the rest, as I played around with it and found this atmospheric duotone effect.

I realised I was getting a lot less comments, so I decided to remove myself as much as I could - partly to keep everyone guessing, set a tone of mystery or suspense. For the most part I was just making it up (the style that is, not the story) as I went along - experimenting with different ways of writing things, and dropping in images that seemed to fit.

Hope you enjoyed the tale as much as I enjoyed writing it.

posted at 1:23 PM •

We made our way to the outskirts of London, to the first signs of the familiar country of motorway and service station. Compared to the journey through the night, this discovery of a vast network of opportunity and freedom, London had not revealed anything to us. We hadn't found any more truth here than was available in any Welcome Break or Little Chef. The destination had turned out to be a dead end, and all that remained was to go back. We set off in the early evening, discovering quickly that the return journey away from London was going to be a lot harder. We struggled to find lifts, and we had to retrace our route more than once. Eventually though we managed to wind our way back up the M1, steadily heading north. In the last hour of darkness we reached a point where our paths diverged. Sally was heading back to Carlisle on the train, and I had a short distance to travel back to Middlesbrough. I set off back towards my own life as the sun broke over the horizon. The dream was over, but in the back of my mind I knew that the roads I had travelled with my friend would stay with me forever.

posted at 3:36 PM •

posted at 6:55 PM •

Freeze-frame. Early morning, a young man and woman sitting in a McDonald's in West London. The man and the woman are dressed lightly for the time of year, and there is a look of exhaustion about them. The day is just starting, prople frozen mid-step as they hurry to catch the bus or tube to get to work. Spray from a street cleaning truck hovers in mid-air, the suns rays catching each droplet like a diamond. Play, fast-forward. The day streams past, too fast to take in. We follow the man and woman as they drift through the city, in a different time frame to everything around them. Dreamlike and out of focus. They stop only occassionally and briefly, the stream of people turning into a blur around them, we cannot hear what they are saying nor see who they are speaking to. The morning turns to afternoon. The winter sun stays low in it's trajectory through the sky, wisps of clouds barely visible as they speed past. The sky turns golden as the sun reaches the end of it's path, and we follow the young man and woman as they make their way out of the city.

posted at 4:56 PM •

posted at 4:09 PM •

We passed through the suburban fringes, making our way towards habitation. The city was waking up, street cleaners removing the debris of the previous night. Exhausted, we stopped off in another McDonalds and drank styrofoam coffee waiting for the tube to open. The sun rose over the half-empty streets, shops and buses glowing with an over-saturated fervour. Stepping out of the greyness of night into the technicolour land of Oz. Dorothy and Toto. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. Bonnie and Clyde. The adventure was over, freeze-frame as we decided what to do next.

posted at 1:40 PM •