It's 1 o'clock in the morning, and I'm on after-hours support, waiting for The Phone Call which lets me know that it's time to check stuff on the mainframe. The Phone Call was supposed to come at around 11 - but I've been told that there are delays, and that I won't be hearing from anyone until at least 1.30. So I might as well bash out a rambling blog post to pass the time and keep me awake.

What can I tell you? Well, yesterday was a nice day out. K and I took a day trip from Derby to London, to attend my aunt and uncle's Golden Wedding luncheon at the Savoy Grill. The train arrived 40 minutes early in London (I know!), which gave us an extra hour to kill - so we swung by the National Portrait Gallery and went to see the David Hockney exhibition, all smartly togged out in our best suits. Does Hockney count as High Art? I don't know; there's something lightweight and decorative about him, and I'm not sure that he particularly Illuminates The Human Condition with any great profundity - but it's pleasantly familiar and diverting stuff, which lifted our spirits. The usual cast: Celia Birtwell and Ossie Clark, his grey-haired mam looking a tad self-conscious (and latterly a bit doolally), various handsome young men with brooding eyes, that bearded New York art bloke whose expressions give nothing away.

For the luncheon, we found ourselves at the next table to Preston from the Ordinary Boys, who was on Celebrity Big Brother this time last year. You know, the one who married Chantelle, the non-celebrity winner. She wasn't there - but no need to alert Heat magazine for a scoop ("PRESTON AND CHANTELLE: IS IT OVER?") as I think she was doing Celebrity Big Brother's Little Brother at the time, so maybe Preston was just kicking his perfectly formed little heels in town with his man-friend. Yes, that would be it. He's skinny and slight, and hence right up K's alley. K chose his seat well, and got to gawp at Preston all the way through the meal. I was happy for him.

Our golden wedding present to the aunt and uncle was a bottle of 1956 Armagnac, so they could have a taste of the year they were wed. (The anniversary itself was December 29, but they were cross-country ski-ing in Austria at the time, which isn't bad going for two people in their late seventies.) They seemed delighted with it. My cousin was there; she's a Something at the House of Commons, and K was duly invited to take the personalised access-all-areas tour of the Palace of Westminster which was such a highlight of 2006 for me. (Clambering onto the roof for great views and an up-close-and-personal with Big Ben; necking a quick post-adjournment pint in the surprisingly cramped and unadorned Members' Bar with the MPs; standing at the dispatch box in the debating chamber and pretending I was running the country.)

K flies to Florida on Friday for the big annual vets' conference - and so, rather than being stuck on my own at home over the weekend, I have decided to pay my dear friend and erstwhile midweek drinking buddy Reluctant Nomad Alan a visit in Amsterdam. It will only be his second full weekend there, and so everything is up for discovery. Hopefully we'll get to hook up with Caroline Eachman (née Prolific) as well. Introductions are better when they're face to face.

I have just received my first interview assignment from t'local paper. I'm going to be interviewing Will Oldham, aka Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, in advance of his Rock City gig on the 23rd - which will also be the first date on his first tour of England in twelve years (Scotland and Ireland got him last year). Gulp. Better start genning up, then.

I spent the earlier part of the evening assembling the tracks for next month's instalment of the Which Decade Is Tops For Pops project, which will be entering its fifth year. I had got it into my head that this year's crop was going to be a total shower of shite - but, actually, it's not too shoddy after all. Two of the tracks from February 1987 have been disqualified, as they are 1960s re-issues that were being used on TV adverts, and so I have substituted the songs at #11 and #12. The 1967 selection is pretty decent, the 1977 selection markedly less so (punk/new wave had yet to cross over commercially, and disco was thin on the ground that week), the 1987 selection is more nostalgic than I was expecting, and the 1997 selection is all grown up and credible, thanks to that brief period when Radio One also decided to be all grown up and credible.

It is now 1:40, I am all rambled out (there's only the stuff about our forthcoming Nottingham kitchen refit to tell you, and I don't propose to bore you with the details), and the Big Call has not yet happened. If I wander outside for a crafty fag, it shall surely happen, and so I shall try and induce it via the power of nicotine. So let's do that.

No editing, no revisions, no sprucing up. Totally old school. G'night!

Update: The Big Call has been put back to 2.30. Thank goodness for the 250+ spam comments that some kindly passing Italian has just left me to deal with. Couldn't have happened at a better time!

Labels: art, celebs, family, journal, london

I do make a rod for my own back sometimes. This post has been hanging over me like an overdue homework assignment, and I'm rapidly approaching the Can't Be Arsed stage with it. So here goes - but quickly now - and then we can all move on with our lives.

5. Went to Duckie.

Immediately upon arriving at my friends' house in Clapham - three and a half pints down, and beginning to wilt - I was informed that I was going to Duckie, and that I had better get a move on, as they were already waiting for me at Kazbar. Having successfully negotiated a brief top-changing window (nice smart Paul Smith stripey shirt OFF; interesting glow-in-the-dark Camembert Electrique T-shirt ON - it's the only vaguely "rock and roll" garment I possess, providing you don't peer too closely at the hippy-dippy graphic), I was summarily bundled back out onto the street, with barely even time to snatch a burger. Still, being told I'd been guest-listed put a spring in my step.

"Guest listed for Duckie!", I texted to K, with the customary glee which I reserve for such nano-triumphs. Duckie is the only gay club EVER, in nearly a quarter of a century of being made to suffer them, which K has genuinely enjoyed. (There had to be somewhere.) That's probably because a) they don't play "dance" music, b) nobody's cruising (at least not so as you'd notice), so there's none of that brittle, competitive sexual tension, c) tops are kept firmly ON, d) it's relaxed, friendly and mostly 30+ (at least), e) there are no vicious, self-adoring, sociopathic disco bunnies bouncing around on f**king E. I wish we could go more often.

As we walked in, the Readers Wifes were playing my second favourite single of the year so far: Peter Bjorn and John's "Young Folks". GOOD sign.

In the middle of what passes for the dancefloor, Amy Lamé was making popcorn from a little machine that she picked up from Argos during the week, and was handing it out in plastic bowls. ("Why am I doing it? Because we've been running this club for eleven f**king years and I've run out of ideas, OKAY?")

Cabaret Act #1 performed a routine that was vaguely based around The Phantom of the Opera. Gothic burlesque, you could have called it. A bunch of red roses was seized; the petals were bitten off, chewed up and spat out over our eagerly upturned faces; and the remaining stems were contemptuously tossed away, most of them landing smack in my face. (The honour!) Upper clothing was removed, leaving a pair of red love hearts, one covering each bosom. A large crimson candle was brandished and dangled above the performer's bare midriff, so that a third love heart could be etched upon her skin with the molten wax. Ooh! Aah! Hey, that's actually quite pretty!

Next, a tourniquet was applied to the performer's upper arm, a syringe inserted, and a blood sample extracted. (I couldn't look. I've got a thing about needles). The blood was then squirted into a half-full wine glass, stirred, and greedily gulped down. Erk! Eek! But hold up, we're not done yet!

Lower clothing (such as it was) was removed, revealing - you guessed it - a fourth love heart, protecting what little remained of the performer's modesty.

It was at this point that we noticed the string.

As the soundtrack changed to "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend", and even before a collective "Uh-oh!" could be muttered, the performer grabbed the string and yanked it downwards - extracting a length of large, threaded beads from her hoo-hah as she did so.

It swiftly occurred to me that this was only the second time in my life that I had been presented with a lady's hoo-hah at such close quarters - and that the first time had also been at a Duckie event, when Ursula Martinez had extracted a string of brightly coloured handkerchiefs from her "special place". Really, the place is an education.

Cabaret Act #2, a slender, bare-chested androgyne of indeterminate ethnicity (if pressed, I'd plump for Flipino), who had previously performed at Caesar's Palace and the Brixton Academy, proceeded to thrill us all with the most remarkable display of hula-hoop-manship that any of us are ever likely to see. To the strains of CCS's cover of "Whole Lotta Love" (used as the theme tune for Top of the Pops for most of the 1970s), he/she worked that hoop like a whirling dervish, spinning it from every limb, and at every angle, at dazzling speed - and somehow managing to avoid hitting the ceiling, the walls, and indeed us (it was a very small stage, and a very large hula hoop). Ooh, we went mental - all lingering memories of vaginal bead extraction banished, as we cheered him/her to the rafters.

The music was - as ever - eclectic, seemingly random, but never obscure (I recognised everything they played, even that "modern" one by The Fratellis) , and always perfectly chosen. Forget the Guilty Pleasures aesthetic; although many of the choices would have overlapped, their context was quite different. For the final run, we gave it up to: "Living Thing" (ELO), "Cannonball" (The Breeders), "Justified and Ancient" (The KLF with Tammy Wynette), "Teenage Kicks" (The Undertones) and "Get Down" (Gilbert O'Sullivan). As I say: perfect.

The day's total damage: seven pints of lager and one can of Red Bull - but spread out over eleven hours, allowing plenty of time for absorption and processing. At forty-four, I don't do shit-faced. So unbecoming in the slightly older gentleman.

Ah, London. You never let me down!

Labels: clubs, gay, journal, london, performance