Category: Archive

“I may sulk and not post for two weeks. It has been known.” – Me, on Monday.

Oh dear, and that was just supposed to be my Little Joke, not some Awful Premonition. That’ll teach me to tempt fate.

Several times over the last few weeks, I have come, ooh, that close to going all Teengoth Livejournal “Impale Yourself Upon The Jagged Shards Of My Pain” on you. Because a) it’s one of the few remaining classic blogging styles which I’ve never attempted, and b) it might have been, y’know, cathartic or summat.

However, I have successfully managed to restrain myself on each occasion. Because – and regular readers can repeat this after me on the count of three – misery is not my muse. To say nothing of the potential for squirming social embarrassment when meeting friends in Real Life who actually read this thing (and there are plenty).

Other times, I’ve thought: come on, blog some meaningless crap about pop music to cheer yourself up. But then, as I said on Vanessa’s blog: Sometimes, the gap between the front and the reality grows so wide that it becomes scarcely possible to maintain the front. (Although arguably, it might sometimes be desirable.)

Yes, readers: I am still wobbling. This week more than most. Although today, hardly at all. Must be that Friday feeling.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, and without quite realising it, I was maintaining a stoic Keep It To Yourself strategy. Then, over lunch with Buni one day, I unexpectedly found myself talking about things. And realised that this was the first time I had properly opened up in a long, long time. And further realised that this was, on balance, a good thing; a necessary thing, even.

So, since then, I have been cautiously following an It’s All Right To Talk About It With People So Long As You Don’t Get Completely Self-Indulgent About It strategy. Which, so long as I bear in mind the second part (after all, nobody wants to be a bore), has served me quite well. Something to do with distance, objectivity and perspective, no doubt. Helps to prevent me getting bogged down in those ghastly, isolating, internal monologue feedback loops. (As does the oh-so-controversial St John’s Wort, which is starting to kick in.)

Yesterday I went to see my GP, and opened up a little further. (We are fortunate enough to have a local state-of-the-art health centre which is widely regarded as one of the best – possibly the best – in the city.) I had several worries about doing this. Firstly, that I would make a complete hash at describing my symptoms. Secondly, that she would dismiss my problems as not worth bothering about. Thirdly, that she would merely write me out a prescription for something which I really wouldn’t want to take – and which would in any case not deal with any of what I see as the root causes.

She listened; she asked pertinent questions; she showed appropriate concern; she respected my position; she took me seriously. I shall be returning next week for a full 30-minute appointment, so that she can begin to assess my situation more thoroughly. There will probably be several such appointments. She was bloody good. It helped. I’m lucky.

So. In the absence of Teengoth Angstblogging, and in the absence of Cheering Inconsequential Crap… let us instead re-open that Old Curiosity Box, and deliver the third of the ten re-picks which I promised you in June.

As requested by groc and noodle, here’s another chance to hear:

Gina X – No G.D.M. (Dedicated To Quentin Crisp) (1979)

(Click here to read what I said about the track last time round.)

This should set you all up nicely for the weekend. Have a good one, y’all. I certainly intend to.

Monday 30.

Visited the Alstonefield Scarecrow Festival. Y’know, for the kiddies, like. Marvelled, non-patronisingly, at the rich untapped seams of ingenuity and creativity to be found in rural communities etc etc etc.

Tuesday 31.

Early train to Newcastle. Best day’s work in ages, as I was reminded of what it feels like to be working in a team. Finished the evening in a gay bar called Switch, alternately staring dumbly into the middle distance at the teenagers bopping around on the carpet, and plaintively texting ex-Newcastle resident Alan for moral support.

Wednesday 1.

Left Newcastle with renewed sense of professional purpose. While changing trains at dreary old Chesterfield, discovered a waiting room adorned with really rather decent C20th paintings, on loan from the late Duke of Devonshire’s collection at nearby Chatsworth House. These raised my spirits enormously.

Thursday 2.

This sums up what I like best about George’s bar on Broad Street: one moment, you can be earnestly discussing contemporary Japanese cinema with a published author, then the next moment you can be giggling about blowjobs with Alan and David, while the author graciously waltzes with a gorgeous tranny to Ella Fitzgerald. But most importantly of all – and this is where so many of us go wrong – you can STILL switch back to other more elevated topics of conversation whenever you wish. I consider this to be the defining hallmark of a truly Bohemian environment.

Friday 3.

I swear that my mother is looking younger with each passing year; maybe it’s the new shorter haircut. Anyway, it gives me immense hope for the future. Our favourite country pub is unexpectedly one chef down in the kitchen, meaning a long wait and our first ever disappointing meal there (their “Greek lamb” tasting suspiciously like shrivelled, stringy beef to us).

Saturday 4.

With four of the country’s top display teams competing to show off the very best of their work, the Shugborough Festival of Fireworks provides me with the most intense and sustained set of visceral thrills since I stopped going to Trade – especially when beat-synched with split-second precision to Darude’s Sandstorm. Seriously, none of us have ever seen fireworks quite like this before. Next year, we’re dragging along everyone we know.

Sunday 5.

The perfection of the morning (glorious sunshine, breakfast in the garden, thick scent of honeysuckle, pale pink fuschia busting out all over) is punctured by the horror story blaring from the front of both newspapers; impossible to reconcile the two.

After a pub lunch of some eccentricity, we attend the horticultural society’s prize dahlia auction in the memorial hall – the ginormous orange and lemon blooms looking like the sort of hats that Princess Margaret might have worn in 1973.

On the phone later, our journalist friend hopes he didn’t overstep the mark with his gently teasing wind-ups of my mother (“I wanted to make her feel included, to treat her just like everybody else“) – for my part, I was delighted that for once, we weren’t all treading on eggshells around her.

Monday 6.

The consistently splendid Richard Griffiths gets all the best lines in the delightfully bawdy Stage Beauty – a worthy successor to Shakespeare In Love.

Thence to George’s, and the aftermath of a gay version of an Ann Summers party (I particularly liked the cockring with the orange plastic teddy bear attached; very Alessi meets Philippe Starck), where some of the remaining guests are lustily singing along to early Beatles hits (although it’s far from being a gay venue, I like the fact that if George feels like hosting a gay sex toy party, then she damn well will).

The night finishes at Peter “Sleaze Sister” Martine’s first-Monday-in-the-month-is-homosexuals-night @ Faces in the Lace Market, where the reigning Mr. Gay UK (the one who won that reality TV sports thingy on Channel 4) treats us all to his debut single (a cover of We Are Family – really, you don’t want to know) … a night which is entirely redeemed in three minutes’ flat when they play The Shapeshifters’ transcendent Lola’s Theme (“I’m a different person,
yeah, turned my world around…“)

Tuesday 7.

I don’t mean to pry, but what was up with Franz Ferdinand’s drummer at the Mercury Music Prize awards? Because in the winners’ interview at the end, he looked pale and green and really Not At All Well. Oh, and he was openly yawning … the ingratitude!

Wednesday 8.

Couldn’t really get into PJ Harvey’s show at Rock City tonight; it was all a bit tame and polite and inconsequential, and I was certainly expecting more of a “performance” from her. Maybe she’s just not suffering enough these days? Verily, contentment is the enemy of Great Art…

Thursday 9.

Finished off my from shuffle to schaffel megamix (13 tracks, 15 minutes, 17.88mb) and posted the link on ILM. If you haven’t heard of schaffel yet, then I dare say you soon will: basically, it’s dance music with pairs of dotted crotchets and quavers (CHUNK-A CHUNK-A CHUNK-A CHUNK-A) instead of steady four-to-the-floor beats (DOOF DOOF DOOF DOOF), which evolved from shuffle blues through 1970s glam-rock and the short-lived electoclash phenomenon. How FABULOUS that after all these years, dance music should FINALLY discover a new rhythm; whatever will they think of next?

Friday 10.

Haircut in 35 minutes, so I’d better dash. Private viewing of Lewis Noble’s new stuff this evening. Bottle of wine and Will & Grace to follow (always the best night of the week).

Saturday 11.

No plans. Peace and quiet. Just the way we like it.

Sunday 12.

Buni and I will be attending the free screening of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin in Trafalgar Square, with a new score by the Pet Shop Boys, accompanied by the Dresdener Philharmonik, with staging by Simon Burney of Theatre de Complicité. If you’re going to be there, then please shout out in the comments.

Later on, we’ll be heading to the very epicentre of Haute Swish: DTPM @ Fabric; Buni has already invested in those shiny almost-clear sunglasses that they all wear, so he’ll fit in fine, but I’m still stuck in Outfit Indecision Hell – honestly, nobody knows how I suffer.

Blogging your wobbles; it’s problematic, isn’t it?

Firstly: a fleeting snapshot is all too liable to be read as a definitive portrait. (Particularly when one flounces off for a few days offline, leaving the posting in question dangling morosely at the top of the page.)

Secondly: for this blogger at least (although this is manifestly not true for others, whose grace under pressure I humbly salute), wobbles are the enemy of free creative expression. For, lo: even as the well of inspiration runneth dry, so doth the reservoir of confidence evaporate. And with neither inspiration nor confidence, I am as nothing.

When confidence runs out, perspective starts to skew. Support is mistaken for critique; friendly advice as intrusive nag; seasonally tumbling stats and capricious de-linking as lofty judgement.

In spiralling Benny Hill circles, bony, stunted little words fruitlessly chase after the big sexy, ideas that will flesh them out and make them whole.

As energy returns, so inspiration trickles down and through. Order is restored, as the currents are reversed: the ideas once again starting to generate and shape the words that will best express them.

Some words and ideas, however, are best expressed – can only be expressed – far, far away from here. So expect something of a sporadic, spluttering service for the time being. An occasional spiritual spittoon, if you will.

Honestly though, I’m OK. Sweat not.

Mike Skinner, on the radio: (plaintively)
And I’m just standing there. I can’t say a word.
Because everything is just gone.
I’ve got nothing.
Absolutely nothing.

Lydia, who turns eight tomorrow: (witheringly)
He’s got a dog.

Like him (but unlike her), I’m bored of August now. It’s been dragging on for far too long. Not nearly enough going on. OK, nothing going on. This office: a hub of inactivity and empty desks. (We’ve just done a head count: eight, in an office which has been known to hold forty.) My clients in Europe have all buggered off for the duration, as Europeans are wont to do. What’s the Cost Code for Thumb Twiddling? Can’t do much until the Big Database Cheese comes over from Holland next week. In the meantime, I’ve perfected my “don’t interrupt me, I’m concentrating on something VERY IMPORTANT” look… whilst all I’m really doing is hitting Refresh on this thread and this thread on I Love Music. Or else beefing up my Freecell stats (21 wins in a row and counting, I’ll have you know). Although my neighbour has just told me about the double-click thingy on Minesweeper, so I might be shifting my allegiances. August and January are K’s favourite months, as the streets are all empty and he can enjoy the relative peace and quiet of the city. I’m with him on January, but not on August. Especially as September is possibly my favourite month of the year: every sunny day feels like an unexpected bonus, and there’s a feeling of rebirth and renewal in the air, as everybody gets stuck back into their lives and the world begins to move on once again. Plus the blogs stop being crap, obviously. At least, this one does. Severe prolonged mojo-loss, in case you hadn’t noticed. Beyond tedious. But then there’s no point pushing it, if the words won’t come. I spent about an hour last Friday fiddling around with an attempt to describe last Thursday night’s goings on in George’s bar (and beyond) – at least, the publishable stuff – but had to give up, which I almost never do. Brain like concrete. Mind you, stopping up after 3am on a school night hardly helped. (Give you a clue: there’s that evergreen gag which we ‘mos never tire of telling, which bears the punchline “five pints of lager“. A convenient fiction, I’ve always thought. Note past tense.) Anyway, Mish described the first half of the evening far more ably than I ever could: go take a look. We’re doing it all over again this Thursday: the guest blogging dream team, that is. Minus the elusive Nixon, although he’s more than welcome to join us (20:30 onwards in George’s). And thence to Stealth, where The Fiery Furnaces and Sons & Daughters are appearing at Club NME. He‘ll be there, and he‘ll be there, and he‘ll be there. K still hasn’t chopped those bloody awful tufts off, so I’m still intermittently chuffing… but I sense we are moving onto some sort of endgame at last. His parents celebrated their Ruby Wedding last weekend, so the extended family were on a three-line whip; we all met up for lunch in a pub in Cheshire, which was full of a very particular type of flash git, of the sort which you only really find in Cheshire. The lunch was lovely, though; I had sirloin of roast beef, and it was Yum. K and his sister handed over a bottle of Burgundy as a present, thus following the Ruby theme – except that the Burgundy wasn’t really the present, but more of a Big Clue, in the style of 3-2-1 with Ted Rogers . It was fun watching their faces when they realised they had actually won a Luxury Holiday For Two! In beautiful and historic Burgundy! With wine tastings galore! And lots of Daily Telegraph readers for company! Meanwhile, the cottage garden is looking fookin lush after all this rain, especially the lawns, which have never looked greener or thicker. Although I’m sick of pruning the sodding geraniums all the time. The bottom’s much better though (yes, you CAN ask) – I can even walk down the twelve flights of steps in this office, which is the ultimate test as far as I’m concerned. Not so much as a twinge since the back end of last week. I’m back on the SJW’s though – as of this morning, in fact – but only after careful and prolonged consideration, so don’t all go wagging your fingers at me. No further background info, as it’s not that sort of blog. (Misery is not my muse, etc – see Troubled Divas passim.) Athough I will share with you my Quote Of The Week, courtesy of that veritable fountain of considered wisdom, Ms. Julie Burchill, in last Sunday’s Observer: “Depression is the most extreme form of vanity.” Which, once you filter out all the surrounding layers of deliberately provocative Burchill-ese (and there are plenty), contains a useful nugget of truth. No? You don’t think? Well, suit yourselves. K’s slides of Peru are back from the developers, and they look lovely, but they haven’t as yet been transferred to CD. When they are, I’ll publish the best ones on here. Who knows, I might even get round to writing up the whole trip. Stranger things have happened. While we were away, Chig read on Ceefax that dozens of people had died of extremely cold temperatures in the Peruvian Andes – not mountain climbers, ordinary people, including tourists. So he texted both of us immediately, but got “undelivered” messages 24 hours later, and so seriously thought we might actually be, you know, DEAD. The reality: my mobile isn’t Triband so doesn’t work in Peru, and although K’s does work, he had it switched off to avoid business calls. I ought to upgrade my mobile, but phone shops scare me; I’ve only ever been in once, to get the original phone. We’re not always as quick on the technological uptake as people might think; we only rented our first DVD last week. Touching The Void – absolutely fantastic, including the DVD extras. First time I’ve ever watched extras on a DVD; yes, I thought you might be shocked. Last night we rented Secretary, which is a little bit too stiff and stylised (the dialogue in particular), and faintly naff round the edges – but which, like Eyes Wide Shut before it, somehow worked for me, against all the odds. In my London clubbing heyday, I met quite a few S&M queens, and I found myself wondering what they would make of it; I suspect that most would basically approve, but then I’ve never exactly Entered The Mindset. Sometimes I think that I credit S&M with too much false mystique. I wonder what long-time Damned fan Gina Snowdoll makes of the track on the new Dizzee Rascal album (Dream) which samples Captain Sensible’s Happy Talk? Because I thought I was immune to being surprised by unlikely musical combinations, but this one has really thrown me. Do we like last week’s UK Number One single, Baby Cakes by 3 Of A Kind? I’ve only just caught up with it, and find myself strangely charmed; I think it’s that certain gormlessness in the vocal delivery. Couldn’t find the Fierce Girl single in Selectadisc or Virgin, and I badly NEED to hear it, because – on paper at least – it sounds like My Sort Of Thing. This afternoon’s rain storm has stopped, and there’s a nice – no, make that a beautiful – rainbow hanging over the Victoria Centre, starting at the Cornerhouse and dropping back down into the Lace Market. Ooh, such positivity all of a sudden! It must be the placebo effect.

From the Public Agenda section in The Times:

In an attempt to improve inclusiveness, the police are to ask all officers and civilian staff in England and Wales to declare their sexual orientation by the end of 2004. They will be sent questionnaires in which they can say whether they are heterosexual or gay ***, or decline to give a preference.

Read the full article here.

*** Yes, I’m wondering about bisexuals and transsexuals as well. Not to mention my concerns about well-intentioned but misguided attempts to codify sexual preferences into rigid, immutable categories. But let’s not even get into all of that for now; we’ll be here all day.

The cynic in me is first to pipe up. Surely this is nothing but shallow window-dressing, merely designed to re-assure those troublesome gay lobbyists that Something Is Being Done. After all, how difficult can it be to knock up a questionnaire and feed the results into a spreadsheet? Talk about following the path of least resistance.

Where my inner cynic leads, so my inner Irrepressibly Chirpy Little Pollyanna is sure to follow. For is it not also perfectly conceivable that the results of this survey might usefully reveal a significant under-representation of gays in the police, thus furnishing a powerful justification for introducing more pro-active recruitment drives, and more challenging anti-discrimination initiatives? (My inner Pollyanna can be quite the jargon-spewing tub-thumper when she wants to be. You dismiss her at your peril.)

Sadly, my inner Pollyanna is in sore danger of blinding herself to a major potential flaw with the whole initiative. Namely, that the recipients of the questionnaire are still at liberty to “decline to give a preference”. This threatens to skew the results in two directions. Firstly: many closeted officers will surely balk at answering truthfully. (After all, what’s in it for them to fess up?) Secondly: those rather more antediluvian elements in the force who are bound to view the questionnaire as intrusive PC nonsense (sic) are liable to refuse an answer on principle – and one cannot help but suspect that their number might be significant. In these ways, the survey is in danger of being rendered utterly meaningless.

But what are the alternatives? Making the question mandatory? Or proceeding from the perfectly justifiable assumption that yes, gays and lesbians are under-represented in the police force, so let’s get on with doing something useful to redress the situation, rather than fannying about with silly pieces of paper that are only liable to needlessly scare some and irk others?

My inner Pollyanna will get back to you on that one.

In case you were wondering otherwise (perish the very thought!) – no, of course our esteemed cottage garden designer had nothing, repeat nothing to do with the ill-fated Puddle Of Doom in Hyde Park. (Sadly, complications over funding meant that his proposed garden never went ahead.)

All of which leads me to wonder whether K & I should stake a claim to being the only safe, fully functioning, family-friendly PDMG left in the land. Just imagine the coach parties! The ensuing boost to the local economy would surely be immeasurable.

On the other hand, one simply shudders to think of all that ghastly cellophane from the Floral Tributes, stacking up outside the egg depot and gusting into the paddock over the road. An ecological minefield, to be sure. So, upon mature reflection, perhaps not.

Advance notice. Coming soon to a residential district near you: PDMG #2 – The Urban Remix. More details as they happen.