THEGAYUK

Tag: Ramblings Of A Gay Man

  • COLUMN | Very Superstitious

    People talk about spirituality and faith and I’m always left puzzled. Talk to me about organised religion and my eyes glaze over as I reach for my Richard Dawkins books. Lecture me on Eastern mysticism and I shudder and look away. If you want to tell me about astrology, cosmic ordering or the time your deceased neighbour communicated with you from the spirit world then I’m anything but fascinated.

    I escaped my religious upbringing as soon as I was able and I avoid anything with chanting or incense. I suspect that my chakras are more than out of alignment but are actually non-existent. A woman at a party once told me that a dead woman called Marjory was wanting to talk to me and I politely told her to go away and take Marjory with her.

    If I think about it, though, I do have a religion of sorts: superstition. I can’t pass a single magpie without saluting it. If I see a shiny penny on the floor then I have to pick it up and I touch wooden things with alarming regularity. This can prove very awkward. Saluting a magpie during a driving lesson will guarantee that a frantic instructor will shout at you in alarm and grab for the dual controls as you allow the car to veer across lanes of traffic. Ducking down whilst on a date to snatch a coin from the street whilst drunkenly shouting: “A lucky penny!” will almost certainly ensure that date number two will not be forthcoming. Grabbing a penny from a colleague’s desk will get you odd looks too. Reaching for tree trunks in the street to touch wood will perhaps risk arrest, if done too conspicuously.

    My superstition is as sound as anything and no less valid. It’s based on centuries of tradition. I know it’s not true and that it’s a mad way to run my life but what’s not to like about not opening an umbrella indoors or keeping new shoes off the table? It’s hardly a hardship.

    For me, it’s more a way of keeping anxiety at bay, like a very mild strain of O.C.D. I see a black cat and I feel instantly calmer. It has a flip side too, of course. Seeing one magpie can leave me lurching with angst. Its mild angst though and it passes. The major bonus for me is that my religion has no dietary restrictions, no observances and no tricky festivals to navigate. It also doesn’t disapprove of me being gay.

    Maybe I’ll start a festival though. If anyone wants to come round to mine dressed as a magpie whilst bearing wood then I’ll gladly let you pick up all the pennies you like from my carpet. Tempted?

  • COLUMN | A Message From The Bunker

    As an atheist, vegetarian, teetotal, chocolate hating, childless man with very little family and a job which requires me to work over Christmas often, I don’t really see a lot in it for me to enjoy. I ‘came out’ as a festive hater a few years back and have suffered all the usual labels of Grinch and Scrooge and the tedious Bah Humbug comments.

    Over the course of several years, I gradually sloughed off the habits expected of me. I just didn’t enjoy them and despite what everyone seems to say, none of it is compulsory. Stopping sending cards celebrating something I don’t celebrate, not attending the tense family meal, avoiding the dreary works’ do: all of these actions felt increasingly liberating. I also discovered that amongst my friends there were a huge number of secret Christmas haters.

    Maybe you love it (and good luck to you if you do) but for those who feel like I do, here are my top five tips for avoiding the Yuletide hassle.

    1) Avoid Social Media: Unless you want to see endless ‘selfies’ of sweaty people in too much make-up at works’ parties, photos of uncomfortable looking people at dinner tables, over-dressed trees and endless Instagrammed food pictures, then stay clear. You’ll also avoid the smug updates and the plethora of posts where people complain about how much they have to do.

    2) Avoid the shops: They’ll be packed with amateurs. People who don’t enter a shop from one month to the next descend on the high streets in December and they just don’t understand the etiquette and tend to get underfoot. Shop rage can soon ensue. Plus: all those delightful little things you want to buy are all wedged in a back stockroom to make way for nasty little novelty gifts.

    3) Invest in good headphones: You’ll need these if you have to make a foray into a shop to buy food or more importantly some kind of substance such as nicotine or alcohol to get you through. Unless you really do love Aled Jones and Shakin’ Stevens then your own music is essential to keep you sane whilst you stagger round the booze aisle.

    4) Utilise technology: Unless you want bombarding with tacky perfume ads, images of plastic families eating mountains of food and various mythical weird Utopian delights dreamt up by advertisers then you need to avoid live television. Skipping adverts is what the DVD recorder/box type thing and internet were made for

    5) If it gets too much hide: There’s still a few bunkers left from the last war. Maybe hiding in one of these might help you avoid the yuletide horrors. I have a perfectly lovely one where I’ve draped a few Liberty fabrics and have a delightful Chaise Longue. If you fancy joining me: I have enough dried food to get me through till January. I also have a collection of music that doesn’t include anything by Slade and a pile of books. Just don’t mention the C word to me.

    If you are religious and Christmas is your festival then I really hope you enjoy it. As for the rest of you: whatever it is you think you might be celebrating, I hope you enjoy it too.

  • COLUMN | The Church of the poisoned mind

    As a teenager I dallied with the idea of religion. That was until I realised that I was actually what religion often calls an inveterate sinner and decided to give it up.

    My dad was agnostic, tending more towards atheism and my mum had been raised a Roman Catholic. My brother and I were christened and all that business and my mum took us to church regularly as small children. I remember it as being a crushing bore. My mum would intermittently pass us dusty boiled sweets or Polo Mints from the recesses of her handbag, to placate us as we stood up and down repeatedly, listening to the strange and spooky incantations in the local Catholic Church. I hated it and would often try to smuggle a book in to pass the time and distract me from the anxiety it invoked.

    For a small child a Catholic church can be a sinister place. The masses of blankly staring statues, the smoky incense, dim light, candles and the mumbling, all combined to give me the jitters and to be honest still does. The huge crucifix with the depiction of a man with a collection of oozing wounds gave me nightmares. I shudder now on the rare occasions I have to enter a church. I still recall that strange mix of boredom, cold and terror instilled into me and I break out into a sweat. I can also understand that scene in “The Omen” where Damien goes off on one. I feel his pain. I also get funny urges to shout absurd made up swear words in very quiet places. No one wants to hear me shout “F**k-bumble” or “W**k-toffee” whilst they’re praying so I avoid that risk.

    Luckily my mum became tired of the ritual of church attendance and the joy of accompanying two bored children to church soon palled and she gave it up for many years. I got to age 12 and decided I’d rethink the whole church issue. My maternal Grandfather was an amusing spiv of a man who was all Brill Cream, bandy gait and cheeky charm. He entertained me and I liked his carefree manner and his love of fruit machines and Embassy Number Ones. I decided to try going to church a few times with him. Oddly, I enjoyed it. The service was a bore and the bobbing up and down was hard on the knees but I got to spend time with my funny Granddad who would be wearing his best suit and we always went in the bar at the Catholic Social Club after and let me have a Shandy. It seemed a fair pay off for having to go in the spooky place.

    I quickly become quite entranced by it all and found I quite liked the ritual and the pomp. There was gold, perfumes and shiny things and a man in a dress standing at the front; ideal fodder for a teenage gay boy’s imagination. I decided to have my first communion and get confirmed, all in one go.

    To become a good Catholic you have to go to classes. I went once a week to the presbytery and sat in the priest’s office for an hour of instruction after school. No, before you ask, he didn’t try a thing. He was in his eighties, a funny little walnut of a man who smelt of old age and fusty cassocks. I was given a little red book called the Catechism that felt like it was a manual to tell me how bad I was. That’s where it all went a bit wrong.

    I was 13 and there I was with a little book telling me how full of dirty nasty sin I was and the voice of the wizened little priest to back this up. The book had such delightful entries as the one telling you that homosexuality was a sin crying out to heaven for vengeance. That didn’t make me feel very warm inside. My teenage love for Nick Hayward from Haircut 100 was the beginning of the road to becoming as evil as Myra Hindley, according to the priest. It wasn’t just a sin to do the bum thing. It was also a sin to think about sex and to masturbate. I was 13. Masturbation is the prerogative of the teenage boy. I could no more stop myself thinking about sex as I could give up food or air. I made a few valiant attempts to give up “the sin of self abuse” but it made me crabby and deranged and never lasted. As Woody Allen once said, “Don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone you love.”

    Apparently I also had to obey and respect my parents. That one was even harder. I sat through the classes getting more and more anxious and mixed up. It was an odd feeling to be told you’re fundamentally wrong and bad. I wouldn’t recommend it.

    I went for my first (and last) confession. It was a bit of a farce. Anonymity wasn’t achieved, as I was the only one in the church. It was also a wet autumn evening and the flickering candles did little to dispel my nerves as I sat behind the grotty little grill. The priest asked me what sins I’d committed and I made up a few minor things, omitting to mention the time I got caught shoplifting in W.H. Smiths and the bouts of long and steamy dirty thoughts about Peter Duncan off Blue Peter with my hand down my trousers.

    The confirmation service was the biggest bore ever, worse than any maths lesson at school. The church was packed with proud parents and was hot and uncomfortable. The Bishop led the lengthy service and did a sermon about how evil Boy George was. He’s badly dressed at times and he can be a bit irritating but I’m not sure about evil. He also added in a topical element by telling us what a sinner Mick Jagger was too. This raised a few puzzled looks from an audience of teenagers in the early 80s who weren’t quite sure who he was.

    My granddad seemed proud, which was a consolation. In retrospect, it’s not really worth months of sitting in a little room being told you’re evil, just to try and make someone proud. The head f**king isn’t a great thing and I feel very angry when I look back and think of myself as a vulnerable child being given such psychologically damaging misinformation. My granddad died not long after that and the appeal of the church going faded and I gave it up.

    My dad converted to Catholicism when he was dying and in an odd twist, at the time, I was dating a man who was a devout Catholic and had once entered a seminary and almost completed his training to be a priest: strange times indeed. My dad’s funeral was an excruciating experience and if you’re a non-Catholic you maybe won’t know that there’s no speed or economy to a Catholic Church service. The funeral lasted over two hours, including the reception into church and the cremation. It wasn’t good to prolong it and required medical sedation, thanks to my understanding G.P. and a sedative prescription that barely contained my grief.

    I don’t intend to ever enter a church again or sit through a service as long as I live unless it’s to marvel at the architecture or the church is now a pub. I won’t attend church weddings or christenings and if I need to go to a funeral then the little bit at the crematorium is fine. I don’t think that’s disrespectful at all, just respecting myself.

    Although my experience of the church isn’t good, other people’s can be fantastic and I don’t disrespect anyone who has a strong religious faith if that’s what gets them through the night. I also acknowledge that religion isn’t all about condemnation and disapproval and I applaud certain aspects of religious faith and works of the church. This is just my experience.

    Maybe my views will change as I get older and I’m self knowing enough to realise that maybe the threat of terminal illness or old age might send me running back in a search for comfort and meaning. I hope not. If there’s one thing the Catholic Church never gave me, it’s comfort or meaning.

  • COLUMN | Frightful

    I tend to have a slightly over-active imagination. Maybe the diet of Hitchcock films and cheap thrillers that I devoured during my youth are to blame. I encountered three situations this week that sent my pulse racing and made me feel like Tippi Hedron in an aviary:

    1) Walking through the deserted park on my way home from work on a dark November evening, I heard a man running at me. As he approached I heard him wheezing and breathing heavily. Anticipating a knife in my back or at least a huge hairy hand round my throat, I braced myself. Of course, it was one of the ubiquitous joggers that pound the streets, getting sore nipples and suffering for a few pounds of weight loss. It was all quite harmless.

    2) Walking towards me was a man who was shouting loudly into the air. He was angry and babbling, face contorted with rage. Clearly this man was deranged and about to kick off, throwing punches and pulling out a huge sword as he moved to disembowel me. Of course, it was a man using his mobile. It’s so hard to tell nowadays who is and isn’t having a psychotic episode, as the world seems full of people shouting into mid air. It was all quite harmless.

    3) Sitting on the bus I hear the words “F**king gay boy” shouted out loud. I wince and am instantly back to my 14-year-old self, suffering homophobic abuse on a daily basis. I expect that an attack on myself is forthcoming and prepare to vacate the bus. Of course it was just teenagers, causally bantering with each other, using the words ‘gay’ and ‘gay-boy’ to mean ‘sh**e’. It was all quite harmless.

    Actually, no: the f**k number 3 was harmless. It was offensive, divisive and damaging. It might have been meant as a fun bit of cajoling but actually it’s really bloody offensive and really dangerous. Would they have used racist terms as insults to each other and thought that was O.K.? Is it O.K. to use a term describing a massive section of society to mean something is lame and useless? Is it harmless to allow this to happen when we’ve fought so hard for so many years for respect?

    Joggers are annoying and get under you feet. Mobile phone shouters are rude and ill mannered. People using the word gay to mean anything other than ‘happy’ (if they’re over 80) or homosexual are beyond despicable and in my opinion, are as dangerous and dumb as racists or people who use derogatory words for disabled people. I’m fully in support of the Stonewall Campaign against the casual use of homophobic language. I know it’s hard to change cultural practices but it’s not impossible.

  • COLUMN | Testing Times

    It’s National HIV testing week: a campaign that I strongly believe in. As a naïve 17 year, I met, and quite quickly moved in with, a much older man. It was the late 1980s and AIDS. was grabbing the headlines. Ineffectual government TV adverts and sensationalist headlines didn’t penetrate my psyche and I ignored the whole safer sex message. As far as I was concerned it wasn’t a worry for me. Condoms were readily available in the gay bars I frequented and for various reasons they stayed gathering dust in my bedside drawer.

    Five years down the line I started to have concerns. People around me in the sleepy Midlands town where I lived were starting to get diagnosed with HIV and a contemporary of mine died of AIDS. in his mid twenties. Famous people starting dying, people who were remote yet whom I could relate to. I’d not been especially promiscuous (yet) and had only had a handful of sexual partners. Of course, this didn’t mean a thing, as the sexual partners that I’d had unsafe sex with had all had a fair share of sexual encounters. I’d effectively opened myself up to the transmission route of every partner they’d had too. The thought that I might have HIVbegan to niggle away at me.

    I did the worst thing possible and ignored it. I flicked past articles about the subject, avoided novels and films with an AIDS theme and tried to supress the thoughts whenever they arose. Trying to keep your eyes, ears and mind closed to something is incredibly counterproductive. Pushing down thoughts can be like trying to hold down a beach ball in a swimming pool: the harder you push it down, the more velocity it attains when it bounces back.

    My hypochondria worsened. Every blemish, ache or swollen gland was a sure fire confirmation of my fears. I actually convinced myself that I definitely had the illness and made changes to my thinking accordingly. I stayed put in a bad relationship for much longer than I should (falsely) believing that no one else would want me if I was positive for HIV I tried not to plan ahead or think about the future, as I was convinced that I didn’t have one. I worried and fretted and tried to keep busy to avoid thinking. Treatments were only just coming out to slow the progress of the virus and during this time, several more acquaintances became ill and died. When one of my partner’s exes was diagnosed with the virus, I was certain that my days were very limited.

    It took several years before I finally plucked up the courage to have a test. There was no flash of light or defining moment. I was just so sick of worrying and doing nothing that I eventually came to the conclusion, that whatever the answer I was better knowing rather than living like I was. The test was negative. A week of anxious waiting proved just how wrong my thinking was. I was so convinced that I had the virus that I had a repeat test a month later. My mind-set took some readjusting.

    Knowing what I know now: I look back and see that had I been positive, I would have somehow coped with the diagnosis. Delaying the testing lead me to not take steps to address the issues and left me stuck in a process of denial and grief. Of course, treatments are better now too and the testing process is much easier and faster with a range of testing options. It’s so important to know your status.

  • COLUMN | Bully Boy

    Secondary school was a pretty grim time for me.

    In spite of being bright, having lots of friends and attending a pretty good school, it was a hideous time in my life and one that I shudder to recall. Markedly effeminate and obviously gay, I was a sure fire target for the homophobic bullies and there’s nothing like a touch of bullying to make life a living hell. I still recall evenings at home sitting and crying in my room, the lurching nausea of a Sunday night with the prospect of school the next day and the soul-destroying erosion of my confidence.

    30 years later, I wondered what advice I might give my 12-year-old self, should I discover that elusive time machine. Here are my top five tips to mini Chris. I’m sure that they won’t apply to everyone and I know that facing up to a bully is a complex issue but here’s what I’d tell myself. Hopefully it might have some advice transferable to others too.

    1) Tell people about it

    The worst bullying of all came from a sport’s teacher (clichéd, I know but people often do behave in a way so tediously true to the expected norm). The belittling comments and name calling during sports lessons set a precedent. If it was acceptable for a teacher to call me ‘the poofter’ in front of the class then it was acceptable for everyone, surely? The resolution came when he blacked my eye (accidentally) by throwing an icy cold football at my face with velocity whilst shouting some retro homophobic name at me. Cue a minor inquiry and a partial resolution of his nasty behaviour (it was the ‘80s, people could get away with more bad stuff than now). It’s easy to see, in retrospect, that I could have made it end a lot quicker had I spoken out sooner to maybe my parents or a sympathetic teacher. At the time this felt terrifying and impossible but I realise now that I didn’t deserve this and that whatever I did to speak out then the moron couldn’t hurt me any more than he already was doing.

    2) There’s safety in numbers

    Take comfort in your allies and if possible, befriend the like minded. I’d tell 12-year-old Chris that he has a great bunch of friends who actually seem to like him and will stand up for him. I made friends with two other gay teenagers and that was an incredibly lucky thing for me. I was lucky that they existed and we got on. We’d hang out together and to our surprise, it was harder to bully three people than one. My loyal female friends were a support too. There was a memorable incident when a boy tripped me over on the way home and my female friend punched him squarely on the jaw. He didn’t cross me again for fear of her firm left-hook. Naturally, I wouldn’t ever advocate violence but I really wish I’d known before that my group of friends were so willing to take no nonsense whilst I was prepared to take so much.

    3) What they’re saying is rubbish

    Just because you have a crush on the singer from Duran Duran and like a good show tune doesn’t make you inferior. Whatever names they might call you are utterly irrelevant. The opinion of someone who terrorises someone due to his or her sexuality really doesn’t count at all. It’s worth less than zero. In fact it’s worth less than that even. It needs a whole scale of its own; it’s so beneath contempt.

    4) Look for positive role models

    Not so easy in the 1980s but this is a bit easier now, hopefully. Even back in the bad old days of leg warmers and The Kids from Fame, there were strong positive people to look up to. It was a revelation to me, at the age of 14, to discover gay literature. I devoured books by Edmund White and Felice Picano and took a keen interest in historical figures like Harvey Milk who had fought so strongly for the cause. Pop music gave me idols too and Andy Bell and Jimmy Somerville were strong and unashamedly gay figures. These people taught me more about humanity and strength than any meathead sports teacher or vile acting teenager with an axe to grind.

    I also found comfort from a local gay youth group and the local gay switchboard. I was amazed that other people understood what the strife I was going through and that I wasn’t alone.

    5) Remember: You really are a lot more fierce and fabulous then they’ll ever be

    Nothing to say about this on except: fact!

    This is just my advice to myself and doesn’t apply to everyone. Bullying is a hard thing to stand up to and to get through alone. If you are being bullied because of your sexuality or any other reason, whatever age you are, then please get some professional help and advice.

    Here’s some useful links:

    http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Bullying/Pages/Homophobicbullying.aspx

    http://www.standupfoundation.com/

    http://www.anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk/advice/children-young-people.aspx

    http://www.eachaction.org.uk/about-each/

    And for more contacts visit: http://www.thegayuk.com/Bullying

  • COLUMN | Tis The Season

    It’s the most wonderful time of the year! No, not all that Christmas nonsense that’s looming, but autumn. I totally love autumn. It’s arrived with a bang in London, heralded by high winds and radical temperature drops but oh, is it beautiful. The leaves are magnificent, the smell of wood smoke is in the air and the weather today is crisp and sunny.

    Finally the weather suits my clothes (isn’t that a line from a song?). I’ve unearthed my wool suits, my tweed jackets and my original 1950s Tootal scarves and I’m ready to rock and stroll. Autumn is my favourite season to go walking: all those leaves to kick, cheeky squirrels to feed nuts to and bright vistas full of warm colours. No more having to expose my flesh in summer clothes that fail to hide the bulges in the wrong places and the puny bits. No more sweating so much that I look like I’ve melted and having to sport unseemly damp patches on the Tube.

    The food is good too. I’ve begun on an odyssey of soup consumption and stodgy cakes, wholesome stews and custard have re-appeared on the menu. The festivals are better too. Give me Halloween any day over your puny Christmas and Easter stuff. I don’t want a chocolate egg or sickly carol singing. I want blood, ghouls and the un-dead. I want rotting flesh, dismembered limbs and evocations of mean. They appeal to me so much more. Cruella de Vil is so much more me than a giant rabbit with a basket or a man in a red fur trimmed suit that entices children onto his lap.

    Snuggling up with the heating on high, a good book and the curtains drawn against the outside world is my idea of heaven. The cold weather keeps people in their houses more so the streets are quieter and there’s less noise and bustle. On the down side: given the energy price hikes, I’ll be destitute come March but I’ve got two kidneys and the market must be good for selling one of those, right?

    With every Yin comes a Yang though. I have started the season of viral illnesses with a heavy cold. I’m drowning in my own mucous and living on a diet of Paracetamol and bad TV. Maybe I’ll give the leaf kicking a miss today and snuggling up will be more sweating and shivering. Oh autumn, how I loved you but like any lover you have some annoying habits and bringing with you these tiresome viruses has to be a deal breaker. I’m all about the spring now. Autumn: We’re through.

  • COLUMN | Some people are gay

    I’m never normally speechless but the other day a work colleague rendered me thus. She happened to mention the Stonewall “Some People Are Gay Get Over It” bus campaign that has re-launched. She wondered why it was necessary at all and considered it a bit of an insult…

    I remained silent, to my shame. There was a lot that I could have said.

    I could have pointed out that homophobic hate crimes still ride high in the crime figures’ hit parade.

    I could have discussed the recent reports about the volume of calls to The Samaritans from men with issues surrounding their sexuality.

    I could have pointed out that although we’re both white and middle class, we work in an area with a high black and ethnic minority population with high social deprivation where homophobia is rife.

    I could have pointed out the high levels of bullying in schools, prevalence of drug and alcohol problems in LGBT people and the high rates of mental illness and suicide that, unsurprisingly, go hand in hand with this.

    Maybe, I could have quoted some of the extremist religious groups and the hatred and bile that they spout about us, to anyone who will listen.

    I could have discussed the long wait for marriage equality and the vitriol that was merrily aired during this debate.

    I could have mentioned the school children on the bus, merrily calling each other ‘gay’ as an insult, the word, naturally, meaning totally crap.

    I didn’t mention any of this. I grunted and carried on typing, followed a few minutes later by a funny little aside about a colleague. I was fulfilling my role, you see: comedic and waspish gay colleague/friend/relative/neighbour. We’re unthreatening and fun to be around. We’re much like the inflatable ‘gay best friend’ recently on sale by a major supermarket. We make hen nights jolly but can be put back in the drawer if we get over blown.

    I think that tomorrow, I may take something unusual to work with me: my soapbox. We’ve got things to discuss.

  • COLUMN | Some Days

    There are days when I really hate those people who shout into mid air whilst sitting on the train.

    In my youth you knew where you were with people who talked to themselves. They were experiencing psychotic episodes and best avoided in case they mistook you for a demon. Nowadays you have to look discretely for the mobile phone and earpiece. Whatever happened to decorum? To the young woman on the train yesterday: I’m terribly sorry about your cousin’s gynaecological problems but actually I think that you’re wrong. The manager in the pizza takeaway where you answer the phone was right to tell you that taking the day off to see a relative in hospital who has a faintly dodgy fanny is a sackable offence. I hope he gives you your marching orders.

    There are days when I hate the scrum at the tube station. I want to shout at people that I’m actually a solid and can’t be passed through like a vapour, however hard you push. They’ve yet to invent a human who can be walked into and won’t make a resounding thudding noise. I want to proclaim the virtues of personal hygiene and cologne and that train seats are for people, not your tacky fringed handbags.

    There are days when I want to the stand up in the cinema and shout at all the people who are discretely whispering asides to their companions. I want to ask them all to go home and watch television in the comfort of their own sitting rooms where they can make inane comments to their hearts’ content and not be irritating the hell out of the rest of the paying public with their hissing babble and verbal nonsense.

    There are days when I want to scream at the people blaring music from their cars as they drive along. I can almost cope with the Gangsta Rap. If there’s music to be blared out of a car window then that’s your tune of choice. Elton John, though? I seriously heard someone belting Elton John out of a car stereo the other day. As much as I like the odd vibration, I don’t want my spleen being wobbled about to “Nikita”, thank you very much.

    There are days when I consider a move to a remote island. Then I remember how much I hate not having a mobile phone signal. I’d get annoyed by the cows and sheep and how they just kind of stand there, the way they look at you and not to mention all that public defecation. The birds would fly the wrong way, the grass would be too tall/too short or too green.

    You know what though? Other days not one bit of this annoys me. Life can be odd like that.

  • COLUMN | Fake Bake

    I’ve developed a new addiction. Tuesday nights see me glued to people making cakes on BBC2. I know it’s ridiculous and that The Great British Bake Off has been going for years but I’m a late adopter with most things.

    Technology is a prime example. I didn’t get a mobile phone till well into the 2000s and only then under duress. I don’t have an iPad, shudder at Kindles and am ‘appy being app-less. I don’t want more electronic devices taking over my life. I’m already bombarded with technology at work. I want note books made of paper, not tungsten and books that smell of fusty old age which crinkle in my hands rather than a little electronic square with a backlit display and a smell of electronics.

    I also don’t understand cookery programs, generally. I hate watching the latest personality who seems to have cunningly developed their traits to order by a PR company, throwing herbs in the air and shouting in Mockney-Cockney, sporting some contrived eccentricity or preparing a meal in full evening dress whilst looking like they’re dying to munch down on your nether regions. The whole idea of watching someone cook bores me senseless. If I wanted to watch housework, I’d prefer a dusting show. Dusting is very soothing and purposeful. Until they bring back Fanny Craddock and her evil snobbish persona I intend to steer clear of cookery shows. I may wait a while unless they can clone Fanny, as she’s long dead.

    It’s not Paul Hollywood either. He might be some people’s idea of a silver-fox but he’s not mine. I find him slightly irritating and although I don’t mind chunky or well built men, he doesn’t thrill me. Maybe it’s those elaborate collared shirts, maybe his constant moaning about the texture of cakes.

    I think the whole thing is schadenfreude. I want to see people fail. I want sunken middles and slanting icing which drips off precariously. I want to see the over confident ones hoisted upon their own petards and the annoying ones flustered in flour showers. I want burnt things, raw things and high anxiety. I’m not ashamed. It’s human to want to enjoy failure isn’t it? As long as it’s not your own, then failure is fine and dandy.

    Has it inspired me to bake a cake? Has it bollocks. I have a supermarket two minutes walk from my house. I’ll stick to enjoying the successes of people like the delightful Mr Kipling.

  • COLUMN | Painless Pleasure

    Yesterday I spent time looking at instruments of torture and some really gruesome looking antique sex toys. I was out strolling round London with my partner and we’d done the usual stuff (theatre, coffee, Vintage clothes shops) when we happened on a fetish wear shop and decided this complemented. It had an enticing window display and the place looked intriguing so we rang the bell and popped in.

    It was beautifully laid out and the orifice ripping metal wear and rubber ball gags were laid out with aplomb. I’ll give them that. I winced a little as we walked around, browsing and clenched my buttocks as I admired the patina on one highly polished ergonomic device designed to cause pain after another.

    There’s a fine line between the two things. Like love and hate, pleasure and pain are sensations that our hardwiring seem to allow crossover with. I almost envy the S and M fanatics. I’m the kind of person who would take to my bed with a bad corn and am known for my stash of painkillers which I heft around in my bag. I struggle enough with my dodgy back, creaky neck and achy knees to want to invoke further trouble by being paddled mercilessly on the buttocks in a dungeon in Vauxhaul. Nor am I one who is keen to inflict pain. I get upset if I accidentally tread on a spider.

    I once slept with a man who asked if he could put me in a half Nelson during intercourse and I wasn’t keen. He also asked if he could pull my hair which for a man over the age of forty is a definite no-no. I’m already at the point of reaching for the Regaine without having the risk of clumps of it coming out during someone’s boisterous orgasm.

    I admire the style and the commitment of the sadomasochistic scene devotees but I think I’ll stick to the Vintage clothes shops on my next ramble round town. There was a lovely Harris Tweed that hid my flabbier areas better than any PVC suit would and the ties there did more for my eyes than the gimp masks would have.