Tag: Ramblings Of A Gay Man

I was standing outside yesterday (having a sneaky cigarette, naturally) when a flock of parakeets flew past me. I thought I was hallucinating for a moment. I’m not in the Tropics but in South East London. Then I remembered, there are colonies of parakeets all over London.

The urban myths are that they originate from a pair released by Jimmi Hendrix or that they escaped from Pinewood Studios during the filming of The African Queen. I prefer the latter explanation and like to think that these parakeets may be descended from a celebrity bird who perhaps had his stomach tickled by the steely Katherine Hepburn.

This is the kind of nature I like. Nature that’s close to a 24 hour shop, is in a grimy urban environment and in a place where there’s full reception on my mobile. It’s much safer that way.

Every morning a heron flies past my flat at about 7am. He’s huge, like a creature from pre-historic times. He glides over the courtyard at the back of my flat and I assume he’s on his way to work. I think he may be a commuter. He works long hours though. I’ve seen him returning at 7pm. He needs to get on to the ornithological union about his terms and conditions.

Two minutes walk from my flat is a little park with a lake. The lake is a water bird reserve and contains a variety of newborns at the moment. There are goslings with dense yellow fluff, clumsy little moor hens and a group of miniscule ducklings. These bring out the inner child in me and I can stand and watch them for ages. There’s a sign by the lake advising against over feeding the birds and this sign is a picture of a huge rat. This brings out the inner panicked housewife in me. I want to find the nearest chair, jump on and tie the bottoms of my trousers up.

An article in last week’s Time Out London did the same to me too. I never respond well to pictures of people holding up over sized dead rodents. I would have mounted the seat for ankle protection and screamed (a perfectly normal response to even the mention of a rat) but I thought that the other people on the train to Charing Cross might think I was odd.

At the weekend I saw a crow attacking a pigeon, pulling chunks of flesh out of its wing. It was a malevolent beast, mean and brooding yet beautiful with its shiny black plumage; like a pantomime villain. This reminds me of my love/hate relationship with the natural world and why I don’t watch wildlife documentaries. I always end up horrified by the expression on the little animal’s faces as they get eaten alive by lions and I end up perturbed. Why can’t they all be vegetarians? I suppose you just can’t get good quality Quorn antelopes in the Serengeti.

Yesterday I saw a dead fox. He was laid out on the window ledge of a big Edwardian house. He was magnificent and would have looked like he was just sleeping were it not for the little trickle of blood pooled around his mouth and the bone jutting out of his back leg. I squirmed a little at the sight but not at the corpse. I was more perplexed and disturbed as to why someone would have placed him on the window ledge. Surely a window ledge isn’t the ideal place to lay out a corpse? I’d hate to be that resident when they opened to the curtains. I’m not good with road kill.

The local high street on the way to work is a minefield too. As a child I hated visits to the local market in the Midlands town where we lived. There were always rows of dead rabbits hanging up and my father would show his usual sensitivity by singing ‘Bright Eyes’: the theme from Watership Down to me. The local high street has stalls with ‘boiling chickens’ hanging by their feet. These are plucked chickens with their heads still on but with jagged knife wounds through their scrawny throats. I’m not tempted by them.

As a child our house was a place that lacked safety from dead animals too. My father knew a man who knew a man who would provide him with game. I would skip into the pantry only to be confronted by a pheasant or a wood pigeon or a rabbit hanging by its feet. One time, memorably, I screamed to see a massive white goose hanging by its webbed feet. I suppose I should count myself lucky to have never walked in to find a deer hanging by its hooves.

I know its all part of the natural plan. The weak and soft get killed by the predators or the hazards. I don’t have to try to like it though, do I? I think for now I’ll stick to admiring nature in parks and stick to my humus and lentils. It’s safer that way.

I’m at that age where I’ve become a bit jaded. Let’s just say I’m over 40, A.K.A. dead in gay years. I get the sensation that I’ve seen it all before and done it all; more than once.

The thought of hanging about in a park all day whilst a lot of drunken people watch the latest celebrity boy bands whilst trying to get Grindr to work and buying cheap tat that’s had the word “gay” added to make it saleable, is my idea of hell.

Thinking back though, this wasn’t always the case. It was the late 1980s and aged 18, I got on a coach laid on by the local gay bar from the Midlands town where I lived, and came down to London to attend Gay Pride. I was intrigued by what it would be like and had no idea what to expect, media coverage of such events being largely non-existent then. I wasn’t expecting what I saw.

The huge throng of people was a sight to see. I’d also never seen so many gay people or even had any idea that they’re that many LGBT people in the whole of England. I’d also never seen men kissing in public or holding hands and thought that I’d landed on some strange planet where things were as they should be. There were many other things I hadn’t seen before: two women with their breasts pierced and chained together (Health and Safety hazard: one slip or trip and you’d lose a nipple), 30 men dressed as Wonder Woman charging along to the theme music from the show, drag queens in vertiginous heels and many many other weird and wonderful sights. The appeal wasn’t that alone though. There were also a huge amount of people just like me. Representatives from the emergency services, various social, political and career groups were all out and proud with a rallying cry of “We’re Here, We’re Queer and we’re Not Going Shopping”. I liked the more strident political side to it and the inventive banners as much as the comedic ones and the fripperies of the O.T.T. drag.

For once, I actually didn’t really want to go shopping. I passed Fortnum and Mason’s without as much as a twitch. I was amazed that we were so public and that we passed so many London landmarks and also staggered that no one was throwing bricks, spouting venom or condemning us to hell-fire.

The festival on the park afterwards had a drag tent which kept me amused, as well as some bad pop and a wealth of people watching opportunities. I felt strangely empowered as the fireworks went off with a bang (as they do) and the bus set off for home.

It’s hard to remember our youth and more innocent joy at things we now take for granted so maybe I’ll try again. Well, I may have to pop in Fortnum and Mason’s first. One needs a good picnic and a comfy rug if sitting on a park at my age.

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My hypochondria is legendary. Actually, I don’t call it hypochondria. I call it being ill but you can make up your own mind on that one.

have a different ailment for each day of the week and am never too far from a packet of over the counter pain killers, anti-sickness drugs or non-prescription sleeping pills. Nothing herbal though. I prefer a chemical. You know where you are with a chemical. Pills are so pretty at times. They come in such lovely colour palettes. My migraine pills are lilac and pink, which is inspired. I like the names too, such poetry; Tramadol, Temazepam andTrimethoprim sound like strange and lovely holiday resorts to me.

I have pills in all my bags, my desk drawer, my bedside drawer and in the overflow pill drawer. Not to mention my TENs machine, heat pack and various lotions which I keep a good supply of. I take an extra toilet bag on holiday, just for pills. I never leave the supermarket without 32 Paracetamol. Why only this week I’ve had a small melanoma, a pleural fluid collection and a nasty bout of spondylosis. They’ve cleared up now, luckily but I had the right pills to hand in case they turned nasty.

I was always a delicate, sickly child, prone to headaches and abdominal pain, plagued by hay fever and recurrent temperatures and a bit of mild asthma. I was fantastic at car sickness and could hurl for England too. I was also rather good at the accidental injury, being a clumsy boy; the fall downstairs, the crash landing on the t.v. after slipping on a discarded novel and famously the swallowed rosary beads and the fishing hook in the back of my head which necessitated trips to Accident and Emergency.

My mum always seemed to notice us more when we were ill and to give her credit, would have made a superb nurse. She believed in the school of a pill for every ill and would hand out Junior Disprins like they were Smarties. She always had some Buttercup Cough Syrup handy and was a dab hand with a cold compress for the fevered brow. My mum also set a fine example by never leaving the house without a handbag stuffed with prescription drugs. She was generous and shared her stash with me too and doled out vitamins and herbal remedies by the handful. I may not be able to ride a bicycle or drive a car but I can swallow two Paracetamol dry. It’s a handy skill.

One of my favourite games was playing grownups, with a glass of Dandelion and Burdock as my sherry, a few sweets as my pills and a candy cigarette clamped in the corner of my mouth. I was learning well.

I have happy memories of the 1970s, propped up on the brown settee, in the brown and orange living room, under a brown and orange duvet. I’d lay down, happy to be off school, with an Enid Blyton, a glass of Lucozade and a single boiled egg for lunch. Lucozade was considered expensive and only allowed to be drunk as medicine during a bad feverish bout. I loved its sickly taste and sugar overload and the crinkle of the orange cellophane coming off would rouse me to prop my pitiful form up on my elbows and let a few drops be placed on my tongue.

There were down sides to being sickly too, of course. I was often unpopular when a nasty headache meant an abortive day trip or my poor mum had to take time off yet again. The painful headaches weren’t fun and although I got used to vomiting and sweating out fevers, I never really liked it. Who would? I must confess that I did have a toy hospital, though. It had little doctors and nurses and pallid patients in their beds with the alpine temperature charts on the ends. Endless fun.

During my teenage years I progressed to hideous migraines, vertigo, nervous tension and a lingering bout of glandular fever which left me weak and watery for months on end. I’ve managed to get both Salmonella and Campylobactor and more Norovirus than I care to mention.

I’ve managed to have most of my organs imaged and investigated, though not through choice really. It just seems to happen. No one would choose the camera up the bladder, believe me. I’ve had MRI scans, ultrasounds, endoscopes and enough blood taken to transfuse a small elderly lady. Naturally, I’m always mostly normal.

I’ve managed to go temporarily blind for a month, be crippled by a slipped disc, laid up in hospital with a testicle the size of a hearty jacket spud and develop a sinister limp. I’ve been prodded and poked by urologists, ophthalmologists, neurologists and gastroenterologists. I’ve paid good money to physiotherapists, osteopaths and hypnotherapists. Let’s not even mention the mental health professionals’ input. They’re too numerous to list.

I very briefly had a fling with a G.P. which was terrible for me. Any foreplay always set me wondering. I’d be lying there thinking “Is he caressing my side or palpating my spleen? Why is he looking into my eyes? Has he seen a cataract?” He didn’t help matters by once breaking off during a session to comment on an irregular mole on my abdomen. I finished it not long after that.

Maybe I’m what they used to call “the creaking gate”. I hope so, as my rusty old hinges have a lot more noise to make yet.

Visit Chris’s blog at www.ramblingsofagayman.com

The modern world is all about the ‘foodie’. We’re all supposed to be happily salivating over organic cuts of meat, freshly baked soda bread and imported delicacies. I’m a little out of kilter with this trend.

I’m actually not very interested in food. It bores me. Eating can be a pain. It interrupts what you’re doing and means you have to cook which in turn means that your nice clean kitchen gets all grubby which is no good at all. Ovens are great places to keep books. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a nice meal out (mainly for the people watching) and if you want to cook for me then that’s fine and dandy but if it was a choice between food or books or cigarettes then the food would always lose. I tend to watch TV whilst I eat. I turn on the TV, start to eat and the minute the meal ends, I turn it back off. It stops me having to think about it. I can happily eat the same food every day without getting too bored. It’s like scratching an itch.

A friend once told me that she lay in bed and dreamt of food. She said that her first thought on waking was “What can I eat today?” I find this hard to understand. I hate the feeling when you over eat. That sluggish torpor and the feeling of being full to the neck is not my idea of fun. It’s a torture.

I don’t really like cooking much. It’s tedious. As for baking, they sell cakes in shops. Why waste your time? You could be reading a good book.

As a child I hated to eat. I hated meat, salad and vegetables. Unluckily for me, I had parents who were as snobbish as Margot and Jerry Leadbetter but with the horticultural skills of Tom and Barbara Good (from the 1970’s sitcom “The Good Life”, if you don’t recognise the allusion). My parents had a huge allotment and grew huge quantities of fresh vegetables which we would have to eat all year round. They sowed, picked, blanched and froze and we had to help. They also loved to cook much more than I hated to eat. I compromised a little and would eat peas and carrots and the occasional runner bean. This wasn’t enough of a compromise and I spent many hours sitting in a chair, not allowed to leave the table or lay down my cutlery until I ate one Brussel sprout or a sprig of broccoli. I was stubborn enough but my mum was the grand mistress of stubborn. Meal times were a tense battle which I usually lost.

I devised a few tricks. Firstly: the dog-friend. He was my food ally and was a canine dustbin. He’d eat anything. I’d try and lure him into position under the table and artfully flick half my dinner into his waiting jaw. He suffered a lot of wind due to his varied diet. Secondly: the swallowing trick. With enough gravy or sauce applied liberally I soon mastered the technique of swallowing most foods. I worked up from peas and eventually was at the point where I could swallow a sprout without it touching my tongue. I still hate sprouts. They were invented by Satan but I do suspect that this technique may have come in handy in other ways too in later life. Thirdly: the pocket game. With a tissue laid on my lap, I would secrete food under the table and stuff it into my pocket, consigning it to a watery grave down the toilet as soon as the meal ended.

I ate so little that eventually I was allowed to have a side plate instead of a dinner plate and no one worried about it. I wasn’t anorexic. I just didn’t like eating much. I expect if it had been any later in time than the 70s and 80s I’d have been admitted to a clinic and tube fed whilst being made to talk about my fear of sexual intimacy. Luckily, I evaded that.

I did like sweets. I’d line up a pile of dolly mixtures and play my favourite game. This was called “Mummy” and involved scoffing a load of sweets which represented my pills. I’d pop them one by one as I held aloft a little glass of dandelion and burdock and a candy cigarette and feel grown up. I would inhale deeply and sigh and pop another “pill” with a swig of my “sherry”.

It wasn’t too much of a leap for a teenage food hater to become a vegetarian. A love of “The Smiths” gave me a fantastic idea. Not eating meat was cool and trendy and would annoy my parents to the highest degree. Every teenager’s dream, I think. I recall a Christmas dinner as I smugly nibbled a cheese and onion quiche, aged 14, whilst my parents looked on and frowned. I soon got bored of it, though and was back eating meat.

As I got older, I started to enjoy food a bit more but on leaving home and moving in with my first partner, I experienced real poverty for a time. We often had no money at all. I had a priority list: cigarettes came top. As long as I had cigarettes I could happily live on Happy Shopper biscuits and bread.

I made a terrible mistake in 2004. I was watching TV and flicked through the channels onto a program on BBC2 about abattoirs. It was repulsive. I cringed as I watched but couldn’t turn it off. The next few days I found eating meat a weird experience. I couldn’t get it out of my mind that it was a corpse I was eating. I felt sick. It rolled around my mouth, sticking there and I couldn’t swallow. I gave up meat. It wasn’t high moral principles that stopped me eating meat but pure over thinking and subsequent disgust.

I’m still a vegetarian now although I had a brief lapse in 2007. It was alcohol related and involved a plate of chicken nuggets which I fell face first into. There’s no meat in a chicken nugget though, really, so it’s all OK.

Want some Vegetarian Recipe ideas? Check out www.thegayuk.com/food

I have an oddity to confess. No, not that one. This one is quite sanitary. I can’t ride a bike. If I tell people this they look at me gone out like I’ve just said I’m a hermaphrodite or I can’t write my own name.

It’s considered, by most people, to be decidedly odd. I personally think that riding a bike is even odder. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I think its witchcraft.

I’ve always been a bit clumsy. I trip over a lot, am prone to bumping into things and am generally uncoordinated. I have mismatched eyes. Not like David Bowie, a green and a brown one, but I have one very long sighted one and one almost normal eye. The first time an optician noted this when I went for an eye test aged 12, he asked me if I was especially clumsy and accident prone. My mother nodded eagerly, finally latching onto to a diagnosis to explain my bizarre mishaps. Recently an optician asked me if I wore my glasses to drive. When I told her I didn’t drive, I’m sure it wasn’t just my imagination that made me see a look of relief wash over her.

I also have terrible balance. I’m rubbish at standing on one leg (I practice often), could never master stilt walking or roller skating as a child and the very thought of ice skating or skiing gives me an icy chill and a vision of plaster of Paris and traction. I get terrible travel sickness and have been known to run out of films with wobbly camcorder type shots, green faced. If I try to send text messages in a moving car I start to feel dizzy and throw up. I have to look away when a fast moving train goes by or I start to spin and I never liked roundabouts or fairground rides that spin round. I once spent a whole evening in bed with a bucket beside me after an ill advised go on the Waltzers aged 7.

These are my excuses for not mastering the art of staying upright on a bicycle. I had the usual sit in and push along cars as a toddler, progressed to the tricycle then onto the little bike with stabilisers. Then the problems began. My father developed a permanent frown and a mouth full of tightly gritted teeth as we repeatedly tried to get me to stay aloft a bike without 4 wheels. He’d push me along, let go and I’d fall off. This went on ad-nauseum, usually until I trooped off home in a strop, abandoning the bicycle with a wobbly bottom lip and a lot of bruises.

I’m not one for perseverance. “I’ve tried it once and didn’t like it” or “If at first you don’t succeed then give the thing up as a bad job and avoid ever trying again” could well be ideal mottos for me. The shiny bicycle which my dad had bought second hand and lovingly restored stayed in the shed until we sold it and I spent the money on books. You know where you are with books (just don’t ask me to balance one on my head).

To be honest, I don’t feel the need to justify my inability to balance on a bike. I look at people going past on them and am startled by what a weird thing it is to do. Surely it’s some kind of sorcery? These people must have magic powers. Balancing on two wheels is nonsensical.

I knew I was on to a loser when attempting to learn to drive my instructor said to me on my first lesson: “It’s much like riding a bike” followed not long after by “You can’t ride a bike? What! How strange”

I’m happy to walk, thanks.

So, this month, we’re looking at the subject of vice. I can definitely relate to the idea of vice. I have way too many. I’m not sure if the addictive personality is a myth or not but if it does genuinely exist, I have one.

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