Suddenly you're older

Another Saturday night in, I feel positively middle-aged. Oh well, Duckie next Saturday and both nights of the Big Bexhill Valentine's Weekend. Outfit crises a-brewing.

And it's not like this week has been a solid run of abstemious school nights. Wednesday was the Peter Tatchell fundraiser cabaret event at the Phoenix Artists Club. I'm not quite sure why Tatchell needs funds at the moment - maybe he's saving up to punch the Pope or something - but no-one could argue with the line-up of fabulous gay artistes, many of them familiar from the Axis of Duckie.

Bit of a last minute decision on our part but me and TSB hung around in Soho after work for a few hours before toddling along to the Phoenix, where everything is setting up. Coincidentally, I'd seen the venue only a week earlier when Mel took us there, and I'd liked it so much I'd joined up on the spot. £120 a year isn't bad for a quiet(ish) spot in Soho where one can be guaranteed a seat of a Friday. And I like the general atmosphere, the clutter of theatrical bric-a-brac.

On Wednesday, there was a clutter of theatrical queens. Having lived a while in London, with its large-enough-to-self-segregate gay scene, I don't tend to come across that particular subgroup of Gay Men Of A Certain Age very often. When I lived in Scotland, the scene was much smaller, so bars and clubs and "gay events" were more diverse, in terms of age range. Here, the likes of Duckie (with its "playgroup for the over-30s" vibe) are more varied than most, but one would have to venture to the Quebec to see the sixtysomethings at play.

Chatting with DawnRightNasty, we agreed that it was refreshing to see so many of this older demographic: it bolstered one's confidence that queer social life doesn't end at thirty, or forty, or sixty, or whenever. Lots of nice cashmere coats and a sprinkling of growing-old-disgracefully leather. If I'm as attractively dapper in my sixties as these guys, I'll be very happy indeed.

Oh, speaking of sexy older men, Brian Paddick was there for a little while, looking very fanciable. I think I'm developing a bit of a crush on him...

And so, on with the show! We parked ourselves in the Members Bar at the back and watched the main area become progressively busier. Nathan Evans, David Hoyle and DawnRightNasty were sitting nearby, and were later joined by Fred Bear - all very Vauxhallville. My eye was caught by a rather dashing (and oddly familiar-looking) chap in distinctly Victorian white tie and tails. Turned out he was one of the MCs, Mr Meredith (Luke? I didn't catch his first name). The acts were introduced, the first being Earl Grey reprising his Queen's Speech. Clever, funny stuff, but I rather missed his Vivien Leigh. Caught him afterwards:



I missed a few of the following acts, having become engrossed in conversation with the ever-fascinating TSB. There was a poet called Ernesto Somethingorother, a striking latex geisha Miss Akimbo, QBoy and the very lovely Le Gateau Chocolat. I'd seen the latter (very deservedly) win one of the voguing categories at Liverpool Is Burning but it was a bit of a revelation to hear him sing. I liked his version of The Man That Got Away. Here he is with Miss Akimbo:



I pushed through the crowded main bar to grab a photo of Dickie Beau then retreated to a more comfortable spot to enjoy his extraordinary Judy Garland monologue. Despite having seen it before, this was just as emotionally engaging, holding the audience spellbound. Where I was standing, people were making little gasps at points of particular intensity.



I briefly chatted to Dickie Beau afterwards and drunkenly gushed at him a bit. As I do.

An angelic-looking David Hoyle was introduced as the last act. I think I liked him; he's so out of the ordinary that sometimes it's hard to tell...



Fred Bear had got togged up in a very cute outfit (I got to feel his scut!) and I was initially disappointed that they'd run out of time for him to perform. David Hoyle brought him up on stage, though.



How does he get his facial hair to look so immaculately handlebartastic? I have moustache envy.



He finished off with a spot of bearbacking:



We drank far too much wine for a school night and indulged in the traditional-but-ill-advised ritual of popping into filthy, seedy ol' 79CXR for a final one for the road. Boozehounds.

Face it, she's Madonna

Well, the tickets arrived in today's post for Morrissey's birthday concert at the Manchester Apollo on the 22nd of May. He'll be fifty. Hopefully the ol' fella won't pull a sickie this time, as he did with his Roundhouse gigs a year or so ago. Predictably, I Have Forgiven Morrissey. Live, when he's good, the cantankerous old bugger is very very good. I do miss the stage invasions of old, though.

He's looking really rather buff on the contttrroversial artwork for the new album:



It strikes me as a sort of cross between an alternative Madonna & Child (Moz wearing the Holy Virgin's blue) and the Michael Jackson's infamous Dangling Blanket Over The Balcony pic. His forthcoming 7-inch is also pretty impressive. I'm throwing my arms around all of them.

Oh, and here's a sample of my Moz-themed attempts at atheist bus sloganeering:

Paved paradise

Home after working late this evening, and still a bit adrenaline-jittery from having been rude to a black cab driver. Sort of. I'm never rude to London cabbies. Generally speaking, I quite like 'em: the stereotypical right wing ones are rarer than one might think and when I do encounter them, they seem almost quaint; clichéd bit players in a panto Life On Mars. Comedy bigots. If the drive through Vauxhall is lightly drizzled with homophobic banter, I ponder whether to out myself as one of those before the end of the journey, watch the backtracking. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

Anyway, I decided to indulge myself and catch a cab home. Very much against le craquement de crédit but I felt I'd earned it. Like in Fame but I'd paid in paperwork rather than sweat.

January's not a good time for taxi drivers anyway, and I approach a rank full of cabs but empty of punters. At the head is a burgundy-coloured vehicle with a nondescript Leo Sayer-haired chap up front. I've cabbed it home many times in the past, just south of the river. I confidently tell the driver my destination. He looks at me suspiciously.

"Where?"

I tell him the street name and he shrugs dismissively. I tell him the nearest arterial route. I know from previous cab rides that it's a central element of The Knowledge; all cabbies have heard of it. He makes a "whatevs" gesture. Slightly irked that he's leaving me standing in the wind while he reluctantly considers my fare potential, I glance at the long line of cars behind Burgundy Boy. Any one of them would happily take me, I'm sure. Burgundy Boy purses his lips.

"I'll take you but I'm not going through any estates."

(The same tone one might employ for saying, "I'm not doing scat". And the same expression.)

"Uh, okay. No estates." I said, bemused. And get in.

He pulls away from the taxi rank, starting to explain himself in a manner verging on accusatory:

BB: Thirty years I've been driving and I've been mugged twice. Guess where.

Me: I don't know.

BB: Guess!

Me: Um, South London?

BB: South East London. I'd be happy never to cross a bridge again. I work up here, I never have to go there. It's a loss leader; you can't get a fare back...

He continues to mutter and tut, radiating resentment. He seems to want me to feel ashamed of where I want to travel to, where I live. I start to regret not having made a break for the second taxi in the rank. Or the third. Ruefully, I conclude that we're already far enough away that I'd have to stand around and wait to hail another one if I got out. And there'd be confrontation, a scene; I'm not good at that.

I marvel that a cabbie reportedly of thirty years' standing seems completely unaware of one of the main routes through South London - and wholly unconcerned at his own ignorance. Proud of it, even.

We proceed in silence for a bit, save for the occasional sigh from the front seat. I text. I'm not great with silence and, after a while, I break it.

"Um... did you get mugged recently?"

Wrong question.

"Three years ago, the last time. Shithole. Animals."

Okayy, I think, that's my shithole. Let's try some empathy, though. I make the right noises. Then, recalling the time I was rather ineffectually mugged (once in eight years; not yet sure whether that gives me a better or worse batting average than Burgundy Boy), having made the somewhat unwise decision after a drunken Christmas night out, to take a short cut home across an unlit stretch of parkland in darkest Kennington, I begin telling him about it. BB cuts straight across my anecdote:

"That's what you get for choosing to live there."

Rrright. Another quick mental calculation of how long it'd take me to get home from here, on foot or waiting to hail another cab. I know TSB has dinner cooking. I stay in the cab, quietly hating the back of BB's head. He seems to be warming to his theme.

"We've had a run of attacks on cabs. They wait at the lights, jump on the bonnet, try to smash through the windscreen. It's not worth my while going south of the river, I'm not paid enough. It's one big shithole. Walworth Road used to be okay in the '70s but not now. Not now."

He seems palpably pissed off now. I wonder why he even took the fare. Feeling faintly disgusted with myself for succumbing to such a classist tack, I try to reassure him that he won't have to stop in any "estates" to get to my Victorian terrace.

"If it's a nice Victorian street, that probably attracts them."

This is all really weird to me. I remember when I first came to London, I'd worried about choosing to live south of the river. Would taxis go there? I've probably discussed this with a dozen or so cabbies over the years and, before BB, they'd all laughed at me. Apparently the no-fares-south thing was true in the moderately distant past but hasn't been for well over a decade. It's passed into the realms of mythology. BB doesn't seem to have got the memo and, as we cross Vauxhall Bridge, he continues to grouse and grump. Over the bridge, he gets into the wrong lane and comes to rest at the traffic lights straddling left and centre. When the lights change, he'll have to nudge left into the traffic stream.

"I'm going to drive very defensively," he informs me, "in case I need to get out in a hurry."

He gestures toward another black cab on his left, next to the pavement.

"I'd be shitting myself if I was him."

Fucking hell, I think, we're at the lights opposite the sodding Hoist. Faintly threatening (in a camp way), possibly, but downtown Gaza it ain't. A third black cab moves across to the right, and BB takes this as validation of his paranoia ("he's got the same idea as me, getting out of here"), a paranoia that's now making me very angry indeed. Okay, I'm sorry he got mugged but, frankly, he's been a rude, sullen arsehole, rolling out sweepingly negative generalisations throughout this journey, making me feel he's doing a colossal favour rather than, y'know, his job. My sympathy is eclipsed by mounting irritation. And I'm almost home.

"I tell you, the Association will soon stop us crossing the river. No point going somewhere you know you're not going to be safe. I don't get paid enough to risk my neck coming here..."

As he finally reaches the end of my (utterly unremarkable) street, I tell him to stop. He does so, peering around fearfully. He keeps the cab door locked until I hand him the money. I'm usually a good tipper but I make an exception for BB. In the course of my journey, he's made me feel shitty, almost apologetic about where I live, a bit of London I love. I hate that he's been able to engender this shittiness. I'm trembling with cold rage.

I pause, before closing the door. As is customary, I thank him, impulsively adding, "and grow a fucking spine."

And speed-walk smartly down my street toward my front door, repeating don'tcomeaftermedon'tcomeafterme. He doesn't come after me.

Big yellow wanker. Tube next time, certainement.

Too many people

After a typically raucous Quiet Drink on Friday (Retro Bar, Phoenix Artist Club - sans Peter Kay - then home for more) it's been a low-key weekend, not just for me and TSB but for most people we know. End of the month, I guess. I've certainly caught up with sleep, to the extent that I got that weird grogginess that comes sometimes from too much shut-eye.

Although feeling generally cheerier, I've been feeling slightly more irritable than usual with my fellow human beings this weekend - the straight, white middle-class London stratum in particular. I'm not entirely sure why, I guess I've just been noticing 'em getting in my way more. We decided to take advantage of the excellent value Sunday roast at the Oval Lounge today. Meal went fine but towards the end, a vast group of thirtysomething couples seemed to descend on our end of the room. They occupied the two large round tables, dumped their square acre of baby/toddler paraphernalia around our little table-for-two and began milling around. One or two (the women, generally) realised they were crowding us and other diners and apologised; the others just carried on. It felt oddly claustrophobic and we paid our bill and scarpered. Heterosexual privilege, eh? I wouldn't mind them so much if they didn't evidently feel an exhibitionistic need to shove their lifestyle in my face...

I remembered feeling crowded earlier in the week, seated on a District Line carriage which filled up at Earls Court. Three blonde women, maybe mid-20s, stood over me, bellowing into each others' faces in the manner of Masterchef's John 'n' Greg, despite being only a couple of feet apart. One was American, the other two slightly braying English. I realised they were talking about their mutual experience as stewards/counselors in some sort of summer camp.

American Woman: You remember that fat girl?

English Woman 1: Yah.

AW: The one with diabetes?

English Woman 2: Yah, what about her?

AW: I hope she's dead now.

What lovely specimens of humanity. Must admit, though, I did titter.

Dissipate shadows

It's been a while, eh? Bit of a musty smell in these parts. Time to open some windows, I think.

"Green shoots of recovery" is, in the current economic climate, acquiring a bit of a dimension of naivety but, this last week, it summed up my gentle pricklings of... for want of a better word, optimism, for the first time since early December. In retrospect, although there's much I've enjoyed over Christmas and New Year, the last month or so has felt unusually cobwebby somehow, draggy, and now that faint sense of gloom is finally lifting.

I think B's death probably affected me more than I realised at the time, not just in terms of the feeling of great and abrupt loss (which has receded but still hits me, vertiginously, when I'm in certain places or have certain thoughts) but also the knock-on effect in terms of concentration at work. Over the last month or so, a huge paperwork backlog had built up and that's taken a while to work off - and, whether symptom or cause, the amount of outstanding paperwork always seems connected to my general mood.

Buuut, in the last week or so, I could feel myself getting back on top of some of that faintly emo stuff. I'm almost caught up with myself, work-wise, and it feels good. Of course, the fact that the planet's sole remaining superpower is now run by someone intelligent and sexy and cool (in a geeky way) helps. I'm sure I'll relocate my cynicism eventually but, in the meantime, I'm quite enjoying a bit of optimistic honeymoonery.

(How fabulous was Michelle O's inauguration outfit? The embroidered white/gold coat, I mean, with superheroesque matching green gloves and shoes. Loved it.)

One of my New Year resolutions was to wear everything in my wardrobe or get rid of it - and I'm trying to be ruthless about this. I'd quite forgotten the dubious joys of EBay selling but have made quite a bit of cash already, which is helping me feel relatively buoyant in the face of, ooh, capitalist meltdown. And I'm eagerly awaiting delivery of a new Little Camera, which'll make it easier to take photos at the likes of Duckie and KUNST. Pics won't be as good as with the Good Camera but at least I won't have to check it into the cloakroom when I'm sick of looking like an American tourist.

Mind you, maybe it'll now be cool to look like an American tourist? Well, less uncool, anyway.

Incidentally, this entry's title comes from the Fleet Foxes' Mykonos, which I'm absolutely loving:



I'm finding the apparent cultural mismatch surreally amusing, though. For the Fleet Foxes, Mykonos apparently conjures up images of wispily exotic coastline, magical "ancient gate"s and the like - whereas the word makes me think of this. Ancient gays, perhaps?

Reminds me of reading Lionel Shriver's The Post Birthday World (on the back of We Need To Talk About Kevin, flawed but invigorating) and finding unintentional American-writing-about-the-UK humour in her description of the dangerously seductive glamour of the world of, er, professional snooker.

Here comes the rain again

Back to the usual British rain-and-wind winter. I rather enjoyed the drama of last week's "cold snap", with its chill, crisp mornings and icy evenings. It felt like a Snow Queen splinter of true winter amid the wet grey mehness that now characterises January and February.

I feel bad because, although I bought spring bulbs, the compost didn't arrive for ages and, when it did, lethargy prevented me planting the stuff I meant to plant. I'm a terrible fair weather gardener.

Duckie this weekend, I think. We've all missed it.

You talked of politics

It's almost 3am, we've guzzled three bottles of fairly good white wine (from my mother's belated Christmas present, arrived yesterday morning and cannibalised this evening) and TSB is asleep on the settee. I'm awake and in need of easy sentiment. ABBA ticks the boxes.

Actually, that's unfair. ABBA is not a band of cheap sentiment. It's all well-earned stuff, especially in my favourite period, Late ABBA, when it all turned wintry and Swedishly distant, melancholy.

One of my favourites:



Our Last Summer always makes me cry. In Mamma Mia (the stage play, not the film), it's the first of a triptych of sobbery - Slipping Through My Fingers then The Winner Takes It All - which invariably renders me a snivelling wreck. There's something about Our Last Summer that plucks my nostalgia strings in a particularly bittersweet manner. I think it may be partly because the events described in the song - a faintly romantic tourist's take on Paris - are doubly familiar to me: I remember having those experiences with my dad and my mother as well as, later, his second wife, my stepmother. And her children, one of whom was my best friend at school (which is how his mum and my dad first met). Paris is, for me, complicated.

Our Last Summer adds an extra layer of plangency in the musical, because it becomes a sort of gay swansong, the plaintive reminiscence of a boy who met a girl and, despite his natural inclinations, went with it. I can understand that. As a gay man who went through a really heartfelt period of trying very hard not to be gay (and falling in love with a woman - but not being sexually excited by her), something in the song strikes a chord with me. It's a kind of bittersweet appreciation of a perfect summer city and perfect company but everything being transient somehow. It couldn't last and you knew it couldn't last. It was wrong.

Lovely song. Colin Firth doesn't ruin it in the film version but the decision to place the song elsewhere in the score and open it up to all the male leads denudes it of intimacy somehow. I preferred it when it was about a one-to-one dialogue between two middle-aged people (one gay, one straight) about a past affection transmuted into enduring mutual fondness. I suppose it speaks to my own idealised relationship with one particular straight woman.

Hmm. And the "politics" bit of the title? I was going to write more about my work night out, but I feel a bit energy-sapped, still. Basically, an American colleague started opining on Palestinian "terrorism" and the rest of us slightly rounded on her, talking over each other about Israeli hypocrisy, controllingness, murder. Heavy conversation for a night out.

More to come there.

Back on the chain gang

For some reason, I've taken the post-festive period return to work particularly hard this year. My inner woes seemed reflected/compounded in the morning's journey, too: bone-tingling cold (although colder tomorrow, I gather); queues for London Underground ticket machines; being held above ground for what seemed like aaages while "congestion on the platforms" slowly dispersed.

Pah.

Still, at least I have a job and remain (mostly) above water, financially speaking. Here's a rather doleful clip of The Last Days Of Woolies:



In the depths of my comedown, I'm even prepared to forgive the wild apostrophising of "Pic 'n' Mix".

No more champagne...

... and the fireworks are through. Were there any fireworks? England's a bit crap at New Year.

That said, last night's Duckie special, in the unfamiliar environs of The Eagle (formerly South Central, formerly Dukes), did exactly what it said on the tin. Key ingredient: The London Readers' Wifes, and thank the Lordy lords.

Crowd vibe was a bit office party if one works in an office populated by stocky, hairy men, beardily chic geeks and slightly mumsy secretarial types in their best glittery tops. Something a bit disorientating about hearing the Wifes' Favourite Record Of All Time then having a further hour and a half left to dance. And dance we did. After five minutes, we'd already heard more good tunes than we did last year.

I really need a working mini-camera; the Big Camera is okay but occasionally temperamental with its flash in Duckie-type settings, insisting the mechanism is blocked then working fine the next day. It's also a bit of a pain to dance with, so this time I checked it into the cloakroom after a few shots. Blurry but quite atmospheric, I reckon. Here's a handful:







(Something about that last one reminds me a little of Blake's Ghost of a Flea.)

My head's not too sore, considering; a full English breakfast at the (packed with hungover gayers) Oval Lounge helped. Vague thoughts of detox will have to wait.

Only regret: despite 'phoning four times in quick succession yesterday, Galasheila never left a message. I feel abandoned.