Don't know when I'll be back again

Bit of a maverick blog entry this, 2.30am and all the drunken sentimentality that entails. I apologise for none of this.

A couple of weeks ago, I made it along to my very first Bar Wotever. It's moved to Vauxhall now, so convenient for me for a drink on the way home and an early evening of Joe Poppism. I'd never met Joe Pop but had seen his very lovely photos. The man himself lived up to them in every sense, a beardy tattooed music meister, comin' atcha though the cornflakes!

Highlight of the night, for me, was Mr Pop's evocation of Mary Travers, the human-and-recognisable third of Peter, Paul & Mary. Joe P played Leaving On A Jet Plane, which is so wonderful and poignant it just has to be linked here:



I had a very pleasant discussion that night about the significance of Mary in terms of my early childhood. I was born in 1970, to parents who were, to some extent, limited by being the first in their respective families to aspire to a university education, and having both ventured outside the UK to practise their teaching.

I think they were confident professionally but less so in other areas of their lives. They'd have liked to have been hippies, but were too responsible to be properly bohemian. They made an effort, though. I grew up amid brown-painted walls, cane furniture, ostrich and peacock feathers (although this was a fairly brief trend) and my mother wafting around in maxi-dresses, sometimes risking the faintest hint of patchouli. Musically, my abiding memory of long car journeys is a mixed bag: Carpenters, Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, Boney M...

Mary Travers' was the voice of my early life. I described it as a "female Oliver Postgate", and I stand by this. Postgate's was the voice of Bagpuss, the narrator of the Clangers. Hers was a profoundly reassuring tone, somehow pure and airy. And she was such a fabulously good Liberal, her voice seemed imbued humanist values. It really does come with a host of happy associations.

So... nice Wotever, but that's all for now. Later.

It got colder, that's where it ends

Haven't posted here for months. All sorts of reasons and, simultaneously, no reason at all. It happens or it doesn't. Many's the time I've started writing a post and it's never come to fruition. That's just the way it goes.

There've been all sorts of lovely and important cultural events since I last posted. Maybe I'll get round to talking about them, maybe I won't.

I'm not long back, this evening, from a standard (I'm thinking of it as equivalent to Classic Coke) Duckie in terms of both Readers Wifes being present and correct. Amazing music, played in just the right order, some of it having gradually accreted danceable fabulousness over time (MGMT's Kids) and a good dollop of old favourite loveliness.

Amy commented on there being a "Back To School" vibe and, although my own work is constant through spring, summer, autumn and winter, I can see where she's coming from. I agree with Chelsea Kelsey about the crappiness of autumn creeping in and infecting everything. At the same time, I rather like the fact that it's chillier and we can start wearing different clothing. I've always liked coats; I suspect Echo and the Bunnymen scarred me.

The whole BAK TO SKOOL thing used to majorly hack me off as a child and teenager. I remember raging (in a middle class way) to my parents about the fact that shops placed huge placards outside their doors at this time of year ("why do they have to remind us our holiday's almost over?") and they assumed the most stupid, appalling spelling. If any sentient felines exist, I imagine they feel similarly about the lolcat phenomenon.

Forever Autumn has always linked, in my mind, with the War of the Worlds soundtrack. I can't listen to it without worrying - albeit distantly - about FUCK! ALIEN INVASION!!

(Possibly going to see District 9 tomorrow...)

It was an unusually quiet Duckie in terms of numbers. Rapunzel was there, as was my friend Justin. Amy made popcorn (which I smelled immediately upon entering the Tavern and) which troubled my dodgy teeth for a while and got irritated by the audience's apparent refusal to engage/click with her. I think they were actually distracted by Lazlo Pearlman's final reveal:





Sexy fucker.

The other act was a rather endearing punk-pop duo (or trio, counting their keyboard) Jean Genet, beautifully accessorised with eyeliner, black electrical tape and not much else. Sang a song about a fatal accident caused by Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time ("She's evil") and didn't take themselves at all seriously. Very cute.



Melanie Griffiths and Sal Solo were both present in our audience, or at least their lookalikes were. It was definitely a slightly autumnal, bittersweet Duckie. If it were me DJing, I would've played California Dreaming at some point. The whole thing that makes Duckie work, however, is the fact that the Readers Wifes aren't me. They're smarter than me, infinitely better at delving through past and present mehness to find the gems. That's what they're good at.

This is it, then, really. Lots of stuff since my last update and God knows when there'll be another. But hey ho.

On such a winter's day

Gawd, it's been bloody aaages, hasn't it? Months. There's been reasons for my falling out of the habit of updating this blog but they're mostly a bit boring so I won't go into them right this minute. Here's a post I started writing on The Day It Snowed and never quite finished. Better late than never (and the photos are quite nice). Expect more catch-up over the next few days...

----------

Snow started falling as I went to bed on Sunday night. Although doubtful that it'd lie, I set the alarm on my new 'phone for extra early o'clock. I woke to an odd light, the bedroom walls gently bathed in soft yellow sodium streetlamp diffused by and reflected off a thick layer of white. Pure white, blanketing everything. The other thing that was noticeable, at first almost subliminally, was the hush, a muffling of the usual distant London traffic roar.

Transport for London was all blue Suspended and Severe delays but my route to work seemed just about doable. So I piled on my heaviest sheepskin jacket, gloves, hat and boots and headed out.

8am South London was as I've never seen it before. My street was near-deserted, only a handful of sets of footprints breaking the ankle-depth white. No cars or buses. The sky was television static grey with a hint of yellow, promising more snow. Walking between half-submerged vehicles, with no-one else around, I got a flash of Cormac McCarthy's The Road and fancied myself sole survivor of a frostbound nuclear winter. Drama queen.

Turning into the more arterial roads, an overcoated businessman handed me his camera ("not as fancy as yours") and posed on a set of snow-coated steps for me to take his photo. In the park, more photos: a couple filming their young kid whooping and gurgling, possibly his first experience of snow. A group of Australians were throwing snow around and laughing; I wondered if it was also their first time. Londoners generally seemed lighter-hearted than usual, smiley and appealingly childlike; Narnia Englishness. I wished it could be Christmas every dayyy.

When I arrived at work, they marvelled at my having got here from South London, saying, "we were just waiting for you to call in" (which immediately made me wish I had called in). Ah well.

Much of the day was a bit of a wash-out. I bunked off and went home early, wandering through a cemetery and various parks and marvelling at the various snowmen. Already, the snow was looking trampled and off-white, and I missed the virginal crispness of the morning.

Here's the inevitable photos:











That last one is a snowy South London homage to Don't Look Now...

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.

Choosing my confessions

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Sparkle up the dark

Well, it's been a longish time since I've updated this blog: the usual ho ho ho festive period excuses. Another blog from a train this time, as I'm travelling back to civilisation after three days visiting my and TSB's families in Scotland. It actually didn't go too badly, all things considered; felt like just the right amount of time to see parents, siblings, nieces and nephews and leave 'em wanting more rather than reverting to boredom-induced sullen sniping and picking irresistably at old wounds.

Nearest thing to a spat was TSB's somewhat arsey little nephew (only recently out of his teens) opining of Boris Johnson "at least he has the brains not to be a socialist" and me responding, "well, he doesn't have the brains not to be a racist"... and subsequent awkward "I can't be a racist because..." hole-digging. I really ought to keep my mouth shut more.

(Someone on this carriage has a mobile 'phone text alert that sounds exactly like one of the bleeps from Hot Chip's Ready For The Floor. Everytime it goes off, I get the urge to sing, "I can't hear your voice, do I have a choice?")

Prior to our trip northwards, there was much sparkling up of the dark. I'll probably talk about this over a couple of blog entries, as my attention span's eroded by gewürztraminer bought in the M&S in Edinburgh station. 'Tis good, nicely floral and still good and cold.

December 20th was the last Duckie before Christmas. Having trekked up to Scotland for a funeral a week or so earlier, we were very much in the right headspace for a good, hearty Duckie. We'd also had our usual Christmas argument over the Norwegian spruce (bought at the last minute from Clapham High Street and hauled back home, painfully, via taxi), which I'd decorated in a state of passive-aggression.

Thankfully (thankyou, Baby Jesus) it was just the right Duckie to heal all wounds. Gareth was there, as was Mel, the crowd was sparser than usual (as one might've expected) and the mood convivial.

Ms Lamé looked lovely as ever, in a white fascinator.



First act was Tim Spooner & Matthew Robins (featuring Gavin) - formerly known as The Society of Wonders, dramatic puppeteers supreme - who performed a very Tim Burtonesque little shadow psychodrama, Flyboy and the Haunted Snowman.



It must be said, the fellow manipulating the puppets (clad in a sort of Ashes To Ashes surfsuit of white funfur) was exceptionally easy on the eye.

The Society of Wonders has never disappointed. This show, in their new incarnation, was more contained than their Punch & Judy shows and also, somehow, oddly moving. I talked afterwards to Wee Lee (who later danced to, I think, Hounds of Love - it was Classic Duckie), who agreed that the show made him feel like he was five again. I know what he meant: there was a childlike, dreamlike quality to the plot and an emotionally engaging punch to the finale. Lovely.



It would've been hard to follow that. The second act was Marcus Reeves, who appeared onstage in a frankly terrifying Christmas tree outfit and sang a medley of festive tunes. I liked his substitution of Wham's Last Christmas, "this year, to save me from tears, I'll give it to someone ugly".



He chucked cotton wool snowballs and Roses chocolates into the audience. Very evocative but I ended up picking cotton woolly chocolate gunk off the soles of my shoes for the rest of the night.

It was a good night, though. Made me feel properly Christmassy.

I like pie

I do love Christmas Eve. Or rather, I do these days, since making the decision a few years back to stay in London with TSB rather than doing the frantic train/'plane trip north to visit parents. Now, it's a time for sitting back and relaxing: everything's done, presents are wrapped and under the tree all seems still and calm. I'm listening to one of my favourite Christmas carols, In The Bleak Midwinter, on TSB's playlist, while updating my own on iTunes.

Here's Frida-from-ABBA's somewhat abbreviated version



and, more traditionally, the whole song:



Dinner this evening was a second helping of what's been one of my favourite presents Of All Time, from our lovely friend Mrs B: on Monday, she presented us with a huge and delicious game pie. Here it is, teasingly wrapped



and denuded!



With the flash:



See the layers! According to Mrs B's home-made label, this pie "might contain" Pheasant, Partridge, Quail, Sparrow, Veal, Wild Boar, Bambi, Pig Foot, Bigfoot, Foie Gras, Sweetbreads, Cock, Cock Robin, Plymouth Dry Gin, Port, Lies, Lice and Mice.

This is why I'd be shit at vegetarianism and why I am shit at anything low-carb. Meat just tastes better in a pastry parcel. I realised, disturbingly, that the two films I can recall which made me think, upon leaving the cinema, "hmm, I fancy a pie now" both featured cannibalism: Titus and Sweeney Todd.

Mmm, pie...

Three feet high and rising

There's a storm outside and the gap between crack and thunder is closing in...

It's mid-afternoon and I'm lying in bed listening to the rain outside. Apparently there's flooding in the southwest, water almost three feet deep in some places. When I lived in Scotland, we used to scoff at this sort of report: bloody English can't even cope with weather. Of course, Scotland's full of pointy mountains. On a flat plain, it's rather a different matter.

I rather like rain, and still get excited by thunderstorms. I've always found James' Sometimes invigorating:



I associate this song with Morocco, a trip from Marrakech into the Atlas Mountains. Returning, with Sometimes on my iPod, I was amazed to find floodwaters waist deep, traffic chaos and kids splashing through the swirling brown puddles.

Vous êtes jamais seuls

The funeral went well, at least as well as these things go. It's only the fourth funeral I've ever attended and I realised they've all been winter funerals - December, January or February. That's probably a good thing: it feels vaguely appropriate to be chilly, wretched and draped in black.

I felt a little bit sick beforehand but attributed that to the hurried Burger King in the station before catching the train out to the wilds of nowhere. Stilted hellos beforehand, with people I only vaguely knew. I did okay until the hearse arrived with the long wooden box, and then I got a bit wobbly. Then there was the order of service, printed with a really nice photo of B smiling in the sunlight: when I saw that, the tears started to flow. I had to keep it turned over because his picture kept giving me a wrench.

The ceremony itself was unfamiliar but nonetheless reassuring; it did what funerals are meant to do. I sniffled my way through a pack of Handy Andies, trying to avoid a saltysnotty moustache. Best of all was the bit at the end when, all of a sudden, the hall resounded with the chant, "YOUR DISCO, YOUR DISCO, YOUR DISCO NEEEEDS YOU!" and everyone, myself included, seemed to laugh and cry simultaneously. Kylie's never been my favourite but I like that song and, right then, it was exactly what was needed. Apparently the choice of B's partner. Good choice.

Afterwards, getting a lift to the wake, the car radio played my obsession of the moment, The Killers' Human, and I felt quite uplifted by the daffy-but-fuzzily-inspirational lyrics. Another case of just the right song for the moment. Me and TSB sang along:



I still feel sad but less so now. And I slept well last night, which was much-needed.

He's gone 2000 miles

Heading to Scotland tomorrow for B's funeral, second of three trips north this month. I know this is going to be harrowing but necessary.

I cry like a baby at funerals - any funeral - and I've a feeling there's a lot behind the floodgates this time. I've been finding myself getting wobbly at unexpected moments at least once a day. I guess the function of funerals is to get it all out, mutually remember the deceased, drink a lot and otherwise have a sort of emotional radiator-bleed. My radiator needs bleeding.

I don't currently have a good dark suit that's not pinstripey but at least I have a subtle stripe that'll be fine with white shirt and black tie. And funerals are always good for a long, flappy black leather coat.

Je suis superficiel. It's what B would've wanted.

The carnivores and the destructors

It's been an odd, doomy week for me. B is still, obviously, in my thoughts and me and TSB have been making arrangements to attend his funeral next week. That'll involve a train ride Up North, the second this month. First was a work-related trip up to Manchester on Thursday, back yesterday. Not bad because I was staying with my sister and caught up with her, my brother-in-law and all the little nieces and nephews. The eldest is just old enough that he's becoming fascinated with the concept of older people having family relationships other than parental ones: he's intrigued that his mother is also my sister, just like he's got sisters. His younger sister's disbelieving that such a thing is possible.

So that was nice. The trip back was annoyingly sluggish, because of scheduled work going on blah blah fishcakes, meaning I had the equivalent of the Slow Train To Euston via Birmingham International. I did, however, have a carriage almost entirely to myself and could stare out at the darkening countryside and imagine myself a lone survivor of some Terry Nation-penned catastrophe... I dozed off (which I usually do on trains) and woke to find the train was motionless with complete blackness outside, no lights at all. I'd no idea where we'd stalled or whether there was now a delay. Eerily disorientating.

Of course, it didn't help that I was nearing the end of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer-winning The Road, a beautifully-written but terrifying piece of postapocalyptica. There's a lot of it about at the moment, what with Dead Set and now Survivors. I guess the recession causes one to consider other scenarios of civilisation collapse, from nuclear holocaust to plague to zombies. As I've remarked before, I find myself drawn to these doom-laden tales and in a weird way they're perversely comforting. The Road, however, is just so unremittingly (for the most part, anyway) bleak that I think that sense of bleakness (struggling to survive in a blackened, lifeless, cannibalistic world of grey ash and dead bones) suffused me for a while, mixing with the more particular ache of B's death.

Anyway, I'd planned to return to London by tea time so there'd be the option of Duckie. Slightly torn between the urge to cocoon at home with TSB (even short trips away make me feel like that) and the desire to get out of the house but be somewhere familiar surrounded by The Gays. A hot bath and the reflection that That's What B Would Want Us To Do saw us tending toward the latter. B not having been unacquainted with excess (wonderfully so), I suspect this won't be the last time he'll be invoked as rationale for getting out and partying.

To be frank, it felt a little like a post-apocalyptic version of Duckie, too. Some of that's undoubtedly carry-over of my general mood but the club itself was the sparsest I've seen it for a long while: Amy remarked on the credit crunchiness of the "smattering of applause" which greeted her appearance onstage and assured us we wouldn't be asked to dig deep for more. Just as well, really, in the case of the first act, Ruby Somethingorother (Nesk? Nesh?), a well-proportioned woman in a black satin basque and marabou-trimmed robe. She came on the strains of the Kaiser Chiefs' Ruby and... well, she walked around a bit, grinning. That was largely it. She said stuff that wasn't quite funny enough to be comedy, wasn't developed or engaging enough to be "character" and wasn't weird/unusual enough to fall into the Intriguing Duckie Oddities category.

What she did do spectacularly well was misjudge both audience and host to the point of alienation. Firstoff, she referred to Amy as the "compere" (to which Amy took exception) then made some half-cocked jibe about preferring male comperes and wondering whether Amy was a man in drag. That didn't go down well. She then started hassling a man in the front row, asking what he did for a living (worked in a museum bookshop) and taking the piss out of the fact that he had ginger hair and wore glasses. Not a great move, given that

a) the guy in question was really rather cute,

b) within the particular geek-chic beardygay demographic which attends Duckie, ginger hair and glasses are not only not automatically seen as bad/sad/undesirable, they're frequently fetishised as being especially sexy

and

c) Amy's partner is a bespectacled redhead.

So. All things considered, a bit rubbish really; she really lost the crowd. A less polite audience would've booed her offstage (as it was, there was a fair bit of disgruntled not-quite-booing at a couple of points). She wasn't called back to take her applause. Gareth and I wondered whether her act would've been successful in any sort of club setting, gay or straight. It just seemed weak and lacking in substance and, where audience banter was concerned, verging on nasty.

(I should say also that there're no photos of this week's Duckie. I brought my Good Camera along and stupidly left the detachable lens at home. D'oh!)

The second act was better (they'd have been hard pushed to be worse): Stewart Somethingorother (neither act is named on the Duckie website, hence my uncertainty), a naggingly familiar-looking chap who's apparently played guitar as part of David Hoyle's act in the past. He came on in a sort of genderqueer early Bananarama drag, full slap, cap, shirt, baggy slacks and really rather lovely shoes. A kind of mimed finding a guitar, licking it and starting to strum chords. Eventually, he became entangled in the flex, fell over and lay still - only to be dragged offstage by a menacing, portly chap dressed like a football hooligan and snarling song lyrics at the audience. All a little bizarre but at least interesting to look at and deserving of applause.

Thank Gawd for the Readers Wifes. They pretty much saved this week's Duckie: almost despite myself, I ended up jumping and air-punching to the likes of Laid and He's On The 'Phone. Bought tickets for their New Year bash and am in the process of enjoying their annual CD mix.

Oh, and Maur Valance was there, so I got a chance to congratulate her for winning the Femme Realism prize at Liverpool Is Burning. She's lovely.

"Destructors" would, I think, be a fitting description of the last hour or two of KUNST, a couple of Fridays ago. This was my second time (the first being the fabulous night featuring Our Lady J's debut solo performance) and I'd made a token gesture toward the Narnia/History of Art dress code by wearing a black shirt and spidery jewellery, gingering up my beard and sticking a large dressing over one ear. I was Vincent Van Goth, ho bloody ho. No, no-one else got it either but I did receive several concerned enquiries as to my aural health. Halfway through the evening, I got pissed off with hearing everything in mono and ripped the dressing off. Shame sunflowers were out of season.

In the event, the couple of punters who actually paid any heed to the dress code went as Narnians, specifically the White Witch. Our lovely host, Dusty Limits, had gone pale and witchy too (not to say a tad consumptive):



KUNST is, I'm coming to realise, more cabaret-heavy than either Duckie or Vauxhallville. I liked Miss Leggy Pee, who showed us her puppies:



She later did a couple of really rather cute Doris Dayesque lip-synched duets with her little old man-puppet:





There was also a rather pleasing operatic version of Psycho Killer



and some excellent poetry from Salena Godden (seen here with truly goddess-like sun-disc balanced on her head):



Nathan Evans did his Queen puppetry striptease:



It's a clever act but I've seen it before at least twice now and I agree with Gareth that some of the trampled-upon rights mentioned in his critique seem to date faster than others in terms of audience response.

For me, however, the oddest part of the evening was the finale, a live last-ever-performance (well, before they return to the US, I don't think they're splitting up) from KUNST's resident house band, Holy Ghost Revival. Apparently they traditionally come on and play toward the end of each KUNST but presumably Our Lady J took their place the last (and first) time I was there.

I guess I found them odd because it all seemed really un-Weimar Cabaret somehow. It wasn't bad, necessarily - there was something quite exhilarating about all that rawk 'n' roll energy - but it did seem to go on about twice as long as it should've done. When Dusty Limits called for a lock-in and an encore, I found myself thinking, "couldn't we just have the DJ back, playing music I actually like?" It was all a little bit jarringly hetero, too, but queered up a bit by Dusty's tales of snogging various band members, reenacted for us onstage.

Here's some pics:











I dunno, though. I don't really understand the appeal of that sort of rock/metal interface; it really has always seemed to me a peculiarly heterosexual thing, the straight boys' opportunity to strut and revel in glitter, spandex, tight leather and big hair while aggressively proclaiming their rampant desire for the ladeez. I was slightly surprised, at one point, to find myself mouthing the words despite not remotely recognising the tune (or even a tune): it was a cover or a part-sampling of Like A Prayer, probably my favourite Madonna song.

How queer.