Hen night free zone: show me the way!

I read on the BBC website today that a bar in Melbourne (one of my favourite cities in the world) has banned heterosexuals. I can just imagine the Daily Mail’s reaction now.

This may sound bizarre, but I think that it’s a terribly understandable thing to do. It’s not that we gaylords are heterophobic as such, but I’m afraid that straight readers have to accept that we often encounter the least acceptable face of straight-dom. Our social encounters with straight people are often in the format of hen nights, who unaccountably believe their impending heterosexual marriage is best celebrated by monopolising any gay bar they can find. Now that it’s no longer acceptable to go and laugh at lunatics in asylums, we queers will have to do. It’s a well observed fact that the atmosphere of Canal Street in Manchester is now considerably less pleasant than it used to be. This is almost entirely due to the prodigious presence of vulgar, loud and drunken hen nights. I take particular objection to having to wait to get into a bar because it’s full when it’s full with people who have no shortage of other places that they could go to laugh raucously at 3 foot inflatable phalluses and wear L plates. For the benefit of any non-English readers means “learner”; a spurious allusion to sexual naivety prior to a wedding night, although I suggest that it ought to be taken to mean “leper”.

It surprises me not one bit that Australia, country of all things good and much commonsense, has supported this bar’s decision. I fear that in the UK few bars would have the nerve to do so.

Brokeback Mountain

After work today, I luxuriated for a few hours with the DVD of “Brokeback Mountain”. I seem to never get time to do stuff like that at the moment and it was an absolute joy. What a great, great film it is. I know that’s really uber-gay of me and I have to admit that my three all time favourite films (Talented Mr Ripley, Beautiful Thing and Brokeback Mountain) all have gay stuff at the centre or near the centre of the plot.

I was sent an email joke at the time of the film coming out that I dug out of my Outlook and thought I’d share with you. I know the people who invented this email and I feel it deserves wider dissemination as I think it’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. If you don’t get it, you’re either not gay, not a fag hag or you don’t know enough poofs so you should go out more.

Brokeback Mountain Weekly Grocery Lists
for Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, Summer, 1963

WEEK ONE
Beans
Bacon
Coffee
Whiskey

WEEK TWO
Beans
Ham
Coffee
Whiskey

WEEK THREE
Beans al fresca
Thin-sliced Bacon
Hazelnut Coffee
Sky vodka & Tanqueray gin
K-Y gel

WEEK FOUR
Beans en salade
Pancetta
Coffee (espresso grind)
5-6 bottles best Chardonnay
2 tubes K-Y gel

WEEK FIVE
Fresh Fava beans
Jasmine rice
Prosciutto, approx. 8 ounces, thinly sliced
Medallions of veal
Porcini mushrooms
1/2 pint of heavy whipping cream
1 Cub Scout uniform, size 42 long
5-6 bottles French Bordeaux (Estate Reserve)
1 extra large! bottle Astro-glide

WEEK SIX
Yukon Gold potatoes
Heavy whipping cream
Asparagus (very thin)
Organic Eggs
Spanish Lemons
Gruyere cheese (well aged)
Crushed Walnuts
Arugula
Clarified Butter
Extra Virgin Olive oil
Pure Balsamic vinegar
6 yards white silk organdy
6 yards pale ivory taffeta
3 Cases of Dom Perignon Masters Reserve
Large tin Crisco

Cool Running

Two days ago, my very wonderful friend Rose and I ran the Great Manchester Run. That’s 10 kilometres around Manchester City Centre, down to Old Trafford and around Salford Keys. I did this with no training and it was actually rather wonderful. It was a really rather wonderful event, with 28,000 people taking part.

We took it very easy and stopped for a toilet break, which involved probably about five minutes’ queuing. Even with stoppage time, we finished in one hour 16 minutes dead on, which I think is pretty good considering the lack of preparation. I am thus now convinced that athleticism is the way forward.

The only thing that slightly troubles me about this is that it seems to me that men tend to discover running as they approach middle age. Often, they discover it about the time that they buy their first sports car. I guess this means that I’m properly middle aged. Crap. Maybe I’ll stick to television and chocolate.

Paris, Paris, Prince and Prejudice

These seem to be the main topics of the news recently.

Paris

Either Paris Hilton (official dumb bitch) has had her jail sentence cut in half for good behaviour. Not sure how, as I don’t think she’s even started her sentence yet. This all seems very strange indeed to me.

Also, Paris yesterday saw the inauguration of a new president of France. Hooray for Sarkozy. I have always utterly despised Chirac and it’s nice to hear the new president condemn the posturing of his predecessor to veto any UN action in Iraq as arrogant. Too right it was: disarming the UN made a US invasion a certainty rather than a great probability. It will be nice to not totally despise our nearest neighbour’s head of state.

Prince

So Prince Harry will not be sent to Iraq. There is much hoo-ha about this, with various rubbish media rather predictably running the populist line of “if Iraq’s too dangerous for a prince, why are our boys there”? Ahem, not the point. I am sure that Harry would go to Iraq and serve with distinction. He seems like a good bloke to me and he’s certainly grown up to be cute, which I think came as a surprise to the whole nation. But I digress. In days of yore, royals would lead from the front (ish). This was all well and good when fighting the Frogs or the Hun, but said Frogs and Hun could be relied upon to act passably like gentlemen in the event of catching a prisoner. In Iraq, any area with Harry in it would be a magnet for attack. In the best case, this would be a huge diversion of resources. In the worst case, he would be captured and could fairly surely not rely on the Geneva Protocol. Guerrilla war is now all about beheadings being shown on YouTube and less about civilised PoW camps. That would be some prize for Harry’s potential captors and would have to be avoided.

It was obvious that Harry was never going to be sent to anywhere in real danger, simply because of the danger this would present to others. How grim his life must be. He’s not academically bright, he has no privacy, he can’t do the job he wants to and both his closest relatives will one day be king of England. Meanwhile, he’ll get to be, well, constitutionally pointless. I feel sorry for him. Should he feel the need for a bit of intimate comfort, he should feel free to Skype me. I’m all heart, me.

Prejudice

The “story” of the missing kid in Portugal continues to be covered in a truly disgraceful way on Sky TV. The police have one principal suspect, who seems to me to be little more than a local busybody. Endless coverage continues to say that the police don’t have enough evidence to charge him (in truth, they’ve never had enough evidence to arrest him, which is most probably because he’s totally innocent). Yet this man’s life is now ruined because he will be recognised forever as the man who killed a young kid. Why? Because Sky said so.

Firestorm of fretfulness

About two weeks ago, two parents on holiday in Portugal put their young children to bed and then left them as they went for dinner and a few drinks at the bar in their complex. Now one might say that it’s not particularly wise to leave kids unattended, as a lone three year old is apt to discover the kitchen knives and how to plug the iron in. Personally, I think it’s a reasonable thing to do if they’re in range of a baby monitor but not otherwise. I see their behaviour as negligent. Planning to go and check on the kids every 15 minutes or so (which would surely be every 45 minutes or so after drinking) isn’t the action of a good parent. The greatest danger to an unattended child is surely the child itself but in this case, with immense improbability, somebody entered the property and took three year old Madeleine.

This is a great tragedy for the child and the parents but it absolutely resolutely is not a world event. In the last two weeks, there has been a frenzy in the UK that I last saw when Princess Diana died. Football clubs replaced their normal kits with T-shirts with the kid’s photo; posters appear everywhere with the kid’s photo and an entreaty to help look for her. Now, I had a good look in my airing cupboard but I found nothing. For the love of God, what can I possibly do? Given that the helpfulness of my contribution will inevitably be the square root of bugger all, why should I trouble myself worrying about it?

It seems to me that the British have become grief junkies. It started with Diana and it’s got worse since. It’s not helped by the rolling news cycle, with 24 hour news stations being desperate to fill time. Eventually, the coverage of a human interest story itself becomes the news and a firestorm starts.

I sincerely hope that the kid is found unharmed, although that’s surely an ever more remote possibility. The top story on the BBC news today is that her father believes she’s fine. Once more, I hope that this brings him some comfort, but how does he know? And since when has the hunch of an anxious, arguably negligent, father been a big enough story to top every other event happening in the world today?

Now I know that in the period that saw Tony Blair finally step down, my own headline was a whinge about Eurovision and that’s pretty trivial. But I’m just a middle aged poof who keeps a blog. I am entitled to my random, deeply disproportionate rantings because I’m not the BBC.

I find this sort of thing deeply distasteful. If there’s one thing that “sells” better than fear, it’s fear for the safety of children. The sort of frenzied coverage of this event further convinces people that the world’s more dangerous than ever (the bald facts are that it’s not). So fewer children get to walk to school and society trembles itself to pieces even more. This sort of grief journalism is plain irresponsible. I also wonder how many parents in Iraq tucked their kids in bed shortly before a “smart” bomb blew them all to pieces or how many kids have become orphans as a consequence of our dumb decision to turn their country into one huge hornets’ nest. Giving this sort of attention to the suffering of one family that were causally responsible for the event itself is plain disrespectful to the thousands of people who suffer greater tragedy every day through no fault of their own.

I predict that in a week or so, there will become considerable pressure to buy a yellow ribbon to wear to “show support” and pay money into the fund that has apparently been set up for…. Well, it’s hard to be sure what for. I strongly urge you to not contribute. Write a letter of support to the parents if you feel sufficiently moved to do so, but don’t encourage this sort of lachrymose frenzy that has become all too common.

Mourning the loss of Eurovision

Last night was Eurovision, an event that I somewhat predictably love. Well, I used to love it but now it’s become a farce. The UK’s entry was a cheesy novelty thing that really didn’t deserve to win. When will the UK realise that uber-camp novelty acts don’t actually win very often? Or if they do, it’s because the camp stuff is a veneer on top of a decent song?

Bad song or great song though, the UK had no chance whatever of winning because:

• Most European countries think we’re the USA’s lackey, so they don’t vote for us because they hate us.
• The contest is now dominated so much by Eastern European countries that en bloc don’t like the West. So although we invented it and pay for the bloody thing, they screw us over every year. Watching it last night, I was able to predict the scores from every country with almost total accuracy. This skill rather spooked the other people at the Eurovision party I was at, but it is entirely explained by the fact that years of working in Eastern Europe means I know which countries border which. FYR Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (whose name I sneer and laugh at, incidentally) were always going to give marks to Serbia, etc, etc. These countries are a joke: if they’re not shooting each other’s sister, they’re making a big show of supposed Slavic unity.

Almost straight after, I noticed this viewer feedback on the BBC website:

None of the Big Four [the four permanently-placed members of the EBU - France, Germany, the UK and Spain due to their immense financial contribution] have won since we did in 1997. If these four nations boycott Eurovision, it couldn't happen happen (sic), and we could laugh at the Balkan Bloc, the Russian Bloc, the Nordic Bloc and the Greek/Turkish Bloc not being able to exercise (sic) their ridiculous voting power.

Ban the Yugoslavian Bloc until they grow up, or just leave the EBU.

Hahaha.

Hugh Morley, Ashford, United Kingdom

Well said, Hugh.

Apparently, some academic insists that politics aren’t a factor in Eurovision voting. This also reminds me how full of crap and disconnected from self-evident truth academics are wont to be. See the story here.

I think we should stop paying for Eurovision in its current ludicrous form and launch “Eurovision classic”, with the states with a clear record of voting for each other excluded. If France, the UK, Germany and Spain actually have some chance of winning, they might even enter decent songs. Until then, I think I’ll stop watching it.

Prompted by one of my blogees’ comments below, I feel prompted to say something about the Daily Mail and its expose of Lord Browne, the CEO of BP. Said scandal is that this confirmed bachelor it seems has been having a romantic relationship with a younger MAN (yes man!) who not only is a homo but who used to be a male prostitute!

I found out about this as Malaysia Airlines only had copies of the Daily Mail as I left KL the other day. Why do airlines always give out the Daily Fucking Mail? I loathe the Daily Mail with a passion that cannot be expressed in polite fucking words. If you read the Daily Mail, stop reading this right now; you’re not welcome in here. What I loathe so much about it is the way that it pretends to be the voice of reason, whilst actually presenting the world with hatred and peevishness to an Olympic standard. Having ruined at talented and decent man’s career, they are keen to point out that they did this to expose his poor judgement in remaining silent (lest he become the victim of blackmail). It’s nothing to do with homophobia really. Or so they, most unconvincingly, say.

Now if I were a shareholder in BP, I would be most keen that my Gaylord chief executive should keep his private life private. Being an oil company necessarily involves dealing with some pretty unpleasant people: the tyrants that run Saudi Arabia; the Iranians, Hugo Chavez; George W Bush. None of these symbols of backwardness and intolerance are likely to react well to not being able to choose to avoid the fact that they know their joint venture partner to be an uphill gardener. If I were a shareholder in BP, I’d like to keep my CEO and I’d recognise the need for him to keep quiet. Whether he keeps silent by keeping his mouth actually shut or just unable to speak because it’s full of rent boy cock, I couldn’t care less as long as he keeps schtum.

By exposing this hypocrisy, the Daily Mail has done immense damage to a man and the sheer duplicity in peddling this kind of self-righteous peevish, small minded homophobia as something honourable makes me hate them all the more. I’d rather have Ahmadinejad, the Pope or the House of Saud. They may be hateful bigots, but at least they have the courage to express their true opinions.

Hotel toasters

At 8am this morning (Malaysia time, which is 1am UK time), I bolted back a quick breakfast at the competent but soulless hotel I’d been staying in.

Who makes the toasters that one finds as a universal presence in hotels the world over? You know the type… they about the size of a colour laser printer but with lots more noise and steel lattice work. You find a slice of bread, which you place on the bit that’s sliding into the thing and then you stand around for an indeterminate time trying not to look self-conscious. Now a variation comes in; some of the machines just gently ease your slice of bread out of the bottom but many shoot it out without warning and with considerable power. You have to try to catch the thing before it shoots on the floor in the manner of somebody practising tennis with one of those machines. In both cases though, your bread will emerge hot but curiously not actually toasted. You probably try the obvious tactic of repeating the whole cycle again but some very minor anxiety tells you that it will spit out cinders next time. Your fear is always well founded as the machine emanates smoke dramatically.

In a globalised world filled with countless mediocre hotels, why has nobody yet managed to market a toaster that actually works?

Why I hate shopping

Malaysia Airlines sadly did not manage to deliver both my bags to KL when they delivered me here. Any baggage delay for more than four hours gives me £300 to spend on clothes, etc as long as I use my Amex card to pay for them. If the bag’s delayed by more than 48 hours, I get another £300. Truthfully, I’d prefer just to have my bag and sod the free money.

To most people, this sudden budget would be a source of considerable joy. Not to me though; I dislike shopping in general and clothes shopping is something that I hate with a passion. I’m aware that many people just love shopping for the sake of it and indeed there is even such a thing as “window shopping”. To me, recreational shopping makes as much sense as recreational ironing. Recreational window shopping makes as much sense as looking at a pile of clothes awaiting ironing. I routinely split my luggage between two small suitcases, so the non-arrival of case 2 isn’t so much of a disaster, but it did leave me without a pair of jeans and no T-shirts. So out shopping I was forced to go. (Why does that sound like Yoda?)

I am faintly fearful of crowds and especially milling crowds where people keep bumping into me. It’s a public holiday in KL and so all of Malaysia was out shopping, as I don’t think that there’s anything else to do here. KL’s like one of those American or Arabian Gulf cities that’s grown so fast that it’s little more than a collection of tall buildings with no identifiable city centre or obvious purpose for existing at all. Its entire purpose appears to be retail, which makes it heaven for many people; but which makes it a vacuous nowhere in my mind. Here are some other reasons why shopping is a fun-free zone:

I can’t bear how parents don’t seem to realise that their kids are not as cute as they think. In one shop, a young girl had locked herself into the only changing cubicle and was screaming and refusing to come out. Her Irish mother seemed to think this hilarious. I am unable to see anything cute or even mildly funny in this brattishness whatever.

It forces me to look my own body image and self-esteem issues in the face (or more precisely the waist). I can live without that, thanks; especially after a week in Africa where the only food that was reasonably certain not to give you food poisoning was chips.

I utterly hate being pestered (or mithered as we’d say in Manchester). If a shop assistant approaches me with unsolicited wittering more than twice, I walk out of the shop. There are no exceptions to this. They could be giving stuff away free but I wouldn’t care; just get out of my face.

To avoid the above, I have developed a routine where I walk so quickly round each shop that they don’t get the chance to follow me. I then work out which shops appear to be worth enduring the endless wittering from staff, although I make it politely but perfectly clear that I don’t “need help”. Looking at clothes is, after all, a perfectly straightforward exercise. I imagine I’d need help with calculus but I don’t need help to flick through a rack of T-shirts, thanks. I suppose what they expect is some pointless chat about what’s “nice”, but life’s too short to fill it with that sort of crap.

Department stores offer less respite from all this than one might expect, as more and more seem to be reconfigured into the American style of department store, which seem to be organised by designer. I truly couldn’t care if clothes are made my Gucci, Guess or George at ASDA as long as they look OK. They’re all made using child peasant labour in Indonesia anyway. It just drags the process out to have to look at each designer’s shirts (along with the other 95% of their stuff that I haven’t the slightest passing interest in). What a waste of time.

I find it irritating that shopping malls often stagger the escalators in random places to force you to walk around and see other shops that you had no desire to walk past. I can see the logic in this but if I’ve gone out for a couple of T-shirts, I’m deeply unlikely to buy anything else; especially if my egress has been blocked by a milling crowd moving at about 0.1 mph.

Eventually, after coming to hate the entire experience (humidity and jet lag did not help either), I saw a branch of Quicksilver. To my considerable joy, the staff said hi and invited me to shout them if I wanted anything but then just left me alone. What a relief the soft sell was after being followed by assistants in numerous small shops, Guess and Timberland. About £130 later, I left very pleased with having found the place. They even had the courtesy to provide a pair of jeans that fit with a 34” waist. 34 inches, my arse! Well, my arse is 36 inches to be more precise.

I hope my case turns up though. It’s got my favourite casual clothes in and the idea of replacing them is horrid as it would involve numerous trips to numerous shops. Yuk.

The rather weary traveller

I’ve been bad at blogging recently, haven’t I? Apologies- I’ve actually been rather busy. I’ve travelled to Accra (Ghana), Lusaka (Zambia) in the last week and I’m writing this in KL (Malaysia). All that travel and hotel breakfasts has left me rather bewildered and short of time.

Africa was a fantastic experience, if you can ignore the chaotically bad organisation from some of my colleagues. Which I can’t, but I won’t bore you with my gripes. Zambia in particular was quite a surprise with Lusaka reminding me of Canberra of all places. I’d go back to both Ghana and Zambia again given the chance. Right now I’m on the 23^rd floor of a typically clean and soulless but competent Asian hotel. KL, like Singapore, is a place that it’s hard to have any real opinions of at all. Mind you, after a week in places with bags of character in Africa, it’s nice to have somewhere where it’s safe to eat the fruit and where I’ve not brought my own supply of medical sharps in case of emergencies (HIV rates sadly being what they are in Africa).

The photo is a picture I took of my class in Accra: over 100 very pleasant and hard working ACCA students who I was hopefully helping in their attempts to pass auditing exams. These students deserve a better future, given their attitude and hard work. It’s nice to be able to help in this, especially as I was being paid to be there!

I’ll get back to the usual opinionated drivel soon. Please keep watching this space and leaving the odd comment.