Why I miss London

The Student Nurse phones: "It was my birthday yesterday. As you weren't around to buy me something, I told the boyfriend I was working and went to a sauna. I had three men. Then I had a cup of coffee and a muffin then I had four men all together. They were all well fit and horny, but some of the people watching us weren't, but they kept their distance and then all applauded when i finished, which was nice."

Cardifficult

So, the boy from last Saturday went into meltdown.

We've all been damaged by men. I can't glance at a certain kids TV presenter without seething with jealous rage, and there's an underwear model who quite put me off oysters. But you know, beyond having had my heart broken at 21, I really don't think there's that much wrong with me. Well, nothing that a cocktail menu can't cure.

But poor Rob was hideously damaged by his ex. Over the week we tried to meet up, this kind of leaked out from under his confident shell. But all was going well until a sudden mad flurry of texts.

"i just can't meet you tonite. i'm so fucked up. i'll fuck it up. i'll fuck u up."

No, you probably won't.

"i just can't give u what u want."

I know. Lego train sets are so hard to come by.

"i can't meet up. sorry. i just can't. i've realised i just can't do this."

Okay. Fine. Call me sometime.

"actually, babe, looks like i'm gonna be there at 7 rather than 6. that okay for you? mine's a stella xx"

Huh?

(worrying) Thought for the day

I caught myself thinking: "You know, I just don't own enough cardigans."

Suddenly on the radar

SATURDAY:
A gay club. In Cardiff. At scrapy-am. The loong night after Eurovision.

ME: If I wasn't so drunk, I'd make a pass at you.

HIM: If I wasn't so drunk, I'd fend you off.

***

SUNDAY MORNING:
Um, am I in a relationship?

***

SUNDAY EVENING:
A text from him: "You've not replied. Pity. Goodbye."
Me: Huh? Did I miss something?

***

MONDAY EVENING:
A phonecall from him: "... uh, so, anyway ... My brother-in-law is also called James. He's just texted to say 'Yes. I am amazing at sex. And I have no idea what the other thing is, but yes, I'm probably good at that too.'"

Um. Interestingly, he used to be a farm labourer, but is now a banker. Imagine Sean Bean in a suit. Only young, and with his face all nicely ironed.

PS: He owns a haystack. Larks!

And the winner is...

Rather wonderfully, was at the awards for Welsh Business of the Year or something. It involved lots of spoken Welsh, indoor fireworks, and was sponsored by the words "interactive", "innovation" and "passion".

Welsh Small Business of the year was run by a firm selling solar panels, which seemed brave.

The awards were hosted by Gyles Brandreth, who was brilliant - imagine a sycophantic drag queen in a dinner jacket. "Ah, John Major. No flies on him..."

Big Brother: You're Watching It

Went out to a Welsh gay club late last night. BB Live was projected on every available wall and screen with the sound turned off. People were just stood, staring at it, transfixed.

Probably cos, by that point, nearly all the male cast were topless and drunk. And there was an Asian babe in the corner eating sushi and giggling.

Semi-naked young men and a fag hag? What's not to like?

With the sound off, it looked like a bunch of gay porn boys were having a party with some girls called Tiffany and a bloke from IT support. Am I wrong?

The Archers: The Story So Far

In brief:
1) All the women are house-obsessed nags.
2) All the men are hopeless. And can't cook. Except for one, and he's gay.

In more detail:

WILL AND ED AND EMMA AND GEORGE
At the heart of Ambridge is a caravan. In it, young Emma Grundy is bringing up boiby Georgie and scheming for a better life. For her, this means a flat and flexitime at the cafe.
She was married to Will, but then left him for his brother, Ed. Ed is the only man in Ambridge not to realise that Emma is *completely fucking bonkers*.
Emma has recently left the caravan, after a CD rack fell on George while Will, Ed and Emma were fighting over who was the best parent.

THE GRUNDIES
Clarrie Grundy has been suffering since birth. A member of Opus Dei, she punishes herself by selfless marriage to Eddie Grundy and servitude to his 400 year old father. Eddie isn't speaking to his son Ed over the Will/Emma meltdown, despite the fact that Ed is now raising organic cows at Willowtwistle Cottage, something that Eddie is secretly proud of.
Eddie is currently working on a range of erotic gnomes.

SAINT SHULA
The spiritual centre of Ambridge is Shula, descended from Joseph of Arimathea. Originally, a pensioner played teenaged Shula. 40 years later, she's still there. Shula is The Nicest Person In Ambridge. She forgives her vet husband for his gambling addiction, more concerned about whether or not her young child will get into Organ School and win the soapbox derby.
She's best friends with Usha, the lawyer, but hates that she's going out with the vicar, because, well, after all, Usha's a bit foreign, really.

IAN AND ADAM
Ambridge's only gays. They first kissed in Adam's strawberry growers, and now share a house together. As none of the scriptwriters has ever met a gay, Adam and Ian behave oddly.
In an attempt to introduce conflict, Adam and Ian briefly argued over household chores, before getting a cleaner. Foolishly, they hired Emma Grundy, who leaves the caravan twice a week to lament on their Japanese effect scatter cushions.
Adam and Ian's only habit is long evenings in their outdoor hot-tub. We frequently hear them earnestly discussing stawberry yields in it. Seriously. That's all they do. They honestly don't shag.

LINDA SNELL
A drag queen.

LILLIAN ARCHER
Also a drag queen.

BRIAN ARCHER
No one can quite remember what he's for.

DEBBIE ARCHER
Played by Tamsin Greig. Fabulously, but very occasionally.

YOUNG TOM ARCHER
Referred to as "The Sausage Baron of Borsetshire" without even a smirk. Had an affair with the manager of the local supermarket. His sausages are no longer organic.

JAZZER
The only teenager in Ambridge ever to try drugs. He immediately suffered brain damage and became a non-speaking character.

JOLENE AND SID
Manage the pub. Once heard them having adulterous sex in the shower, which quite put me off my spin class. Jolene has a daughter called Fallon. Brilliant.

Singalong-a-S&M

An evening of culture in Cardiff. Well, to see Topping and Butch.

Last night's dream

So, I'm playing a robot in a crappy science fiction film.

I think I'm doing very well at playing a robot.

Two people are watching. The kind of fat, dodgy men you'd expect to turn up at the shooting of a crappy science fiction dream film.

"You're rubbish!" says one of them.

With suprising venom I turn to him and shout, "They should never have let you out of prison."

A friend of mine looks on, and sadly shakes her head.

I am then fired as a robot.

***

I wake up at 4 am and think: Huh?

Meanwhile, on Radio 4

This week's Woman's Hour serial features a vampire beach hut.

Champagne Spies

Diary Of A Provincial Lady In Wartime is one of my favourite books. It's about a hapless London socialite in 1940. Pigeon Pie by Nancy Mitford goes one better and adds spying!

Lady Sophie is a ditzy aristocrat who, in between oysters and gossip, stumbles across a spy ring. When she finally realises what's going on, no-one takes her seriously, so she decides she's just going to have a jolly good go at sorting the spy lark out herself. Oh, and be in time for cocktails with Randolph.

After the war, Mitford distanced herself from it. It's politically dubious and was immediately dated - 2 days after publication, the Phoney War ended - but oh, it's funny!

Features the following lovely put-down of the ghastly evangelist Florence: "Sophie wished that Florence wouldn't talk about God as though his real name was Godfrey, and God was just her nickname for him"

You know you're a middle-aged gay when...

You find yourself pressed up against the wall outside a nightclub saying, "Nah, not without three gins and some lube. Why don't you just jizz over that rat there?"

Vodka Love

Josh Kilmer-Purcell on vodka. Sums vodka and him up brilliantly. As it does his book - about his days as a drunk Manhattan drag queen with a crack whore boyfriend.

Anyhoo, on a whim, not drunk for two days. Appear to have lost an awful lot of weight very quickly. Um. That's not fair. Good, but not fair.

That new James Bond trailer

Um. Ohhhkay. Fine. Allright then. So, James Bond looks like he has a hangover. A really bad hangover. Um. Fine.

And, from the sounds of it, the script is also hidden under a duvet on the sofa, craving toast. Poor Dame Judi.

Backed into a corner by my London ways

I pulled on the walk home this morning. Odd.

I normally take a short cut from the clubs through a car park, but the fence is being repaired.

This was unfortunate, as the car park is also a cruising ground. Not a sexy-Latvuanian-new-to-town-grinning-like-sailors cruising ground, but a forlorn cruising ground patrolled by the broken biscuits of gaydom.

It all brings back nostalgic memories for summer strolls home from SoHo to Euston, through Bloomsbury square, those long warm evenings sat hopefully on the grass trying to catch the eye of That Gay From The DIY Show. Ah.

Instead of which, this is a cruising ground that tells you: "Well, you may have had a shit evening, but at least you're not that bald, that fat, or that ugly just yet. And you've not spent two hours trying to look sexy in the rain. Go home. Have a fag. Read a book. It's all good."

Except that this Saturday night, they'd mended the gap in the car park wall. Turning a short cut into a game reserve. For once in my life, I found myself "backs to the wall", confronted by a shumbling hoarde of... well, gay zombies.

Anyway, I headed out of the Car Park Of Crushed Dreams, and walked round the long way.

Here's where the point of this diversion comes. Now, there's a very nice guy I see out, with big arms, on his own, drinking water. He seems lovely, but I never quite catch his eye.

But there he was, walking down the road as I was walking up it. As we passed, we checked each other out, walked on a bit, turned to see if the other was still looking, realised we both were, panicked and hurried on.

He vanished round the corner. I stopped. And waited. How exciting.

He came back round the corner and back up to my flat.

***

Now, at this point, Barbara Cartland would draw a veil and all would be well.

Sadly, this is me. Back at the flat, he turned out to be... and I turned out to be... Well, let's just say I misread the situation. And forgot that all gays, even those with big arms, carry two things in their heart: baggage and romantic hopes.

Suffice to say, things went very well out on my balcony, *really* well on the sofa, not too shabby on the carpet, and then suddenly not so well in the bedroom. We
ended up hugging on the sofa, while he told me in a small quiet voice about how he'd just split up with his boyfriend and how it was all... you know...a bit sudden... and how he'd only ever slept with two people before, and well... obviously I wasn't like that at all what with my London ways.

It was only after he'd left that I suspected that "London ways" probably meant "fat slut".

PS: Life's always more complicated than it first appears. The next day I found his gaydar profile: "SINGLE AND WILLING: COME RIDE ME NOW". Oh.

Hypocrisy

Although I've given up smoking, I'm suddenly on 5 a day.

Irony

Finally met a Welshman who found me attractive. In London.

Oh to be...

It's that time of year when my posh London club which I have no right to belong to emails me to say "Now, don't forget to drop by any time to our yacht while you're at Cannes".

Yeah. Right. *sigh*