Amsterdamp

Recently, we went to Amsterdam. My boyfriend  bought a pair of shorts to go clubbing in.

"I think those are pants." I said.
"No, old man, these are definitely shorts. It's just a European cut. Can you hold my wallet? There don't appear to be any pockets in these shorts."

So, we headed out with him dressed in a micro t-shirt and a pair of knickers. Like so:

He suggested we go to a club called The Eagle because there's one with that name in Manchester and it's dead classy. I wasn't convinced - the Dutch branch had no windows and even from the outside, it looked a bit fisty. "No no," he assured me, "It's part of a chain. The one in Manchester is a swishy cocktail bar."

Slow dissolve to us standing in a dimly-lit bar that smelt of poppers and kidney infections. There were no cocktails.

"I'm fairly sure it's a sex club," I insisted, but he shook his head, suggesting we go to the "lounge" upstairs. It contained a lot of dark corners and a picnic bench lit by a single red bulb.

"Don't sit on the picnic bench," I said.

We went and sat in a corner and slowly sipped our drinks. They may not have been cocktails, but they were very strong. Probably a good cure for shigella.

There was a long pause.

"This seat is quite damp."

Another long pause.

"I'm sitting in a sex club wearing only a pair of pants and something is dribbling down my leg."

I'll take you to Blackpool

My boyfriend suggests we go to Blackpool for... well, he doesn't call it a romantic weekend. Instead he tells me there'll be chips involved.

Having seen a few too many episodes of The Hotel Inspector (apparently they can't do an episode in Blackpool without mentioning rodents and roaches) he decided that, as the gays like do like their cleanliness, we'd stay at a gay hotel. He asked his old flatmate for advice.

Which is how I ended up phoning a place where all the rooms are named after divas. "I can't give you Bassey, but Kylie's free then. It doesn't have a chiller but it does have tea and coffee making facilities." I'm sure Kylie would approve.

We check in. It's homely. Very homely. With a tiny disco in the front room and a notice advising us to book early for Christmas. We go up to our room. I boil the travel kettle while my boyfriend checks the Hotel Booklet. And then pauses. "Have you seen this...."

We had accidentally booked into a sex hotel.

10 good things about Freelancing

Ten good things about freelancing:

1. Sofa = Office
2. The canteen never shuts
3. If a book is that good, you may stay up till 3am reading it.
4. And have a lie-in till 10 the next day. Sometimes.
5. Being in for the delivery man
6. Lego = Team-Building Away Day  .
7. You get to go to the gym when the only other person there is a pervy-looking gymnast.
8. No meetings*
9. The giddy rush that comes from being able to turn down a hateful project. 
10. Cat = Manager

(* this is not true. Everyone has meetings)

I could list the bad things, the many, many bad things. But today I am celebrating the good.

The Party party

I went to a marvellous party given by a friend who likes Labour. She likes Labour so much the highlight was her children playing "Bash the Tory pinata" as a papier mache concoction of Boris and Dave exploded in a haribo shower. For her politics is fun.

Also at the party was a young Labour activist. He was good looking, even if all his clothes felt a bit tweedy/flanelly/corduroy, and he had that vibrant passion about politics that 19 year-olds have. For him politics was decidedly not fun. We'll call him Blairette.

My feelings about politics have always been summed up by Bridget Jones:

"Labour stands for the principle of sharing, kindness, gays, single mothers and Nelson Mandela as opposed to braying bossy men having affairs with everyone shag-shag-shag left, right and centre and going to the Ritz in Paris then telling all the presenters off on the Today programme."

I'm not really a details person. It's curious the way people are polite at parties - in that we tolerate people being very rude to us but go out of our way to avoid giving offence back.  Blairette was thundering away about how Boris was an evil, crypto-fascist Murdockian running dog (gawd, student politicians sound the same now as they did in the 90s). I casually said I thought he was actually rather endearing, and pointed out that, if Ken had got stuck on a tripwire, we'd have seen a massive sense of humour failure, rather than a grown man valiantly waving a flag and doing Thomas The Tank Engine impressions.

I did not, at any point, say I thought Boris was the best thing since sliced oxygen. Just that he was fun and handled bad situations well.

BLAIRETTE: (a hiss of denouncement) "Did you vote for him?"

ME: "No. I voted for the nice lady who is dressed by her cats. But I put Boris second."

BLAIRETTE: "That makes you a fellow traveller! The Greens don't count! You're voting for the Bullingdonian Enclave!"

ME: "Actually, I was just making sure I wasn't voting for Ken. He's the kind of boyfriend you'd have help arrange you a mortgage, whereas Boris is the one you'd got out for dinner with."

BLAIRETTE: "I'll have you know that Ken wrote a restaurant review column. It was very entertaining, actually."

ME: "Well, I'm not sure I'd eat at a restaurant he liked-"

At this point Blairette dismissed me and starting urging my friend to back his tabled point of order at conference, which, if passed would allow people to not only table points of order but also clarify a  mandated speaking point when tabling points of order. "It'll blow the place apart!" He really figured this nonsense really was the way to enhance the unions, grow power, and make people vote Labour again.

I found it all baffling, tiresome and sad. It's tedious being lectured on politics by a 19 year-old expert. It also made him quiet hard to fancy (I bet even his undercrackers were corduroy). My last encounter with Labour Activism was at a car boot sale where a book stall was manned by two very bright gay young things who urged me to attend meetings with the promise of free tea, biscuits, and a throupon in the disabled loos. The thing they remembered was that politics is supposed to be - just a little bit - fun.

That's why those of us who blithely voted Labour in 1997 voted for them - because it felt like we were putting the fun people in charge. And it's why I now find it so hard to vote for them. They started hanging out with weird friends, then doing hateful things, and finally, they became dull. Even the sexy ones.

The other thing was realising I was being lectured on why it was my social duty to vote Labour by someone who was 5 in 1997.

Them gays and their rights and stuff

I signed a petition. Just one. I didn't realise it would have consequences.

I am not a political person. I don't understand the reasons why things happen, I know enough about local politics to know I'm powerless, and at the last mayoral election I voted for that nice lady because she looks like she's dressed by her cats. The world is a bad, complicated place, and I'm fairly convinced that if I tried to sort it out, I'd make as much of a mess of it as when I tried to clean a laptop with spray bleach.

But, you know, from time to time, I sign a petition. The one in question was about giving a (quite hot) Ukranian gay some rights or something. I didn't read the small print, I just thought that bad things shouldn't happen to hot people.

What I didn't realise was that I was unwittingly joining the "Purpose Foundation" and consenting to receive regular emails from "Andre and Jeremy" urging me to sign yet more email petitions, and to forward their emails to my friends to get them to sign them. (The phrase "one final push" may have been used, several times).

You remember when The Guardian launched that double-page spread in the middle of the paper to publish a a daily poster of a striking piece of photo-journalism? At the start, it was eye-catching, wonderful and occasionally moving. It then became your Daily Misery Porn Pull-Out, an interchangeable blur of crying mothers and starving babies, screaming "You Should Care More!". The fact is, after a while, you don't. Like a familiar picture on the wall, after a while, you stop noticing it's there.

The same with sending regular emails from "Andre and Jeremy" about fresh atrocities that demand my signature on an e-petition to strike a vital blow/send a stern message/change the game/refresh the legacy etc etc. You may think you've created a protest movement. You haven't. You've just created manual spam.

In my imagination "Andre and Jeremy" have become idealised idealists. Andre gets back from his shift at the Shelter, hanging the bike up on the hooks in the lovely whitewashed walls of their uptown apartment. He's about to prepare dinner using some locally-sourced ingredients, when he notices something wrong. Jeremy is sat, staring sadly at his macbook. "Oh no," Andre sighs, giving his lover a backrub, "What's happened now?". "Don't worry," says Jeremy, "I've got the internet onto it. Together we'll fight this."


I just don't entirely buy that signing an online petition changes a thing. It may do. But it just feels too easy. Remember when we all got hot under the collar about that nasty Jan Moir and rushed to the Press Complaints Commission? Nothing. And filling in a PCC online complaint form was actually quite hard.

Sending me constant emails telling me to be outraged yet again just makes me sad and even more convinced that I can't change anything.

There's a lovely mention in Private Eye of Ethan Zuckerman's Cute Cat Theory of how online activism really works. In brief - people don't really care about much online beyond looking at cats and porn. Governments think they do and block their access to stuff like Facebook. The masses can't look at cats any more. They get cross. Result: uprising. He came up with the theory in 2008. When the Arab Spring happened in 2010, Mr Zuckeman got proved very right indeed.

The three-second rule does not apply

Boyfriend (crawling in at 3am on Saturday morning): "After you left,
Tara and I found a rubber truncheon on the dance floor and started
taking pictures of each other deep throating it. It was HILARIOUS."

Me: ...

Boyfriend (suddenly awake at 3am on Sunday morning): "Ow. My throat
hurts and my tonsils are swollen. I think I've got an infection. How
can this have happened?"

Me: ...

New Media, Old Boiler

When the Internet was invented, it was all about an Information Super Highway into CyberSpace. Which initially meant Project Gutenberg and a Star Trek episode guide. Shortly afterwards the Internet invented sex and hasn't looked back since (I remember working for a firm where we used to test the speed of a PC's processor by loading up an unintentionally hilarious animated gif on a porn site - if they were banging like hyperactive steam hammers then there was a chance you'd be able to run FrontPage. Ah, innocent days).

In the early days shopping involved emailing someone your credit card details, or buying a cheap DVD from Amazon and then paying £31 import duty. It was exciting, it was cutting edge.

I don't know at what point the internet got boring. Was it just after "other people" found out about Lolcats, or when the gays got grindr on their mobile phones? Or was the moment, just now, when I caught myself shopping on ebay for spare parts for my boiler?

This is a liberation for me. I used to have a sexy plumber. Then I got a really dull Greek one who turned up briefly to try and mend the timer on my boiler 18 months ago. I said I'd like a new timer switch. He brought me a thermostat.

ME: Will this turn on the boiler at 7am?
HIM: Yes. If you wake up. You can turn it on then. From your bedroom. With remote control. Is wireless.
ME: But will it turn on the boiler at 7am if I don't wake up?
HIM: Yes. If you leave boiler on all night.
ME: And will it turn off at 9am after I go out?
HIM: Oh yes. If you use Remote Control. And work nearby. Is wireless.
ME: But is it a Timer Switch?
HIM: (puzzled pause) No, is Thermostat.
ME: I would like a Timer Switch.
HIM: Okay, boss. I get you now. But this... this is wireless.
ME: It is not a Timer Switch.
HIM: No.
ME: Can I have a Timer Switch?
HIM: Yes. If you really do not want this Wireless Thermostat.
ME: Yes please.
HIM: You want it?
ME: No, I want a Timer Switch.
HIM: Ah, okay, I go get you one right away. If I have to come back three dozen times I shall do this for you.

He charged me £100 and I never saw him again. The internet - it may be dull, but it means that I am no longer a slave to my plumber. (Although in the early 2000s the phrase "Slave to my plumber" would have got a lot of hits).

Einstein on the Beach

Some relationships have to survive rows, lies, and infidelity. Ours had to survive Philip Glass. We made it into Einstein On The Beach, and we came out the other side, five hours later, tired and dying for a pee, but still very much together.

Other couples weren't so lucky. Genuinely, a relationship ended three seats away from us - although it took her about four minutes to storm out along the aisle, squeezing past knees, muttering excuse-mes and shooting back the odd venomous glance. She lingered, hoping he'd come after her, but he stayed where he was, watching as a child Einstein swung above the stage, throwing paper aeroplanes.

My favourite ex, Simon, introduced me to Philip Glass in the 90s, along with futons and "It's not you, I'd just rather move to Houston to design a staircase". We'd sit in bed, listening to "Songs From The Trilogy" while I read a book about spaceships and he pored over a Haynes Manual. I liked the music much I went and got the full operas - but Einstein on the Beach always defeated me.

At the time I lived in a flat with really loud upstairs neighbours who'd keep me awake with band practice till 3 every morning. I'd wake up at 7 and, as I left for work, would put on Einstein on the Beach. Loudly. On a loop. All day. After a week, the cat refused to go near my room, so I stopped. Strange when you look back and think "Ummmm.....".

Anyway, that was a long time ago. And, since then I've seen one Glass opera on stage and it was amazing - so perhaps, Einstein would be just as great live.

Well, it was. Kind of. And it was utterly wonderful and baffling and etc. But, you know, could have been over and done with in about two hours flat without anyone missing a bit. Of course, that's not the point - in the programme notes, Glass hints that the mind-numbing repetition is the idea, and the audience reaction is more important than what's going on on stage - or, in other words, sneaking a smug glance at the couple two rows down who fell quickly asleep in each other's arms, or at the recently-single man three seats away, who sat, rapt and grinning for all five hours and then gave the show a standing ovation. He looked, oddly, like a weight had been lifted from him.

And yes, if you ever get a chance to go and see it, do. And, if you're lucky enough to be in a relationship with someone who'll go with you, take them. If to see if you can make it as far as "Two Lovers" at the end.  Here it is in Lego...

The Killing (a year after everyone else saw it)

So, I've finally watched The Killing. It was hilarious.

(NO SPOILERS AHEAD)  The thing I most loved about it was Pernille. Not since Sheri Palmer stole 24 has there been a crazier wife on television. The following image doesn't do her mad eyes justice:

You may cry "But wait! She was playing a grieving mother! Do not mock!" but all the same, her eyes rolled around like two magic eight balls falling down a spiral staircase built out of suspicion and lunacy.

A friend bumped into her at BAFTA and complimented her on her acting. "What, this?" she giggled, and did the Crazy Eyes. She was in on it too! If I ever do a tumblr, it will be Pernille Is Worried About Things:

My other favourite thing about The Killing was Sarah Lund. Not for her jumper, but because she's rubbish. If she nipped out to fill up the car, she'd arrest the petrol pump attendant and blow up the gas station, all the while not making eye-contact with broken-hearted suspicion. It's as if Bambi were assigned to the LAPD.

Needless to say, my favourite scene in The Entire Killing is in the last episode when Pernille and Sarah Lund go on a car journey together:

See? Brilliant. If they ran someone over, both of them would pretend very hard it didn't happen ("What was that?" "What was what?" "What? What are you making me say?" "I don't know. What aren't you saying?" etc). The sheer joy of this scene made up for The Worst Thing About The Killing... which is that...

The Murderer Can't Have Done It. Remember the moment in Twin Peaks when you found out who killed Laura Palmer and wept with rage and horror and frustration? The Killing manages to make you go "No, really? Are you certain? Did someone else oversleep that day and miss being the murderer? I mean, if you're absolutely sure they did it, then that's fine, I guess. But, honestly? After 20 hours? This?"

Sadly, The Killing Series II is boringly brilliant from start to finish. Not only is it about Troubled Soldiers Who Pout Even In The Shower, but the plot is so mind-bendingly fiendish that I stayed up till 3 last night just so that I could finish the last four episodes in one giddy "but... but.... but...." gallop.

Inactivity

We've suddenly got a whole load of new facilities in Somerstown. It's as though the Council is going "Ignore the BioMedical Zombie Research Factory we're building - look, a community cafe!" (the Zombie Factory rumbles on - if you want to know how scary it is, Gordon Osborne has called it "the most important building in the world").

One of these new things is that they've given an indoor squash court a makeover. For years our Community Sports Centre was a room that smelt of socks with a grumpy man on reception next to a broken drinks machine. But it now, after months of intense building work, appears to be...  a squash court with a Shiny Granite Front.

Curious to know what they offered (and cos I'm no longer allowed to eye up the sweaty businessmen in my old gym), I popped inside. The grumpy man was still on reception. The drinks machine was still broken.

I asked for a leaflet explaining their services. He pushed something over the desk to me. I read it on the way home. The Activities for Adults section read "Pick up a leaflet from reception". Oh.

Undeterred, I followed the website address printed on the front of the leaflet ("http://www.stcsc.co.uk/") and got.... Page Not Found. Mysterious.

I wonder if it's actually now an emergency bunker for the Zombie Factory staff to flee to. That smells of socks.