Gays and Girls

I'm currently reading The Longest Journey by Eddie Forster. His second novel, but his last to me - I've put off reading it for some time because afterwards there will be no more Forster, in novel form at least. He only wrote 6, but I wonder if he had been born heterosexual whether there would have been none at all. Contented people have nothing to say. Forster's obsession with men who he saw as being connected to nature: Stephen in The Longest Journey, Scudder in Maurice, Gino in Where Angels Fear To Tread: the John Barleycorns to his, um, Plato, was, in today's vernacular, a liking for rough trade, and his theme of the girls going for partners not considered suitable: the Schlegels, the Honeychurch, even Agnes in The Longest Journey, could also be read as analogous to EM and his gay chums fancy for each other, rather than for the ladies. Forster, brought up by women and sympathetic to the women's movement, often writes about his desires within his female characters.

Similarly, in song, Noel Coward was mad about the boy, but Diana Washington and other women sang it. Lorenz Hart's My Funny Valentine, I Wish I Were In Love Again and It Never Entered My Mind can be sung by either gender without sounding odd. Ditto Cole Porter: Let's Do it, You Do Something to Me, Anything Goes, It's Alright With Me. Written for Broadway and Hollywood they nonetheless retain an ambiguity, meaning that they can be read as simple love songs or as more saucy and gay than a thousand Julian and Sandy sketches. And the songs specifically for female characters written through a gay man persona gives the women more to do than simper.

Miss Otis Regrets is about a murderess, Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered states: "I'll sing to him, each spring to him and worship the trousers that cling to him." This is rather more sexy and assertive than women were allowed to be. Singing a gay man's lyrics enabled pre-war women, who didn't have much else to do but get married, to automatically sound liberated .

*
I made friends with a half-Siamese half-tabby cat who was slinking about Allens Gardens. S/he spent an awfully long time sniffing my hand before she submitted her head for a stroking. I did wonder what decisions cats come to about human odours before deciding to be friends or not. Onions or perfume presumably make felines believe that the human is evil.

Gays and Girls

I'm currently reading The Longest Journey by Eddie Forster. His second novel, but his last to me - I've put off reading it for some time because afterwards there will be no more Forster, in novel form at least. He only wrote 6, but I wonder if he had been born heterosexual whether there would have been none at all. Contented people have nothing to say. Forster's obsession with men who he saw as being connected to nature: Stephen in The Longest Journey, Scudder in Maurice, Gino in Where Angels Fear To Tread: the John Barleycorns to his, um, Plato, was, in today's vernacular, a liking for rough trade, and his theme of the girls going for partners not considered suitable: the Schlegels, the Honeychurch, even Agnes in The Longest Journey, could also be read as analogous to EM and his gay chums fancy for each other, rather than for the ladies. Forster, brought up by women and sympathetic to the women's movement, often writes about his desires within his female characters.

Similarly, in song, Noel Coward was mad about the boy, but Diana Washington and other women sang it. Lorenz Hart's My Funny Valentine, I Wish I Were In Love Again and It Never Entered My Mind can be sung by either gender without sounding odd. Ditto Cole Porter: Let's Do it, You Do Something to Me, Anything Goes, It's Alright With Me. Written for Broadway and Hollywood they nonetheless retain an ambiguity, meaning that they can be read as simple love songs or as more saucy and gay than a thousand Julian and Sandy sketches. And the songs specifically for female characters written through a gay man persona gives the women more to do than simper.

Miss Otis Regrets is about a murderess, Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered states: "I'll sing to him, each spring to him and worship the trousers that cling to him." This is rather more sexy and assertive than women were allowed to be. Singing a gay man's lyrics enabled pre-war women, who didn't have much else to do but get married, to automatically sound liberated .

*
I made friends with a half-Siamese half-tabby cat who was slinking about Allens Gardens. S/he spent an awfully long time sniffing my hand before she submitted her head for a stroking. I did wonder what decisions cats come to about human odours before deciding to be friends or not. Onions or perfume presumably make felines believe that the human is evil.

Open the door!

It's that time of year again when people wander London clutching square green booklets, peering at maps on street corners and staring confusedly at bus timetables. Yep, it's Open House weekend, which the tube is supporting by having Planned Engineering Works on only 4 of its lines rather than the usual 7.

Over the weekend, I visited:

St Mary's Old Church; not the tall spired one but the little 16th century village-style church, I take off my sunglasses in awkward reverence and a friendly Christian approaches me, wanting to give me a flyer about "Sacred Stories: Exploring the Bible in a Secular World". The first meeting is a visit to an exhibition on sacred texts at the British Library, followed by a meal at Pizza Express. Food is the the new way to spirituality. The church is wooden and gloomy and a bit shabby, which adds to its charm. The cleaner follows me around, sniffing unbelief as if it were clinging to my clothes like incense. There are quite lovely wooden pew boxes which look like they stop people escaping the sermon, but, as I read the bumpf, I find out that Charles Barry, who renovated the church in the early 19th century, spent all the money on shingled fleches and cement render and there was none left for new pews. Hurrah for penury.

[An attempt to go to Village Underground, but there are queues, and anyway you can see the carriages on the roof from Broadgate. Walking down to Liverpool St, I'm accompanied by a cortege of hundreds and hundreds and (literally) hundreds of bikers, some of them on horrible 4 wheel hogs, followed by several police bikes. People stand outside shops and watch them. I presume it's something to do with the murdered hell's angel. Macho men are often the most sentimental. NB I was impressed by the attention to detail in not-as-bad-as-you-would-think-it-would be TV comedy Saxondale (The IT Crowd also falls into this category) as Coogan's character has an Ace Cafe mug.]

Wigmore Hall, a sumptuousness of art nouveau. Am collared by a woman by a shiny Steinway who wants to know my reasons for being there. "Are you a student?" "Where do you come from?" and tries to get me to stay for a concert. Places to be, lady. The blurb states that the arts and crafts cupola symbolises: "The striving of humanity after the elusiveness of music in its great abstraction." Now they're just striving after the elusiveness of lottery money.

RIBA - it seemed appropriate. No-one quizzes me and there are toilets and chairs and art deco detail and views across higgledy piggledy rooftops to Hampstead and Ally Pally.

For reasons involving buses, I end up on the Southbank, caught up in the Thames festival which seems to involve corporate stalls, jerk chicken, street performance and an attempt by Ken to sell the new Barclay Oyster Card to the unsuspecting public. I wandered, lonely in a crowd, noting that the whole of the Southbank arts complex has now been turned over to chain cafes. In London, you're never more than a hundred yards from a Pret.

Go home to sleep. Architecture is so exhausting.

Finsbury Town Hall. We do a tour which includes Bob Stanley (as a fellow touree, not the guide - who is uncommonly grumpy. When questioned if the other rooms are similar to the ones we're in, he snaps: "They're in use. This is a working building." "I was only asking," replies the old lady questioner. "I was only telling," he retorts. She looks like she's about to hit him with her stick.)

The hall is more art nouveau stylings: stained glass, angel lampshades, and period frescos (fresci?).



Through Clerkenwell with its hidden churchyards, mysterious gardens, secret alleyways and retro-arches made by an earlier incarnation of the St Johns Ambulance to Circus Space which used to be an Edwardian power station. We are shown around by a man with considerable more charm and enthusiasm than the last one. There's even a slide show with before and after pictures; the building was derelict for decades and the pigeon-poo covered lamps look like Chris Offili sculptures. The place is used for visiting gymnasts to practice and also runs courses for kids and adults. Along with having my face painted like a cat, I thank god I missed out on being foreced to do things like weekend circus training when I was a kid. I would have probably run away to do my maths homework.

Lunch at the Diner (I have a terrible weakness for both fake diners and motorway services) and finally: the RSA which is very pretty and has a nice mural, painted by James Barry. 10 artists were asked to put forward a proposal, James said he would do it for free. His offer was accepted. I'm pleased that a Barry (no relation) and money, lack thereof, have once again reared their head, making this weekend circular, somewhat like the room.  David goes around the auditorium spotting all the famous figures, but I'm more interested in a nice sit down and the very welcome cup of tea they kindly offer at the end.

Open the door!

It's that time of year again when people wander London clutching square green booklets, peering at maps on street corners and staring confusedly at bus timetables. Yep, it's Open House weekend, which the tube is supporting by having Planned Engineering Works on only 4 of its lines rather than the usual 7.

Over the weekend, I visited:

St Mary's Old Church; not the tall spired one but the little 16th century village-style church, I take off my sunglasses in awkward reverence and a friendly Christian approaches me, wanting to give me a flyer about "Sacred Stories: Exploring the Bible in a Secular World". The first meeting is a visit to an exhibition on sacred texts at the British Library, followed by a meal at Pizza Express. Food is the the new way to spirituality. The church is wooden and gloomy and a bit shabby, which adds to its charm. The cleaner follows me around, sniffing unbelief as if it were clinging to my clothes like incense. There are quite lovely wooden pew boxes which look like they stop people escaping the sermon, but, as I read the bumpf, I find out that Charles Barry, who renovated the church in the early 19th century, spent all the money on shingled fleches and cement render and there was none left for new pews. Hurrah for penury.

[An attempt to go to Village Underground, but there are queues, and anyway you can see the carriages on the roof from Broadgate. Walking down to Liverpool St, I'm accompanied by a cortege of hundreds and hundreds and (literally) hundreds of bikers, some of them on horrible 4 wheel hogs, followed by several police bikes. People stand outside shops and watch them. I presume it's something to do with the murdered hell's angel. Macho men are often the most sentimental. NB I was impressed by the attention to detail in not-as-bad-as-you-would-think-it-would be TV comedy Saxondale (The IT Crowd also falls into this category) as Coogan's character has an Ace Cafe mug.]

Wigmore Hall, a sumptuousness of art nouveau. Am collared by a woman by a shiny Steinway who wants to know my reasons for being there. "Are you a student?" "Where do you come from?" and tries to get me to stay for a concert. Places to be, lady. The blurb states that the arts and crafts cupola symbolises: "The striving of humanity after the elusiveness of music in its great abstraction." Now they're just striving after the elusiveness of lottery money.

RIBA - it seemed appropriate. No-one quizzes me and there are toilets and chairs and art deco detail and views across higgledy piggledy rooftops to Hampstead and Ally Pally.

For reasons involving buses, I end up on the Southbank, caught up in the Thames festival which seems to involve corporate stalls, jerk chicken, street performance and an attempt by Ken to sell the new Barclay Oyster Card to the unsuspecting public. I wandered, lonely in a crowd, noting that the whole of the Southbank arts complex has now been turned over to chain cafes. In London, you're never more than a hundred yards from a Pret.

Go home to sleep. Architecture is so exhausting.

Finsbury Town Hall. We do a tour which includes Bob Stanley (as a fellow touree, not the guide - who is uncommonly grumpy. When questioned if the other rooms are similar to the ones we're in, he snaps: "They're in use. This is a working building." "I was only asking," replies the old lady questioner. "I was only telling," he retorts. She looks like she's about to hit him with her stick.)

The hall is more art nouveau stylings: stained glass, angel lampshades, and period frescos (fresci?).



Through Clerkenwell with its hidden churchyards, mysterious gardens, secret alleyways and retro-arches made by an earlier incarnation of the St Johns Ambulance to Circus Space which used to be an Edwardian power station. We are shown around by a man with considerable more charm and enthusiasm than the last one. There's even a slide show with before and after pictures; the building was derelict for decades and the pigeon-poo covered lamps look like Chris Offili sculptures. The place is used for visiting gymnasts to practice and also runs courses for kids and adults. Along with having my face painted like a cat, I thank god I missed out on being foreced to do things like weekend circus training when I was a kid. I would have probably run away to do my maths homework.

Lunch at the Diner (I have a terrible weakness for both fake diners and motorway services) and finally: the RSA which is very pretty and has a nice mural, painted by James Barry. 10 artists were asked to put forward a proposal, James said he would do it for free. His offer was accepted. I'm pleased that a Barry (no relation) and money, lack thereof, have once again reared their head, making this weekend circular, somewhat like the room.  David goes around the auditorium spotting all the famous figures, but I'm more interested in a nice sit down and the very welcome cup of tea they kindly offer at the end.