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January Forward to
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Sunday 6
February
It's conventional to criticise British Telecom. But I reckon that as ISPs go, they do a pretty good job. For £10 a month plus tax, they give me a reasonably fast and reliable service, with a freephone connection all weekend, and they scarcely ever disconnect me or get overloaded. Also, they offer me a free home page with unlimited web space. Until now, I have not taken advantage of the free web site, partly because I haven't wanted another web site and partly because they don't make it particularly easy for you to upload files. In fact, the only help that they give in their instructions is to say "You will need an FTP program to upload your page to the BT Internet server." It's also conventional to criticise GeoCities. But I have no complaints against them either. (Obviously I'm easily pleased.) Their file manager is a pleasure to use, with a self-contained, childishly simple procedure for uploading files. I have never had any trouble with this, and it's usually very fast. But I don't have an ftp program, and this has deterred me from using the BT site. However, it occurred to me a few days ago, while I was scanning some of the photos that we took on the recent trip to Spain, that it would be be a neat idea to put them on the BT site so that friends and family can see them. I downloaded an ftp program from Anarchie, and found that it isn't so hard to use after all. The BT site is now up and running, and consists mostly of photos of Tom, and a few others of Gran Canaria. This gives rise to an ethical problem. There seems to be a convention that you should not put somebody's picture on the web without their permission. Some people go further than that, and they don't use other people's real names without their permission. I once had a critical email from a visitor to this site who reproved me for using Mary's real name. My reply was simple: What on earth makes you think that I do use her real name? She might be called Esmeralda for all you know. In fact, I do mostly use people's real names here. I thought about this for a while when I first started the site, and I drafted the first few entries using pseudonyms. But that didn't seem natural to me, and I decided that there really isn't any harm in using real names. There are also some pictures of Mary on my pictures page. This is possibly harder to justify. But she is such a central part of my life that I didn't see how I could exclude her from being represented here. It's an inevitable consequence of my closeted life situation that she doesn't know about this site, so I could hardly ask her permission for putting her photos here. But I am pretty sure that if she knew about the site at all then she would be happy enough to be part of it in this way. I also don't have any qualms about including photos ot Tom; babies are fair game. But I don't think I would want to include pictures of Steve, Jo or Liz on this site. There are photos of Steve and Jo on the BT site, but that's okay: they know that they are there, and they don't have any objections to being pictured on the family web site. ADDED LATER: I just realised that there is a photo of Steve and Liz on my pictures page. But that was taken over 20 years ago, when they were little kids. So that's all right, isn't it? Now let's get around to the ethical problem that I mentioned above (I seem to have taken the scenic route in getting there): should I give a link from this site to the BT site? If I do, isn't that as bad as putting the pictures directly onto this site? On the other hand, the BT site is openly there for all to see, so why shouldn't I point you towards it? *shrug* Well I'm going to transfer the ethical responsibility to you. If you think it's wrong, just don't follow this link to the BT site. Of course, most readers of this page probably aren't interested in seeing pictures of my family in any case, so the problem won't arise for them. Others will want to point out that if I only had the guts to come out openly as gay and tell my family about this site then I wouldn't even have to deal with problems like this. Okay, I hear what you're saying, but I don't think that's going to happen.
We finished dinner yesterday, packed the dishwasher, and settled down for a quiet evening. In fact (I have to admit) I nodded off, as I often do at that time of day. My Dad usually fell asleep for a while after dinner as he grew older, and now I'm doing the same. *sigh* I was woken by an insistent ringing at the doorbell. We weren't expecting any visitors, and Mary is always nervous about answering the door after dark. She peered cautiously through the curtains, and saw that a large white van had pulled right up to the front door, and this suspicious looking character was standing at the door. She told me not to open the door, but by then I had already done so, and there was Nick, looking cheerful as ever. He had left work early, rented the van, and driven up from London. It turned out that he had arranged to collect a whole lot of kitchen cabinets from our mutual friends Sam and Nayah who are having a new kitchen installed. Nick has just bought a house in London, and they had offered him their old kitchen units. He was going to stay with them overnight and drive back to London today. But relations between Nick and Sam/Nayah are a little bit strained just at the moment (no need to go into why), and he didn't want to have to spend the whole evening with them. So he decided to drop in on us to cadge a bite to eat and to chat for a couple of hours. I was still half asleep when I answered the door. I shook hands with Nick as he came in, and he seemed to hesitate for a moment. It was only when he went to hug Mary that I remembered what happened last time we said goodbye to him, and I realised that he had been hoping for a hug from me too. Oh well, maybe I'll remember next time. The evening's conversation was mainly about cats. Nick always enjoys making a fuss of our cats, and now that he has his own house he is thinking of getting a couple of cats. He has an odd motive for this. After his divorce he is very worried that Ingrid will turn the kids against him and that he will gradually lose touch with them. William is now 4, and Nick is very fond of him. Sam is only 2, and they don't have such a strong bond. William is coming to stay with Nick soon, and Nick's idea is that the boy will be so captivated by the cats that he will want to come back often, and that Sam will be so jealous of William seeing the cats that he will want to come too. Hmm, I'm not sure that this is a very sensible plan. As Mary says, if you get a kitten now you could be stuck with it for 20 years. But Nick is not easily deterred once he gets an idea, and he spent the evening browsing through Mary's cat encyclopedia.
A couple of weeks back, a reader kindly sent me this: Here's the URL for Simon LeVay's web page--take a look at it and send it to your friends. http://members.aol.com/slevay Check it out! Simon LeVay is famous for his research on the "gay brain." He's written several books and he gives lectures at colleges and community groups.Of course, I immediately did go to take a look at it, and I hereby recommend it to you. The name Simon LeVay meant nothing to me, until I went to his site and saw in his bio that he had been to the same school, and for that matter the same university, as me. Then it all came back to me. In fact, Simon's older brother was in the same class as me at school, and Simon himself was in the same year as my brother. I was never particularly close to the older LeVay, and I don't believe I ever met Simon at all. But it was interesting to read about his career as a neurobiologist and more recently as the founding Director of the Institute of Gay and Lesbian Education in West Hollywood. He has also written a number of books including one, The Sexual Brain, that sounded as though I ought to read it. It is a study of the brain mechanisms which control sexual behaviour, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Apparently this book caused a good deal of controversy when it first appeared in 1993, but it passed me by completely, and I don't remember hearing anything about it. A couple of days after I received this email, I had to go to London for the day, so I called in at Gay's The Word to buy a copy. They didn't have it in stock, but they said that they could get it for me in a few days. The day wasn't wasted, though, because I had a very pleasant visit to Chariots. I met a nice guy called Stefan there, who su...[censored] On Monday the bookshop phoned to say that they now had the book in stock. I could hear my secretary in the next room taking the call. "What did you say the name of the shop was?", she asked. Then she put the call through to me: "There's a young man wanting to speak to you from a book shop, I think he said it's called Gay's The Word". Audrey is very inquisitive, and I could tell that she was itching to know what this was all about. But she is also totally discreet and loyal, and I know that she won't talk about it to anyone. I had to go to London again yesterday, so I was finally able to collect the book. (Of course, I could have ordered it through Amazon, but I prefer to patronise GTW when possible.) I also had an even better time at Chariots [no details available]. I read the first couple of chapters of The Sexual Brain on the train going back to Leeds, and it promises to be a fascinating read. It is very clearly and authoritatively written, with a fine literary style, as is only to be expected of someone educated at Dulwich and Cambridge. :) When I have finished it I'll write a report on it here.
Love isn't enough; you've got to fancy him.Yes, the second series of Queer as Folk is underway, for those of us lucky enough to live in the UK. (The official Channel 4 web site is dismally inadequate, so the above link takes you instead to an excellent fan site run by a cute looking young Scots guy.) Last night's episode took over where the first series left off. It was fast, funny, totally uncensored (I don't know how Channel 4 gets away with some of the dialogue -- their web site may be crap, but their commitment to this series deserves a lot of credit) and not afraid to raise serious issues. Vince and Stuart, now reaching 30 and worried about losing their looks, feel threatened by the younger generation of twinks in the bars and are wondering whether they will ever find long term partners. Vince is still pursuing Stuart, who loves him as a friend but doesn't feel physically attracted (hence the quote above). Meantime young Nathan has returned from London and has found himself a boyfriend, stunningly attractive but intellectually a total airhead. Nathan is left wondering whether physical attraction really matters so much. In other words: fancying isn't enough; you've got to be able to love him. It all seems rivetingly true to life. The underlying themes of what one should look for in a partner, and the difficulty of finding the right one, are raised thoughtfully, but not hammered home. No slick answers here. In another strand of the plot, Stuart, who is not out to his family, has trouble with his ten year old nephew, who discovers a gay porn site ("Big Cock City") on his uncle's computer and tries to blackmail him. Stuart grabs the obnoxious kid, upends him and flushes his head down the toilet. Whereupon the brat screams "You touched me. I'm going to tell my dad you touched me up." I won't spoil the story by saying how this thread continues. Unfortunately, this series only consists of two episodes, and it's hard to see how all the strands will be resolved next Tuesday. Probably they won't be. I forgot to mention that I bought the book of the screenplays for the first series of QAF when I was in Gay's The Word last week. But I haven't started to read them yet.
Today was bright and sunny in Leeds, with the first hint of spring in the air. Snowdrops and aconites are blooming in the garden, and birds are starting to nest. On the internet too, there are signs of life stirring after winter. Not only has Mickey returned after a few weeks of hibernation, but there have even been updates from Scott, Corey and Rotti recently. It's just like old times. I have felt the urge to do some spring cleaning on this site, and instead of writing an update here, I have spent this evening tidying up and reorganising the about me page. I have put a brief Who's Who there, and shifted the potted autobiography to two separate pages. Bruce has also been doing some work on tidying up his site. It must be that nesting instinct at work. The Nedstat counter on my Contents page has now been there for well over a year, and the hit rate shows a strange seasonal pattern. There is a marked peak from October to December, and a trough in February. On the other hand, October and November are the months when I find it hard to write, and don't seem to have anything interesting to say. Can it be that everyone feels the urge to be creative in early spring (so they don't bother to read other people's journals), but in the autumn they can't find the energy to do anything other than surf the net? Or is it just that the Nedstat server crashes each February? That certainly accounts for part of the trough.
Maybe Richard was right after all. He was disappointed with the new series of Queer as Folk, and he wrote in his journal last week: "the story doesn't work... it doesn't ring true. The magic of the first series is missing. What a shame." I disagreed with him, and I really enjoyed last week's episode. But the concluding instalment last night was definitely not up to standard. It had its hilarious moments, but on the whole I thought it was very unconvincing. The Guardian's TV critic liked it (with reservations). In his column this morning, he said: "The pressure was on writer Russell T Davies to provide a resolution to all his story strands, and as a result the narrative fell to pieces about halfway through the episode. But that's a minor quibble; it was worth it for the audacious fantasy ending...". I won't say any more, to avoid giving away spoilers, but believe me the ending was totally over the top. Reverting to domestic matters, I have completed the overhaul of this site by changing the design of the books, music, pictures and poetry pages to bring them into line with the about me and links pages. I haven't changed the content on these pages, just the colour scheme. In fact I haven't changed the content on these pages, or even looked at them, for far too long. I was shocked to see that I haven't posted any new reviews on the books page since September 1998. On the other hand, I have occasionally reviewed books here in the journal pages. Yesterday I sent off for a replacement driving licence (the old one was falling to pieces). This meant that I had to have a passport-type photo taken. Usually, photos like that make me look gruesome, but this one turned out rather well, I thought. So I have put a copy of it at the top of the pictures page.
Saturday 26 February Follow ev'ry rainbow, till you find your dream The surprise hit of the season in London has been the singalong screenings of The Sound of Music, complete with subtitles to encourage maximum audience participation. In fact, the subtitles probably aren't really needed, because however much they may affect to despise it, everyone seems to know the lyrics of this movie pretty much by heart. The performances seem to have attracted the same sort of cult following as The Rocky Horror Show. People go to great lengths to dress in an appropriate way, and each evening there are prizes for the best costumes. Travellers on the London Underground have been surprised to find themselves sitting next to Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With Strings. An entire rugby team went to the show as Girls In White Dresses With Blue Satin Sashes. Not surprisingly, there has been a substantial gay contingent among the audiences. Admit it now, you'd love to camp it up like this for an evening, wouldn't you? I know I would. I see myself as A Lonely Goatherd, wearing a faded brown smock and leather sandals, and carrying a long crook. The Sound of Music brings back vivid memories for me. I saw the film when it first came out, in 1965. I was in Philadelphia for the year as a graduate student, and at the end of the school year I wanted to travel around the country before going back to Britain. I didn't have a car, or much money, and I was wondering how much of the country I could get to see by Greyhound buses. Then I found that there was another British postgrad at Penn who also wanted to spend some weeks touring around before going home. Clive was not at all physically attractive, and he was deeply religious. He had a sense of humour, of sorts, but it was very different from mine. So he was not an ideal travelling companion. But he had the huge advantage of owning a car, a VW Beetle. He was glad enough to have my company, if only to share the driving and the costs (such as they were: the total gasoline bill for the entire trip came to $60 each for the two of us). So we set off together for the trip of a lifetime. We travelled 12,000 miles in six weeks, camping in a little two man tent and stopping off from time to time to stay with friends. We touched just about all possible bases, making our way from Philadelphia to some remote little place in the mining valleys of West Virginia, where we stayed overnight with one of Clive's college friends, then on down to New Orleans and across to San Antonio. From there, we started on a grand tour of the National Parks and Monuments of the Southwest: Big Bend, Carlsbad Caverns, Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, Sequoia, King's Canyon, Yosemite... As well as the spectacular natural scenery, we came across some interesting people. In Los Angeles, staying with more friends of Clive's, we met an old man who had lived in that area all his life. He was born in the 1880s, and remembered it from the time when it was all farming country, and Pasadena consisted of orange groves. I remember that he pronounced Los Angeles with a hard g, as in "anger". Later on, at a campsite in Oregon, we met another old-timer, who had worked as a surveyor in the 1920s. Travelling on horseback through the forests, he had taken part in the first-ever accurate triangulation of eastern Oregon. From California, we travelled up the coast, making detours inland to visit Crater Lake and Spokane (where we attended a service in the cathedral at which yet another friend of Clive's was being ordained as a priest). Then we took the ferry from Seattle across to Victoria, and started to make our way back eastwards across Canada. Let's see, where was I? Oh yes, this was supposed to be leading up to The Sound of Music. (We're getting there.) In Vancouver, we stayed for a couple of days with my Canadian cousins. My mother's cousin Mary grew up in Britain, but married a Canadian GI, Bill, when he was stationed in Britain during the war. After the war, they settled in Vancouver, where Mary still lives. (Bill died last summer, and my brother went to Vancouver for the funeral. Unfortunately, I couldn't go, because I was in Spain at the time.) Mary and Bill had four children. When Clive and I visited them in 1965, the older two were teenagers, but David and Debbie were still quite small (5 and 7). Mary and Bill wanted to take us all out for the evening, and they asked whether we would like to see the new movie version of The Sound of Music. Mary suggested this very diffidently, as though she thought that these two intellectual grad students might think such a thing beneath them. But we thought it was an excellent idea, and of course we all thoroughly enjoyed the evening. David and Debbie sat entranced through the whole film, and the rest of us were able to enjoy their pleasure as well as the film itself. Okay, the story may be corny and the music syrupy, but I liked it then and I like it still. At the end of the film, as the von Trapp family make their way over the mountains away from their home towards the safety of Switzerland, I had mixed feelings about our own journey into the mountains the following day. I was sorry to be saying goodbye to the cousins that I might never see again, but looking forward to our trip over the Rockies to Banff, Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore, Chicago... I never have seen David and Debbie again since then (they'll be in their 40s by now). I have been back to Vancouver a couple of times to see Bill and Mary, and they have visited us in England. But whenever I hear the songs from The Sound of Music it reminds me of the excitement shining in the eyes of those two little kids as they watched the film. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. The information about the karaoke Sound of Music comes from a marvellous article in the February 14th issue of the New Yorker. But I didn't have the gall to copy the opening line of this article, which is of course "Let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start)." I won't give a link to the New Yorker, because its official web site quite frankly isn't worth visiting. You'll find it much more rewarding to go to the New Yorker inane ad of the week.
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