I know, I know......

But I can't face this. Bloody weather. At least we have Valencia in September to look forward to. Days of 23C! How will we cope?

On a brighter note, John's going down!!!!! And my self-imposed exile may be over. Maybe I should have used my years in the wilderness to write a book, or at the very least a pamphlet. If Maxine McKew wins John Howards seat of Bennelong, I will send her flowers. I loved her when she was on the ABC.

In other bleeding-heart liberal news, I am abandoning my inherent dislike of Australian Male Cultcha and going to see Damien play his last football match tomorrow. Here is the team list (seriously):

South London side:

FB: Marty Chadders Jezza
HB: Conrad Dicko Scotty
C: Birdman Speersy Chocka
HF: Naughto Saundo Crabs
FF: Youngy Matesy Hollers
Rucks: Benny E Pos BJ
Bench: Patty, Frank, Oli, Goody, Lukey M, Sac

I am pretty sure that Lukey M and Frank are only on the bench until they can come up with decent nicknames. This will be the third year running that Damien is playing his last game, so I am slightly sceptical, but we will be having a picnic and (possibly) drinking white wine, so it shouldn't be too unbearable.

So a bit of a catch-up is in order, I have been slack, for various reasons too mind-boggling uninteresting to go into here.

A few interesting things (well, interesting to me, if you don’t find it interesting, you can leave this blog now J ) have happened the last few weeks. Miss Bernie was on a three-week trip to our sodden shores. I was lovely to see her - she is always such fun, and is always generous with her hair. Paul, Bernie and I went for fish and chips (and champagne! How louche.) at the Golden Hind. Bernie revealed that Lucy has been frequenting the Golden Hind. I was stunned – Oi Knowles! Hands off! It’s our restaurant, not yours! Paul, myself, and Simon and planning on reclaiming it next week.

We also had a big night out with Miss B in London’s so distressed it’s trendy East End. A big group of us met up at The Commercial. It’s a pretty cool pub – more bar than pub, but I really liked it. I suppose that’s not all that surprising as Maria who runs the ‘Friendly Society’, also owns the Commercial. And it’s very Fitzroy. Lucy and Brock were there, as was Mark, Jari, Stuie,and Simon. We ended up in some random curry-house for dinner, then hit a few more bars. Paul and I ended up sharing a taxi home in the wee hours with Lucy and Brock, after standing in the rain for 20 minutes (note to self: must always carry umbrella).

Last Saturday saw my contribution to the Summer of Food ^{tm reg}. We met Damien and went to Hakkasan. It was lovely. Really good food and the fitout is very sexy…. We then went to a party in London’s what-do-you-mean-it-was-bombed-in-the-blitz-it-looks-like-it-was-bombed-30-minutes-ago East End. The party was fun though.

Brighton Pride was on - it is responsible for changing my opinions on both kilt-wearers and blackberry users.

We did our normal beachside lunch, then went to the park. We amanaged to get an earlyish train back to London, then Paul and I set about cutting Damien's hair. I reckon we did allright.

Day trip to Brighton

Saturday we headed down to Brighton for Pride on the train, along with the rest of London. Due to some technical difficulties getting a coffee and a pain au chocolat, I didn't manange to get into the same carriage as Stuie and Paul.
Instead as I walked the train trying to find the boys, I was goosed by Chris and Ronald, being the polite boy I am, I stayed with C + R, chatted and drank cheap cava.

Also in the same carriage was Ian (an ex of someone we were friends with in the early 90's) and one of my clubbing stalkers, Jason. In the spirit of human kindness I offered Jason a glass of cava, but he declined, as "I have to go back to London tonight". This was at 11:30am. Go figure.

We met up with Clayton, Jari, Damien, Mark, Angel, Mark, Oscar, Giles and Andy while we were down there, as well as few others we know from various places. We started with lunch down on the beach, then headed to Preston Park after for Pride proper and socialising. It was good fun day, even if a lot of it was spent on the mobile saying things like "The Wild Fruit tent", "To the right of that if you're looking at it" , "I'm waving a red-tshirt" etc. etc. trying to locate friends. Pride finished up around 20:00 and we managed to catch the last train back to London at 23:00.

Full set of photos can be seen here.

See, everything is connected

So tomorrow we're off with the rest of Gay London to Brighton, for Brighton Pride. Still free and still a lot of fun - it's like London Pride used to be. All afternoon drinking in a park - something tells me it could get messy. I spoke to my Mum ('Hi Mum - hope you're feeling better!'), last weekend and she asked 'How long does Pride last?' - I suppose it's all very confusing what with London Pride(or Europride as it was this year), Soho Pride and now Brighton Pride. Anyway, they're all different and all separate. And we're going to them all. Tomorrow with Stuie, Damien, Mark, Mark, Oscar, Lee, Clayton, Jari et al.

Also going along tomorrow is Derecks. Whose combined birthday party with his partner, Don (he of the death trip to Wales), we attended on Saturday night. Rupert, whose exhibition opening we went to last night, was at the party too. He's a sweet guy and it was very interesting chatting to him about his paintings. Rupert channels his colours. Now Paul wants to start channeling. Imagine the first channeling accountant, channeling speadsheets. I can see there would be a demand for it.

Don is originally from Cork - and his son is friends with someone who was in the Cannes-winning film 'The Wind That Shakes the Barley'. And we saw that on Wednesday night (8.15/10, since you asked). It was very good - I liked it a lot and thought it was pretty fair to all sides. And it showed what pr*cks human beings can be to each other. And how lucky Australia was to be granted independence and not have had to fight, brother against brother, family against family for it. And that imperialism is wrong, which bring me on to Lebanon, and Iraq, and.....

So you see, everything is connected.

Hooray!! We’re uncles again.

• Jack Connor was born on Tuesday 21st February at 13:40. Weighing in at a whopping 9lb 2oz. My brother and his wife are over the moon – as are my parents. Jack’s my brother's first boy, so now there’s someone to carry on the paternal family name, something I’ve obviously been quite conscious of. I’m sure my brother was too, and Dad.

• Friday night we went down to Brighton's over the top Royal Pavilion to watch the 'Adult' pantomime ‘Babes in the Bushes’ with Stuie, Louise + Jo. To say it was dire would be being generous, it was full of racist drag-queens and in-jokes. We’d had enough by interval and left to go eat tapas and have a few drinks instead. I think we went to the 'R-bar', then another bigger bar, and someone decided we needed a dance, so we went to Revenge. It ended up being a fun night. We stayed the night at Louise and Jo’s and then had a late breakfast and sat around chatting. Louise and Jo were lucky enough to ride the Nineties London property boom, and have ‘downsized’ to a lovely 3-bedroom house in Brighton. Met one of the Pony’s primary school friends for lunch con partner and partner’s sister. After lunch we just wandered around Brighton, went to the pier - rode the ‘Crazy Mouse’ and played ‘Dolphin Derby’.

• Sunday afternoon it rained. And rained. And rained. But only after we’d got to London’s literary Hampstead. So we popped into the King William for a pint and lunch – hoping it would stop. Instead we sat there and complained amongst ourselves about the crap service and how nice a pub it could be.
  We were only there for an hour or so, but when we left my eyes stung from the cigarette smoke for another 3 hours. Bring on the smoking ban I say – I can’t wait.