Addicted to a beer garden

Funny how sometimes one can get addicted to an alcohol-related habit, rather than to alcohol itself.

For almost three weeks now I would go after 2pm to a nearby pub’s beer garden, have a few pints, come back to my digs for a meal and some time at my laptop, then return to the pub to have a few more pints inside. But of course one can’t go on like this forever.

So I decided to stop my afternoon beer garden visits and only go to the pub at night. Today was the first day. Now I have enough beer and vodka in my digs to fight alcohol withdrawal, yet I’ve been listless all day simply on account of knowing I had to wait until the evening before going to the pub.

I’ve survived, but I still can’t wait to be there.


(originally posted probably on WordPress)

Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim

This ride, unlike most of the things that happened to him, was something he’d rather have than not have. He’d got something he wanted, and whatever the cost in future embarrassment he was ready to meet it. He reflected that the Arab proverb urging this kind of policy was incomplete: to ‘take what you want and pay for it’ it should add ‘which is better than being forced to take what you don’t want and paying for that’.

The other day my sister asked me why I liked the book so much and I replied that it was on account of its cynicism, later enhanced by the fact that it was one of the first books I've read in the English original. A few weeks later another important reason occurred to me, however: Jim, like me, finds mere coping with life so demanding (in particular as regards social intercourse), that he has no energy left for ambition. This theme, without being expressly stated, runs throught he whole story. Whenever he achieves something, it's usually largely by simple good luck.

It's amazing how distractions one wouldn't have noticed in one's early days become absolutely shattering when one … grows older.

I've known - and loved - the novel since adolescence, and read it several times since then. It's interesting how the older I am, the more compassionate I feel for Professor Welch, because the more he reminds me of myself. Including the growing slowness in thinking, in reacting.

(originally posted probably on WordPress)

Paul Flynn: Good As You

Frankly, a disappointment. The author does warn the reader in the Prologue that he can only tell the story of gay liberation in Britain as he subjectively saw it unfold and I don’t blame him, but his likes and experiences are too different from mine. His is the world of clubbing, pop, big dreams, soap opera and so on; mine is the one of loneliness, depression, defiance, books and so forth. Suffice it to say that Peter Tatchell is mentioned nine times, while one of the ten chapters is basically all about Kylie Minogue.

Still, I did learn a lot: for instance the importance of Manchester in British GLBT history, and the fact that characters in soap operas can be as influential for the mindset of a TV-watchers as those in books for the mindset of a book-reader. And of course, it would be strange if there were no passages I could absolutely relate to, like:


Part of coming to terms with being gay is accepting that all your previous belief systems collapse.

(Greek Pete) 

Absolutely. Some say that a man’s mentality is basically completely formed by the beginning of adolescence, but I’m sure my frames of reference have changed almost beyond recognition during the years I was coming to terms with my sexuality.

[….] that subtle new ways of recalibrating the phrase ‘I am gay’ would have to be found in the perpetual motion of identification that accompanies coming out. Nobody tells you that you’ll have to do it over and over again, boring yourself with answers to a carousel of the same questions asked over and over for the first five years, before you’ve worked out subtler ways of short-circuiting this ritualistic moment in which your sexual fancy becomes other people’s property.

Quite so. You think you’ll tell a friend and the next day everybody’ll know, but no, you have to come out again and again … and again … and only gradually you learn how to do it right.

[….] the terror that sits at the heart of some homophobia – that we are only here to steal your brothers, husbands, cousins, sons [….].

I wouldn’t know about blood relatives, but I was always well liked by women who knew I was gay, probably because they felt they could be relaxed and open with me – with the exception of wifes and girlfriends of my (straight) male friends, the majority of whom were quite obviously jealous of every minute these friends might have spent with me without being ‘watched’ by them.

Programmed in my subconscious from very early on was the idea that I’m not safe.

(David Furnish)

But then this goes almost without saying for us gays of a certain generation.



(originally posted probably on WordPress)

Alone in an echo chamber

They tell you, to quote for instance Lexico (formerly Oxford Dictionaries Online), that an echo chamber is an ” environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not considered”.

What they don’t tell you is that, contrariwise, if perchance you do have a particular opinion which differs from that of the other ‘members’ of the echo chamber, you only encounter views which don’t coincide with your own.

So that I’m following all these people who, like me, lean politically towards centre-left, are comparatively well educated, support gay equality, are anxious about climate change and so on and so on … and there doesn’t seem to be a single one who would, like me, support Brexit, and I only see it criticised.

Funny, in a way.


(originally posted probably on WordPress or maybe on Tumblr)

The Union and the Carpenter

Funny how from early April to early July I would visit the Union almost daily and the Carpenter only very rarely, and then all of a sudden, without ever intending to and for no apparent reason whatsoever, I began frequenting the latter and never returned to the former. The staff is equally good in both places; maybe I became subconsciously fed up with the Union’s piped music and clientele.


(originally posted on Tumblr or WordPress)

Hats Off

Just listened again – after a few years – to the whole Hats Off to the Buskers album by The View and still think it’s the best debut album ever released. (Well, there’s Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1, but that wasn’t a real debut album for any of the Wilburys involved).



(originally posted probably on Tumblr, or maybe on WordPress)