troubled diva

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Saturday, February 09, 2002

The 40 In 40 Days Project.
33. The Shove From Above (1993)

My father’s personality was one of extremes.

An exceptionally kind-hearted, generous man, always willing to go out of his way to assist people around him – whether he knew them well, or hardly at all. Gregarious, sociable, at his happiest in company – he loved to go into a new pub, to take up position at the bar, and to strike up conversation with total strangers, who would invariably be charmed and invigorated by his presence.

And yet – I have never met another human being with so much anger inside him. His tempers were frequent (usually on a daily basis at the very least), completely unpredictable (he could fly into a rage at seemingly nothing), ferociously savage (although rarely violent) – and piercingly, devastatingly eloquent. In less than a minute, he could destroy me utterly, reducing me to a tearful, trembling wreck, consumed with a wretched, self-loathing misery. In these moods, he was terrifying – and yet, looking back, I can now see most of them as nothing more than the temper tantrums of a spoilt little boy who had never quite grown up.

Although he loved me unconditionally, he was quite unable to accept me for who I was – sensitive, artistic, creative, thoughtful, critical, analytical, questioning, vulnerable, emotionally intuitive, emotionally open. In fact, I think my personality actually scared him. He didn’t want a weedy cissy for a son – he wanted someone practical, physically strong, emotionally resilient, who could share his conventional and conservative values and stride confidently through his corner of the world. Unable to comprehend or to accept me (beyond a certain pride at my academic accomplishments), he constantly sought to change me – mainly by berating me, at great length, for everything which I was not.

The result: I lost all self-confidence, and instead developed an all-consuming self-consciousness. Unable to be my true self, unable to pretend to be the person my father wanted me to be, I was left with no idea as to how to conduct myself in the world. Instead, I closed off, and retreated into my own, deeply private, inner life, where no-one could reach me. I kept my own company as much as possible (and was, of course, roundly berated for it).

Only one thought kept me from total despair – the thought of escape. I knew that eventually, I could start building my own personality in my own world – I just had to ride the storms, and wait until I was old enough to get away. At heart, I have always been an optimist, and thankfully this kernel of hope was never quite extinguished within me.

In adulthood, the tensions slowly eased. Revealing my homosexuality to my father may have been, in some ways, the final disappointment for him – but in other ways, it lanced the boil. On some level, I think he finally came to accept me for who I was.

November 1993. K is away on business. Breakfast time. My stepmother calls with wholly unexpected, shocking news. It was a heart attack; it was quick. I am numb, strangely devoid of emotion. In my teens, after a particularly savage attack, I once shut myself away in my room, gripped with a single, awful worry – what if my father dropped dead, and I couldn’t cry? Now, it was happening, and no tears would come. They never came.

In a daze, and having excused myself from work for the rest of the week, I decided that I might as well do some ironing. I set up the board, grabbed a shirt, and started thinking. That disastrous marriage of his to Sally. A war zone. A hideous mistake. A terrible mess. They never loved each other, or if they did, then they stopped many years ago.

The next thing I knew, I was sprawled out on the parquet floor, hot iron still in hand, backside aching from the fall. I have no idea how I ended up there. I looked up, ruefully. OK Father, I thought to myself, I guess I was wrong about that one. Of course you and Sally loved each other, in your own ways. I’m sorry I ever doubted it. But there was no need to shove me over quite so hard, thank you!

Eight years of slowly increasing, slowly burning anger followed, as I endlessly, obsessively re-analysed and relived all the shameful failings on my father’s part. Self-pity obliterated grief. Until, eventually, on the eighth anniversary of his death, I decided I could be angry no more. For the first time since the funeral, I visited his grave. I placed the flowers, stood in silence, and made my peace. Just before leaving, I found myself saying these seven words out loud.

“I love you. And I forgive you.”

The ghosts are all laid to rest now. I do love him, and I have forgiven him. Actually, he was one hell of a guy.

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Meg’s already notorious “originality” thread (ooh, it's all over Metafilter, you know!) is now spiralling off into the realms of the truly surreal. Whaaaaat?

If the bookmark link doesn't work properly, then jump down to the comment #40, by "dzigavertov in the 25th century"

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Pidol: now there’s even a Guardian leader article on the great Gareth vs. Will debate. Whaaaaat?

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Saturday Schadenfreude:

One of the most senior officers in Cleveland police resigned yesterday after disgracing himself on an overseas consultancy and losing an advisory contract worth £100,000.

Chief Superintendent Kevin Pitt, 49, was caught urinating against the wall of the Lithuanian presidential palace this week while visiting the country to teach ethics to local police.

He was also accused by Lithuanian officers of trying to bully them into dropping proceedings which led to a humiliating court appearance and a fine of £35.
Closed circuit film of the incident has been shown repeatedly on the Baltic state's TV, along with satirical calls for emigres to retaliate outside Buckingham Palace.

Read the full story here.

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Ra-Ra-Rasputin, Russia’s greatest love machine…

From The Guardian Guide, previewing a Channel 4 documentary on the shag-happy mad monk (Tuesday Feb 12, 10pm):

…Rasputin’s shenanigans were fuelled by warped religious logic. Believing that redemption was the ultimate spiritual experience, it followed that the only way to garner redemption was to commit sin first – and the bigger the sin, the bigger the redemption that came after. Spiritual bulimia, in other words.

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Friday, February 08, 2002

Mike's "Sally Field moment"...

Well. What an extraordinary week this has been.

Crossing the border between the virtual and the real, I met a whole load of my favourite London bloggers, and found to my delight that they were all every bit as lovely as their blogs had implied. If the success of a blog can be measured in terms of how accurately it represents its creator, then I would say that Bboyblues, Blogadoon, Brainsluice, Over Your Head and Swish Cottage are all highly successful blogs.

My visitor stats soared, dramatically – from around 60 a day to around 100 a day. I had some wonderful feedback, via comments and e-mails, from readers old and new. Sometimes, I’ve wondered whether writing this site was merely wanking into the wind. This week, I was made to feel that it was all worthwhile.

I’ve written about some difficult, heavy, painful stuff this week, and the words have basically come out more or less the way I wanted them to. Not only that, but to my great surprise, some of the jigsaw pieces of the “40 Days” project have started connecting up in my own mind, affording me new, fresh insights on some of the more troubled aspects of my past. I never intended this project to be “writing as therapy”, but as an unexpected by-product of the exercise, it has been most welcome.

I’ve been immortalised in song.

I’ve been thanked in an edition of Popbitch.

I got my act together and tidied the site up a bit (no more nicked images).

My boyfriend made a big speech today in front of an audience of important people, and it was a huge success.

39 of my favourite people have said they’re coming to have lunch with me next weekend when I turn 40.

It’s been a wonderful week. It’s going to be a great weekend. All is right with the world.

A happy weekend to all my lovely, lovely friends!

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The 40 In 40 Days Project.
32. The Apotheosis of Queer (1997)

Let’s generalise wildly, like those journalists do. If I spent the 1970s in denial about being gay, and the 1980s getting used to being gay, then I suppose that looking back, I spent much of the 1990s celebrating being gay. Indeed, I positively luxuriated in being gay. Gay this, gay that, gay the other. Gay gay gay gay gay!

Gay mates. Gay pubs and clubs virtually every weekend; in our local venues, I knew half the people there. Boyz, Attitude, The Pink Paper, Gay Times; I read them cover to cover, and I never missed an issue. The big gay issue of the day? I had an informed opinion on it. A new club opening in Birmingham, Manchester, London? I knew all about it. I was a prolific contributor to the uk-motss mailing list – a gay discussion group about gay topics. I was a volunteer with the local Gay Switchboard. And so on, and so on. After the birth pangs of the 1970s and 1980s, the gay movement had finally come of age, and I was proud to identify myself as a fully participating member of that community.

It all reached its peak in 1997, when I was asked to put together the official web site for that year’s Pride March and Festival in London. I went down for the launch party and the big fund-raising club night, and was introduced to various members of the “great and good”. At the festival itself, I was backstage, celeb spotting for all I was worth (Chris Lowe! Boy George! Holly Johnson! Loads of faded 1980s pop stars! Eek!). It was the very last of the “great” Prides, before the Pride Trust went bust and the whole operation finally went unashamedly commercial. I wouldn’t claim it was the best (the Brockwell Park Prides will never be beaten), but it was certainly the biggest. The day climaxed with Holly Johnson onstage, singing “The Power Of Love” as the fireworks went off, and thousands of boys and girls snogged each other in the evening light. I looked around at this beautiful, amazing sight, aware that I too was part of it, part of this community, part of this success story, and suddenly – overwhelmed by the feeling of emotional connection – burst into floods of joyful tears.

The Apotheosis Of Queer. When you’ve had an extraordinary defining moment like this, how do you progress beyond it? In my case, it was by coming back down the other side. Slowly – and not before time – disillusionment and cynicism crept in. Maybe the “great and good” weren’t that great and all that good after all – the self-congratulatory complacency around Stonewall was starting to annoy me now. Maybe the commercial scene had become stifling rather than liberating – after a period of rapid expansion in the early 1990s, gay pubs and clubs were getting stuck in a serious rut. And oh, could I really bear to read one more word about Section 28, “outing”, gays in the military? The whole subject of homosexuality had started to bore me.

Finally, in Autumn 1999, I had a second, diametrically opposite, defining moment. I was at the Royal Albert Hall, watching that year’s Stonewall Equality Show – a miserably lame and clichéd spectacle, which seemed to do nothing more than smugly celebrate its own under-achieving mediocrity. Is this where we have ended up, I wondered? Rainbow flags, bad cover versions of “I’m Coming Out” and “We Are Family”, boys doing ballet in their underpants, tired comedy routines, feeble speeches from government ministers stating the bleeding obvious, Elton John prancing round with a bunch of cub scouts, and those bloody lesbian drummers are here again? Followed by two separate invitation-only after-parties – one for the hacks and the other for the real A-list? Is all this now the Apotheosis Of Queer? Is that all there is to being gay? Oh sod it, I’m off then.

And so, tired of the whole palaver, bored with the entire subject, I started “de-gaying”. I unsubscribed from uk-motss, resigned from Switchboard, stopped buying the gay press, found other things to do at weekends, and started looking round at the world outside my ghetto.

Now, in 2002, with a weblog all of my own, a curious thing is starting to happen. To some extent, I appear to be “re-gaying” myself. But in a new, quite different way. It’s much too soon to analyse, but – you know what? – it feels right.

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In a rather pleasing manifestation of "comment drift", it would appear that Peter from Naked Blog and I have started drafting a film together. Start about halfway down, then page up. Do feel free to collaborate!

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Thursday, February 07, 2002

Answers to this week's Retro Bar pop quiz are in the comments, or just click here. Did you beat us? Huh?

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The 40 In 40 Days Project.
31. The Failure (1981)

I have no real idea why I decided to become a law student. Like so many of the major events in my life – careers, relationships, homes, the stuff which other people agonise over – it was something that just…happened, I suppose.

At school, I had always blithely assumed that one day the clouds would part, a giant hand would reach down towards me bearing a rolled up sheet of parchment, and I would suddenly be filled with a sense of vocation. As this never happened, and as I definitely fancied living the life of a student for a few years (well, it sounded like fun), I drifted into law.

In some ways, it felt like the path of least resistance. I come from a family which is steeped in the law, on both my mother’s and father’s sides. There was even a family law firm in Doncaster – Slater and Sons – which I could have stepped into if I chose (thus making me the fifth generation of Slaters to do so, as my grandmother often reminded me).

I also thought (when I bothered to think about it all) that as an academic discipline, law would suit me well. I enjoyed mathematics and languages at school, and I imagined that solving a legal problem would be very much like solving a maths problem. Define the issues at stake, get the books out, process the information, output the result. The Law Says This. Then, like in maths, you could mark me out of 100 for how near I got to The Right Answer. And in the process of reaching The Right Answer, I could use my language skills to argue my case eloquently. Well, there had to be just the one Right Answer, surely? You know, natural justice and all that? Right and wrong – true and false – binary thinking – piece of piss, probably.

Oh, and I enjoyed “Crown Court” on the telly. Seriously – I factored that in as a reason. Human interest and drama – there was bound to be loads of it, right? I couldn’t wait to get stuck into those case reports, and learn all about the personal struggles of the people involved.

How wrong can you be?

As a fledgling law student, I soon learnt a few things.

1. There is no right or wrong answer. It’s up to you to argue a case one way or the other.

2. There is no human interest in a law degree. Case reports are not like newspaper stories, or episodes of “Crown Court”.

3. There is a huge amount of reading. It’s not like reading a novel, either. The prose is dry to the point of indigestibility.

4. 90% of law students are hyper-confident, self-possessed, highly motivated, ambitious individuals. I am none of these things, nor can I pretend to be otherwise.

5. There is no discussion, at any time, of morals, ethics or natural justice. I think this might have been optional in the third year, though.

6. There’s a lot of fun to be had as a student. None of it has anything to do with your coursework.

7. As an academic subject, Law is really, really boring. Teeth-grindingly, skull-crushingly boring.

Well, it was inevitable really. I flunked one of my four first year exams – Property Law, a subject which I especially loathed. There was a resit at the end of the summer vacation. Even faced with the possibility of being thrown off the course, I couldn’t bring myself to do the necessary revision. I flunked the resit, and was promptly thrown off the course.

I been denying the reality of my situation for months. Now, reality hit me hard – for the first time in my life, I had failed an exam. It felt like waking from a dream. I was no longer comfortably rolling along the conveyor belt with everybody else, safely on my way to the assured future of a well paid professional career. I was out on my arse.

Once again, I’m not too sure how this happened - but a week later, I found myself accepted as a first year student in the German department of the very same university. In one of the greatest strokes of luck in what has unquestionably been a ridiculously lucky life, I was now back with my friends on that very same conveyor belt.

A mere blip, then. Life rolled on.

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You know, I got to thinking the other day, and something really struck me. Originality on the web is such a rare commodity nowadays. It all looks somewhat re-hashed, ripped off, nicked, made over, re-jigged. Particularly in the sphere of weblogs and online journals.

And just to support the above, have you seen this? Blimey - the cheek of it!

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I think I'm going to cry...

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A fascinating exercise in social engineering last night, as K and I put together the seating plan for my fortieth birthday party. This is taking place on the day itself (Sunday February 17), upstairs at Harts Restaurant in central Nottingham. Exactly forty friends and relatives will be sitting down to lunch together, at four separate round tables. Putting the tables together was far more complicated than you might think…

“Too many single gay men at that table – too easy, too obvious!”
“Too many straight couples at that table – let’s gay it up over there!”

“ We can’t put ABC and DEF at the same table – they fell out years ago.”
“We can’t put GHI and JKL next to each other – they shagged years ago.”

“We can’t have partners sitting next to each other – let’s have them facing each other across the table.”

“MNO is the only woman at table 3! Can’t have that!”
“No straight men at table 4! Can’t have that!”
“PQR is the only straight man at table 2! Do you think he’ll cope? Yeah, course he will…”

“STU and VWX have never really got to know each other, have they? Right, let’s stick them next to each other, then.”

"Can't have that lot all sitting together - they know each other too well - EFG and HIJ might feel excluded. Let's swap that couple for that couple...yeah, that evens it out..."

“So…this group can talk about politics…this lot can talk about business…this lot can talk about walking in Derbyshire…this lot can talk about food…this lot can talk about nightclubs and shagging…hang on, that’s too predictable…let’s swap him with her…oh yes, much better….”

“YZA is a bit isolated there…doesn’t know anybody…yeah, but look: BCD is such a strong character…he’ll bring YZA into the rest of the group…”

And so on, and so on. Ooh, I’m all excited about it now!

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Back in the 1990s, The Pink Paper hosted a competition to choose a logo for that year’s Pride festival. Three logos were displayed in the paper, and readers were asked to vote for their favourite. This was presented as a nice little bit of PR, intended to persuade an increasingly sceptical readership that Pride was still democratically accountable – “our” festival.

Round about the same time, an acquaintance of ours was working full time for the now defunct Pride Trust, the organisers of that year’s event. We were talking about the logo competition, which was appearing in print that week.

“Of course,” he explained, “we’ve already chosen the logo ourselves – the stuff’s gone to the printers and everything.”

I looked shocked. He looked amused, with a "Were you born yesterday?" smirk playing across his face.

“Oh, come on! Get real! Do you seriously think we’d leave a important decision like that to the general public?”

The final of Pop Idol takes place this Saturday. If Gareth Gates doesn’t win, then I’m a fat opera singer in a red dress.

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Wednesday, February 06, 2002

This evening's primetime viewing on ITV:

8.00 - for a whole hour! - Carol Vorderman presents Britain's Brainiest Estate Agent.
9.00 - for another! whole! hour! - Garages From Hell.

And British broadcasting reaches a new low....

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A word or two of clarification...

This weblog is called "troubled diva".
I, however, am not Troubled Diva.
I am Mike.
Untroubled, happy-go-lucky Mike.
Look, see me smile!

I hadn't made this properly clear before, so I've had a slight re-jig.
And I've got rid of the frumpy old trout at last. Hurrah!

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And it’s back to the Vale Of Tears we go. Hankies out, readers!

The 40 In 40 Days Project.
30. The Romantic Obsession (1975-1978)

Adrian (not his real name) was in the year below me at boarding school. I hadn’t even paid much attention to him - until one afternoon, when someone told me a highly indiscreet story involving him and another boy. To the person telling the story, this was probably just routine gossip. But for me, it changed everything.

Aged thirteen, I was becoming increasingly aware that my feelings of same-sex attraction were probably never going to disappear, and what few feelings of opposite-sex attraction I had were fading fast. I had been nurturing crushes on other boys from around the age of ten – idealised, romantic crushes, as yet unsullied by more directly physical desires. I was already well aware that these feelings had to be kept entirely secret. But suddenly, there was now a possibility that someone might have the same feelings as me. I was both thrilled and fascinated.

I started secretly observing Adrian - looking for clues, finding none, but also finding nothing that would directly refute the possibility that he might also be…well, I didn’t really have a word for it then. Homosexual, I suppose – the word gave me the creeps, though. “Gay” meant someone carrying a banner down the street. The other words were all insults.

The more I observed him, the more he fascinated me. All my most daring hopes of romantic fulfilment started to wrap themselves around him. He became my lifeline. Theoretically, there was just the faintest glimmer of a hope that he and I might…well, fall in love with each other, I suppose. Because sex didn’t really come into it. Sex to me meant my father’s secret collection of “girlie” magazines, with their stark, vaguely threatening photographs and their mechanical, brutal prose. Sex both disgusted and terrified me. Romance, however, filled me with hopes and dreams – for a faithful companion with whom I could share everything.

And so, in the space of only a couple of weeks or so, I fell head over heels in love with Adrian. This emotion was easily the most powerful I had ever felt. It took me over entirely. I felt its presence constantly, throughout every waking moment. The more I secretly gazed at him across the common room, the classroom, the dining hall or the TV room, the more beautiful he became to me.

To begin with, I openly courted his friendship, and for a while there did seem to be a particular spark between us. However, rather than capitalise on the rapport we had built up, I instead shrank back in fear. I was standing too close to the fire. There was too much at stake. If I gave him any hint of how I felt, I would be facing not only rejection, but possible exposure, ridicule and public humiliation. For being a “queer” at school was completely beyond the pale. The homophobic banter and teasing (with the accent firmly on “phobic”) was constant. So I settled for three years of unrequited obsession instead.

In those three years, I never quite gave up hope that Adrian was also secretly in love with me. In fact, I analysed every last detail of his behaviour towards me for possible clues. In all that time, I found just three, to which I ascribed enormous importance. They are as follows.

1. Walking into Cambridge city centre one afternoon, I pass Adrian coming the other way. We greet each other and carry on walking. I count a few seconds, and then steal a look behind me. Just in time to see the side of his head, in the process of turning back to face the other way. He too had taken a look behind him, and I had missed him by a split second.

2. Our house Christmas party, towards the end of the evening. The whole house is asked to link arms for Auld Lang Syne. From right across the other side of the room, Adrian comes quickly pushing through the crowd. He comes to a halt beside me, far away from his usual gang of friends. He looks up at me with a warm smile, and seizes my hand.

3. Walking down to the far games fields, one sunny afternoon. No-one else in sight. Adrian appears in the far distance, a tiny figure. He sees me. He breaks into a sprint. He catches me up, a big friendly smile on his face, and we continue the walk together – still no-one else in sight – talking, and joking, and smiling all the while, and generally acting like the close friends which we never were.

It wasn’t exactly much, but it was still enough to keep the feelings burning inside me. Feelings towards another human being, which only served to push me still further inside myself. Endlessly hopeful, and yet utterly hopeless. The stuff of which self-pitying adolescent poetry is made.

Adrian eventually left the school, and I had no choice but to get over him. A year later, the cycle of obsession began again with somebody new. It was a pattern which I was to maintain for several years to come.

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Song For Europe scandal! Zee Asha is disqualified!

The gay disco vote promptly transfers itself to Tricia Penrose.

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On the tube this morning with Royal Academy (who kindly put me up last night), and we are making valiant attempts at a cheery conversation, despite the earliness of the hour. We are in fact the only two people talking in the entire carriage.

Victoria station. A wild-eyed, scraggy looking scruffbag lurches over and leans over us.

“Here’s a tip for you perky morning people on the tube. What you need to do is get a dog, right? Because when you get back, the dog will have got your breakfast ready and waiting for you, right?”

And with that, he leaves the carriage.

What do you suppose he meant?

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Yes, it’s time to stem the constant flow of weeping children and dying relatives which seems to have engulfed this site of late, in order to bring you some much needed levity in the form of…

Last Night’s Retro Bar Pub Quiz!

I have to say that last night was well worth the journey down to London. Messrs Bboyblues (Marcus), Blogadoon (Ian), Brainsluice (Dave), Over Your Head (Jonathan & Mark) and Swish Cottage (David) were all every bit as welcoming, charming and thoroughly delightful as I had hoped they would be. The quiz was right up my street, even though we lost by half a point (I believe this is more or less traditional – and former colleagues in Nottingham reading this can also testify that it is traditional for me too).

Top: Me, Jonathan, David, Marcus. Bottom: Ian, Dave . The assignment of these bloggers to these positions is purely coincidental and is not indicative of...etc.

Not the most representative image of everybody, I'm afraid. For other pics/reports of the evening, try here and here.

See if you can beat our score of 17, or the winning score of 17.5:

First off – three theme tunes from Top Of The Pops. Artist and Song Title in each case, please…

1) Early 80s, starts with a “Peeeeeeoooow!” syn-drum type noise, accompanied on screen by cascading 7-inch singles in coloured vinyl – and later, “Attack, Attack, Attack-attack-attack!”. Male soloist.
2) Mid-late 80s, curly-haired male instrumentalist who had a stuttering Number One hit in 1985.
3) 1970s, cover of famous Led Zep track.

Three tracks from 2001 albums. Artist and Album Title in each case, please…

4) Last Resort (this may not have been the track played on the night…)
5) M1 A1 (this may not have been the track played either…)
6) There You Go

7) Two songs by two dead celebrities – name them…
a) Worzel Gummidge Theme
b) Shut That Door

8) Duet by two dead British comedians – name them…
“Medicate in my direction, feel your way…”
(this wasn’t the song played on the night, but the answer is the same…)

9) What are the next eight words to Donny Osmond’s “Puppy Love”?
“I hope and I pray, that maybe some day, you’ll be back (you’ll be back!) in my arms (in my arms!) once again (youllbebackinmyarmsonceagain!)”

Three very very brief intros to hits from the late 70s. Artist and song title please…

10) Hey you!
11) [brrrring brrrring] I’m…
12) Every lousy Sunday morning….

A section called “Pump Up The Volume.” Artist names please, to the following dance tracks.

13a) Don’t You Want Me (no, not the Human League – a different track altogether)
13b) “Because she’s homeless, la-da-dee la-doo-dah…”

14a) Everybody In The Place
14b) “Only love can set me free….”

15a) “Acieeeeeed! Acieeeeeeed!”
15b) Beat Dis

16. Two Metallica cover versions, played by a cello quartet. Song titles for both please…
a) “Say your prayers little one / don't forget, my son / to include everyone”
b) “New blood joins this earth / and quikly he's subdued / through constant pain disgrace / the young boy learns their rules”

Three cover versions. In each case, give me the song title, the artist who is performing the cover, and the artist who had the original hit with the same song.

17. “She keeps Moet & Chandon in her pretty cabinet…”
18. “I saw him dancing there by the record machine / I knew he must have been about seventeen / The beat was going strong / Playing my favourite song / And I could tell it wouldn't be long / until he was with me / YEAH Me”
19. “Standing in the door of the Pink Flamingo, crying in the rain…” (CLUE: This cover version provoked massed booing from all people of taste and discernment)

20. These three singles were all hits in the SAME year. Which year? Yes, it’s something of a trick question…
Alive & Kicking – Simple Minds
Temptation – Heaven 17
Dancing Queen - Abba

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Tuesday, February 05, 2002

You see that “We blog” sidebar down the left hand side? Well, I read all of them regularly, and in some cases have built up quite a strong mental picture of the bloggers who have created them. Three of the bloggers (Buni, Chig and Groc) are people I already knew in “meatspace” before they started blogging. The others, however, are only known to me online.

Imagine, therefore, the excitement which I am feeling this afternoon, knowing that in just over 5 hours’ time, I shall be meeting several of my favourite London bloggers for the very first time! Yes, I’m putting in a special guest appearance at the Retro Bar’s weekly pop quiz. If you’re a regular reader of Over Your Head, Swish Cottage, Blogadoon or Brainsluice, then you might know what I’m talking about.

That’s right. I am catching a return train to London, and am taking a whole morning off work, in order to take part in a pub quiz. Hey, you gotta problem with that?!

Wonder how they’ll react when they discover I’m a sociopath fantasist who lives with his mother and blogs from the local library. With halitosis. And a flatulence problem. And large, disfiguring facial warts.

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The 40 In 40 Days Project.
29. The Concept Albums (1975-78)

At the age of thirteen, I decided to record my own concept album. I had recently realised that with two portable cassette recorders, it was possible to create a multi-tracked piece of music, and the possibilities of this enthralled me. My modus operandi therefore went as follows:

1. Think up a suitably freaky, surreal album title. In this case, Supper At Jojo’s or The Pink Genies Ride Again.

2. Think up an equally freaky artist name. In this case – and I have no idea where this came from – I decided to call myself (ahem) Fanta-Lick Extraordinaire.

3. Think up twenty interesting sounding track titles, and write them down. At this stage, I had no idea what each track would sound like – I would use the titles as inspiration. Tracks included: Funky Lone Ranger, Lemon Anorak, Like It Or, Maxine By The Graves, Mildred The Worm Manages To Sing Along, Cheapside Kate.

4. Gather every musical instrument in the house together in one room. There weren’t many to choose from: a recorder, a guitar (which I couldn’t play), a Rolf Harris Stylophone, and a digeridoo. I augmented this with a large array of percussion devices, mostly taken from my old toy cupboard.

5. For each track, I would first write a lyric, if the song required one. Again, freakiness and surrealism were my watchwords here – literal meaning came way down the list. Influences at the time would have been Gong, Edith Sitwell’s Façade, Monty Python, Pink Floyd and early Soft Machine.

6. I would then build up the track layers as follows. Record track 1 through the microphone of tape recorder A. Play it back through the speakers of tape recorder A, while recording through the microphone of tape recorder B and simultaneously playing/singing whatever was needed for track 2. Play back combined tracks 1 & 2 through tape recorder B, while recording on tape recorder A and performing track 3. And so on, until the track sounded finished. Of course, this meant a lot of tape hiss built up, with the earlier tracks sounding progressively more muddy, but I liked the effect this produced. Tracks were kept short – usually around 1.5 to 2.5 minutes long.

I was enormously pleased with the finished album (a full 40 minutes’ worth), and played it over and over again – though never to anyone else. The recordings weren’t intended for others to hear, and I was actually quite secretive about them. As a result, without the discipline that would have come with attempting to appeal to an audience, I gave free rein to any mad idea which popped into my head. I also gave free rein to my thirteen year old’s idea of “wacky” humour (Python, Goodies, Goons etc), with much use of “comedy” voices throughout. The humour has not aged well. In fact, the entire album makes me cringe when I hear it now. A sweet little project, but one which would have benefited from more forethought, seriousness of intent, and – let’s be honest here – musical ability.

With a piano added to the line-up, and later a clarinet, I went on to make two follow-up albums to Supper At Jojo’s. In Spring 1976, Fanta-Lick Extraordinaire released the Cleopatra album, followed in Autumn 1976 by (Lord love me!) The Cult Of Wekki-Wekki or Mr. B. Slagheap’s Ankles. I then put Fanta-Lick Extraordinaire out to grass, and formed my fantasy art-rock band, The Placemats.

The Placemats were influenced by the burgeoning experimental indie scene that was then being championed by John Peel: The Residents, Desperate Bicycles, very early Devo, Thomas Leer, Robert Rental, The Normal. The musical discipline tightened up – I would now score much of the music in notebooks before recording it. The wacky humour was jettisoned. The lyrics remained bizarre, wilfully obtuse, stream of consciousness stuff. The music remained unplayed to others, and for good reason – I am making it sound far more interesting than it actually was. The musical ability, you see, was as negligible as ever.

The Placemats recorded two albums: Mood Music For Every Occasion (1977) and Rowing Across The Chesterfield Canal With The Placemats (1978). And then, the concept albums were no more. There were, however, a few more attempts at home made music, in particular, a pop song called “Hole In My Life” (1982) which actually showed some slight signs of promise – despite a hilariously Freudian chorus:

You say I might be distorting the truth
I say, who really cares?
So what if my heart isn’t breaking in two
And I’m not drowning in a sea of tears?
I want you – I know that
At least I know it when you’re not around
You give me so much – but what do I need
You’re turning me upside down!

Chorus:
I love you…
At least, in some ways I do…
There’s a hole in my life
But could it be filled by you?
There’s a hole in my life, a hole in my life
But could it be filled by you?
Could it be filled by you?

I hear ABC on the radio
It makes me feel good for a while
Then I think of last week when I was dancing with you
Putting on all that style
I want you – I know that
But I didn’t miss you at the party on Sunday
When the feeling died down
And I thought about things
Did I still want you on Monday?

Chorus.

Very little survives of the music I recorded. I’ve still got the cassette of Supper At Jojo’s and some Placemats backing tracks. However, instead of making these available, I’d rather you listened to these two offerings. They were recorded almost twenty years ago, in my friend Pete’s room, using his WASP synth, electric piano and drum machine, in a student flat on the Ilkeston Road. Both tracks were done on the same evening, with no second takes. I hope you will be charmed by their raw immediacy…

The first track is a reworked instrumental version of The Placemats’ biggest hit, “Listen To The Placemats”. If you listen closely, you might be able to detect the Ramones song from which it steals its central riff.

Download it here. (1.58MB)

On the second track, Pete is Diana Ross, and I – in all my multi-tracked glory – am Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard. Listen as I join in around the 30 second mark, and then attempt to upstage Pete for all I am worth. Maybe I should have been a drag artiste.

Download it here. (2.52MB)

Pete went on to become a successful record producer, who has worked with acts as diverse as Bucks Fizz, The The, Robbie Williams and Def Leppard. But we all have to start somewhere, don’t we!

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As promised last night: pop music, celebrity gossip, and shagging. Yowsah!

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Monday, February 04, 2002

I'm warning you now - this is a heavy one. It's also very long. Tomorrow, I'm sure we will be safely back to pop music, celebrity gossip and shagging. And hurrah for that, I say!

The 40 In 40 Days Project.
28. The Parental Disclosure (1989-90)

Slightly amended and edited excerpts from a letter to my sister in Malawi, January 1990.

…when I went to Blyth on the weekend after Christmas, I decided to "come out" to Father and Sally [stepmother]. The initial reaction was quite promising: Sally flung her arms round me and kissed me, saying something like "Darling, I always knew!", while Father said that he'd also already realised and that there was no problem. However, it became increasingly clear that he'd had absolutely no idea at all beforehand, and that I'd dropped a huge bombshell on him. He went very quiet for the rest of the evening (although perfectly polite) and went to bed fairly early. When I tried to bring the subject up again that night, he said "Can we just drop it for now, please".

The moment he went to bed, Sally said that although she'd known about me and K for ages, she was amazed that I'd told Father, and that it was a big mistake to do so. We then sat up and talked about the whole thing for the next four hours, during which time I polished off at least two full bottles of wine, plus a load of brandy as well - God, did I need alcohol. Although Sally did say the odd peculiar thing (she was asking me about little boys at one stage), she was 90% totally OK about things, and was very accepting and supportive. I explained why I felt I had to tell Father about me and K, and she actually listened to me, accepted my arguments, and changed her opinions.

Father remained quiet for the rest of the next day: he's always behaved peculiarly, I know, but this was a different type of peculiar. We went to this appalling lunchtime "do" at GC's (the timeshare merchant - enough said?). At these functions, Father normally pushes me round everybody in the room, introducing me to all and sundry and showing me off: "Michael's been to University, haven't you Michael?". Well, there was none of that this time. However, there was one person who he did introduce me to, who turned up completely out of the blue: Mrs. A-----, who used to teach us both. She remembered me very clearly, even though she hadn't heard anything of me since 1968, and wanted to know all about me, in detail. When we somehow got onto my lack of skill in the kitchen, she said kindly, "What you need is a girlfriend to cook for you", at which point, Father just buried his face in his hands.

Father gave me a lift back to Nottingham, but first of all we went back to Blyth to pick some old records up. Father opened the garage door, stood in front of all the clutter inside, and said in his best melodramatic voice, "This - is all that's left. These are the tatters - of what was once a f***ing good family".

That was just about all he said between Blyth and Nottingham; the journey was conducted in almost complete silence, broken only by Father sighing very heavily at regular intervals. I just didn't feel I dared say anything at that stage - I felt as if I was setting next to a box of gunpowder just waiting for someone to ignite it. So I decided to ride it out, keep my head down and wait for a better time in the future.

When we got to Nottingham, Father didn't even come with me to the door of the house, even though I was laden down with stuff. This was very significant, as he normally always comes in, says hello to K and has a quick drink of something. As I got to the door, he was getting back into the car and banged his head on the roof as he was getting in -it sounds ridiculous, but I really think he did it deliberately. So as I was going inside, he was doubled up and groaning loudly and repeatedly in a ludicrously over the top manner.

During the next week, Sally rang me twice, and on both occasions was friendly and supportive, wishing me a Happy New Year and so on. I also had a phone call from [my aunt] that week, who immediately launched in: "Now then, about your being gay - it's no surprise to me and [my uncle], we put two and two together years ago, but thought it best not to say anything." Father had rung her up and told her everything. At this pitch, I realised that every member of my family worth considering was fully behind me, and had no problems about my sexuality. Only Father couldn't cope.

This became startlingly apparent the following Friday night - exactly a week after I'd dropped the bombshell. Father rang up in a real state, and ranted on for about an hour. At times, he was barely coherent, kept losing the thread of what he was saying, went off onto all sorts of irrelevant sidetracks, especially about his first marriage, and kept calling me "Sally", which disturbed me as much as, if not more than, the content of what he was saying, as getting people's names mixed up is a clear sign that something is very badly wrong with him.

Well, he really let rip. He accused me of breaking up his marriage with Sally by coming out, and said that Sally was blackmailing him (she was supposed to have said something along the lines of, "You keep quiet about your children for the sake of my children"). He said that I'd given her ammunition to use against him, even though he admitted that she'd been accusing me of being gay for years. I would have thought that being honest with her would actually rob her of a piece of ammunition, wouldn't you? He said things like "Once again, a [mother’s maiden name] offspring is destroying my life". He said that he'd been to church and prayed for me. He said that he'd got out his Bible and read it, and that he knew homosexuality was a sin. I don't believe a word of it - what's with all this new found religious mania all of a sudden? Throughout the whole conversation, he seemed to have lost all grasp of the distinction between fantasy and reality; he was lying continuously, but I think that some of the time, he didn't even realise that he was lying. I tried to get an assurance from him that he wasn't being violent towards Sally, and did in fact get a grudging denial, given very hastily, but then he said, "If Sally calls you a f***ing queer, I hit her". When I challenged him on the morality of this, he said that just as he couldn't accept my morality, so I would just have to live with his morality. That was a good one, equating my love for K with violence against women! The conversation ended with him ringing off while in mid-sentence. Although I kept my cool and dealt with everything he said as best as I could, when allowed to get a word in edgeways, I was absolutely shattered by the end of the call. The first thing I did was ring up my aunt - I needed to talk to someone who knows Father inside out. She and my uncle were fantastic, calmed me down, and said all the things that I would have thought for myself eventually, but needed to hear someone else say at that time.

So after an hour with my aunt and uncle, I had just got back downstairs, was handed a can of beer, and was just about to open it when the phone rang again. This time it was Sally, who was ringing up to give her side of the story, and to make sure I was alright. The things she said and the things Father said didn't match up at all - so one of them wasn't telling the truth, and it was quite clear that Father was doing the lying. Sally was nearly as upset as I was, so that was another hour on the phone. The moment Sally rang off, and I was once again handed a beer by an increasingly gobsmacked looking K, the phone rang again, and I was on the phone to [my aunt] for another 10 minutes - she had spoken to Father in the meantime, he was still in a real state, and she advised me to keep my head down for a while.

What I decided to do was write a letter to Father and explain everything to him: why I had told him I was gay, why I had told Sally as well, why I didn't think he had anything to fear from Sally, why I didn't accept responsibility for the state of his marriage, how I didn't expect him to change his attitudes overnight, how I had suffered myself for years on account of being gay, that I was telling him because I loved him, that I wanted him to be happy because I was happy, that I wasn't siding with Sally against him, and much else besides. It was a long letter, and surprisingly easy to write. I was speaking to him in a way I had never done before, and I found it a positive and liberating thing to do. I also remain convinced that I have done the right thing in telling him - he was going to have to know sooner or later, as it would begin to look increasingly obvious as the years go by, and I would rather the whole upset was over and done with as soon as possible, so that the healing process can get going as soon as possible.

There was the odd ray of hope in amongst all the other things he said. He has not disowned me, or rejected me in any way. He said that he "admired my courage" in telling him. He said that he was "probably being very bigoted", but that he couldn't change the way he felt. He also said that he likes K a lot, and "has a lot of time for him". Mind you, when I said that he could come and stay whenever he liked, he said that he could never spend a night in the house knowing that I was there with "That Man". K rather liked that bit; no-one has ever called him "That Man" before and it makes him feel rather glamorous and wicked…

Anyway - I haven't heard a squeak from Father since sending him the letter nearly a fortnight ago. Time alone will tell what happens next. But please don't be upset by any of this. I have taken the whole thing in my stride, in a way that has rather surprised me, and I don't actually think that Father is any more or less miserable/loopy than he was before I told him. It's something different for him to shout about, that's all. And I am very optimistic. Things can only get better.

Excerpts from a letter to my father, January 1990.

I do not expect you to change all your attitudes about homosexuality overnight. I recognise that for you to come to terms with who I really am will probably take a very long time, and I intend to be patient. After all, it took me many years of intense misery, guilt, shame and terror before I could learn to accept myself, and that too was a slow and laborious process. It is also one of the reasons why I left home 10 years ago, and why I have been back so little. I had to find my own feet in my own way, and knew I could never fit in with your world. However, I have not become a social outcast - quite the opposite. The loneliest I have ever felt in my life was while I was at The Leys [boarding school], where I was a complete social leper for a couple of years, not because anyone knew I was gay, but because it had made me so self-conscious and frightened. You must remember yourself how peculiarly I behaved at that time. You must also have noticed how I have gained dramatically in self-confidence since that time. That is because I stopped trying to fight what I really was, learned to accept my true nature, came to respect myself, stopped feeling sorry for myself, and eventually found love and happiness. No-one ever "led me astray". No-one ever corrupted me. It took a lot of soul searching and courage to get to where I am now. The final hurdle I had to face was telling my family the truth, since parents are unfortunately often the very last to know such things. It wasn't until 1989, after nearly 5 years of being with K, that I felt ready.

I hope very much that you will come to feel happy for me, rather than appalled at my sexuality. One of the main reasons for my telling you is that I want you to know that I am very happy, and I want you to share in that happiness, and not be excluded from it, as you have been for so long. I also wanted to tell you because I love you as a father. If I didn't give a shit about you, I could easily have spared myself all the effort, couldn't I?

You are not being forgotten about by any of us in your family. None of us take any delight in seeing you upset. Please believe this. If you feel angry, then take it out on me, not on Sally. I will come and visit you soon, if you wish to have me.

June 1992. My father has rung, with news that my grandmother (his mother) is unlikely to make it through the night. This news comes just over a week after the death of my other grandmother. I am too numb to be able to process the information properly. K suggests that he drives me up to meet my father, so that the two of us can then go to the nursing home to be with her. This is quickly arranged.

In the car with my father, on our way to the nursing home, he thanks me for coming up. I explain that it was actually K who suggested driving me up to meet him. There is a reflective pause. My father is not generally given to reflective pauses. Eventually, he speaks again, softly and sincerely.

“He’s a good man, Michael.”

Reconciliation.

We spend the next few hours sitting with my grandmother, who had finally lapsed from consciousness earlier in the day. It is the single closest moment we ever share together.

Less than eighteen months later, at the age of sixty, my father suffers a fatal heart attack. In the intervening period, my stepfather also suffers a fatal heart attack. Two months after my father’s death, my grandfather passes away peacefully. My stepmother remarries, but the new marriage lasts less than eighteen months before her new husband dies of cancer. Three years later, at the age of fifty-five, and after a lifetime’s heavy drinking, my stepmother dies from liver failure.

By coming out to my father, I know I upset him greatly. If I had known he had such a short time left to live, I might well have chosen not to tell him. But I do not regret what I did. At the end of the day, I think it was necessary.

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On Brucehoax, PJ transcribes a recent conversation with his mother, in which they discuss the mistakes of the past. It was posted nearly a week ago, but it keeps popping back into my mind every now and again - probably on account of some of the stuff I've been writing about myself, but also because it's an honest and moving piece of writing.

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One of these days, I suppose that I'm going to have to move away from my Blogger template / Swish Cottage source code rip-off excuse for a "site style", and implement something of my own. I say this with a heavy heart. Posting new original content on a daily basis? Yes, happy to do that, thanks. Ancillary site design? Big fat yawn.

Anyway - if and when I do, I wanna do it nouveau ugly style. Cuz it rocks!

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Replying to my “Why I Hate The Bloggies” e-mail rant of last week, Tom of Plastic Bag argued that they would help to publicise the medium as a whole to people outside. To which I responded:

They strike me as a very inward looking, self-referential thing, of interest only to other webloggers. But I could be wrong...

And now, this happens. OK, I was wrong!
(Link nicked from not.so.soft)

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Scanning the list of remaining "40 Days" entries, I find that I have unconsciously been tending to opt for the cheerful ones in preference to the bleaker ones. So be prepared for a certain degree of bleakness over the remaining thirteen days. Still, you should all know by now that my story does have an entirely happy ending...so fear not!

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An unsettling start to the working week.

Six-thirty this morning. I am the comic actor Rob Brydon, in character as that taxi driver fella from "Marion & Geoff". I am smartly dressed for a job interview and checking my tie in the mirror. I am going into the interview room. I stay in this character throughout the interview, with its particular mixture of chipper bravado and hopeless pathos. Very early on, I realise that I am never going to get the job, but I carry right on being chipper, with steadily increasing levels of underlying quiet desperation.

The alarm clock comes as a relief.

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Cringe-making quote of the weekend.

Friday night in the Laguna Tandoori: me, K and Buni.
Buni: "Can I have a coffee when I get back to yours?"
K: "I'm sorry, but all our coffee machines are in Derbyshire."
Buni: "Can't I just have instant?"
K and I together (crisply): "We don't have instant."

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Sunday, February 03, 2002

For those of you waiting to find out which way up the Jenny Pockley painting is supposed to hang, the answer is now tucked away in the comments, just below the two competing images. Just scroll down to Thursday January 31st...

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The 40 In 40 Days Project.
27. The Royal Procession (1972)

My mother’s father really was quite posh. A QC, who presided over the old Quarter Sessions in the county of Dorset, he also took his turn as Master of the Inner Temple, and was later appointed Commons Commissioner. In the early 1980s, he was awarded an MVO (Member of the Royal Victorian Order) in the New Year’s Honours list. Other memberships included the Athenaeum club, and the Royal College of Arms, where he bore the title of Norfolk Herald Extraordinary.

In his role as Norfolk Herald Extraordinary, my grandfather had to undertake various processional duties at major state ceremonies. His ceremonial dress included a splendid tabard, bearing the royal coat of arms, along with a sword, black leggings and buckled shoes. You can easily find him in footage of Sir Winston Churchill's funeral in 1965, and the 1969 investiture of the Prince of Wales. However, his two regular gigs were the State Opening of Parliament and the annual Garter Ceremony.

One year, it was decided that I was old enough to come down to Windsor Castle with my mother, in order to watch my grandfather take part in the royal procession that accompanied the Garter Ceremony. However, on the day in question, it was raining heavily – so heavily that the usual procession was cancelled. In its place, there would be a procession of cars along the same route.

And so it came to pass that young Master Michael Slater, sitting with his mother and grandfather in their chauffeur driven car (hired for the day from Godfrey Davis), got to take part in a formal royal procession, past thousands of cheering onlookers, through the streets of Windsor.

At the age of ten, it has to be said that I did bear a very, very slight resemblance to the young Prince Andrew (who cut a considerably slimmer figure in those days). Slight, but still enough for a group of several dozen Brownies to mistake me for the Prince as our car rolled by, and to start cheering and vigorously waving their Union Jacks at me. To which I automatically responded – as if to the manner born – by regally waving back from the rear passenger window, in that customary “slow windscreen wiper” fashion for which our royal family has become famous.

After the ceremony, the three of us attended a drinks party at one of the houses within the grounds of Windsor Castle, hosted by one of the Sergeants of Arms (or something similar – my memory fails me on this point). It was attended by most of the people who had taken part in the procession – Clarenceaux Kings of Arms rubbing shoulders with Rouge Dragon Pursuivants, that sort of thing. It was a terribly, terribly posh party – the poshest I have ever attended.

However, for young Master Michael Slater, the party came as something of a disappointment. Frankly, he was expecting something grander. He was particularly appalled to find that all the ladies were keeping their hats on indoors. Dear me, how common, he thought to himself.

Downstairs in the kitchen (I ask you, the kitchen!), a smiling lady – possibly the hostess – approached me, bearing a silver tray of sausage rolls (I ask you, sausage rolls!). Would I care to take one? I picked one up suspiciously, squeezed it, and then flung it back on the tray in disgust. “Eurgh, it’s cold! No thank you!”

My poor Mother was utterly mortified. Well, I’m sorry, but I had my standards, and cold sausage rolls served by ladies in hats in basement kitchens fell far below them.

At the age of ten, I was already too grand for royalty.