Teacher, mother, secret lover – I am none of these things
I quite like McFly, and I often get ribbed for it. But I’m glad I don’t care what people think, otherwise I wouldn’t have been in the Echo Arena with Andrew last night, dancing like an idiot while surrounded by screaming female fans. I’m seriously glad I went — those guys know how to put on a show!
OK, I sound like a 15-year-old girl. The moral of the story is… Do what makes you happy, as long as it’s legal — and maybe sometimes, even if it isn’t! 
I’ve come up with a new concept which will cheer us all up and boost the economy in these austerity-riddled times.
Everyone has one birthday a year, but I think that 12 months is far too long to wait for the next one to roll around. Therefore I propose: the half-birthday, a day exactly halfway between birthdays but with all the usual pomp, circumstance and gift giving.
The benefits are twofold: first of all, everyone likes to get presents and attention showered on them. The half-birthday is a nice ego-boost, without the drawback of actually being a year older and the maudlin contemplation that often goes with that.
Secondly, if this catches on, it means everyone will buy twice as many birthday presents as they do now, providing a welcome boost to the “tat you don’t really need” market and injecting much-needed money into the economy.
By total coincidence, my half-birthday is tomorrow, so get on over to my Amazon wish list and order something (next-day delivery, of course).
So there’s my proposal. Come back next week, when I outline my plans for Bizarro Halloween.
Loft conversions are not something to be undertaken lightly. We’ve just had one done, and a lot of upheaval was involved. I missed most of it myself because I was flat-sitting for my friend Andrew while the worst of the work went on, but my unfortunate family had to live in a house with no roof for six weeks.
Still, it was worth it, and I now have a new “pad” (as the cool kids like to say) to be proud of. Alert MTV Cribs to send a camera crew!
It would be nice to have a home that isn’t attached to my parents’ house, but I’m working on that. At least I have a proper space for my important world-domination work to be carried out. There’s even enough room for a basic videoblogging set up, but that’s a project for another day…
I’ve decided to make public my new year’s resolutions and hope that this gives me more motivation to keep to them. There are only three, and none of them are too exciting, but here they are anyway:-
The secret to new year’s resolutions is to make them achievable and realistic. So this year I have left off “cure world hunger”.
July brought big changes to the newspaper industry, as The Times started charging for access to its web site. This was supposed to ensure a steady income stream for the newspaper, putting it on a secure financial footing for the future. However, it also resulted in the Times being completely removed from the online chatter of the blogosphere, as its news coverage and columnists were no longer accessible to the internet hoi-polloi. Still, I’m sure this decision made sense to someone somewhere.
The Supreme Court ruled that gay people facing persecution are entitled to claim asylum in the UK. I welcomed the decision, although my blog post is curiously vague about precisely why I welcomed it. Hmm…
In other gay-related news, I reviewed, with sadness, a booklet from the US Military discussing its anti-gay don’t ask, don’t tell policy.
Elsewhere, health and safety went mad as one person suggested banning rugby scrums. I felt uncomfortable on a train full of Orange Lodge marchers and I defended the traditional sitcom from an onslaught of criticism from trendy TV reviewers.
What a year 2010 was! It had twelve months, each consisting of at least 28 days. On some of those days I made blog entries. Here are the highlights.
I began the year in January fretting about an alleged Crystal Maze remake starring Amanda Holden. This story fortunately turned out to be utter bollocks. Ginger people again proved that (yours truly excepted) they have no sense of humour or perspective. Britain experienced a deluge of snow, and Merseyrail impressed everyone by soldiering on throughout, a feat which they would surely repeat next time we experienced awful weather… right?
I finally joined the Wii owners’ club, just as the console stopped being cool. My rekindled love for video games did not result in me getting rickets. I also celebrated my first Twitterversary and cautiously welcomed the iPad.
I also took time to blog at length about a US comedian no-one has heard of over here, illustrating my post with YouTube clips which have now been removed for copyright infringement.
In more serious matters, the Haiti earthquake occupied people’s thoughts as a humanitarian catastrophe unfolded in the devastated country.
You know when there’s lots of snow and the authorities only advise you to travel if its absolutely necessary? I wish I’d heeded that advice last night.
It was our office Christmas party last night. Despite the heavy snow forecast, I headed into town. The weather was clear when I left home, but I emerged from Central station at 7.30pm to discover that the snow had started coming down heavily.
Most of the Christmas party was spent anxiously checking various transport operators’ web sites on my mobile phone. At 11pm, with the weather worsening and rumours spreading about serious disruption on the railways, I decided to head for the station and get home.
Central station was in a scene of chaos: the departure board listing a lot of obviously fictitious trains (one train shown as “Expected 22:36″ despite it being 23:05 by now). The man on the ticket barrier, besieged by inebriated people, could only explain that there was nothing moving on the Northern Line at all.
It’s my birthday, and for once I actually feel like celebrating. It’s been a hell of a year — I went to Scotland, went to Brighton, came out and went to Pride, and did a whole lot more besides.
There’s nothing like a birthday to make you feel loved and appreciated. As well as the usual gifts from family, I got cards from people in work, from new friends I’ve made recently, and from old friends that I previously thought had forgotten me.
Things are going well for me at the moment. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I’m happier now than I have been at any time in the past. Even more excitingly, I firmly believe that things are going to get even better for me in the months ahead. Life isn’t perfect, but I feel ready to take on anything that the Universe throws my way.
Partly as a result of my new-found enthusiasm, I’ve finally pulled my finger out and started to renovate and generally fix up this web site, which has stagnated a bit over the past year or so. A redesign is on the cards, but until then some more minor adjustments have been made, including an answer — finally — to a question Seb asked, on 19th August 2003: “how long does a links page take to make?” The answer, as it turns out, is seven years. I’m sure it was worth the wait.
The notion of Gay Pride arouses much tedious harrumphing from some sections of the public, usually along the lines of, “if we had a Straight Pride event we’d be arrested for bigotry. It’s PC gone mad. Loony left, asylum seekers, Daily Mail, BBC Have Your Say”
This opinion (it’s an overstatement to call it an “argument”) ignores the fact that Pride is possibly the one day each year that LGBT people can live their lives completely openly without fear of intimidation or violence. One could easily argue that the other 364 days of the year are de facto Straight Pride days.
Such thoughts were in the back of my mind as I travelled into the city centre for the inaugural Liverpool Pride celebrations. Accepting my sexual orientation has been a long and difficult road of turbulent emotions and long phases of denial and self-loathing. Until very recently, I was out to hardly anyone. Truth be told, I felt like a bit of a fraud for even thinking of taking part in a Pride march, because for a very long time, my feelings were of shame, not pride.
Why hello, Mr Blog. It’s been a while since the last time I put fingers to keyboard and inserted my text gently into your box.