Wildewire

Facebook is an odd thing.  I have just over three hundred friends on Facebook; I have met all but two of them and can honestly call them friends... some more than others unsurprisingly, and others I sometimes wonder if I would still like them if I spent regular face time with them today, but the past we shared was rosey enough not to have to go there.  I make clear on my profile that I am not interested in amassing thousands of contacts rather than having a way of being in touch with some of the people I met in my life. People still send me 'Friend Requests' but I rarely respond. Another odd thing is when people I have known but would not call "friends" contact me. I do try to consider the time that has passed and how the person might have changed and how important the reason for any fall-out might still be, but I will have a good nose around their profiles before I might accept them... I got a request from a manager of an organisation I worked for last year for

When I think about it, there are things about even the people I love most that I wish were different about them, not enough to actually want to change, but that I just wish were different. I don't think I am alone in that or that it makes me any more of a horrible person than I am already- I KNOW there are things about me that those closest to me wish were different about ME too. Most of the time those things are just there- I accept them- WE accept them about each other because fundamentally our love or affection trumps these 'imperfections' or hides them in the background. The man I love most in the world and more than anyone I have met in my life- who happens to be straight and our relationship is purely platonic, turns out to have pretty unacceptable views about Muslims- it is to do with where he lives and his up-bringing etc. We sometimes 'discuss' it and I am often ashamed at not delving deeper for fear of damaging what we have together. I recently cr

It is so cool to be on schedule with our main project this year: the LGBT online archive for North East England named after a popular DJ: Michael "Sal" Lumsden who died of lung cancer in 2007; The Sal Lumsden Archive Project (SLAP!). We had our first "scanning party" tonight at 'The Dancing Peppermill'- formerly 'Pride Cafe' with which I was involved for a few (ultimately painful) months last year. The idea is to get people to bring things they might have kept that tell a story about LGBT events and people: posters, fliers, programmes, photos to be scanned for inclusion on the website along with their comments and memories... We're asking organisations to share their constitutions and records of important decisions etc and we will be interviewing people to get their stories on audio or video. We want to capture the stories of older people and to honour their contributions to the LGBT communities around the region. Fewer people  turned u

I drove to Durham today (!!!) to meet an 'Age UK' group of LGBT elders. In some ways it was to be a bit of a dress rehearsal for the event we're doing tomorrow to drum up contributions for the online LGBT archive we're developing, but there was no way of really knowing what the group would want to do so we piled everything into the car to be ready for anything. They were an interesting group and they reminded me of a lot of things I knew but had let slide to the back of my mind. Widowers who only began to explore their true natures after the death of their wives, some of them living in small rural communities where the role of grieving widower is more acceptable than born again gay! They're unsurprisingly suspicious of the "freedoms" LGBT people enjoy in this country- it makes little difference if your neighbours find out your 'one of them' and decide to make your life a misery. One was a trans woman who attends bingo with her wife and most p

I can hardly believe it! I passed my driving test!!!! I only had two minor faults this time (you can have up to 15 and pass). I was concentrating so much I could feel beads of sweat rolling slowly down my face. I messed up the drive on your own bit- where they say "follow the signs to..." but I was concentrating so much on the road etc I missed the sign. Fortunately, my driving was better than my navigation. I decided I wanted to celebrate so bunked off work early and encountered a friend at The Yard and downed a few pints with him. Someone with whom I worked last year until his ego left no space for partnership flounced in. Both my friend and me have no time for this individual but he had clearly decided it was time to forget the past or something so (in a weirdly aggressive way) he said "Hello" - with a sort of querying inflection, my friend and me managed a grunt in his general direction. -While I am being bitchy lol- I saw his ex-boyfriend a few days ag

!!! I found this in an 'unpublished folder' Its a pretty standard rant from me, I can't remember when it was drafted, might as well post it... Now is not the time for investing in “strategy”, at least; in minority arts! I have lost count of the number of consultations and strategies I’ve witnessed and to which I have contributed since 1985. Each one promised a great leap forward for minority arts and culture, so why does it seem that so little has been achieved? How many full time UK creative companies, let alone venues are run by and for people from minority communities? How much public money has been spent to deliver consultations and research ‘on our behalf’? Why does it seem that so many of those consultations were conducted by the ‘Usual Suspects? Why are so few professionals from minority communities acceptable to “Strategic” agencies to conduct consultations and deliver reports? How did those who have the confidence of ‘Strategic Agencies’

Its impossible to go from "A" to "B" if you're at "C"! I've been preoccupied with my relationship with my godson and thinking with hindsight that it was never going to work out the way I hoped when I agreed to foster him three years ago. I thought I would be able to give him security, guidance, support and to build up an affectionate relationship with him that would help him make his own way in the world. I hadn't accounted for how self-reliant this tri-lingual 13 year old had become- had needed to be to survive his childhood. Self-reliance seems to be an increasingly important quality or skill-set, but it can be a problem if it is based on insufficient knowledge, experience or both. He endures my nagging with stoicism but, despite his intellect, fails to make the connection that if he struggles to exist in a home where his meals etc are provided and he has most of the things he wants, how is he going to survive when he doesn't have acc

Well; "empire" is obvious hyperbole but I am quietly excited by how well my company is taking shape as we roll into the third month. Last week was packed with  obvious opportunity to develop subsidiary activities able to deliver additional income and provide work for creative professionals in a shrinking market. Our main project: the online LGBT archive is gaining a lot of interest from potential contributors and organisations and is actually on schedule -except we've had to take the website down to develop it. After a meeting with clients from last year's main project, I am delighted to discover demand for the additional services we want to deliver. I really enjoy going into our odd office every day and work happily making new connections with organisations and potential clients, writing promotional stuff and update reports for funders and 'stake-holders'. The internet stuff has been installed, but doesn't yet extend to our office so I am still relyin

I am really pleased with the way that the main project on which I am working with my colleagues is taking shape. The training with the regional archives has been invaluable and has changed the way we want to do some key things. We even received our first contributions last week. I am determined to make a success of it, in part to prove some people wrong and because I have a profound belief in the power of communities to bring about positive change. I am so surprised to be on track despite the Archives starting their training two weeks later than we had planned, that I keep checking and refining my "master plan' for the project in case there is something I have missed. The more we work on it, the more additional interesting things pop up like a film club and also; working with the film-maker we've commissioned for the archive to work with us to offer services to clients like the community centres. The lack of effective LGBT activism in this region surprised me when I fi

I did get an apology from my godson's dad about his behaviour on Sunday- he was having a bad day apparently. But I have been preoccupied with how unhappy I am about the situation as carer for a bright kid who wilfully refuses to do... anything it seems to me, that doesn't involve playing and communicating on his computer. He is of above average intelligence his teachers say (mind you, they seem to think that because he reads for his own pleasure) but he does speak three languages after the various accidents of his upbringing to date. But he gets below average marks at school mainly because he is " demotivated by school " because " the best it can offer will be 40 years of a job I'm going to hate ". I did laugh when he said that: the idea of securing a job that would keep one for 40 years is at best naive and I tried to explain that the sure way of getting an unsatisfactory future is to mess up his time at school. Of course it is crap to get people to m

I was really impressed with Northern Pride. Newcastle's "Pride" event has come a LONG way from the cliquey closed and dull affair it was when I first came here. At one point the organisation that was allegedly running the festival got a grant from the local council for an office but didn't actually produce the event for two years and couldn't or actually wouldn't say what they HAD been doing. Of course there were gripes on facebook et al about it becoming "corporate", it pisses me off when people equate the badly-organised, poorly advertised and completely uninspiring with "community" and the opposite as "corporate". One of the group told me the festival- now over a week, will be costing £250,000, the grant its predecessor received 10 years ago was £2,500. I was there yesterday with my colleagues to promote our main project. After almost three weeks of surprising sunshine tantamount to a real summer, the forecast was dire. Luc

The company two friends and me are building is based on the skills, experience, passions, energies and contacts of the people involved, yet in these first two weeks of operation it has been tragicomic how easily our shoestring budget has worn holes in the fabric of what we're trying to achieve and tempt us to wonder if this "new approach" hasn't been tried before is because it just doesn't work? The one certainty is that if any of the established institutions might contemplate what we're trying to do, they would set their budgets at twice, if not three times the amount for which we're trying to do it. Through luck and a promise of collaboration  we've landed offices in the city centre,  for twelve months,  a minute from its central rail terminal, for the same cost as the "Hot Desk" budgeted for in the funding application for our main project. On paper, this central base will help to attract and connect with clients and it positions us clo

  I am NOT one of those who will slag London off just because I no longer live there, I think London is a fantastic city, I just began to find it a very difficult place in which to actually live. This is my eleventh year in Newcastle and I have NOT regretted moving, in fact I regularly give myself a silent congratulation when I experience something that is very different to the experiences I had in London. I love being able to saunter across the city in under an hour, I love the pace, I love the scale. More people use London's Charing Cross station in the 'Rush Hour' every week day than live in the cities of Newcastle and Gateshead combined. 2.5 million people live in North East England, there are just 2 people per square kilometer living in Northumberland... I have had some hard times, since 2011 in particular, but I am convinced that the effects of redundancy and clawing myself back would have been MUCH more difficult in London. I remember seven lean years I spent i

I'd give the first week in the new office for our community interest company C-! At one point I was so frustrated I wanted to KILL! Despite all the planning we weren't quite ready- the lack of internet access was the biggest blow; the 'landlords' won't have it installed for up to 6 weeks. I thought I'd be able to prepare at the office and send stuff via internet at home or a nearby cafe etc but my problems were compounded by my home computer being repaired but losing access to microsoft office and me being unable to find the product key and being confronted with the prospect of paying microsoft again- until I sorted that one out I wasn't able to do the work at home. Part one of the solution came with purchasing a handy gizmo that creates my own personal mobile internet hotspot. My relief was palpable. Another problem is our main establishment partner hasn't been returning calls, messages or texts. They're to get £1,000 for delivering 40 hours o

Homophobia bothers me ("no shit Sherlock"!). LGBT people are a convenient scapegoat for everything everywhere from economic woes to natural disasters, but I am perhaps irrationally most disappointed by black homophobia. I expect black people to know better than to jump on the band-wagon of persecuting a group because they're different. But I know that is ridiculously naive: look at the history of the Jewish people and how they treat the Palestinians in the land they stole from them now they have the power to do some of what was done to them to someone else. That Christianity fuels so much black homophobia is equally galling. I do not presume to challenge let alone denigrate anyone's religious beliefs, but even the most cursory glance a the history of Africa (and Asia and South America etc) reveals "bringing the "Christian" message" as an excuse for the most inhuman atrocities. Yet it is homosexuality that is presented as an evil import from &qu

On Monday, I move into  new offices in the city centre with two colleagues, to properly launch the project I started in 2011. The rent is cheap, the offices are minutes from the central station and run by two guys with a vision and limited experience- we (and other tenants) are committed to supporting them in return for the low rent. Our approach (to culture-based community development) is to develop an association of freelance creative professionals able to offer a range of skills for specific projects whilst keeping a small and versatile admin group to maintain the organisation between projects and secure funds and resources for future activities.   We start by offering admin, fund-raising and project management services to organisations and then by pitching projects that match our own skills sets, we develop by identifying freelance professionals with additional skills who are willing to work with us. We contact Associates offering them work, if they don't want to/ can't

Having blocked him on Facebook, I thought the guy I'd been dealing with recently would have got the message, but two text messages yesterday smashed that illusion. The first was worryingly petty and irrational, whilst the second was a grovelling apology for the first that sought sympathy for his emotional state. My response was to clearly and firmly tell him to leave me alone, to stop trying to tell me what 'my problem' is and for him to expend that energy on himself. He tried to attack everything he thinks he knows about me and to present me as a failure in all aspects of my life. He attacked me for the failure of our relationship, completely failing (again) to acknowledge that the problems we encountered surfaced when I finally accepted that he had no intention of fulfilling what he said he would and reacted to that. To read his messages, you would imagine I had put HIM through months of hellish abuse. There was something in his observations about how I seem to let

Well, the potential suitor proved not to have matured with age and was blatantly attempting to string me along - or was fooling himself, about seriously contemplating a move to Newcastle. The number of 'slips' he made wasn't even funny by the end. I was as clear as I could be consistently telling him I didn't want a "long distance relationship" and listed the reasons they have never worked for me and are not attractive to me. I made it clear that if sex was the sole motivation it would not satisfy me- I can get sex in Newcastle whenever I want it pretty much, why should I wait for the occasional visits of a peripatetic partner? He visited last week end and it was soon clear we were on different pages. The weekend visit is the worst experience of the Long Distance Relationship in my opinion as so much tends to get crammed into a short amount of time usually when both really need to chill. On the Saturday I was made to wait for hours whilst he was "doin

Lots of things are 'about to happen' for me, which is quite exciting. Perhaps most of them won't come to fruition, but it is an interesting feeling to be experiencing so much "dandy potential". On the work front: I have persuaded two colleagues who have been suffering wage-slavery at the hands of ...'inadequate' bosses that their lot would be better working collaboratively as freelance independents, with me. They agreed and a project I have been developing for over a year finally received the "partnership funding" we required to release the grant we were awarded last year so it can get going this month. We've started negotiations with a client who approached me for fund-raising and business development support and who have cheap offices for rent in the city centre. We're also galvanised to revisit the project we did last year: Centrelink  to both complete the project along the lines we described in the final report to funders AND to s

-And "yes" I DO class myself in the first category! I have met few people up here with the community arts and development skills and experience I possess. Its too hard not to moan when I see so much I can't change and I am very aware that my (bad) reputation precedes me- with some justification as I have locked horns with bored Boards and flounced off into the distance more than once. ANOTHER friend shared the horrors of working for inadequate managers recently, seemingly incapable of addressing obvious issues out of fear and obvious inability. The common theme is that if you're the sort of person who won't rock any boats, frighten any live stock and maintain the status quo; you're in!- Brown-nosing is a  creative sector  core skill. Beware the person who is everyone's (professional) friend: you can wager they're sharing information about you both real and invented with your enemies and will end up well funded whilst you fall from favour. There is a

Sad to say that I was right to maintain my cynicism concerning the idea that a buff, young, body-building Ukrainian would actually commit himself to living with an ancient, cantankerous queen of questionable fitness like me! As much as I thoroughly enjoyed the five month experience, I maintained a modicum of awareness throughout, to enjoy it like a sort of active novella or computer-generated alternative reality game.  Even after I contacted my supposed suitor three days before Arrival Day (oooh!) to make sure he was actually going to be there before I splashed cash on trains and accommodation, he left it until Arrival Day (oooh!) -1 to concoct a tale of incapacitation as the result of a serious road accident. I wrote back that I was of course horrified, but I had to go as I had just noticed a 500lb pig flying around my garden and I wanted to get a picture of it. No further contact after daily missives and conversations without fail for the last three months. You gotta admire that k