Northern Pride

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. Luckily, the rain held off until after the parade and the event at Exhibition Park had been in full swing for a couple of hours. I thought that the balance between community organisations and outrageous rip off merchant (£4.40 for a bottle of bud!!!) was good, we managed to leave our cards with just about all of them. 

 I went back today just to stroll about and give my kilt an outing. Bumped into a friend being wheeled about by his 'ex' who is 'on the way out'... It is sad, but my empathy is exhausted with this person: he is undoubtedly ill now, but he has affected helplessness for so long, has whined to his elderly parents to buy him the latest thing like a spoilt teenager, has managed to wangle a lot of state-assistance- up to three carers a day doing everything for him whilst he basks in a sense of regal entitlement. So now that he is obviously ill, few have much sympathy left- except his ex-partner who seems to feel obliged despite having separated more than a dozen years ago and having married someone last year.

 It was a nice day. I eventually mosied over to The Eagle, which was... The Eagle before heading home. All day I'd been swapping texts with someone I thought was a friend I'd helped out recently, when I got home it turned out to be my godson's father who has finally got his act together (two weeks into his kid's summer holiday) to actually  respond to my pleas a month before the kid's holiday that he sort things out in time. Now that HE was ready, I was expected to drop everything and jump to his attention. A friend had also come to stay for a while so I texted saying I'd deal with it in the morning, but no, his highness wanted to talk NOW so called me and got an ear-bashing before I cut him off. So thanks to him: a crappy end to a nice weekend.

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