Wildewire

I confess that most weeks with absolutely no green are tiresome, but in the 9th (?) week of the UK 'lockdown' it is proving more difficult for me than is reasonable. Facebook is my main diversion as I've found no new job opportunities for which I can apply for a while. -A month ago I found out that I've been shortlisted for a job I think I'd actually enjoy, but they're not going to interview until the lockdown eases. My problem with Facebook is that people  state their opinions regardless of science or (my interpretation of) common sense and are adamant about their "right" to do so. I've locked horns with friends keen to end the lockdown including one who's severely asthmatic and has at least one very small child and another who keeps announcing that it is a "hoax" but won't elaborate on that statement.  The government wants state schools to reopen on June 1st but public schools like Eton et al won't reopen until Septemb...

When an ex-partner/fomer MEGA crush recently shared on Facebook his abhorrence of the word Queer as a descriptor for non-heterosexual people, I realised that my feelings about the word have shifted. "Reclaiming" words of hate is a complicated business; when "Queer" became fashionable in UK in the early 1980s I noticed that Queers were almost entirely white, under thirty, had cash enough to be in all the "right" bars wearing a uniform that featured jeans, tight white tee shirts and green "bomber-style" jackets with orange lining. As a black man, I never felt part of that crowd. It amused me that a particular journalist, who was a High Priest of the 'movement' at the time was, a few years ago, calling out guys who dressed like that. The fact that he no longer looks good in that drag might have something to do with it. My attitude to "Queer" changed when I made friends with a couple of different straight guys who are comfortabl...

The sanctuary project has not progressed. It has been well over a year since I discovered that one of the main people in the group had a completely different and largely incompatible concept of what we were trying to achieve; they were openly antigonistic to the idea of being open to the visitors who form both the spiritual and financial engine of the project.  I did my usual of taking on all the planning and realised my mistake when, despite a week-end meeting where we went through proposals line by line, my two partners displayed a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of the project. This has happened before: when I started Intercultural Arts, I took on all the planning and got a group to act as its trustees. All I asked them to do was to read monthly reports on the project's progress, which proved too much. By the end; I was shouldering so much of the project on my own I began to miss submissions and incur fines which is why I closed it down. This has been the first tim...