Wildewire

When I was a first year studying drama at UEA, one of the professors translated "Miss Sara Sampson" by Gotthold Lessing. Apart from some spectacular typong misstkess one line has always stuck in my memory " One can not always have the friends one would ideally choose ." My circle of friends (as opposed to acquaintances) has remained quite small since I came to Newcastle- certainly in comparison with life in Deptford/New Cross. My friends have been great... In recent years, my friends circle has grown even smaller, but my friends have still been great. During "Lockdown" I found myself part of a de facto "bubble" with the two friends with whom I have spent a Saturday or a Sunday for the last five or six years. One of them displays their lack of formal education with some pride and gusto, they know what they know and they have opinions about the rest! Our relationship has never had any intellectual depth; we just get on and have things in common. Th...

  A year after George Floyd was killed by a racist police officer in Mineapolis there has been a marked increase in discussions about "race", dramas and documentaries have been aired and people are having conversations they would not have thought about before. More white people are questioning the way they perceive the world: the position of the white experience as the default or 'norm' is being challenged; white standards of beauty are no longer accepted without question; groups and organisations are reviewing their practices to identify unconscious bias and institutional racism... I have not experienced any of those discussions or explorations among LGBTQ groups, with the exception of a Black gay Facebook page based in America. I tried to generate conversation about this in a Facebook page for Radical Faeries of Colour which may have had more white members than members of colour. After an argument erupted at my suggestion that it might be a space for Faeries of Colo...

My (half) sister who lives in America, has been doing some DNA/family research and has discovered ANOTHER child of my father's! I THINK that makes 11or 12 kids from 5 women, but I can't be sure at this point. If he hadn't left Jamaica who knows how many children he would have had.  My (half) brother, who is two years older than me and lives in North Carolina asked me to tell him about life with my father. All he had been told was that he had been a policeman. It took a while to come up with three pages which I had to preface with an apology for its grimness. My brother had grown up thinking life would have been better if his father had been in his life. I had to tell him that my mother would have been better off in many ways if she had not had a violent, gambling drunk literally pulling her and her family down. I shared with him the day I came home from school, collected my brothers and found a huge padlock on the front door... It transpired that the Honda 90cc motorscooter...

We've just had local elections. Despite MANY obvious failings, the Selfservatives show little sign of losing control as working class turkeys continue to vote for Christmas. Hartlepool, which has been Labour since its creation voted for the Tories. One man said on camera that it was because the Tories had created 12 food banks... I really feel that Britain is failing: the stubborn refusal to see the folly of Brexit reminds me of the knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who still wants to fight after most of his limbs have been lopped off. The electorate is not clever or politically savvy, that was obvious after they swallowed what the media served them about Jeremy Corbyn. They voted against the last potential socialist alternative after UK media branded him a "commie". It will be lost on many of them that policies Jeremy Corbyn suggested have been taken up by the present government despite prophecies of doom when they were originally suggested. The country is horrib...

  I've known  for thirteen years that I would end up needing surgery at some  point to sort out my kidneys. It is interesting how the medical professionals played it down for a couple of years despite me having to go for tests every three months. They called it anything but "cancer" until I got a doc to cut the crap! Thirteen years ago a major proceedure was described involving a massive cut, innards placed to one side to get at the kidney and a possibility of the kidney being removed. Luckily; techniques and technologies have improved in thirteen years and I was in and out of hospital in three days. The surgeon used a robot to do the cutting etc and it was all done by "keyhole surgery" which left me with four small holes and a body cavity with excess gas (carbon dioxide?) which they pumped into me to make room for the camera and robot slicers to work. It was very painful getting rid of that gas- the worst part of my recovery. I have never had any symptoms from ...