Wildewire

  A drunk friend contacted me last week. He'd called me when I had visitors and I'd sent him a message explaining why I hadn't been able to converse. We ended up speaking for a couple of hours! We've had an on/off relationship in part because of our different backgrounds but similar creative and professional aims. It turned out that it had been a traumatic couple of weeks for him with three or four people he knows having died. He had decided to contact people with whom he doesn't have a lot of contact to let them know his feelings for them. He ended up inviting me to see a performance at the end of a rehearsal period for a piece of dance he'd been choreographing. I've got a collection of music on 'Spotify' I call 'Choreography' as I see complete dance pieces when I listen to them. I'd shared the collection with him last year and he'd used a couple of pieces in the dance. I got to the venue and encountered a couple of people who were a...

  A drunk friend contacted me last week. He'd called me when I had visitors and I'd sent him a message explaining why I hadn't been able to converse. We ended up speaking for a couple of hours! We've had an on/off relationship in part because of our different backgrounds but similar creative and professional aims. It turned out that it had been a traumatic couple of weeks for him with three or four people he knows having died. He had decided to contact people with whom he doesn't have a lot of contact to let them know his feelings for them. He ended up inviting me to see a performance at the end of a rehearsal period for a piece of dance he'd been choreographing. I've got a collection of music on 'Spotify' I call 'Choreography' as I see complete dance pieces when I listen to them. I'd shared the collection with him last year and he'd used a couple of pieces in the dance. I got to the venue and encountered a couple of people who were a...

[ Pic: Black Gay Group, Gay's the Word, 1980s] It really interests me how little impact the global response to the murder of George Floyed and the subsequent resurgence in Black Lives Matter seems to have affected or impacted the LGBTQ groups and organisations with which I have been involved. I fell out with the 'High Priest' of the 'Albion Faeries' when I tried to initiate conversation about this. After I left I noticed that the ill-judged and poorly-maintained Facebook page 'Faeries of Colour' wherein the 'heated debate' occured was taken down completely. The fact that I realised that I'd made about 80% of the contributions to the page and removed them all in a fit of pique may have contributed to that. Eighteen months later, those groups are still untroubled by racial discussions. I shuddered when the implications of that hit me: At one level; I felt asked to prioritise my sexuality over my ethnicity and I realised how far I've been prepar...

I miss my hair! I've been shaving my head since the early 1990s when I noticed that my extensions were affecting my scalp! I never expected that to become permanent, but when I decided to start growing my hair again, it wouldn't. I'd had a good run, though: "Hair that moves, always grooves!" I remember that the same week I shaved my head, a Channel 4 discussion programme in which I had taken part: "Doing it with You Is Taboo" was broadcast. It did seem a little like I had changed my appearance so as not to be identified which was a little sad as one of the points I'd made in the show was that I was happy to be identified as a Black, Gay Man on behalf of people who could not. Nevertheless, I was somewhere in North London one day when a Black guy approached me and thanked me for being on the show, he'd recognised me even without the Barnet. The first time I shaved my head I didn't do it very well and travelled to work with an isosceles triangle...

I like dance, a lot! I remember watching early episodes of 'Strictly Come Dancing' but ditching it when I felt it became too much of (just) a gimmick. The show has become immensely popular in the sixteen or so years since it started but I haven't been drawn back to it until they began to discuss same sex couples. Unsurprisingly, there was the inevitable 'Backlash' from pearl-clutching phobics frothing at the mouth about 'morals', 'protecting children', 'family show' and the usual bollocks they always spout at moments like that. I think it has been a couple of years at least since same sex couples were proposed for the show, this season it happened. I was relieved that it was a couple of men: too often when they start this kind of thing it is with women; two women have always been more 'acceptable'/titilating than two men. So I decided to watch the current season. The two men, a Black South African and a white Brit have been doing very...

  The safest response, in terms of my sanity, would be to laugh... So, I was contacted by a friend a couple of weeks ago, asking me if I was involved in the 'cultural archive project' to which she'd been asked to contribute. I knew nothing and reminded her of my persona non grata status among the creative elite of Newcastle. She insisted and sent me some information. I saw that all of the people and organisations who seemed to be leading this project were women. I told her I really wasn't bothered about not having been involved. My friend drew my attention to the fact that the project had been initiated last September to run for a year. She was annoyed that they could have done almost a year's work about minority ethnic arts development and not contacted the organisation that was set up to develop that sector... ... With some reluctance, I accepted her prompt and recieved a missive from one of the organisers with whom I had worked when I ran Intercultural Arts. We ...

The friend/bubble-mate with whom I fell out some time ago has now fallen out with our other friend so is not coming to our green day gatherings. It is interesting as the week before this latest 'crisisette' they acted oddly in my opinion right from the moment they arrived. -Strangely demanding I mean more than usual and as dismissive as a feudal ruler. I found it so odd that I was quiet for most of the visit. -'the problem with them' is that they live in a world in which they are rarely challenged by the people around them- family and friends. They have a reputation for explosive reactions that has taught most people that it is easier to pretend to give in to them rather than challenge their madness. Their own children rarely share anything of import with them because they can never count on them to respond like an average adult might. The precipitation of this latest issue comes from our friend's regular visit to their home most Tuesdays. It is an expected and habi...

  A lot can happen in two weeks, and it did. It is ironic that when my life becomes hectic or a bit exciting I rarely find time to write about it. My last post was about the fostering training I've started, but last week one of the lads who has been lodging with me 'absconded' so I will start my catch up posts with that. At 19yrs old, the lad is legally an adult and doesn't have to be 'looked after' by the local authority- at least in principle, except that he became a 'failed asylum-seeker' whilst lodging with me. Social workers and me ran around like crazy things trying to understand the Byzantine machinations of the Home Office and were eventually assured that there would be no dawn raids to take this 19yr old to a detention centre- UNLESS he got into any trouble, in which case the process to deport him would be accelerated and he would forfeit the cash sweetener he would have been offered when 'invited' to leave, it apparently costs thousands...