Wildewire

This has been a difficult week: I have made a lot of contacts with different groups; I even drove all the way to Teesdale  to a Visitor Network meeting and arrived late having got lost.  I came back on the opposite side of the valley I drive past to get to work . It was stunning. I arrived at the meeting as they were gloating about their "hidden gem" status. My first contribution was to suggest that patting themselves on the back for being "hidden" was counter-intuitive for a visitor network because people just don't know about the region- people in Newcastle and Durham are as ignorant of the area as Londoners which makes the job of promoting it more difficult ("derr")... It has been a week of meetings which have disrupted my aim to have a draft budget to work on next week before producing a draft development plan for my boss the following week. I am finding the council's systems as frustrating as I expected. I understand the need for security ...

This was my favourite sculpture until it was dismantled after bits of it started falling off. " The B of the Bang " was positioned outside Manchester Stadium and signified the moment a starting pistol is discharged. My life isn't grand or important-enough for an all out "bang" but I'm near to managing a fully considered "pop"! Sadly, the sculpture was dismantled when one of its giant spikes fell to the floor- not hard to see why the council would want to avoid the potential of a citizen being speared by a giant spike. That is another reason I feel there is an affinity between the sculpture and my life! (lol). LOADS has happened since I last blogged! Ironically; when my life becomes interesting I find less time to blog. My new job is turning out to be really good!! My biggest problem is that although I have received my first salary cheque I am still struggling financially and seem set to do so for almost as long as I was out of work! The job i...

Of course they're not; its only been a month since I wrote about my Faerie Friends. Since my last blog post the rainbow flag has been discussed. It started with Philadelphia I think who added two brown stripes to the flag. It was a symbolic acknowledgement of the invisibility and marginalisation of people of colour in LGBTQ communities. Despite supposedly being hot on "spirituality" the symbolism of this gesture was lost on almost all who participated in the ensuing discussion. I took part at first; trying to explain that the fact that there aren't green or blue-skinned people wasn't relevant and that "yes" the rainbow flag is supposed to be inclusive but it clearly doesn't include everyone. Even Faeries to whom I consider myself close seemed not to get it. I sat back and observed the conversation become trivialised until it was easy to dismiss. It was a truly fascinating experience. I do feel a lot less close to the group as a result. I feel lik...

I'm a member of a group of "radical" queers who are committed to alternative ways of being and relating to each other. There's a Facebook page for the group where recently I posted a couple of things about racism in Gay communities. I posted them because I've been involved with alternative queer groups since the 1990s and have rarely encountered more than one or two other people of colour at any event especially if they're residential events, the same has been true of this group. I was curious to see how they'd respond. It was really sad that they responded in very typical ways. From dismissive to defensive: "Black people are racist too", "there is too much madness in the world"- to be discussing this at the moment, "there's plenty of racist white gays. There are also plenty racist black gays." This last comment was from the group's central figure and was most disappointing because of that. He presents a very spi...

I have been in bed since Sunday with abdominal pain and nausea which have kept me awake. I am exhausted and drained.  I am pretty sure it is trapped wind- no bloody joke when it hits I tell you! It happened to me a few days before my 30th birthday: I was working for Talawa Theatre and they had a belated office Christmas Dinner at some Mongolian Grill place- lots of near-raw vegetables and yummy sauces. The next day I was uncomfortable, by the evening I was in agony. To make it worse, I'd organised a big birthday bash at Central Station in King's Cross. By the time guests began to arrive, it was all I could to to lounge on a sofa and smile wanly... Until my Irish friend Eamon arrived, laughed, bought me a double port and lemonade and the pain went!!!!   am ever the optimist when it comes to my health so I refused to believe the excruciating pain I was feeling was anything more than trapped wind and that it would go away... Eventually. I'd spent Sunday with a ...

So writing this blog again served its purpose as a repository for my darkest fears but last Thursday I got an email saying that my references had been received and were satisfactory so my new employers would be sending me a start date. The next day, they asked me if I'd start the following Monday, I refused. I reminded them that I was unwilling to show up as "The Manager" when all I know about the business is that it is losing money. I asked for an organisation plan of departments with job titles, what the MONTHLY takings have been and costs for each department, how many business units remain empty, what the rents are etc... Can you imagine turning up to a job where a restructure is likely to shed jobs but you don't actually know how it operates?  My Line Manager relented, sent me some docs and we agreed I would start next Tuesday after the May Day bank holiday. I began brain-storming and one of my lodgers joined in. We had some exciting ideas but looking at the...

Three weeks after being offered a job I still don't know when I might actually start working! Being utterly poor it is one of those ironic times where I have time to be doing stuff but no dosh to enable me to do it: I have invites to the South of France and to Norway to visit friends but I can't afford to get there and  Sod's Law dictates that as soon as I landed anywhere I'd get a summons to start work back in UK. The problem appears to be references. Despite telling them, with three day's notice that one of my referees would be going on holiday for 2 weeks I don't think they managed to get the request to her in time. As for my former employers, it wouldn't surprise me if they put the request at the bottom of their in-tray: they went to extravagant lengths to make me understand how insignificant I was in the scheme of their things whilst I was being paid by them, why should that have changed? There is of course the possibility that they either give an unf...