Monthly Archives for June 2008

Down Low on a Sunday Morning

When I woke up with a fuzzy felt faux moustache stuck firmly to the top of my right arm my initial terror at seeing it – thinking it was a spider – was sluggishly replaced by the dawning recollections of the previous night, which ended barely two hours before, in full daylight.

The stick-on ‘tache is the entry ticket for the New York Downlow, a mobile gay man trannie-shack disco that’s set up shop in Trash City at this year’s Festival. It was one of the few remaining places open at 4am when we were convinced that the thing we wanted most in the whole of Glastonbury, was more lager.

We economised on time by avoiding the field-long queue – the club hadn’t yet been reviewed for GlastOnline, so we needed to get in there pretty quick – and entered the hazy dry-ice-filled world of topless male disco bunnies. We got our beer and I got some sideshow entertainment by watching my two (male) friends cling to the bar, cautiously observing the other side of Glastonbury. While I wandered off to explore – break dancing jump rope; lots of horny moustachioed men mauling each other; and a few lost hippy-trippers – they escaped to the food van outside.

Every year at Glastonbury I try to be a vegetarian. This is partly because I refuse to eat field-cooked chicken and partly because the home cooked veggie food on offer looks far more appetising. Burgers hold a certain appeal, but I don’t like to do things by halves so they’re also outlawed for the five Festival days.

There is just one animal that thwarts my foray into the wholesome underworld of self control – pig, in the smoked, cured and rashered format. When alcohol free it’s pretty tempting, after too many pints of lager and two hours sleep, it’s irresistible. It’s also like the solid version of Berocca – an instant hangover cure.

So, today, at 10.30am, I broke my meat ban.

COPYRIGHT GLASTONBURY FESTIVALS 2008

Saturday at Glastonbury

Today I took a sauna with a load of naked hippies, ate yet more veggie burger breakfasts and went to watch Joan Armatrading, where I officially found my second Hive of the Leztival. This one was the preserve of lesbian mums and clapped out wrinkly old hippie Wah Wahs. Eye candy at every angle.

Yes, it’s been another Gay Day at Glastonbury:

Joan Armatrading sauntered onto the Jazz World Stage on a sunny Saturday afternoon to a warm reception from a loyal band of fans that were clinging to the barriers at the front.

Dressed entirely in black and brandishing an electric guitar like Bruce Springsteen, she launched into tracks from most recent album, Into The Blues, surprising anyone (like me) who was expecting retro pop romp. When I first found out that the singer behind the 80s classic ‘Drop The Pilot’ was a black bluesy-soul diva, better known for her lesbian love songs, I was pretty shocked.

I’m not an avid watcher of blues, soul or female singer-song writers, so I don’t have a reliable benchmark with which to compare Ms Armatrading. Let me be clear, she was good. And with a voice strong enough to reach the opposite side of Worthy Farm there was no way anyone could fail to pay attention.

She’s a lady with a list of hits as long as both of her arms, stretching back over a decade or three. In her hour and a bit long set she managed to skip through her recent blues-folk era (‘Into the Blues’), indulge the Springsteen (‘Me Myself I’) within and touch everyone’s hearts with her best love ballads – tales of traumatic transatlantic girlfriends (‘All The Way From America’) and lonely longing (‘Love and Affection’).

The guitar was dropped briefly, for a haunting almost-whispered rendition of ‘Willow’ which floated out and over the field full of people who were hanging on her every word. Every pause lasting more than two seconds was filled with bursts of rapturous applause from an audience who couldn’t resist the enormous grin and flashes of white teeth from a singer who clearly loved every minute of her Glastonbury experience.

After an hour Joan vanished, without having Drop(ped) The Pilot. She duly returned, like the encore diva that she is – swapping guitar for mic, to play her best piece of 80s pop, finishing one of the most eclectic and interesting performances I’ve seen at this year’s festival.

Copyright Glastonbury Festivals 2008

Friday at Glastonbury!

Santogold earlier this afternoon – awesome.

“For anyone who hasn’t yet seen or heard Ms Santi White (AKA Santogold), try imagining what you’d get if Missy Elliott had her wicked way with Beyonce in a (clean) backstage toilet, with an echoey mic recording every breath. It’s pretty cool.”

Copyright Glastonbury Festivals 2008.

Glastonbury Leztival

I’ve made my annual pilgrimage to Glastonbury and am writing to you from a bus, in a field, with wireless internet. This year’s Glastonbury is going to be a Leztival, I’ve decided. And it’s requiring far less effort than I thought it would.

It’s only Thursday and they are everywhere – mostly in pairs, which are mostly matching. At first I was going to start a photo record of sightings, but given the way I’m going I’d be out of film by Friday. I’ve seen so many lesbians at Glastonbury that I’m almost bored of them already.

So I’ve decided to do what anyone with a boring script would do – that is, create sub plots for my story. That’s why I’m taking notes on the hotspots – i.e. those areas with the highest levels of sightings. Let’s call them Hives.

Question: What do you get if you put a woman with a chainsaw in the Field of Avalon? Shapely tree stumps and a lot of men. And fucking hundreds of lesbians!

“Charlie Dimmock’s got nothing on her,” was one of the more polite comments I overheard while watching my first display of chainsaw tree sculpting. Picture a well built woman in jeans brandishing a fucking huge motorised saw, carving up tree stumps like they are pieces of cheese.

I’ve always been slightly bemused by Charlie Dimmock’s popularity, as neither gardening nor Groundforce are particularly cool. Yet her calendar was in the top 5 bestsellers last year.

However, seeing a girl with a chainsaw artfully chopping up tree trunks has opened my mind. Now I’ve seen the effect a bit of female muscle, sweat and sawdust can have on male festival goers, and lesbians.

It’s not really my thing, but I sort of get why it might appeal. Chainsaw Charlie almost had me mesmerised for a moment – until I remembered the task at hand. Hives.

Observing the Dimmock effect in real-life rates as one of the funniest things I’ve seen at Glastonbury. A mixture of wonder, fear and longing evaporated from the huddles of open-mouthed lezzers who seemed to be rooted to the ground around the open-air studio.

I heard one man offering encouragement, with a hearty, “Go on, girl.” Another one muttered, “That’s one way to get away from the kitchen sink.” All that vocal sexism and chauvinism would have bounced off her industrial strength earphones, but she wasn’t wearing goggles so would have to be blind to not notice how many Wah Wahs she was attracting. I’ve officially found my first Hive.

Fond memories of a Town called K

My preference for K-Town over T-Park is no secret and anyone who’s been reading this Blog over the past couple of months will know that I’m finding it hard to adjust to my new postcode. Even if the street code part of it titillatingly looks like ‘SEX’. In fact you’re probably fed up with hearing about it – I know my Homies are (they LOVE our new pad).

It’s not that I don’t like T-Park, I just prefer K-Town. They are such different places…despite sharing a Sainsburys Local.

For example, the local T-Park hairdresser is rather imaginatively called ‘Hair Centre’. In K-Town it’s Kutt Zone (see what they did there with the K-Town ‘K’? Genius). Guess which one I go to to get my hair cut. My Homie, Andrew also prefers the K.

That’s just a taster of the differences between the two places. Newcomers to the North of London can be referred towards a stroll up both K-Town Road and T-Park Road for further info. You will see that these are two very, very different tracks.

K-Town Road is a menagerie of independent shops, including the ramshackle hardware store where I went Tool-Belting, the Kutt Zone hair saloon and Blustons – the original roaring forties granny twin-set boutique, not to mention a plethora of the North’s finest battlecruisers (that’s boozers, for the un-cockney’d among you).

At the top of K-Town Road there are benches under a shelter where the train station used to be, near the current K-Town Tube station, allowing one to pause and reflect on the sights, while repositioning the weight away from the legs and towards the arse. It’s always a pleasure.

T-Park Road is a long strip of large townhouses-cum-terraced mansions. The only respite from the strip is Tufnells, the imaginatively named sports bar, where one can procure a BBQ’d burger and a pint of Fosters to accompany the big screen sport-related ents they have on there most weekends. Like K-Town Road, T-Park Road has a bench, situated outside our flat’s front window.

Initially I had high hopes for this – benches always attract waifes and strays (check K-Town out, if in doubt – there’s always a cider-soaked tramp passed out by the station). And promisingly, on our first day in T-Park a strange blond-dreadlocked lady with a whip and an Alsatian camped out for the day on our new bench. After spending a few hours doing whip-poi and frightening her dog, which then shat near the bench, she left. She returned once, but was ushered away by a parking attendent, of all people! I suppose technically, she was parked there. We haven’t seen her since.

Another K-T difference is the nature of our immediate neighbours. Instead of having a couple of roudy Australian dirty-thirty encore-gap-year goers living beneath us, we now have a reclusive old man and a one-dimensional midget female lawyer.

They don’t live together, but I reckon they’d get on just fine if they did – they both hate bikes and wont allow them in the hallway. That’s why Carson, my vintage Raleigh Vektar, is now camped out in the garden with only a plastic sheet and a strong chain for company, poor thing. He’s really not an outdoor bike – being an 80s legend he’s more at home on t-shirts and in eBay collectors groups.

True it’s quieter, cleaner and far ‘nicer’ and my Homies no longer get disturbed by noisy louts living beneath us, but I miss the edgy K-Town odd-bods and the peeling paper in the hallways in what I fear may have been the last vestiges of my era of student living. Oh it was a sad day when the Homies left K-Town. I even miss those middle of the night wake-up calls from the druggies across the road, who used to hammer down the door of the old man who’s house they went to for their four o’clock fixes…

Project Tool-Belt

I’ve always denied any interest in DIY. I don’t have a tool box, don’t want a powerdrill and have never had a longing for a socket set.

So, why, on a trip to my local K-Town hardware shop, did I get unnaturally excited and dare I say it, inspired by the endless boxes of nails, hooks, screws and other exciting little trinkets which have some very specific purpose that I have no clue about? Could there be a latent Tool-Belt Lesbian in me, trying to escape? I have been wearing my combat shorts a lot lately…

Anyway, I hear you asking me why I was in the hardware shop at all, given my lack of interest in DIY matters…Well, I’m kitting out the walk-in cupboard in my bedroom to make it into a darkroom (creaming at the thought). The cupboard currently has the standard issue handle on the outside, but not on the inside of the door. Strange, that. So after checking with my very understanding landlady (she has a darkroom too) I bought a handle for the inside of the door (so I can shut myself in the cupboard-cum-darkroom). Hence the trip to the hardware store on K-Town Road.

The door handle came eqipped with four little screws, with which to attach the unnaturally gold looking implement to the door. Cue a little trip to the airing cupboard to find my Housemate’s toolbox (she’s a real lesbian) and locate a screwdriver. As you can see from the picture below, Project Tool-Belt was a roaring homosexual success:

Toolbelt Lesbianism at its most efficient

My next Tool-Belt task is to knock in some picture hooks and attach a few mini-clotheslines so I can hang up to dry my films and prints. Better locate my claw hammer…

What’s in a Lesbian name?

I wasn’t surprised when someone told me about a Greek island full of lesbians – any lezzer knows Lesbos is a hot spot for rug muchers. Especially if they have been there (like me!)

So, why is this in the news today? Well, it seems Lesbos is a bit more full of lesbians than I first thought. The Greek ladies of the isle also like to call themselves lesbians. In fact, they say they are the original Lesbians (with a capital ‘L’). And that’s why they are a littled muffed, sorry miffed, that their good name has been taken somewhat in vain.

Such is the spread of the muff the Greek warriors have decided to take this matter to court, challenging the lady-lovers’ right to call themselves lesbians. What’s more, they have suggested that if they win they might try to fight the lez on an international scale. Read all about it on the BBC website by clicking here.

Now, although pretty damn hard to enforce, one of the outcomes of this case would mean girls-wot-like-girls are left sans nom. That would be a tragedy…oh see what I did there?!

So, who are the real lesbians? Is it gay women, or the 100,000 people living on Greece’s third biggest island – plus the other 250,000 expatriates who originate from Lesbos?

Personally I’ve never much cared for the word ‘lesbian’, or any of it’s derivatives (lez, lezzer, lezza, lesley, lemon…creative bunch aren’t we?) so if we had to use the more descriptive ‘gay women’ then I don’t think it would be the end of the world. I also rather like Wah Wah – an underused term if ever there was one. And if that doesn’t suit we could just settle for rug munchers, muff divers, Australian DJs, or be those innocuous ‘women in comfortable shoes’…

However, the latent two-year-old inside tells me that if I was told that I couldn’t use the word lesbian, it would magically position itself on the tip end of my tongue and proceed to dive off at the most inopportune moments. In fact, it’s already on the end of the spring board.

You know, like when you mean to say ‘lettuce’ or ‘less’ or something like that. Imagine it – you’re in a provincial branch of Hamburger Union (like I so often am, not) ordering a cheeseburger and ask for a little bit of lesbian with it…aaarrrgh, the horror! Almost as bad would be ordering dinner after the hot straight work colleague your sitting next to who doesn’t know you want to Wah her. She asks for a large portion of the dish (probably meat); you try to ask for ‘less then her’, but all that comes out is that you want to ‘lesbian her’. Not cool.

Already I want to say it. LESBIAN. Lesbian. LESBIAN. L-L-L-LESBIAN. Les-les-les-les-LesbIAN!

So the issue is, who has the right to call themselves Lesbians – is it those in pursuit of pussy or the swathy hetrosexual Greek ladies of Lesbos? Who knows. At the moment there doesn’t seem to be a strong argument from either side. The chap leading the charge for the natives is a publisher called Dimitris Lambrou, whose main point seems to be that the ‘international dominance of the word in its sexual context violates the human rights of the islanders, and disgraces them around the world’. Phew – that’s heavy stuff. According to Mr Lambrou, all the sex-ccociation of the good Lesbian name causes daily problems to the social life of Lesbos’s inhabitants…

So much so it’s allegedly gotten to the stage where the Greek government is so embarrassed by the term Lesbian that it has been forced to rename the island after its capital, Mytilini…

No chance of sharing that name then, Dim?

K-Town/Gay-Town

I’m going to start calling K-Town Gay-Town. When I first moved here a couple of years ago it instantly felt like it was supposed to be (hence giving it an affectionate nickname almost straight away), and now I know why. It’s absolutely riddled with homosexuals…

Today’s sightings included four fags, three lezzers and five on the fence. I was only out for an hour or so, but had I known it would be such a visual feast, I’d have made the effort to leave my house well before three pm today. I don’t know why I get so excited when I see other lesbians out and about in K-Town – but for some reason, sightings are like squares of dairy milk.

Maybe it’s because I’m secretly a little bit scared of them. It’s a TUA (truth universally acknowledged) that I’m terrible with girls…that I like, or might potentially like. Clearly lesbians fall into this category. I’ve been told conversation with me in such circumstances is a bit like ‘pulling teeth’, and that’s not far wrong. I don’t know what it is – usually I can talk for hours. But not if I’m near a strange lesbian, especially if it’s a fit one. So, this fear of girls is perhaps why I find it exciting to observe them from a safe distance, in my ‘hood. It’s always nice to be checked out too.

Anyway, today’s haul of Lez-Spots included an interesting new revelation. I was in my local charity shop, which is run by a very friendly fag with whom I’m well acquainted, and noticed that his young (female) assistant was sporting the lesbian summer uniform. You know, the combat shorts and white vest – her aviators were probably behind the till somewhere. I’ve seen this girl many times before and never batted a gay eyelid, but today was different. Her uniform completely gave her away, revealing to me for the first time her massive inner lesbian. Actually, thinking about it now, I don’t know how I missed it before – she’s a full blown strutting, boy pant-wearing lezzer. So obvious!

Before picking up a quick compliment from the friendly fag (he always tells me how good my hair is looking) I moved on to one of K-Town’s more familiar lezzer haunts, Kutt Zone on K-Town Road. For a haircut. The holiday sun and sweat had made my hair almost double in length and more annoyingly, density, so I dropped by in the hope that I could secure a last minute trim before hitting the town tonight. And bumped (almost literally – it was a near miss when crossing the road) into my second K-Town Lez of the day. What fun – it was like lesbian pinball! This one was an unremarkable dark-haired one, brandishing a couple of weighty looking shopping bags full of tins of cat food. OK, I made that last bit up, but it would have been funny if they were…

Number three was slightly more interesting in that she didn’t reciprocate my lesbian nod of acknowledgment. That was a little rude, but I’ll forgive her – she may have known not what she do…perhaps she was distracted (I know I’m regularly guilty of wandering around in my own world). Otherwise there’s no excuse – lesbians always have to at least make eye contact, don’t they? It’s all part of the fun of being in a semi-secret society.