Mon
31-Jul-2006

soho pride weekend

Images

Matt and I spent Saturday sunning ourselves and drinking cava and fruit beer in Regent's Park. We were joined by Jamie and Will, Michal, Ema, Patrick and Laurent, and got quite pissed and mildly sunburnt. In the evening, Matt went off to sample the new GAY Late bar, and I headed to Angel, to Clockwork, a very hip bar on Pentonville Road, with dark red lighting, loud music and interesting cocktails, for Kal's birthday. The bar was a bit loud, but fun. They projected Wacky Races and Transformers the Movie up on the wall. Andy, Tom M and I all sat mesmerised by the death of Optimus Prime and the transformation of Megatron to Galvatron! I also had a fun chat with Catherine about political philosophy.

Next day and Matt and I had to get up rather early for our Crusaid 'Walk for Life' fundraising walk round central London. Though we only started raising money a few days before, we managed £540 between us, which is not bad. The walk was fun - lovely sunny weather, but not too hot - lots of central London sights along the way - and nicely tiring. My feet were hurting a bit from banging on city concrete for three hours, but all in all it was very jolly.

We finished our walk around 15.20, and after eating bananas distributed by a kindly dalai lama like figure at the end of the walk in Hyde Park, we made our way over to Soho.

Soho was heaving with the gay nation, as Compton Street, Rupert Street and Soho Square were all given over to street parties and drunken drugged up revelling. We bumped into all kinds of people. At one point my father called me on the mobile, as the Gaydar stage – adorned with Roman gladiators sporting hot pants and huge oranged plumed golden helmets – pumped out loud house music behind me:

"Tom," he asked me solemnly, "where are you?"
"I'm at Soho Pride!" I shouted over the top of the music. "I'm slightly drunk!"
"Why that's great darling because I'm totally pissed!" he replied. "Thomas - do you think that we should sort out a ceasefire in Lebanon?"
I turned off my left hearing aid to block out some of the house music and struggled to get my brain in gear: "Well, yes definitely. The current conflict is rooted in Israel's illegal occupation of the Golan Heights and the West Bank, its destruction of Gaza and its gradual attempt to extinguish the Palestinian nation. There should definitely be a ceasefire."
"No," he said, "I mean, should we, that is you and I, sort out a ceasefire in Lebanon?"
I had sudden visions of travelling to Lebanon with Russ, ready to somehow arrange a ceasefire from war torn Beirut, so gulping down my nervousness: "Definitely - I'm with you all the way with that."
"And what about Matt?"
"Well, Matt thinks Israel is an insane state, so probably yes, though I'd have to ask him."
"And what about all those people there at Soho Pride - what do they think?"
I looked around at the diverse spectacle of the gay nation - from bears to twinks, from shirtless tanned muscle to spiky indie lesbian kids to classic old queens, most of them bouncing around to house music, many of them gurning on Es and coke: "Well, a lot of the people here are quite busy right now, and of course many of them have their own problems in their lives which means they are not always thinking about events happening far away."
"That was a good series of answers, darling. I love you very much."
"I love you too."

We had a few beers and then made our way through the packed crowds to Rupert Street area, which was more chilled out. There we held court for a few hours, till it was getting quite late. Matt headed back to Kentish Town on a bus with Phil. I went with Jordan to Crouch End to help him feed a pill to Lola, a cat with a stomach infection who he was looking after while her owners were away. Beautiful cat, but a deeply unhappy one who snarled viciously and had to be subdued with a towel before forcing the pill between her clenched teeth and lips!

Phil and Jordan went on to DTPM. Me and Matt got some much needed sleep.