Today has been something of a wash-out. Much as I'm pretty sure I still have jet-leg, I confess to having slept pretty solidly for 12 hours last night, waking up periodically through the night after experiencing a series of vivid dreams. In one of them, my mother was suggesting I wore a suitcase full of smart clothes from the 1990s, which were all box-shouldered and shiny.
I drove in the late morning to Brent Cross and got stuck in traffic which made me re-route and eventually lose my way. I wanted to buy a copy of the film Milk, which is about Harvey Milk. I don't know why I bothered. I had thought finding the film would be a needle-in-a-haystack scenario, what I didn't expect was that finding a shop which sold ANY form of DVD was the futile search. It would appear that no-one buys their DVDs or CDs in shops anymore, which I think is a desperate shame.
I came home and watched a lot of telly, falling asleep in front of The Queen, which struck me as a rather silly, somewhat pointless film. Who can be sure what was going through the Queen's head when Diana died, and more importantly, who cares? I have never been a fan of actors playing real-life figures when they're still alive. Everything feels like conjecture and nothing seems that believable... You can't help but wonder if the Queen herself watched it, and sat wondering what on earth was going on!
I got sucked into watching The Last Night of the Proms, which I enjoyed thoroughly. I always do if I'm honest. I love a bit of jingoism, and who could fail not to be stirred by Jerusalem, or, indeed Benjamin Britten's take on the National Anthem, which is the first time I've ever semi-enjoyed that terrible piece of mush. It upset me a little to think that this could be the last time we get to celebrate the UK in this manner. This particular night always makes me feel extremely moved and very proud to be British. Actually, one of the reasons why I think Scotland is contemplating going it alone, is that we never get enough opportunities to celebrate our special union, and seeing people in the different parks around the country waving Welsh Dragons and St Andrew's Saltires made me suddenly aware of the fact that we have something here which we are duty bound to protect.
Actually, what this county needs is further devolution, so Yorkshire people and Cornish people and Midlanders can all feel proud and noticed and, above all, responsible for their respective corners of this wonderful country. And then we all need to get on with not feeling guilty for having had the Empire and the Crusades and slavery, and enjoy being the country which excels in all the things that the rest of the world envies; the arts, high fashion, pharmaceuticals and IT. I think the time has come for us to relish the brand and become Britain again. Come on Scotland. What do you say?
Saturday, 13 September 2014
Friday, 12 September 2014
Rinsy Willis
The journey from LA to London was a deeply gruelling one. I've never been a good flyer, and sometimes night flights send me into a state of apoplexy. It was desperately frustrating; literally every time I fell asleep, I got the feeling that the aeroplane was listing or diving, and woke up with a start, grabbing Nathan's arm. I've done this sort of thing before. Actually I remember doing it repeatedly to Fiona the last time I flew back from San Fran. God help me if I ever go to Australia.
So basically I'm a quivering wreck and feel like death, but it's all been worth it. We've had the most awesome honeymoon.
We tubed it back to Highgate, cursing at the intolerable length of the journey, but returned to find the most beautiful present waiting on our stairs. A card from lovely Abbie welcoming us home, and with the card, a bag of choice groceries; two baked potatoes, a tin of beans, some cheese and a packet of cookies. It is, without question, one of the most touching and thoughtful gifts I have ever received.
We also returned to a spotlessly tidy house. Cindy, who'd stayed on in the house later than us, had made everything look beautiful.
That, with all the wonderful messages we received when things went wrong in San Fran, and we feel like the most loved couple in the world.
Right. Time to catch up on Bake Off with a pair of baked potatoes...
So basically I'm a quivering wreck and feel like death, but it's all been worth it. We've had the most awesome honeymoon.
We tubed it back to Highgate, cursing at the intolerable length of the journey, but returned to find the most beautiful present waiting on our stairs. A card from lovely Abbie welcoming us home, and with the card, a bag of choice groceries; two baked potatoes, a tin of beans, some cheese and a packet of cookies. It is, without question, one of the most touching and thoughtful gifts I have ever received.
We also returned to a spotlessly tidy house. Cindy, who'd stayed on in the house later than us, had made everything look beautiful.
That, with all the wonderful messages we received when things went wrong in San Fran, and we feel like the most loved couple in the world.
Right. Time to catch up on Bake Off with a pair of baked potatoes...
The San Fran dream
I'm currently on an American Airlines flight which is winging its way high above the arid mountains of California from San Fran to LA. These internal American flights are curious affairs, which feel rather like British bus journeys. People bring their own food with them. Some have even come equipped with takeaway meals. It brings a whole new meaning to the phrase budget airlines. The stewards are all grumpy gits and the air is thick with the stench of potato chips and Haribo. One child is eating sweeties which are "happy cola" flavoured. God knows how many E numbers she's chowing down on, but I reckon someone's gonna get a sugar high and then crash before this flight is done. She's already laughing like an addict. She'll be checking herself into the Betty Ford clinic before the week is out.
We went into a bookshop on Market Street today and were greeted by the sound of Holst's Planets Suite. It felt rather prescient to be hearing something so quintessentially English on the last day of our American adventure. To add another layer of brilliance, the movement which was playing was Jupiter, the main theme of which is, of course, I Vow to Thee My Country, otherwise known as Thaxted; written in and named after the town where my parents live. And what a tune that is! I wonder if I'll ever write a tune that good.
We sat outside Starbucks on Castro and 18th for old times' sake and met a ballet dancer with eyes the colour of forget-me-nots. He'd come from Russia via Jamaica and wanted to open a dance school for young people. We couldn't tell if he was odd or just Russian. I think he was probably also a rent boy.
A car was illegally parked outside the cafe and a traffic warden sidled over. Instead of crudely slapping a ticket on the windscreen with a sense of desperate glee (as I'm sure would have happened in London), he took the time to ask every single person sitting outside the cafe whether the car was theirs. When the owner finally appeared, the traffic warden ushered him on his way without the ticket, which he'd already written out. In my view this is exactly how traffic wardens should behave. Everyone deserves at least a chance to move their car.
A man in his thirties arrived with a beautiful black dog. One assumes they were homeless. The man left the dog with the Russian dancer and went into the Starbucks to get himself a glass of water, which he shared with the dog. After a few minutes, he entered what can only be described as a drugs-related episode, which I assume was related to the can of spray paint he was holding in his hand. He started sweating profusely whilst shaking, moaning and banging his head with his hands. Eventually the panic subsided and he fell asleep, only to be woken up by Starbucks staff who informed him he could only stay if he bought himself a drink. He picked his broken body off the chair and disappeared with the dog.
And there it was: the flip side of the San Franciscan free-loving, hippy-drippy dream. People come here, and, encouraged by the Castro-Haight vibe, live decadent, irresponsible, sun-drenched lives. But then it catches them. Bang! And they're nothing but relics. Their pace of life has slowed to a stand still, they're unable to function in everyone else's reality. Unable to move elsewhere, unable to find a job, they remain in the Castro or the Haight because it's the only place they don't feel like freaks, the only place where their sense of normality is mirrored by others. Anywhere else in the world, they'd probably be hospitalised. And they know it.
There's a mobile dangling from a lamppost on 18th street. Made from a bicycle wheel, it spins in endless circles, buffeted by the wind. Suspended from the spokes of the wheels are a series of action men dressed up in camp costumes. Some are figure skating, others are ballroom dancing, some are placed in suggestive sexual positions. For me, the mobile sums up the entire lifestyle here. A sort of wonderful, beautiful, relaxed bubble, which eats itself and ultimately leads nowhere.
Our San Franciscan honeymoon has been rewarding, exciting, remarkable, intense. It will never leave us. But ultimately it's time to head back to the real world, before we're sucked into the bottomless whirlpool!!
We went into a bookshop on Market Street today and were greeted by the sound of Holst's Planets Suite. It felt rather prescient to be hearing something so quintessentially English on the last day of our American adventure. To add another layer of brilliance, the movement which was playing was Jupiter, the main theme of which is, of course, I Vow to Thee My Country, otherwise known as Thaxted; written in and named after the town where my parents live. And what a tune that is! I wonder if I'll ever write a tune that good.
We sat outside Starbucks on Castro and 18th for old times' sake and met a ballet dancer with eyes the colour of forget-me-nots. He'd come from Russia via Jamaica and wanted to open a dance school for young people. We couldn't tell if he was odd or just Russian. I think he was probably also a rent boy.
A car was illegally parked outside the cafe and a traffic warden sidled over. Instead of crudely slapping a ticket on the windscreen with a sense of desperate glee (as I'm sure would have happened in London), he took the time to ask every single person sitting outside the cafe whether the car was theirs. When the owner finally appeared, the traffic warden ushered him on his way without the ticket, which he'd already written out. In my view this is exactly how traffic wardens should behave. Everyone deserves at least a chance to move their car.
A man in his thirties arrived with a beautiful black dog. One assumes they were homeless. The man left the dog with the Russian dancer and went into the Starbucks to get himself a glass of water, which he shared with the dog. After a few minutes, he entered what can only be described as a drugs-related episode, which I assume was related to the can of spray paint he was holding in his hand. He started sweating profusely whilst shaking, moaning and banging his head with his hands. Eventually the panic subsided and he fell asleep, only to be woken up by Starbucks staff who informed him he could only stay if he bought himself a drink. He picked his broken body off the chair and disappeared with the dog.
And there it was: the flip side of the San Franciscan free-loving, hippy-drippy dream. People come here, and, encouraged by the Castro-Haight vibe, live decadent, irresponsible, sun-drenched lives. But then it catches them. Bang! And they're nothing but relics. Their pace of life has slowed to a stand still, they're unable to function in everyone else's reality. Unable to move elsewhere, unable to find a job, they remain in the Castro or the Haight because it's the only place they don't feel like freaks, the only place where their sense of normality is mirrored by others. Anywhere else in the world, they'd probably be hospitalised. And they know it.
There's a mobile dangling from a lamppost on 18th street. Made from a bicycle wheel, it spins in endless circles, buffeted by the wind. Suspended from the spokes of the wheels are a series of action men dressed up in camp costumes. Some are figure skating, others are ballroom dancing, some are placed in suggestive sexual positions. For me, the mobile sums up the entire lifestyle here. A sort of wonderful, beautiful, relaxed bubble, which eats itself and ultimately leads nowhere.
Our San Franciscan honeymoon has been rewarding, exciting, remarkable, intense. It will never leave us. But ultimately it's time to head back to the real world, before we're sucked into the bottomless whirlpool!!
Thursday, 11 September 2014
Lush
Our last full day in San Francisco was just what last days of holidays should be. Quiet, relaxed, drifty. We had nowhere to be. No time constraints. Just a day to simply be in this beautiful city. And Nathan was feeling well again! How could things have been any more delightful.
Our Bed and Breakfast is delightful. We had breakfast in the little kitchen with an older straight couple from Australia and a lovely pair of queens on their own honeymoon from the UK.
It took them about two minutes of chatter to recognise us. "It's you isn't it?" The English one said, "who?" Said his Scottish partner. "The gay musical wedding couple!" "Oh my God, we have your wedding on our Sky planner. It was so moving. Your mothers' duet was exquisitely moving." And so on. It felt very special to be recognised like this on our honeymoon, especially after the painful nonsense of the last few days.
We left our lodgings and took ourselves along the length of the Haight, drifting into some of the second hand record shops in search of ABBA singles, and up to Haight Ashbury, land of the hippies, where I bought myself a flat cap, which I'll no doubt lose. I can't even count the flat caps I've worked my way through in my life, but no autumn is complete without one, so this one can be the next!
We ambled back to The Castro, deciding to sit outside Starbucks and attract as many wonderful locals as we could, encouraging them to sit down with us and tell us their life stories. First up, and by far the most entertaining, was Chuck. Chuck was in his eighties. He'd been in the military just after the Second World War and lucked out, being stationed in Germany instead of Korea like all the other people in his division.
Marcarthyism was his enemy however and his was dishonourably discharged from the army for being (in his words) a "cock sucking Commie." There are, of course, worse things to be, but, like so many in his position, he headed West and ended up in San Francisco, rubbing shoulders initially with the beat poets before embracing the hippy culture; "the Haight had to be closed to traffic because there were so many people there. Be under no illusions, this place was JUST as exciting as they say it was... More so..."
Eventually he opened up a dog grooming parlour on Castro (where he looked after Harvey Milk's dogs), and spent all his spare time shooting films of the area on Super 8. The 1970s documentary footage in the opening of the film Milk was all his work. I was deeply honoured to be in his presence.
We had lunch and wandered back to Delores Beach where we marvelled at the number of insane casualties from the drug era, and in a far more positive light, how mixed the whole of this city seems to be. Gangs of young people are mixes of black, white, every shade of Asian, gay and straight. It's a true melting pot.
Back in the Castro we made more new friends. One of them introduced us to a plaque in the memory of a local character, a gay Vietnam veteran by the name of Leonard Matlovich whose chilling epitaph read "when I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one." Come on! That's got to be worth a few minutes' thought!
Just around the corner another of our new friends showed us the latest plaque on the Castro. This one is very carefully made out of a cardboard box and is to Robin Williams. There's a little picture of him cut out of a newspaper and a quote from him which goes something along the lines of, "when I walk the streets of San Francisco I no longer feel like freak." It's another corker.
I'm now drunk. I wrote all the rest of this blog before drinking two gin and tonics. Doesn't sound like much, but I don't drink. We went to a piano bar and I sang ABBA. Money something. Funny key. I'm not Frida am I? Am I? Am I Frida? Shh. Mustn't talk to the locals.
Tonight we climbed Corona Heights and are cake. Watched mists rolling in. Nice crisps by the way. San Fran in mist is delightful. Somewhere across the bay, the dying sun caught on windows. Like balls of fire.
Shh, because people in the B and B don't want to hear me singing. Can they hear me eating crisps? Packet of crips. I'm riding the special bus.
Is that enough? Have I written enough? Little tiny people on the street outside. Dear little San Franciscans. Of course I love them all even though they're tiny. Are all tiny people tiny or just further away?
Our Bed and Breakfast is delightful. We had breakfast in the little kitchen with an older straight couple from Australia and a lovely pair of queens on their own honeymoon from the UK.
It took them about two minutes of chatter to recognise us. "It's you isn't it?" The English one said, "who?" Said his Scottish partner. "The gay musical wedding couple!" "Oh my God, we have your wedding on our Sky planner. It was so moving. Your mothers' duet was exquisitely moving." And so on. It felt very special to be recognised like this on our honeymoon, especially after the painful nonsense of the last few days.
We left our lodgings and took ourselves along the length of the Haight, drifting into some of the second hand record shops in search of ABBA singles, and up to Haight Ashbury, land of the hippies, where I bought myself a flat cap, which I'll no doubt lose. I can't even count the flat caps I've worked my way through in my life, but no autumn is complete without one, so this one can be the next!
We ambled back to The Castro, deciding to sit outside Starbucks and attract as many wonderful locals as we could, encouraging them to sit down with us and tell us their life stories. First up, and by far the most entertaining, was Chuck. Chuck was in his eighties. He'd been in the military just after the Second World War and lucked out, being stationed in Germany instead of Korea like all the other people in his division.
Marcarthyism was his enemy however and his was dishonourably discharged from the army for being (in his words) a "cock sucking Commie." There are, of course, worse things to be, but, like so many in his position, he headed West and ended up in San Francisco, rubbing shoulders initially with the beat poets before embracing the hippy culture; "the Haight had to be closed to traffic because there were so many people there. Be under no illusions, this place was JUST as exciting as they say it was... More so..."
Eventually he opened up a dog grooming parlour on Castro (where he looked after Harvey Milk's dogs), and spent all his spare time shooting films of the area on Super 8. The 1970s documentary footage in the opening of the film Milk was all his work. I was deeply honoured to be in his presence.
We had lunch and wandered back to Delores Beach where we marvelled at the number of insane casualties from the drug era, and in a far more positive light, how mixed the whole of this city seems to be. Gangs of young people are mixes of black, white, every shade of Asian, gay and straight. It's a true melting pot.
Back in the Castro we made more new friends. One of them introduced us to a plaque in the memory of a local character, a gay Vietnam veteran by the name of Leonard Matlovich whose chilling epitaph read "when I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one." Come on! That's got to be worth a few minutes' thought!
Just around the corner another of our new friends showed us the latest plaque on the Castro. This one is very carefully made out of a cardboard box and is to Robin Williams. There's a little picture of him cut out of a newspaper and a quote from him which goes something along the lines of, "when I walk the streets of San Francisco I no longer feel like freak." It's another corker.
I'm now drunk. I wrote all the rest of this blog before drinking two gin and tonics. Doesn't sound like much, but I don't drink. We went to a piano bar and I sang ABBA. Money something. Funny key. I'm not Frida am I? Am I? Am I Frida? Shh. Mustn't talk to the locals.
Tonight we climbed Corona Heights and are cake. Watched mists rolling in. Nice crisps by the way. San Fran in mist is delightful. Somewhere across the bay, the dying sun caught on windows. Like balls of fire.
Shh, because people in the B and B don't want to hear me singing. Can they hear me eating crisps? Packet of crips. I'm riding the special bus.
Is that enough? Have I written enough? Little tiny people on the street outside. Dear little San Franciscans. Of course I love them all even though they're tiny. Are all tiny people tiny or just further away?
Wednesday, 10 September 2014
Sing if you're glad to be gay
Nathan woke up this morning feeling particularly chipper, which was just as well as we had to wheel our suitcases up Market Street from the Travelodge to our new little gay-owned Bed and Breakfast. This place is an absolute joy to behold. There are about ten bedrooms within the guest house. Breakfast is served in a tiny upstairs kitchen. There are cocktails for all the guests between 7 and 8pm every night in the lounge and fresh towels and beautiful scents drift through the building. We're very happy in our new home. It's much cheaper than the Travelodge and fastidiously clean... Unlike the lodge, which was a desperate shit hole with drunk vagrants peeing all over the car park; the car park which guests were charged $15 a night to park in. I was reading a review of the place today from someone who'd checked in and found a can of Tox on his bed!
Because Virgin Atlantic haven't even responded to us about changing flights, the decision has been made to take an internal flight down to LAX on Thursday in time to catch the flight we'd already booked. The alternative was shelling out £2000 for new flights, and, frankly, our insurance company have been so sketchy about what they're prepared to pay for, we didn't want to take the risk.
Nathan ended the day back at the medical centre who have signed him off as fit to travel. Apparently if Virgin get a sniff of a word like pneumonia, they'll refuse to let Nathan fly without a doctor's note... So $150 dollars later, we have the necessary document.
Nathan was already a celebrity in the clinic on account of his lovely accent and his pneumonia being so acute, but today he became a veritable pin-up boy because his body has responded so speedily to the treatment.
He does indeed seem like a new man. We celebrated by taking the train to Ocean Beach so that he could see the Pacific Ocean for the first time. We actually fed crows on the beach. I wasn't aware that crows liked to nest in sand dunes, but there they were, squabbling with the seagulls over our chocolate chip cookie.
We walked, barefoot, along the sea shore. The water was freezing. The surf was fairly high, and quite a lot of surfer dudes were taking advantage in their wet suits. A fair number of artists were painting pictures on the beach, strangely very few were attempting to capture the sea views they were sitting in front of! One woman was painting a picture of two people crying blood. Only in San Francisco!
We walked up to the camera obscura, which is quite a lot of fun. You're led into a dark room with a white parabolic dish in the centre onto which a 360-degree view from a spinning roof is projected via a mirror and two lenses. It's a surreal and rather beautiful sight. Some of the waves on the ocean were glinting magically in the sun which, whilst we were inside, had popped out from behind the sea mist. Knowing what I know about San Francisco weather, I'm not sure the sun ever shines for long on Ocean Beach!
The complex within which the camera obscura is situated used to be a Victorian penny arcade. I visited it with Fiona when I was last here, 14 years ago. We had our photo taken in a 1950s black and white photo booth. I was immensely sun-tanned and looked like a little Bengali lad. Sadly, the arcade was re-located 12 years ago, so there was no before and after shot for me, which is a real shame. I very badly burnt my forehead about four days ago, and I look a proper state with all the peeling and nastiness. There's a brown layer of dead skin on my hair line. It looks like I'm wearing a dirty wig. It would have been fun to capture this on camera!
We walked back the entire length of Golden Gate Park, which, for those in the know, is quite some trek, albeit a hugely worth-while one. The park is stunningly beautiful. Closer to the ocean, it's all dusty red earth and native fir trees, but the nearer to the Haight you get, the more it becomes landscaped with stunning Japanese tea gardens, waterfalls, lakes and lawns as green as fresh peas. Golden Gate park's only drawback is that it's nowhere near the Golden Gate Bridge, which is a little confusing, especially when you consider that the park next to the bridge is actually called The Presidio.
The most moving area of the space is the National AIDS Memorial. The Americans really know how to do a monument. They don't stick a crappy brass plaque on a tree or go for some conceptual piece of marble, they dedicate whole acres of land to the cause and make everything thought-provoking and emotionally-charged. Perhaps it's because they tend to honour their more recent history more fervently. We wait until everyone's dead.
Anyway, the AIDS memorial is essentially a series of walkways and circular stone platforms carved into a verdant ravine. Many of the stones are inscribed with touching messages to the insane number of San Franciscans who died of the disease. The community here was ripped apart - just as it was pulling itself together and becoming a force to be reckoned with in the wake of Harvey Milk's assassination.
One poignant stone carving instructed passes by to stop inside the circle and contemplate that
"Although they all died of one cause, remember how their lives were dense with fine compacted difference." Another stone said simply, "we fought for love." My God how my community did just that...
Elsewhere in the complex, a little toy dinosaur with its stuffing falling out sat on a stone. Was it simply a dog's toy dropped carelessly? Or did it have far greater significance?
In one circular platform, an almost bewildering number of names were written in a giant spiral: the names of those who'd died, and their loved ones left behind. That's when I started weeping bitter tears.
The entrance plaque pretty much summed things up. "This grove proclaims to the world that there is a dedicated public space where anyone who has been touched by AIDS can find comfort, grieve openly without being stigmatised, and experience the feelings of hope inspired by nature. The National AIDS Memorial Grove signifies that the global tragedy of AIDS will never be forgotten."
San Francisco has repeatedly made me feel proud to be gay. It makes me feel free to celebrate my sexuality because it constantly reminds me how people fought and died to give me that right. It's also made me realise quite how much, until I got married, I'd found myself making compromises with the way I behaved, because I knew my own sexuality could make others potentially feel uncomfortable. When I made the films for The Space about my Requiem, my BBC mentor actually told me that he felt the films were too gay; "if you rub your sexuality in your listeners' faces, you'll intimidate them and lose audiences." I responded that I'd spoken openly about being gay in the films because the requiem is about love and the people I love tend to be men. I asked if I was black, and had written a gospel-inspired piece, if he'd have found that intimidating. "Would that have been too black?" I asked. He didn't know what to say. In San Fran, nothing is too gay, and because of that, no one feels the need to scream about it!
Because Virgin Atlantic haven't even responded to us about changing flights, the decision has been made to take an internal flight down to LAX on Thursday in time to catch the flight we'd already booked. The alternative was shelling out £2000 for new flights, and, frankly, our insurance company have been so sketchy about what they're prepared to pay for, we didn't want to take the risk.
Nathan ended the day back at the medical centre who have signed him off as fit to travel. Apparently if Virgin get a sniff of a word like pneumonia, they'll refuse to let Nathan fly without a doctor's note... So $150 dollars later, we have the necessary document.
Nathan was already a celebrity in the clinic on account of his lovely accent and his pneumonia being so acute, but today he became a veritable pin-up boy because his body has responded so speedily to the treatment.
He does indeed seem like a new man. We celebrated by taking the train to Ocean Beach so that he could see the Pacific Ocean for the first time. We actually fed crows on the beach. I wasn't aware that crows liked to nest in sand dunes, but there they were, squabbling with the seagulls over our chocolate chip cookie.
We walked, barefoot, along the sea shore. The water was freezing. The surf was fairly high, and quite a lot of surfer dudes were taking advantage in their wet suits. A fair number of artists were painting pictures on the beach, strangely very few were attempting to capture the sea views they were sitting in front of! One woman was painting a picture of two people crying blood. Only in San Francisco!
We walked up to the camera obscura, which is quite a lot of fun. You're led into a dark room with a white parabolic dish in the centre onto which a 360-degree view from a spinning roof is projected via a mirror and two lenses. It's a surreal and rather beautiful sight. Some of the waves on the ocean were glinting magically in the sun which, whilst we were inside, had popped out from behind the sea mist. Knowing what I know about San Francisco weather, I'm not sure the sun ever shines for long on Ocean Beach!
The complex within which the camera obscura is situated used to be a Victorian penny arcade. I visited it with Fiona when I was last here, 14 years ago. We had our photo taken in a 1950s black and white photo booth. I was immensely sun-tanned and looked like a little Bengali lad. Sadly, the arcade was re-located 12 years ago, so there was no before and after shot for me, which is a real shame. I very badly burnt my forehead about four days ago, and I look a proper state with all the peeling and nastiness. There's a brown layer of dead skin on my hair line. It looks like I'm wearing a dirty wig. It would have been fun to capture this on camera!
We walked back the entire length of Golden Gate Park, which, for those in the know, is quite some trek, albeit a hugely worth-while one. The park is stunningly beautiful. Closer to the ocean, it's all dusty red earth and native fir trees, but the nearer to the Haight you get, the more it becomes landscaped with stunning Japanese tea gardens, waterfalls, lakes and lawns as green as fresh peas. Golden Gate park's only drawback is that it's nowhere near the Golden Gate Bridge, which is a little confusing, especially when you consider that the park next to the bridge is actually called The Presidio.
The most moving area of the space is the National AIDS Memorial. The Americans really know how to do a monument. They don't stick a crappy brass plaque on a tree or go for some conceptual piece of marble, they dedicate whole acres of land to the cause and make everything thought-provoking and emotionally-charged. Perhaps it's because they tend to honour their more recent history more fervently. We wait until everyone's dead.
Anyway, the AIDS memorial is essentially a series of walkways and circular stone platforms carved into a verdant ravine. Many of the stones are inscribed with touching messages to the insane number of San Franciscans who died of the disease. The community here was ripped apart - just as it was pulling itself together and becoming a force to be reckoned with in the wake of Harvey Milk's assassination.
One poignant stone carving instructed passes by to stop inside the circle and contemplate that
"Although they all died of one cause, remember how their lives were dense with fine compacted difference." Another stone said simply, "we fought for love." My God how my community did just that...
Elsewhere in the complex, a little toy dinosaur with its stuffing falling out sat on a stone. Was it simply a dog's toy dropped carelessly? Or did it have far greater significance?
In one circular platform, an almost bewildering number of names were written in a giant spiral: the names of those who'd died, and their loved ones left behind. That's when I started weeping bitter tears.
The entrance plaque pretty much summed things up. "This grove proclaims to the world that there is a dedicated public space where anyone who has been touched by AIDS can find comfort, grieve openly without being stigmatised, and experience the feelings of hope inspired by nature. The National AIDS Memorial Grove signifies that the global tragedy of AIDS will never be forgotten."
San Francisco has repeatedly made me feel proud to be gay. It makes me feel free to celebrate my sexuality because it constantly reminds me how people fought and died to give me that right. It's also made me realise quite how much, until I got married, I'd found myself making compromises with the way I behaved, because I knew my own sexuality could make others potentially feel uncomfortable. When I made the films for The Space about my Requiem, my BBC mentor actually told me that he felt the films were too gay; "if you rub your sexuality in your listeners' faces, you'll intimidate them and lose audiences." I responded that I'd spoken openly about being gay in the films because the requiem is about love and the people I love tend to be men. I asked if I was black, and had written a gospel-inspired piece, if he'd have found that intimidating. "Would that have been too black?" I asked. He didn't know what to say. In San Fran, nothing is too gay, and because of that, no one feels the need to scream about it!
Tuesday, 9 September 2014
Will someone ride to our rescue?!
There was a moment this afternoon whilst I was speaking to the British consulate when I realised I'd hit something of a brick wall. The futility of the situation we've been wading through for the past twelve hours suddenly struck home.
Nathan had had an awful night. He'd coughed almost constantly; deep, chesty, rattling coughs which made me feel utterly helpless. At 5am, I'd attempted some kind of whacko spiritual healing thing and focussed all my energy into my finger tips which I'd pressed into Nathan's head, urging whoever might have been listening to stop him from suffering. I thought if nothing else it might soothe him somehow. Bizarrely, it did the trick, the coughing almost instantly stopped and he fell asleep. I don't know how or why it worked. Sometimes the touch of another human being is all we need. In the morning Nathan accused me of practising dark arts, but I hadn't been able to stop him from feeling utterly exhausted as a result of having only managed three hours' sleep.
We got up and took a cab across town to the medical centre where Nathan was pumped full of a shedload of saline and anti-biotics and given cough medicines, headache tablets and anti-nausea drugs. On route to the clinic we had a flurry of phone conversations with our travel agent and our insurers who were refusing to talk directly
to one another. We were trying to find out if the insurers would authorise our traveling back to London with a different airline as Virgin were apparently entirely booked for all their flights from San Francisco. We got precisely nowhere. I tweeted Virgin to ask what to do. They ignored my messages.
The only highlight of this troublesome part of the day was our cab journey, which was presided over by a young San Franciscan with a metal bolt through his nose who told us his life story. His father was a con who'd gone AWOL, his mother had just returned from a mid-life crisis during which she'd run away to the circus! Insane!
Whilst Nathan was attached to his drip, I took myself back to the wave organ. High tide in San Francisco Bay was at noon and a full moon was on its way. These were apparently the two key factors which would assure the wave organ's success. And it definitely sounded more chirpy than it had before. I made some sound recordings of very strange gurgles and pedal notes in a little half-hour window of relative bliss and calm...
The joy was short-lived. Nathan seemed to be iller than ever when I picked him up from the clinic. He had a pounding headache and needed to go straight to bed.
We returned to the Travelodge to find our rooms keys not working, so ambled off to reception to report the problem.
That's when all hell broke loose. The air-head-cum-pot-victim who served us (and had booked us in the day before) said we'd only actually requested accommodation for one day, and that if we wanted more nights, the room rate was rising from $99 to a whopping $350. $350 for a room with no wifi, a broken sink and bath, and faulty electrics. She seemed completely disinterested in the fact that we were there on our honeymoon and that Nathan had pneumonia and needed to be in bed, in fact, if anything, our desperation, seemed to harden her resolve. I'd almost describe her response as callous.
You can rest assured that if we were a heterosexual couple on honeymoon, someone would have waded in at this point and saved the day. I'm not quite sure the entire world finds two gay men on a honeymoon romantic!
We've actually been made to feel a little odd about announcing that it's our honeymoon on many occasions on this trip. Our travel agent actually told us to mention at the airport that we were on honeymoon on the off-chance that they'd offer us an upgrade. We nervously mentioned the fact to the Virgin staff member on the gate and she looked at us like we'd crawled out from under a stone, making us both feel totally ashamed. A little unfair, I feel.
I'm pretty sure there was a racket going with the ghastly Travelodge girl and her unintelligible Indian boss who, when I complained, denied being present when we'd initially booked into the hotel despite being next to the pot-head girl when she did the paperwork. One assumes that when the dim-looking tourists book themselves in for more than a few days, the pot-head girl only books them in for a single night so that she can then scam the tourist into paying three times the value of the room because they don't want the hassle of moving out. It's deeply disturbing. I complained to the head office at Travelodge USA. I was on the phone for hours - all at my expense. They said they couldn't intervene in the matter because the hotel was owned privately. Owned privately, yet proudly displaying the Travelodge logo? Incredibly suspicious...
I envisaged having to wheel Nathan down Market Street in a bath chair like some fucked-up Death In Venice/ Philadelphia mash-up. In the end the freak woman behind the counter offered us one more night at a reasonable rate, and we said we'd check out tomorrow.
And so I called the British consulate and burst into tears and the woman there was useless, promising to call me back but forgetting to do so...
After Nathan had slept for a few hours, he felt strong enough to stroll into the Castro where we walked like the gay Mary and Joseph from hotel to hotel asking if there was any room at the inn. The answer was no. Intel have a convention in the city starting tomorrow and everywhere is booked up. We sat in Starbucks and started calling hotel after hotel. All were booked. Just as we'd decided we were going to have to sleep in a park, we spoke to a little gay B and B who said they could give us two different rooms for the two nights we needed. The bathroom would be shared, but, frankly, I'm sure the stable will be warm and inviting and equally sure that Saint Harvey Milk will pay homage to us armed with sequins, poppers, and some dry shampoo.
We decided that this would be the turning point for our holiday. Nathan's headache was clearing and the antibiotics were kicking in, so we had some food, and sat for a few minutes in a bar watching people outside queuing up to have free HIV tests in the back of a truck. I wondered how it might feel to be given the news that you were HIV positive in such a peculiar environment. Only in San Francisco!
We then went to a piano bar and sat for three hours listening to people singing songs from the shows with varying degrees of success. We're hoping that tomorrow will bring us some good news about flights. I don't hold out much hope. Virgin have just responded to my tweet in such a half-arsed way that I am pretty sure we're going to be stranded here forever.
Nathan had had an awful night. He'd coughed almost constantly; deep, chesty, rattling coughs which made me feel utterly helpless. At 5am, I'd attempted some kind of whacko spiritual healing thing and focussed all my energy into my finger tips which I'd pressed into Nathan's head, urging whoever might have been listening to stop him from suffering. I thought if nothing else it might soothe him somehow. Bizarrely, it did the trick, the coughing almost instantly stopped and he fell asleep. I don't know how or why it worked. Sometimes the touch of another human being is all we need. In the morning Nathan accused me of practising dark arts, but I hadn't been able to stop him from feeling utterly exhausted as a result of having only managed three hours' sleep.
We got up and took a cab across town to the medical centre where Nathan was pumped full of a shedload of saline and anti-biotics and given cough medicines, headache tablets and anti-nausea drugs. On route to the clinic we had a flurry of phone conversations with our travel agent and our insurers who were refusing to talk directly
to one another. We were trying to find out if the insurers would authorise our traveling back to London with a different airline as Virgin were apparently entirely booked for all their flights from San Francisco. We got precisely nowhere. I tweeted Virgin to ask what to do. They ignored my messages.
The only highlight of this troublesome part of the day was our cab journey, which was presided over by a young San Franciscan with a metal bolt through his nose who told us his life story. His father was a con who'd gone AWOL, his mother had just returned from a mid-life crisis during which she'd run away to the circus! Insane!
Whilst Nathan was attached to his drip, I took myself back to the wave organ. High tide in San Francisco Bay was at noon and a full moon was on its way. These were apparently the two key factors which would assure the wave organ's success. And it definitely sounded more chirpy than it had before. I made some sound recordings of very strange gurgles and pedal notes in a little half-hour window of relative bliss and calm...
The joy was short-lived. Nathan seemed to be iller than ever when I picked him up from the clinic. He had a pounding headache and needed to go straight to bed.
We returned to the Travelodge to find our rooms keys not working, so ambled off to reception to report the problem.
That's when all hell broke loose. The air-head-cum-pot-victim who served us (and had booked us in the day before) said we'd only actually requested accommodation for one day, and that if we wanted more nights, the room rate was rising from $99 to a whopping $350. $350 for a room with no wifi, a broken sink and bath, and faulty electrics. She seemed completely disinterested in the fact that we were there on our honeymoon and that Nathan had pneumonia and needed to be in bed, in fact, if anything, our desperation, seemed to harden her resolve. I'd almost describe her response as callous.
You can rest assured that if we were a heterosexual couple on honeymoon, someone would have waded in at this point and saved the day. I'm not quite sure the entire world finds two gay men on a honeymoon romantic!
We've actually been made to feel a little odd about announcing that it's our honeymoon on many occasions on this trip. Our travel agent actually told us to mention at the airport that we were on honeymoon on the off-chance that they'd offer us an upgrade. We nervously mentioned the fact to the Virgin staff member on the gate and she looked at us like we'd crawled out from under a stone, making us both feel totally ashamed. A little unfair, I feel.
I'm pretty sure there was a racket going with the ghastly Travelodge girl and her unintelligible Indian boss who, when I complained, denied being present when we'd initially booked into the hotel despite being next to the pot-head girl when she did the paperwork. One assumes that when the dim-looking tourists book themselves in for more than a few days, the pot-head girl only books them in for a single night so that she can then scam the tourist into paying three times the value of the room because they don't want the hassle of moving out. It's deeply disturbing. I complained to the head office at Travelodge USA. I was on the phone for hours - all at my expense. They said they couldn't intervene in the matter because the hotel was owned privately. Owned privately, yet proudly displaying the Travelodge logo? Incredibly suspicious...
I envisaged having to wheel Nathan down Market Street in a bath chair like some fucked-up Death In Venice/ Philadelphia mash-up. In the end the freak woman behind the counter offered us one more night at a reasonable rate, and we said we'd check out tomorrow.
And so I called the British consulate and burst into tears and the woman there was useless, promising to call me back but forgetting to do so...
After Nathan had slept for a few hours, he felt strong enough to stroll into the Castro where we walked like the gay Mary and Joseph from hotel to hotel asking if there was any room at the inn. The answer was no. Intel have a convention in the city starting tomorrow and everywhere is booked up. We sat in Starbucks and started calling hotel after hotel. All were booked. Just as we'd decided we were going to have to sleep in a park, we spoke to a little gay B and B who said they could give us two different rooms for the two nights we needed. The bathroom would be shared, but, frankly, I'm sure the stable will be warm and inviting and equally sure that Saint Harvey Milk will pay homage to us armed with sequins, poppers, and some dry shampoo.
We decided that this would be the turning point for our holiday. Nathan's headache was clearing and the antibiotics were kicking in, so we had some food, and sat for a few minutes in a bar watching people outside queuing up to have free HIV tests in the back of a truck. I wondered how it might feel to be given the news that you were HIV positive in such a peculiar environment. Only in San Francisco!
We then went to a piano bar and sat for three hours listening to people singing songs from the shows with varying degrees of success. We're hoping that tomorrow will bring us some good news about flights. I don't hold out much hope. Virgin have just responded to my tweet in such a half-arsed way that I am pretty sure we're going to be stranded here forever.
Monday, 8 September 2014
Pneumonia
I'll confess. Today has not been exactly plain sailing. Right now, Nathan and I ought to be winging our way down the Pacific Highway in the direction of LA, but instead we've checked into a crappy motel on Market Street, where I'm not sure I dare leave my new laptop!
Nathan has pneumonia! We discovered this earth-shattering fact this morning. He's been coughing for days, and having night sweats and heavy joints and things, but we'd put everything down to some sort of crazy 'flu. Nathan tends not to complain. He wanted to enjoy the honeymoon, so suffered in relative silence. A few days ago he did say that he wouldn't be surprised if he had pneumonia, but was so flippant about it that I didn't pay much attention. I should have known to. Nathan's family are like psychic freaks when it comes to self-diagnosing health issues!
Anyway, we woke up this morning and his cough was like a death rattle. He was all for ploughing on, but I convinced him it was a good idea to go to the chemists just to see if they could recommend something. Actually what she recommended was the walk-in clinic out towards the Golden Gate Bridge, and we went there by taxi...
Our doctor, the charmingly named Dr Martin, immediately put Nathan in for an X-Ray and then speedily diagnosed a very severe case of the illness. She later showed the X-Rays to us, and there was white cloudy stuff all over the place. If Nathan had been any older, or less fit, she would have immediately sent him to hospital, but she decided to treat him as an out-patient, hooked him up to a saline drip, fed him some hard-core antibiotics and banned him from travelling to LA.
All this, of course, means that we have to change our flights, cancel our LA hotels and get on with contacting our travel insurance people. The medical bill is already close to $1000, and will go up further tomorrow after Nathan receives another intravenous dose of heavy duty drugs.
So really, that's been my day, but for a hugely charming evening trip to the famous Castro Theatre, an old-school cinema in the middle of the gay district which caters to its gay audiences with rowdy sing-a-long screenings of films like Mary Poppins, Sweet Charity and latterly, films like Frozen.
It was a Robin Williams tribute weekend, and we opted to see a classic film, Good Will Hunting, which, oddly, neither of us had ever seen. It was a tremendous film, but more tremendous was the atmosphere within the theatre. As we walked in, an old dude was playing a massive Wurlitzer, which vanished into the floor, old-skool style, as the film started. The cinema is a massive barn of a place, dating back to at least the 1920s, with glorious wall-friezes. American audiences are more vocal in their responses to the visual arts. Robin Williams' first appearance in the film generated a massive round of applause which, in the light of his death, felt both appropriate and rather moving.
After the film, I looked around the audience and was proud to see the full gamut of members of the LGBT community; from trans-people, little twinks and big gay bears, all the way across to a couple of elderly Chinese lesbian ladies, which is a sight I've actually never seen before.
Nathan has pneumonia! We discovered this earth-shattering fact this morning. He's been coughing for days, and having night sweats and heavy joints and things, but we'd put everything down to some sort of crazy 'flu. Nathan tends not to complain. He wanted to enjoy the honeymoon, so suffered in relative silence. A few days ago he did say that he wouldn't be surprised if he had pneumonia, but was so flippant about it that I didn't pay much attention. I should have known to. Nathan's family are like psychic freaks when it comes to self-diagnosing health issues!
Anyway, we woke up this morning and his cough was like a death rattle. He was all for ploughing on, but I convinced him it was a good idea to go to the chemists just to see if they could recommend something. Actually what she recommended was the walk-in clinic out towards the Golden Gate Bridge, and we went there by taxi...
Our doctor, the charmingly named Dr Martin, immediately put Nathan in for an X-Ray and then speedily diagnosed a very severe case of the illness. She later showed the X-Rays to us, and there was white cloudy stuff all over the place. If Nathan had been any older, or less fit, she would have immediately sent him to hospital, but she decided to treat him as an out-patient, hooked him up to a saline drip, fed him some hard-core antibiotics and banned him from travelling to LA.
All this, of course, means that we have to change our flights, cancel our LA hotels and get on with contacting our travel insurance people. The medical bill is already close to $1000, and will go up further tomorrow after Nathan receives another intravenous dose of heavy duty drugs.
So really, that's been my day, but for a hugely charming evening trip to the famous Castro Theatre, an old-school cinema in the middle of the gay district which caters to its gay audiences with rowdy sing-a-long screenings of films like Mary Poppins, Sweet Charity and latterly, films like Frozen.
It was a Robin Williams tribute weekend, and we opted to see a classic film, Good Will Hunting, which, oddly, neither of us had ever seen. It was a tremendous film, but more tremendous was the atmosphere within the theatre. As we walked in, an old dude was playing a massive Wurlitzer, which vanished into the floor, old-skool style, as the film started. The cinema is a massive barn of a place, dating back to at least the 1920s, with glorious wall-friezes. American audiences are more vocal in their responses to the visual arts. Robin Williams' first appearance in the film generated a massive round of applause which, in the light of his death, felt both appropriate and rather moving.
After the film, I looked around the audience and was proud to see the full gamut of members of the LGBT community; from trans-people, little twinks and big gay bears, all the way across to a couple of elderly Chinese lesbian ladies, which is a sight I've actually never seen before.
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