Picture from News RT
Yesterday wasn't all about disappointing breakfasts I am glad to report, I bought some new socks. The temptation to end today's blog with just that one line was very strong but once we've all got over the excitement of my new sock purchase I may carry on because the day was very nice despite the fact that my breakfast wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Saturday should be our day together all day because we work all week and on Sundays I have the podcast to worry about and family lunch at my dad's so to spend a whole day together is a luxury. This only works if I have had time to record the podcast during the week otherwise I will do it on Saturday, or if Mandi hasn't volunteered to do overtime. On the other hand I sometimes use Saturdays to catch up on admin and spend at least a couple of hours in my office.
We had a nice day wandering around town with nowhere to go and no hurry to get there, and in order to calm ourselves down after all the sock fun we took in a bit of a charity shop sweep too. Before that we watched the Pride march going up into Hockley. It's things like this that make you realise what a nice world we now live in sometimes, David Hockney recently remarked that years ago you couldn't be openly gay but you could smoke and now we have same sex marriage but you can't smoke, there's always something. For people of my generation the notion that everyone walking past and blowing whistles, waving flags and generally looking pleased to be there would only 48 years ago be technically committing a crime is beyond belief. People in the public eye had to keep their private life a secret because such a revelation would have ruined them; we know about the shame felt by people in the public eye such as Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd for example, but that was the reality for possibly millions of men in normal life. Attitudes aren't quite right just yet but progress has been amazing, I'm only commenting on this as a straight man so my rainbow coloured vision might not be exactly right and things might still be a struggle, but to have something happen like Pride with nobody leering across to shout 'bender' at them is a step in the right direction.
I bought one of those vinyl LP box sets yesterday, The Classic Touch by James Last. Eight records worth of James Last, it was only one pound. My other record finds were You Caught Me Out by Tracey Ullman, and Live and Direct by Adamski. Although I doubt there's a lot left for me to learn about Charles Dickens I bought another biography, this time by Peter Ackroyd. My plan is to read this one on the tram and save Ooh! What A Lovely Pair: Our Story by Ant and Dec for home.
The Sunday Alternative #49 is available from here.
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July Housekeeping
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