Aunty Eileen’s doctor advised her to take up smoking for her asthma. You have to understand that this was in the 1960s. Doctors now are prescribing choir as part of proven Singing for Lung Health programmes.You might not yet have heard about ‘social prescribing’ – but you will.
Category Archives: Wellbeing & Thriving
Don’t You Want Me, Baby?
The vest is mine, the underpants too, the cock – well I suppose it’s mine. I bought it. I wrote the little piece above about the time when I took my drag king persona Eddie onto a public stage in Brighton.
White, mainstream, middle-class, respectable, assimilated gaydom?As Edelman’s global ethnographic review from 2001 will tell you, liberation doesn’t tend to emerge from such spaces.
Back on the Beer in Worthing
Anyone who passes down South Farm Road has spent months of their life waiting at the railway crossing there. Romances have come to inception and ruination during long moments of boredom or tetchiness at that crossing. Dogs and children whine why, why when they’re told again and again that they cannot move – yet. (There’s still another train coming through, apparently, although we’ve seen 2 pass already).
Screaming at the Sea on Worthing Beach
And so that was Christmas. Or Hannukkah. Or just another holiday season. But have you noticed, my dear one, that nothing feels quite the same these days? Have you noticed, my dear one, that nothing feels quite the same these days? This December was heavy with undertones and reminders of last December – whenContinue reading “Screaming at the Sea on Worthing Beach”
Shitty Crafts
After going all un-Boomer ish last post and plastering my personal life all over the blog, which has had great positive responses, I thought I’d do a quick share of something I got into over lockdown, which began as something of a time-pass and then turned into both a kind of mindfulness practice and alsoContinue reading “Shitty Crafts”
Queer Love in the Time of Covid (Part 1 of 2)
On one of our weekend lockdowns, at a Worthing hotel (where we drive just 10 minutes up the road once every few weeks, to get away from domestic life and the over-familiarity of home) I asked. Shocked, she responded, “thank you”. We both laughed at the response and at the thrill of making something good happen in the middle of all the horror around us. The older you get, the more you understand the cosmic complex truth that, somehow, when the house is burning down, remembering to laugh and to dance is important.
Who’s Living Nextdoor?
A chaotic mix of entrepreneurial hustle, neighbourly compassion, lost pets, reports about traffic, queues and crowds, curiosity about roadworks or wildlife species spotted- and a fair bit of baiting and toxic trouble-stirring. Lockdown has intensified both the volume of traffic and the emotional charge.
A Breath of Fresh Air?
One man kept backtracking as he remembered things the family might need in case of shortages – “sorry, sorry”, he kept apologising, unaware in those days of magic hand-sanitiser that his outbreath and loud ‘sorry’ could itself be a vector for spread.
My Blue, Blue, Heart (Part One)
We’re still junkies for the gaudy – hooked on brilliant colours. Years of drooling over websites and catalogues full of wine-gum annuals have blunted our taste. We’re in recovery from bedding plants, and it’s going to take a while.
“We’d Never Even Heard of Worthing”
To be clear, this is not a head shop, and they don’t want to be confused with a traditional drug paraphernalia shop (as Nicole puts it). They’re seeing themselves very much as a dispensary.