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.
Tag Archives: wellbeing
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 2 of 2)
A Sussex lockdown queer wedding. Blending some old and well-known traditions with Celtic spirituality and a nod to church roots worked. And at no point did it ever feel like ‘Sheilaism’ (the term Robert Bellah famously used for describing the contemporary fall from traditional religion and rituals and into an utterly individualistic solipsistic pick-and-mix contemporary state of ‘spiritual but not religious’). The celebrant reminded us Boomers how far we’ve come since our teens, when ‘gay wedding’ was preposterous blasphemy. Keep an open mind. Allow the unexpected into your life.
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.
Epic Fail for Dry January? Daytime Drinking in Lockdown? Too Much Toking Going On? No Worries (Part Four)
From the consumer point of view, frankly, one six-foot tall and beefy 20 year old’s session is likely a five-foot skinny 50 year old’s downfall, so you have to take this ‘session’ concept a bit personally
Epic Fail for Dry January? Daytime Drinking in Lockdown? Too Much Toking Going On? No Worries (Part Three)
Dry January feels like a sticking plaster on a gaping wound. For society. Even at a personal level. I remember I had all my friends round the house on day 30, and they rolled a foot-long and I remember feeling sick and thinking – well, that was pointless, that whole month.
Epic Fail for Dry January? Daytime Drinking in Lockdown? Too Much Toking Going On? No Worries (Part Two)
What do you feel about the AA-style sobriety (or even ‘hip sobriety’) as opposed to the ‘mindful drinking’ approach? I’ll never climb a mountain, but I’ll get up Cissbury Ring alright.