Almost Home, My Love!

Grandad was waiting patiently, immaculately dressed as always. Shoes polished, hair slicked back, and sporting a jacket and tie.

"I've been waiting" he said, smiling. "I thought you'd be here sooner".

"Sorry, but I wasn't sure if I should leave the girls, they still need us", she replied.

"They'll be fine" said grandad. "And besides, I've got something to show you".

He took her hand, as gently and lovingly as he always had, led her through the open door, and out into the bright morning sunshine. Instinctively, she closed her eyes against the sudden glare. But she could feel the warmth on her face, and smell the fresh, familiar breeze. Someone must have just cut their grass.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Home" was his simple reply.

"We're going home Bet".

Through My Fingers

My nanny finally passed away this evening.

In the same calm, dignified way that she lived her life. Without any fuss or drama, she just closed her eyes, and slipped quietly away from us.

How can the people we love so dearly be gone so easily. After almost 93 years of giving so much and asking so little. Shouldn't there be something, a soft roll of thunder, or maybe the lights should flicker for a brief moment? Just something small to make people realise that the world just lost something precious. That Elizabeth Lavender is gone forever.

The tears that come aren't just because she's gone. They're because I've suddenly realised that it's too late for so many things. I wish that last time I saw her, I'd held her hand for just a little bit longer, and squeezed it just a little bit harder. That I'd let her kiss me one more time before I turned and left. And that I'd told her how incredible she was, and that she could never be replaced.

The tears are because even though we loved her so dearly, we have to say goodbye.

Elizabeth Lavender (1918 - 2011)

A Moo-less Cow

Along with cleaning behind the cooker, I've been meaning to write something about this since Christmas......................... or was it Chanukah? 'How is a body supposed to know these things', as my grandmother would probably have said. I'm using a past tense here (well, present perfect to be exact), not because she's dead, but because Aloysius Alzheimer has left her unable to know or say anything. A silent Jewish grandmother, now there's a first. And silenced by a medical condition with a German name as well, an irony which would have had my poor nanny choking on her own chicken soup ('Oy! So many nice Jewish diseases, and God gives me a German one!')

The head of my department at work gave me quite a hard time for decorating our office (Christmas) tree with Stars of David. Not a hard time in an anti-Semitic way, but a hard time in terms of questioning my motives.

He asked me if I was Jewish (which I'm not), and I said, no, but I have a Jewish heritage (which I do). He then asked me why I celebrated Chanukah if I wasn't Jewish. And again I said because I have a Jewish heritage. It almost seemed as if he were suggesting that I was some kind of religious fraud (there's probably a German name for that condition as well).

Is it me? (Oh no! I just shrugged my shoulders, a sure sign of Jewish blood). Am I imagining something that isn't there? Because for me it's very clear that Judaism (or Yiddishkeit) is something both religious AND cultural. It's like being English. You don't have to be born and live in England to have an English heritage. Just look at how many of our extended antipodean family still celebrate St George's Day with far more enthusiasm than the residents of Cheltenham, or even deepest Bermondsey.

He seemed to be suggesting that I was just some kind of Judophile..............or should that be Yiddophile? But for me it's so much more. Am I missing the point? Or am I really just some kind of freakish Hebe-obsessed, Yiddophile Jew-stalker?

My Polish/Ukrainian-born maternal grandparents (just in case you haven't read any of my earlier blogs) didn't bring up their children in 'the Jewish faith'. They didn't convert, they just stopped................ well, stopped shrugging their shoulders, talking in riddles, and going to schul. But culturally there is such a strong identity that I'm not sure there's such a thing as an 'ex-Jew'. It's a bit like being a cow.


Just because you stop mooing, it doesn't mean that you stop being a cow. You still eat grass and fart all day, and people still look at you and say 'Oh look, it's a very quiet cow'.

Throughout my childhood, I just never realised how (stereo)typically Jewish my grandparents were (especially my grandmother). And of course, like many immigrants from that wartime period, they were never particularly eager to talk about it, or advertise it. I think a lot of the secrecy was partly fear, and partly the desire to be accepted in Britain and not be 'foreigners'. Remember that they came from a land where, before anything else, you were always 'A Jew'. Not a Pole, but a Polish Jew, not a banker, but a Jewish banker, and not a man, but a Jew. And of course, not forgetting that classic, anti-semitic eastern European favourite, 'A Dirty Jew'.

I remember talking about this to an old work colleague quite a few years ago. Although she was (and still is) terribly, terribly middle-class, her surname was Kastner, so I'd always assumed her family were 'of German descent' (or 'foreign' as some people still insist on saying in England). Then one very drunken evening on a balcony in Venice, we got on to the subject of 'who had the oddest family'. It turned out that her father's original surname was Cohen, and that he'd been smuggled out of Czechoslovakia to Sweden as a small child just before the outbreak of the Second World War. From there he was brought to England, and for some unknown reason ended up with the surname Kastner. But in exactly the same way as my grandparents, he had turned himself into what he considered to be the most English of English.

Now, despite the fact that my family are right up there with the Munsters when it comes to oddness, naturally, she won the competition hands-down. After all, who in their right mind would try to assimilate themselves into post-war England by taking a German surname at a time when Germans ranked second (just below bed bugs) on the list of things that the English hated.

But back to my odd family.

I really didn't know they were either Jewish or eastern European until I was 14, and I didn't grow up in an area with any Jews (dirty or clean!). So, with the exception of the year I spent in Israel when I was twenty, I'd never really been around Jews in any number. Even in Israel it's very different. The modern Israeli culture has very little to do with that classic old-world 'Fiddler On The Roof', 'schlap my tukhes, und call me Moishe' Yiddish kind of thing. It wasn't really until I started visiting New York in my thirties that I was introduced to the whole Yiddish/Jewish thing, and in particular the idea that it was something to be celebrated as our cultural heritage. Anyone who's ever been to New York will know that 'being Jewish' is a big thing, almost as big as the Americans themselves.

I know that most people probably don't understand how I can consider myself to be even remotely Jewish if I have a foreskin, short sideburns, and don't go to schul . But that's just because they don't come from Jewish family. I'm not Jewish by faith, but very proudly Jewish by heritage.

And for those alter cockers like my head of department who still don't get the picture. There really is only one answer................kish mich in tukhes!

Only Ginger Rogers Escaped The Wrecking Ball.

'It's a vunder (wonder) she never slung you kids out too' was the answer my grandmother always gave when my sister and I demanded that she 'tell us about when we were little'.

This was our favourite question, way ahead of 'Tell us about the olden days nanny', 'Have you got any sweets' and 'Is Grandad dead?'.

This final question wasn't as brutal as it sounds in retrospect. It was asked by we children as a result of his habit of taking long, silent afternoon naps, during which you couldn't tell whether he was breathing or not. And Nanny's concerned response was always the same 'Daddy! Daddy! Stop it! You're scaring the kinder (children)'.

But back to the whole point..........................

My mother, for all her many good points (and there are many), has never been what you'd describe as sentimental. In fact, she's the human equivalent of a wrecking ball slamming into a beautiful, but no longer practical, Victorian building. Unlike me, she doesn't feel the need to hold on to things for the sake of having them, or because they hold fond memories, or even purely because they're pleasing to the eye. She likes the 'working surfaces' of her life to be clear of clutter and ready for action. Unnecessary obstacles only hinder her ability to sweep down like a vast Sioux war party, armed with a duster and can of furniture polish, onto the unsuspecting covered wagons ambling across the prairie, scattering bonnetted women and children in her wake, and emerging with bloodied scalps ready to be cleared out to make 'more space'.

However, we could never work out what she wanted this 'more space' for. As children, the idea of more space meant that it could be filled with precious things, or at least things which were precious to us. But, unfortunately for we treasure-hoarding children, the only thing precious to my mother was empty space. Shelves, stripped naked and polished daily to an almost scientific shine, and cupboards whose emptiness echoed every time they were opened or closed.

Things fell into only one of two categories 'used' and 'not used', usually the latter.

In order to be classified as 'used', it was necessary for something to be touched by a human hand (ideally ours) at least once every week, even more for some things. I'm not sure how she achieved it, but throughout our childhood, my mother used some kind of sophisticated detection system which could tell when a much-loved toy had last been played with, or when that poster of David Essex had last been gazed at. Anything failing 'the test' would be immediately and mercilessly stripped from the wall, or would just simply 'disappear'. So efficient was her system of removal, that it was almost as if they'd been beamed up into space by aliens in front of our eyes. One minute they would be there, and the next.............vanished into thin air. At a rough guess at least half of all sentences uttered during my childhood began with 'Has anyone seen my.............?'

Unless of course, it happened to be an old musical video, or more recently a DVD.

They say that every man (and woman) has their vice, and my mother's one weakness is musicals from the 1920's an 30's. To this day, the only thing guaranteed to make my mother go weak at the knees, apart from sheer exhaustion, is the sight of the perma-tanned Howard Keel, gazing at her longingly from across the span of time. Teary-eyed Anne Margaret, tinkling yet another corny love song about her bloody 'poor broken heart'. And of course, at the head of this grainy black and white army. Ginger fucking Rogers!

Pushing Boundaries

As a 'homosexually-orientated' man, I've never really thought of myself as particularly raunchy or adventurous when it comes to 'bedroom things'. In fact when asked to describe myself in five words, vanilla is usually about the third one on the list, directly below intelligent and infuriating (I can actually talk for 15 minutes without hesitation, deviation or repetition on the origins and interpretations of the missionary position. You probably aren't aware of this, but in 3rd century BC Mesopotamia, in what is now modern-day Iraq.................... well, maybe another time, eh?).

When it came to anything out of the ordinary sex-wise (by gay standards), I always felt very much like one of those rather dull, middle-aged, home-counties, cake-baking, Women's Institute ladies. They spend almost 30 years being gently and predictably penetrated vaginally (apart from one slight slip) once a month by a mild-mannered accountant with haemorrhoids and striped pyjamas. Then suddenly, they find themselves widowed, divorced, or separated at the age of 50, and on a 'foreign' holiday in Turkey for the first time with their friend Margaret, confronted by a 25 year-old Turkish waiter with a rock hard, throbbing, 8 inch boner squashed into his fake 501's. And like the plate of freshly-caught, chargrilled baby squid in its own ink that he's holding out, they have absolutely no idea what to do with either, and just sit there like a 'rabbit in headlights', jaw resting gently on their large, securely-brassiered chest.

But then, before you can say 'Kamal Ataturk', there they are, shrieking up and down the beach at 3 o'clock in the morning on the back of the waiter's scooter! Clad in a bikini top, sarong, and ankle-chain, clutching a glass of Raki & Diet Coke, sucking cock and 'doing anal' as if they were born to it.

We think these lusty Shirley Valentines are the exception, but it seems that we all have boundaries which move quote easily with a some gentle persuasion (and a bit of Aegean spit!).

I realised just how far my own boundaries have shifted quite recently when I read an advertisement on one of those Internet sites that people claim never to use, you know, the ones packed full of sad and lonely losers desperate for sex. The advertisement was written with impeccable grammar by a guy who wanted nothing more than to be kicked in the balls. I read the two sentences through twice just to be doubly sure that he really had said 'I want to be kicked in the balls', and yup, he definitely wanted a ball-kicker.

My first reaction was to tut tut, roll my eyes, say something like 'Shiver me timbers, what a fucking freak', and move on to the next advert.

But I didn't.

Something caught my imagination and made me wonder what it would feel like to intentionally kick someone in the goolies. Would it feel sexual? Or would it just feel odd? And how would it work? Would he just stand there with his legs apart and shout 'Come on you fucker, kick me where it hurts!'. And surely it would hurt, in fact it hurt me just thinking about it. But I did more than think about it, I emailed him back.

I was still thinking 'Shiver me timbers, what a freak' and wondering if I could go through with it several hours later, when Mr 'Kick Me Hard In The Balls' rang my buzzer.

I've discovered that the thing about pushing your boundaries and doing something that you could never imagine doing usually, is that at some point you find you have an alter-ego who is more than happy to do it. It's a bit like being an actor and walking on stage in a play. You stop being yourself and become someone else, which in my case was a ball-kicker. My shy, mild-mannered, cake-baking facade melted away and before I knew it, I'd turned into a kind of sadistic, truncheon-stroking prison-officer and had this complete stranger's nads in a vice-like grip. And the more positively he responded (which he most certainly did), the more comfortable I felt and the more pleasurable it became. He had come fully equipped for his ordeal, and had brought a pair of beautiful, yellow leather boxing gloves, which I needed no encouragement to slip on. After instructing my victim to strip down to his underwear (which rather surreally was a pair of Union Jack boxer-briefs), I gave him what I thought was a pain-inducing tap.

This is the point at which, without exception, every man I have told the story to, has turned rather pale, broken out into a cold sweat, and asked not to be told any more. Consider yourself warned.

My idea of a pain-inducing tap was met with a groan of sexual pleasure (and a serious woody), and so my taps became harder and harder, gradually turning into full-blown punches (complete with an arm-swing and a three-step run-up). This 'ball-beating', which turned out to be extremely enjoyable for both of us, lasted for well over half an hour, and would have left even the Kray Twins feeling pleased with themselves.

My point is not to see how quickly I can bring tears to your eyes or to change the way you look at me forever. It's to demonstrate the ease with which, even someone like me, can take something that we imagine to be beyond our capabilities, and turn it into something which is perfectly acceptable. I found it exciting, but at the same time frightening to think how far I was capable of pushing my boundaries.

How far could you push your boundaries?

(This blog was written from the comfort of my padded cell).

The Lost Tree Trunk

My grandfather was the solid trunk of our family's tree, and the shock of losing him several years ago left us all emotionally stranded, like pollarded sycamore branches, scattered around on the ground, foundationless, and incapable of sustaining ourselves.

You see, he was the one who first sunk roots into the unfamiliar and often unfriendly ground in this country. The one who supplied all our needs, and the one who stood firm and sheltered us when strong winds and tragedy tried to blow us down. He created a tough, loving shell around us all, and tried to protect us from the world. A fortress into which we frequently fled when danger threatened.

When my younger sister was killed by a car at the age of 11, and my mother was left paralysed with grief, it was my grandfather who dragged her back and forced her to carry on. It was my grandfather's constant presence in our lives that prevented my father's worst excesses, and which saved us from financial crisis when he died of cancer, at a relatively young age, leaving my mother with his debts.

Although not always able to change our lives, it was his strength of character and ability to cope with even the worst of situations which taught us to shut out the things we could not deal with or found too distressing.

But without realising it, his fierce desire to protect us and keep us safe also made us weak and incapable of surviving without him. Like a hedgehog, once our protective prickles were gone, we were left vulnerable to attack, and without the means or experience to defend ourselves. Because we were always sure of his guidance or intervention, we never developed the tools to face the difficult side of life or to stand up for ourselves.

My grandfather was a strong, gentle, loving man devoted to his family, and together with my grandmother, created a family environment free from any form of danger. When something or someone threatened us from outside 'the family', rather than confront it, we retreated inside our protective walls. Standing up for ourselves was never something we considered. Instead, we learned to slam the door and wait for our attackers to get bored and leave.

We learned many valuable lessons from my grandfather. The ability to love and accept love, the value of family and friendship, and being able to ignore the difficulties in life and focus on the positive aspects have all been huge advantages. But there is one lesson learned from my grandfather which , in hindsight, has proved disastrous.

Defence is not always the best form of attack.

Writing a blog

I'm just about to start a new blog about things we did as kids. I'm never entirely sure where each one is going, they seem to take on an energy all their own. Sometimes I write what I initially intended to write, and sometimes it goes off in a completely different direction.

The ones about my family and childhood were quite unexpected, but ended up being some of my favourites. I originally began with the intention of simply writing something light-hearted and funny about growing up in Essex. It's seemed an easy subject to take on, because there is no shortage of material. My Essex childhood on the estuary is absolutely jam-packed full of wonderfully horrific characters with big hearts, tatoos, white high heels, and determination of steel.

But the problem with scratching the surface is that you just never know what you're going to find.

Writing about my past just seemed to lead automatically, and also quite naturally, back to my parent's and grandparent's past. Although my mum's over-loving parents seemed to be the more interesting, my father's under-loving, Victorian parents also deserve their own blog at some point.

I didn't realise how much the possibility, or maybe I should say certainty, of losing my grandmother and her link to that area of our past was affecting me. The Long Journey Home probably isn't the best thing I've written, but it was the one which was most difficult to write because I suddenly realised that the loss of my grandmother meant the loss of that whole part of our family history.

Losing things which are impossible to replace is something that only ever seems to become apparent when it's too late. The fact that my grandparents chose not to speak very much about their past was always perfectly normal, and where the rest of my family were genuinely not interested, I didn't ask because I thought they had every right not to talk about it. But I'm suddenly faced with the possibility that it's too late, the horse has bolted, and I wish I had stood up and said 'I want to know, it's important to know'. With my grandparent's passing, that means that two more family histories will have vanished, no more Sztajnbergs (grandad), no more Voightlanders (nanny). What didn't go up in smoke, will just have fizzled out because nobody talked about it.

It's funny how certain things make us realise the importance (or at least relevance) of others.

But I suppose that's what writing a blog is about, the opportunity to write about what is important or relevant to me, without worrying about whether it's of any interest to anybody else.

Assimilation, as easy as falling off a branch!

My Polish-born, Jewish grandparents worked tirelessly when they first arrived, to become what they thought was 'as British as roast beef' (or roost beefs, as my nanny called it). A simple change of name, and Yehuda and Rivka Sztajnberg became Andrew and Elizabeth (Betty) Flowers. My grandfather's brother Moishele, their only relative in Britain, became George Flowers at the same time.

Who knows why they chose those names, the logic of immigrants is unfathomable. George and Elizabeth were the names of the much-loved King and Queen at the time, and Andrew was the name of the patron saint of Scotland, where my grandparents first started their new life. But the important thing was that they were names that they hoped 'British people' could look at without frowning at their foreign-ness and total unpronouncability. Strange combinations of Z's, K's, and I's, and multi-consonant pile-ups were like a public announcement telling people 'We're not from here'. And at that time in Britain, if you weren't 'from here', then you fell into the single other category of 'FOREIGN'. Regardless of whether you were black or white, Christian or Jew, a king or a peasant, when people spoke about you, they would inevitably incorporate one of the following suffixes:

1) He's a very nice man, although he is foreign.

2) You'd never know from looking at them that they were foreign, would you.

3) I expect they do that where they come from.

4) He's not English, but he's still a very nice man.

So, my grandparents set out on their mission. Objective: Total Anglicisation!

Despite living (rather illogically) in a predominantly Jewish area, surrounded by numerous 'landsmen', they worked hard to change languages and master English. My grandfather did quite a good job, but for my grandmother, it wasn't quite as easy. Even after seventy years in Britain, she never did learn the art of 'crisp consonants', and words beginning with the letter 'D' always sounded as if she had lost the end of her tongue.

Although nobody in my family (particularly my grandmother) ever seemed to notice her constant 'linguistic free-styling', her errors were truly epic, especially when it came to colloquial phrases.

Something considered unimportant was 'like water off a pig's back', and things were often 'on the tip of her mouth'. As alike as chalk and cheese translated as 'they're the same as coal and roses', and greedy people were very likely to 'take the eyes from your head' or 'the tongue from a blind man's mouth'. And instead of being given a piece of her mind when we were bad, we were given (rather unpleasantly) a 'piece of her tongue'.

She created memorable, if slightly un-natural pairs, such as nuts & screws, night & dark, and cats & frogs. And almost everything which wasn't supposed to have a definite article seemed to acquire one. We would never think of talking about 'the cancer', and 'the swimming' was something good for the 'peace and mind'.

But somehow, despite my grandparents lifetime of linguistic struggles, to me they never seemed anything other than the most English of English.

Considered Good-looking

Casual sex is most definitely not everyone's cup of tea. It really depends on whether you can draw a line between kissy-kissy, catch-me, catch-me romance (romantic love) and plain old tooth-rattling, eye-popping shagging, and whether you can rationalise the need in your life for each, or both.

I'm a firm believer in the overall benefit of a good, healthy, nutritious diet with all the right food groups. But I also think that once in a while, eight pints of Heineken, a large chicken doner, and a bag of candy floss is good for your spirit. You may regret the after-effects the next day, but you never regret just 'how fucking good' it felt at the time.

Just to avoid any confusion over what I understand by the term 'casual' sex. For me, casual sex is any act where at least one of the participants are sucked or penetrated in any of their knob-sized holes by someone they met (in the flesh) less than a couple of hours ago. Online chatting doesn't count as 'meeting' unless you talk about something other than who is going to get what, how hard, in which hole, and how many times.

So, okay, let's cut to the chase. I've had plenty of casual sex. It's not sleazy (unless you want it to be), it's not cheap (unless you make it), it doesn't ruin you forever (unless you're a fifteen year-old Iranian girl), and it's not illegal (unless you're a fifteen year-old Iranian boy). So, unless you're one of these people who can't 'do it' unless it's on snowy-white, Egyptian-cotton sheets smelling of new-born lambs with the boy you've been seeing since you were twelve, then there really is no down-side to casual sex.

What is essential (in addition to almost no gag-reflex and a good supply of sexsersories..............you know, lube, condoms, ball-gags, a sling...........), is the ability to not be easily disappointed.

It doesn't matter how hard you try or how careful you are, at some point you're going to run into the guy who didn't have a picture to exchange. He's not at his own computer, he's in an Internet cafe, in the office, wife's around, or the most frightening one. ..................... 'I'm using my children's computer' .......................to trawl for casual gay sex! But he'll be the one who catches you when you're horny and gagging for a shag, or just catches your imagination. You have trust his description of himself, even if that description includes the dangerous phrase 'I'm considered good-looking'. Being a seasoned casual-sexer, this should immediately send alarm bells ringing and red lights flashing...................'Considered good-looking by who? Quasimodo The Fucking Bell-ringer?' Should be the reply. Because too many times, my Mister 'Considered Good-looking' has turned up at the front door looking distinctly like Mister 'Ageing Married Troll Who's Let Himself Go'. Or what about Mister 'Balding Clerk with Bad Knob Hygiene and a Paunch'?

Love may be blind, and so, apparently, are a good number of my fellow casual-sexers! So, a word of advice to save us all a whole lot of disappointment and embarrassment. If you're not 100% sure whether you actually are good-looking or not, check it out and ask someone for fuck's sake!

Somewhere In between

'Ay Channaleh, why so late? We're all waiting for you again!' my grandmother said tersely as my mother arrived that morning. But Channah is just one of the many long-lost ghosts from my grandmother's past who now light her journey home. Channaleh was my grandmother's dearly-loved, youngest sister who died shortly after the German invasion of my grandmother's hometown of Lvov in 1941, kicked to death by a gang of teen-aged Ukrainian militia let lose on the unprotected Jewish population.

'It's not Channaleh mum, it's Carole' my mother replied crossly. But although her voice may have been cross, I know that her heart breaks every time my grandmother fails to recognise her or my auntie Junie. Every time she slips back into the silent world that excludes the two daughters who lovingly and selflessly care for her. The daughters who arrive at the nursing home in which my grandmother lives, four days out of every seven, without complaint and loaded down with anything they think might make my grandmother's life just slightly more comfortable. They scrub and polish her small, self-contained flat over and over again, rearrange my grandmother's dishevelled and mismatched clothing, and change the incontinence pads that she needs in her newly child-like state. And for no other reason than the fact that my grandmother is their flesh and blood, and as essential to them as breathing. Despite the fact that they never receive a thank you, and are seldom recognised, they lavish their time and love on the frail old woman who did the same for them without question.

'Is that you Mags? Are we going to the shops Mags? Is it time for dinner Mags?'

'Mags, Mags, Mags, all we get now is bloody Mags! If I hear Mags one more time, I swear I'll throttle her' snaps my mother on the rare occasion when the only way to disguise her grief is through anger. But only my grandmother knows who Mags is, and she's oblivious to either my mother's anger or her grief.

To lose the people you love so dearly is hard; but to lose them and yet still have them so close is almost too much to bear.

But as my grandmother would say .............................. 'Di velt iz ful mit tsores' ......................... the world is full of sorrows.

The Price of Romance

Being a 'romantic' is incredibly hard nowadays.

'I want to spend the rest of my life with you!' has been replaced by 'Why don't we both live in my flat so that we can rent yours out?' And 'Let's go out for a really nice meal on Saturday' has been replaced with 'Shall we get a couple of grams of K for Saturday night, get shit-faced, and have a threeway?'

Romance may not be completely dead, but it's definitely choking on its own vomit, and seems only to live on in its purest form in the hearts of über-wrinkled, hand-holding, octogenarian couples, and the bulging wallets of Hallmark Card executives and florists.

The problem with being a romantic who is neither highly-paid nor 'pushing death' is that you are almost always going to be disappointed in a world where so many people think that leaving the room when you need to fart is a romantic gesture. We've been slowly re-educated, or brain-washed, into believing that 'romance' is something material which involves large amounts of money, happens at very specific times of the year appointed by retailers, and must come from a list of 'authorised' gestures. What's romantic about sending 12 frighteningly over-priced red roses on Valentine's Day? Most people don't have a vase for them, the heads wilt within 24 hours because they're exhausted after their 48-hour flight from Peru, and they were probably picked by under-paid, under-aged children who will almost certainly die from a lung disease caused by the pesticides and fungicides they have to breathe in.

The idea of romance peddled by companies like Hallmark has been horribly distorted into some kind of emotional version of Muzak. A company who create non-existent, but highly romantic occasions, and then cleverly convince us that we should be sending cards with messages like 'Happy Belated Rosh Hashanah To My Beloved Goy-friend', and 'Congratulations! You Got Your Period, Now We Can Have Un-protected Sex Again'.

That's not romance. That consumerism!

I know I'm starting to sound cynical or bitter (or, God forbid, anti-Hallmark!), but that's not the point I'm trying to make. What I'm saying is that real romance is something that we should feel comfortable to demonstrate at any time of the day (or night), and every day of our lives (past and present). It shouldn't be something that is only available to 'couples' to demonstrate the fact that, even though they rarely have sex anymore, they still love the person they're with. We have all been shockingly robbed of the right to feel comfortable being romantic in our everyday lives. We have to go to the cinema and longingly watch it happening fictionally on-screen because, like the 'ginger-gene', it's gradually being bred out of existence.

I want that intimate, 'eyes-across-a-smokey-room' form of romance (even though, thankfully, smokey rooms are a thing of the past). Surely it must still be possible to lock eyes with a complete stranger, and find our hearts palpitating, our palms sweating, and a funny fluttering in our stomachs? Or are our romantic sides so dead that we just put it down to either a minor heart attack, or a bad curry? Despite Hallmark's attempt to turn romance into 'an occasion', and the efforts of the many non-romantics who try to convince me that romance and shagging are the same thing, I know what I want and still belive it's possible.

So come on boys, forget Gaydar, forget your Xbox, get on your white chargers and sweep me (all 80kg of me) off my feet!

Don't you ever let me get like that!

I went to see my grandmother on Saturday, after almost 6 months. I had been putting it off and off and off because my sister went and was really upset. Yes, this is my 'hard-as-nails', council-estate sister (the one who used to pierce her own ears when she was a teenager) ...................upset, yes, actually upset! She's a bit like me, we both disguise feelings with sarcastic humour, so for her to be visibly (and audibly) upset is a huge thing.

My mum and aunt made the decision to move my grandmother into sheltered accommodation towards the end of last year because she had the quite rapid onset of dementia (my grandmother, not my mum). As they were concerned that she wasn't safe being on her own, they found a very nice residential complex where she has her own flat with living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom, but within a warden-controlled complex. This means that the carers check on her in the morning, evening, and several times during the day and deal with any issues or concerns. So, it was a good compromise between making sure she was safe, and not taking away ALL her privacy and independence.
I don't think anyone thought that her dementia would progress so rapidly and within six months she is probably about 5% of her old self.

Anyway, back to Saturday. My mum managed (as usual) to badger, blackmail, and cajole me into going over even though I said I didn't want to go. I had a really anxious feeling about the possibility of seeing my grandmother, but my mum chooses to hear what she wants to hear sometimes. Part of it is a competition she has with my aunt over whose children are the better grandchildren. My cousin is going to visit on Tuesday, so I think my mum was worried that she would be 'out-grandchilded' by my aunt (auntie Junie) because I hadn't been.

The residential home is actually very nice, especially when you look at some residential homes which are just glorified chapels of rest, full of barely-breathing human fossils in various states of decomposition.
But I was actually shocked when I saw my grandmother. To start with she didn't have a clue who I was, even when mum prompted (and prodded) her. I know that her sight and hearing are both going, but she didn't know who I was, even with my mum hollering at 80 decibels in her ear "Do you know who it is? It's Andrew.........Andrew mum! Andrew, your grandson. Do you remember him? Mum? Mum! It's Andrew". But the reality was that she just looked even more dazed and confused as she trued to manoeuvre her walking frame from the bedroom.
She was like a picture of one of the survivors from Bergen-Belsen, tiny, shrunken, stick-thin limbs, with a face that had almost caved in completely. Dark circles under her eyes, and the vacant expression of someone who isn't somewhere else, they just aren't anything or anywhere. It was truly shocking and upsetting and I knew that I shouldn't have gone.

I stayed for about an hour, and during that time, she was lucid for barely a couple of minutes. It's incredibly hard to have a conversation with someone who has no reaction, I felt like an old, gay Sally Field in Steel Magnolias. But instead of talking to a lifeless, but still stunningly beautiful, Shelby, I had a total stranger who used to be my bright, chatty grandmother. She had always been so fastidious about her appearance, her hair was done every week, fingernails manicured, hands moisturised, make-up applied, and smartly-dressed. I've forgotten how many times she ranted about the old people she saw on the street who had 'let 'em selves go'. She used to say 'Don't you ever let me get like that, will ya, you bang me over the 'ed wiv a lump a' wood if I ever lose me marbles'.


And that's just what I could hear in my head as I was sitting there looking at this complete stranger whose only contribution to the conversation was to beg to be taken to the bathroom. 'I wanna go to the toilet, I want to go to the toilet', like a tiny child. That wasn't the woman I'd been looking up to and loving and being loved by for over 40 years, it was someone different, someone I didn't know. And the only recognition for me was something I felt in my heart, somewhere between love and pity.

"Don't you ever let me get like that!"

I can't imagine how hard this is for my mum and my aunt. I spent an hour there, but they spend every Tuesday, most Thursdays, and alternate Saturdays, cleaning, washing, tidying, and chatting to someone who probably only exists in their hearts as well.

China's Penis Restaurant, a perfect analogy!

Thinking of the choice of who to vote for in the up-coming General Election, this old news article from The Times came to mind. A restaurant with a menu where you only have a choice between one type of penis or another.............................a perfect analogy. You look at the menu, and there's just nothing that makes your mouth water, or even sounds remotely palatable. So you pick the least-offensive thing on the menu, and force yourself to eat it.

China's Penis Restaurant
There are several varieties of steamed, roasted and boiled penis at Beijing’s quirkiest diner.

I'm visiting the Guo-li-zhuang restaurant, a specialist penis and testicle emporium that caters mainly to wealthy businessmen and Communist party officials (who, truth be told, are often one and the same).

It offers every conceivable John Thomas you could ever want, which probably isn’t very many. Nonetheless, the menu is both extensive and impressive.
The place looks like a smart kaiseki ryori (Japanese haute cuisine) formal restaurant, complete with underfloor stream, separate secluded dining rooms and hushed, discreet staff. I have come determined to avoid euphemisms - we’re making a current-affairs programme for the BBC - but I’ll admit the temptation is strong.

I ask a chef to show us the preparation of a penis first, so that I can get a feel for the process. He enters holding aloft an eye-wateringly large yak’s knob. It’s about 45cm long, but thin, so thin. It’s been boiled gently and - I can’t believe I’m writing this - peeled, except for a hunk of foreskin still clinging on to the end. He cuts the thing in half lengthways with a pair of scissors.
As he chops through the very tip of this impressive member, I feel an undeniable empathy twitch in my own penis and a bizarre feeling of nausea in my groin. (I didn’t think groins could experience nausea.) I can’t help yelping in sympathy.

He then uses a knife to make hundreds of little snips along the side of the penis and chops the strips into 5cm pieces. When these are dropped into boiling stock, they curl up into little flower shapes that are so incongruous, I can barely believe my eyes.
I ask the chef if he thinks it strange to deal exclusively in genitalia, but he shrugs and doesn’t know what to say. He’s just happy to have a good job, really. His friends don’t take the mickey, his parents are proud of him and he does what he’s told. Okay.

Less taciturn is the female manager of the place, who says that Chinese history is one of famine, poverty, drought and disaster, which is why the Chinese have become used to eating every part of the animal - they have to extract every edible morsel from the food they have.
I ask if this is good communist food, and she proudly says that most of her customers are male Communist party members. Their meal costs an average of two months’ wages for a dumpling-factory worker, and I ask how a conscientious Communist can be seen here (paying up to £250 for the rarer penises) when the average peasant is on the poverty line.
She holds her hands up in the air and tells me that they come for the virility benefits genital-eating offers. Apparently, you can go for hours after eating a good portion of penis.

We try the water-buffalo penis first, in thin shavings. It started long and thin, but someone has shredded this noble old chap on a mandolin. It has the texture of squid and tastes of the mild chilli stock it’s been poached in.

We are given three sauces to dip it into - lemon and soy, chilli and soy, and a sesame-seed paste. It’s good, and the penile nature of the meat lends an undeniable frisson of excitement to the meal. I tell the boss that “it’s the first time I’ve had penis in my mouth, but I like it and I’m going to do more of it”. Well, someone had to say it.

She seems pleased, and pours me some deer-penis juice, which I’m delighted to say is the vilest concoction I’ve ever had the privilege to imbibe. It’s as sour as a smacked lemon and as bitter as neat quinine. My face freezes in an agonising spasm, and Lord knows how I manage to keep from throwing up. Mr Hoo, the driver, asks if I want any more, and when I shake my spasming head, he grins and downs it in one. I pity Mrs Hoo - she’s going to have a busy night.

We try goat’s penis, chicken feet, bull’s penis tip (that’ll keep you up all night too, the boss warns), terrapin leg and all manner of radishes. I’m offered dog’s penis (“The only one with a bone in it”, and served with a glacé cherry placed pointlessly on the tip), but decline.

All the knobs have intriguing, delicate and bizarre textures, although the flavour is mainly of pork braised in hot stock. My favourite dish of all is undoubtedly bull’s perineum – a delicate piece of flesh, the size of a chicken oyster, which has been poached, then slow-fried.
It’s sweet and crispy, with a deep taste of soy and honey.

Yan Yan, my guide, isn’t too keen on penis, but she’s adventurous in the face of adversity, and tries most things with a curled lip. Just before we go, I ask why the girls get off lightly. Why don’t they serve any female genitalia?

The boss bursts into giggly, embarrassed laughter. “That’s a crazy idea - why would anyone want to do that?”
“Well, because it’s protein and you Chinese are renowned for eating everything.”
“Don’t be insane,” she says. Then she remembers that she’s heard of a dish of donkey vulva, but she’s not sure where. She thinks it’s a disgusting idea.

Extracted from 'In the Danger Zone' by Stefan Gates

I'm a receptionist.........................

I'm planning a really relaxing weekend doing absolutely nothing. I've had the most incredibly busy and stressful week, and I'm mentally tired.

You wouldn't imagine that being a receptionist could be stressful, it's not a word people normally associate with reception work. But in my organisation, expectations (and workloads) are extremely high.

Most people's idea of receptionists is that you just sit at a desk in a Miss Selfridge skirt and jacket, smiling, and wondering what colour to paint your nails at lunchtime, Tuscan Sunset, or Cheeky Blush? Do you want to look like a sophisticated slut ? Or just simply like a slut?

You answer the telephone occasionally in a bored, monotone, vacant-sounding sing-songy voice.................'Helloooooooooo, Smith, Smith, and Smith Chartered Accoooooooooooontants how may I help yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooou?'.

Then, after quickly connecting your caller to the wrong number (the ONLY quick thing you do all day), you go back to nail colours and wondering how far the small hand needs to move before you can go to lunch with Cordelia from Jones & Jones Financial Wideboys, and Shazzer from the Royal Bank of Total Wankers (where your colleague Nadira's fiance works). At lunchtime, you meet other well-groomed, 'Fembot-esque' receptionists (or sometimes Admin Assistants or Secretaries) and shuffle around the shopping mall looking at shoes, clothes, and you guessed it.........................make-up!

Sometimes, you invite 'fat' Rachel (pronounced Rashelle because apparently her great-grandfather was French or black or something) who used to work there until she got the job as PA to an old American guy whose wife refused to let him have 'some young dolly' as his PA. So, he employed her because 'nobody in their right mind would fancy her' (except that he actually does because she gives him 'these fucking awesome blow-jobs under the desk after work - and swallows - and let's him pee over her tits in the exec washroom').

'Don't get me wrong babe, she's a really, really nice girl and I love her to bits, but she eats tons of carbs and she's probably a size 14...................and she sort of smells funny' (Yup, that's because she can't get the smell of piss out of her delicates!).

You wile away the afternoon looking at recruitment websites which advertise jobs that you aren't remotely qualified for but that sound like you'd be really good at. Exotic Futures Analyst (that must be about fruit or something), Strategic Offshore Economist EMEA (that one has loads of foreign travel, probably France or maybe America or even New York), Integrated Retail Planning Consultant (well, that's all about shops, isn't it!).

You break up the monotony of the day with a bit of pointless photocopying, usually something personal. But you never use the nearest copier because it's right next to the Legal Department and the Legal Secretaries are 'such a bunch of total bitches who look down their noses at everyone, even Karen and she's got 4 GCSE's! But they're only normal secretaries ............ .................... right?

Instead, you go all the way up to the photocopier on the third floor next to the IT Department where they're pretty much all buff young guys in T.M.Lewin shirts and Armani Exchange jeans. Then you hang around the copier huffing and puffing and looking helpless until Darren, or Terry, or Max (the one you shagged in the spastic toilet at All Bar One after the Christmas party last year) slither over and ask if you need a hand. The conversation is always pretty much the same:

- Awright Sasha, you need a hand?
- Oh I dunno, this stupid copier's not working again! I keep pressing the button but it won't copy and there's no lights on.
- Yeh, we switch it off sometimes because it gets too hot.
- Oh no, oh God, I'm SUCH a total blonde! (true) You must think I'm really thick (true).
- Nah, course not (lie). Do you just want normal copies?
- No, can you get it bigger for me? (you say, innocently raising your 'recently-threaded' eyebrows)
- (Darren raises his eyebrows) Well, never had any complaints so far (lie).

(you both laugh for 2 seconds)

- .....................oh my God, you're so filthy, I can't believe you just said that!
- What? What?? That's just your dirty mind Sasha (true).
- I've got to get back downstairs, the phones are just manic this afternoon (lie) and I left Nadira on her own.
- Is that the Asian girl with the scarf?
- Yes, but she's really nice though (lie - you think she's stuck-up). She's getting married next month, but it's like a normal marriage. It's not arranged or anything (lie - their families arranged it). Her fiance works at the same place as my mate Shazzer and she said he's really nice (lie - Shazzer calls him 'the wacky-paki' behind his back and thinks he a total perv who spends his time staring at her tits even though he's engaged).

- Are you going out for Ellie's leaving drinks on Friday?

- Might do. Are you going?
-Dunno, are you going?
-Probably.
- Awright, I've got to go, Nadira gets really stressed when she's on her own (lie - she's actually really relieved that she doesn't have to listen to your incessant twittering about shoes and make-up and can concentrate on planning her wedding instead).

You get back downstairs just in time to take your afternoon break, which you spend outside on your (pink) mobile phone smoking and telling Shazzer (and then Cordelia) what a perv Darren is and how much you fancy him (whilst Darren is leaning back on his chair upstairs telling Max what a fucking 'bike' you are). Then you tell Shazzer (and then Cordelia) what a bitch Nadira is, and how she never does anything except talk about how much money her fiance earns. At the same time, whilst you and Nadira smile synthetically at each other through the window, she's on the phone to her fiance telling him what a slut you look in the Cheeky Blush nail varnish that you put on at lunchtime while you were with that other awful slut who works at the same place as him, the one whose tits are too big for the small top she wears.

Will it even make the front page?

So, we've got our General Election date, Thursday 6th May.

And once again, there really isn't much of a choice. It's like that Monty Python song, Spam.

Spam, spam, spam. Spam and egg, spam and chips, spam, egg and chips.

The Conservative Party, the 'opposition' party in what's always been a two-horse race, will promise absolutely anything to win more votes. They always say that they're a new, modernised party, but like the apparently newly-respectable BNP (far-right, nationalist party), you know that underneath, they are the same right-wing, watered-down fascists that they've always been. They've just changed their ties, and re-phrased their tired old promises. The

Conservative Party and the Labour Party both walk that same line of trying to look as if they're doing something, whilst actually doing very little. They try to draw in minority voters whilst not alienating the majority. We saw that demonstrated by David Cameron's sad attempt, during his interview with Gay Times, at being 'right-on' and 'gay-friendly'. He thought he was putting out a new image of the Conservative Party by being interviewed by the 'Queer Press', and fell flat on his face at the first hurdle when they asked him why his party-representatives in the European Parliament had supported Lithuania's implementation of a new 'anti-gay' law. Anyone who thinks that the Conservative Party isn't still the party of the middle to far-right needs to look under the surface.

He's just another grey politician (apart from his high-vis cyclists stripe) who 'didn't inhale'. Just a shame that they all don't all stop inhaling completely and save all a lot of money.

Of course they are going to win, but the question is but what majority.

And of course I'm going to vote. I'm a great believer that we shouldn't waste a right that people died to get. But who am I going to vote for? Well, I'm a socialist, and I've voted Labour all my life. But the problem I have is that the current Labour Party bare deserve the title 'socialists' any more. They've moved so far towards the centre (or further), that they're hardly recognisable as a socialist party. And they seem to have been far too busy in the last couple of years trying to work out whose turn it is to 'be in charge' to actually worry about doing what they said on the tin. I would feel more positive about voting Labour if they promised a new party leader at least.

Gordon Brown was a brilliant finance minister (and I'm sure he's a very nice man who loved his mother), but he's been a total disaster as a party leader and Prime Minister. If ever a party were guilty of 'gross disappoint', then it is the current Labour Party.

And as for the other minor parties. I suppose it sends a message to the main parties when marginal parties receive votes, but apart from that, it's a pointless vote and has no impact on the way the country is governed. They have no voice (or seats) in Parliament.

I would feel more positive about voting Labour if they promised a new party leader. Gordon Brown was a brilliant finance minister, but he's been a disaster of a party leader and Prime Minister.

Fucking hell! Will someone please re-invent politics in this country and actually do what they say they'll do. Or just do SOMETHING! It's boring me to tears..................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!