Second Holiday
3 August

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Well, I've begun my second holiday week of the summer.

This time, at least, I'm not hanging round waiting for a letter telling me that I haven't been successful in getting a new job.

Most of the time I have been out in the garden. Whilst the weather is still not consistently brilliant, it is good enough to require us to throw open the windows for ventilation and to use the electric fan a night to keep us cool.

Our horticultural escapades continue and our attempts at cultivation appear to have worked. We have an ongoing crop of cabbages which have been added to many a meal. The annual crop of plums is reasonable this year. Currently, they are ripening but it does appear as though something has been nibbling at some of them.

Around the fringes, last year's new spotted laurel has settled in and has flourished. The lavender and fuchsia bushes are in fine fettle. Down by the pond, there's a carpet of purple and yellow which is matched by the St John's Wort which we purchased at Erddig two summers ago.

The honeysuckle and buddleja are doing particularly well this August.

It's all a far cry from when we first moved in nearly eight years ago.

Perhaps the best judge of this is the wildlife and we are certainly seeing more insects, more caterpillars, more ladybirds, more bees and more butterflies in the garden as each year passes. Jemima, particularly, is very fond of butterflies as they are great sport to leap after and catch, particularly since they don't sting.

So, I've been eating out, reading out, sitting out and generally wearing my shorts and exposing my legs to the elements.

Quite a lot of this back garden relaxation is to do with the change in neighbours. On the down side, Spencer has now left taking winsome son, Shane, with him.

However, we've been getting to know downstairs flat occupant John a little. He's a spunky little dude in the Jeremy Jordan mode. However, he seems to be taking forever to sort out the flat before moving in.

The upstairs lot are a bit more basic. We have had one public row. But nothing like the days of Bev and, even then, it seemed like a genuine family dispute rather than the continual wash of bile that characterised the last three years that the foghorn was with us. We did wonder if we were going to go back to the days of dog shit in the side passage but, no, that has been cleared up as well.

I stuck my neck out a bit a few postings back when I argued against the importance of the argument for sexuality being genetically encoded and therefore not a matter of choice. With uncanny synchronicity, the news has been full of unhappy gay-related stories.

This week has seen the Lambeth Conference and much internal division within the Anglican Communion over the issues of gay bishops and the blessing of same sex unions. There has been much use of scripture in its various guises to support many opposing views.

Meanwhile, I am just catching up with remarks made by Democratic Unionist Party MP Iris Robinson on BBC Radio Ulster about using psychiatry to turn men away from homosexuality and quotes from Hansard which have her saying that "there can be no viler act, apart from homosexuality, than sexually abusing innocent children." She has also called homosexuality an abomination - which at least has scriptural authority (although the Hebrew work translated as "abomination" by the King James Version actually means "ritually unclean"). She is currently chair of the Northern Ireland Assembly's health committee.

Here on Merseyside, 18-year-old Michael Causer was beaten to death by two other teenagers because he was gay.

Maybe I'm wrong to see a connection.

In a sudden rush of blood to the head, I made an impulse purchase from Amazon of Food for Love. I'd like to pretend that I was interested in comparing the film with David Leavitt's novel The Page Turner which I'd read a long while back. But no. I was just curious to see Kevin Bishop's backside - and it was certainly worth £9.00 of anyone's money.

The story itself, as with the book, was most interesting when it was dissecting how everyone was using each other in one way or another. Not abusing - but using. Young Paul using older men to gain experience (and Kevin Bishop was rather good here in portraying the uncritical naivety and selfish eagerness of an eighteen year old). Paul Rhys as forty year old pianist Richard Kennington using Paul to recapture a phantasy of his younger years. Allan Corduner as Joseph Mansourian, the partner, lover and agent of the pianist, using Paul to assuage loneliness, emptiness and lust. And Juliet Stephenson as Paul's mother using Paul's pianistic talent as a way of projecting her unfulfilled passions on the future.

However, director Ventura Pons allowed the plot to get away from him - and I suspect that I felt this of the novel as well. The opening third is good as Paul falls in love/lust with Richard Kennington. The central section is a mess. In the film, there's a totally embarrassing scene in which a group of mothers with gay sons deliver a government health warning about gay sex in the guise of a support meeting. By the end, at least we've seen the characters begin to move on a bit. So, three stars for overall effort.

I do wonder, however, about moving the central location from London to New York, particularly since the majority of the actors were British and the film was shot in Barcelona with a Spanish director. Most of the actors managed a passable North American actor but Geraldine McEwan's vocalism moved waywardly between Eastern Europe and Aberdeen.

Still, Kevin was cuteness on a stick and opened up to experience with doe-eyed determination.

And he does naked teenage draping over the furniture with aplomb.

And, for a film with very little sex in it, he did seem to spend an awful lot of time putting his trousers back on.