Controlled Mayhem
Well, the weekend was mayhem of sorts but a lot more controlled than I thought it was going to be.
Thursday was another tube strike day spent working at home. And I'd
being alternating between the keyboard, preparing paid work and
consultancy type work, and doing things around the house, when I got
a phone call from Glen. So, that was a nice way to spend the evening.
Friday brought a trip to Reading to lead a training session for some of the staff there. It was heavy stuff dealing with some of the anger and frustration that people there are feeling. You might have thought that the sessions were dealing with customer care. I thought they were more about group counselling at one remove. By the evening, I was shattered.
Sean arrived at about 12.30am via a recital of early church music in Oxford. I had just about unwound by then and we shortly headed off to bed to talk and cuddle and relax. We spent most of Saturday morning doing just the same. He's had an extraordinarily busy time of things recently and it did the two of us good just to chill out and talk and drink copious amounts of coffee while the day passed us by on the pavements outside.
We finally lurched into town in the late afternoon and met up with Chris (the one who I'd met at Pride) and we spent a very pleasant evening together the three of us eating, drinking and talking.
We also went to see The Celluloid Closet - a documentary about lesbians and gay folk as seen through the eyes of Hollywood. There was some interesting stuff in there, some nice footage of queer undertones in films of the 50s and some perceptive comments but I wanted some more.
How could they include stuff about Montgomery Clift and not mention he was queer? And that went for a lot of folk mentioned in the film. And I know that it was supposed to be about Hollywood but there was so much more that could have been said if European film had been included. And again the commentary about how audiences reacted to films was very State-side orientated.
They discussed the film Making Love, the first film produced by a major studio (Fox) with an openly gay theme. American audiences were said to have been appalled, left the cinemas in disgust. The main reactions from the audience when I saw it Liverpool in 1982 were boredom and laughter. It is a genuinely bad film.
Chris headed off to Cambridge after the movie finished and Sean and I headed back to my place and chilled out to various bits of Renaissance music before hitting the sack. We continued the relaxation for much of Sunday, except for the fact that Sean kept teasing me about my concerns for the coming week. He characterised it as a mixture of excitement and apprehension - which is probably about right.
This week has been a tough one at work with a clogged diary and a lot of important business to be conducted. So far, I appear to be keeping my head above water.
Home life is changing at the moment as well. There's a lot going on and I want to get it sorted out in my head a bit more before I write about it here.