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#OrlandoStrong #OrlandoUnited

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Context: This blog is an amalgamation and update of two previous Facebook posts. I was in Orlando, Florida on the day of the Orlando Pulse nightclub terrorist attack, but not involved. I did not want the posts to be lost in the firehose of social media.

I’ve only ever once experienced direct homophobia

When I was at university I was walking along the seafront one evening, hand-in-hand with boyfriend-du-jour. We passed a group of three lads, who went stony silent as they passed us. They waited until we were about 30 metres away before one of them yelled “QUEER BOYS!” at us. How original.

I was furious. University was my fresh start with my sexuality and I had always been open about it since arriving, having hidden it at Sixth Form (where I experienced indirect homophobia, almost always through ignorance rather than anything else), and this cunt violated that.

I started to run towards the one who I knew yelled it, the one with the biggest grin on his face. He broke away from his two friends and I chased him into the town. I caught up with him and I threw him to the ground. He put his arms up and said he was sorry and begged me to leave him alone, having very clearly underestimated me (bear in mind I was nowhere near as physically strong then as I am now). Which I did, after telling him what I thought of him at the top of my voice and instructed him in rather frank terms never to do such a thing again.

Why did I do this? Because what he did, even though it did not cause me or boyfriend any physical harm, was NOT FUCKING ACCEPTABLE, and I was not going to let him get away with it. I hope he never did it again and always thought twice about such idiocy and ignorance after that night.

(In hindsight it was a pretty stupid idea to abandon the boyfriend with the other two, but nothing else happened, I just have to chalk that one up to seeing red.)

Since then, some 20 years on, I have never suffered any sort of homophobic abuse. There are a couple of advantageous factors which have contributed to this, the first being that I “don’t look gay” (whatever that means) and the second being that I have lived in major cities for the majority of my years since university, which are generally considered to be safer for gay people.

But I realise that I am very lucky, and I also realise that it could happen to me, someone close to me or just any other gay person, known or unknown to me at any time. It scares me, and it isn’t right, and I still DO NOT FUCKING ACCEPT IT.

The attack in Orlando on 12th June was deliberately targeted at gay people. Again, it did not affect me directly. The reality is because I’m 40 and don’t go to nightclubs any more it would have never had a chance of affecting me personally. But it did affect 103 people with whom I share community, nearly half of which are now dead. And that is not fucking acceptable.

This will happen again if we don’t start to stand up to the plague of hate that we are suffering at the hands of extremists. This has nothing to do with guns, this was a hate attack, plain and simple, and it could have happened anywhere. I am sick of reading in the news about the plight of gay people in Muslim countries, and now not even that is good enough; now gay people in western countries are being targeted for public massacre. That is not fucking acceptable, and we cannot ignore it or make excuses for it.

Nobody should be in the least bit comfortable about what happened on that day and nobody should ever forget it. Homophobia in any form and from any source is never justifiable. This direct attack on our community, solidarity, hard-earned freedoms, rights, culture and way of life is way over the line, and we need to stand up to it and say that we will not fucking accept this bullshit any longer, regardless of who we may upset in the process.

When I came out to my parents, I told them I was frightened about what might happen to me because I’m gay. That fear upset them, especially my Mum. She’s long gone now, but it turns out that her upset wasn’t without merit. I need to show her that I’m not frightened, and I won’t fucking accept this.

I’m tired, it’s been a stressful day and I’ve been through a wide range of negative emotions, from anger and rage to frustration, disbelief, disgust, shock and of course grief and sadness. Thank you to all those who reached out to me today, it’s been very touching and it meant a lot to me, especially those whose care I arguably do not deserve.

Here’s the Orlando Eye, photographed the day after the attack. Many other buildings around the world were lit up in the rainbow colours in its wake.

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This could have happened to any of us

A man from Illinois makes white crosses for every victim after a mass shooting in the United States. Now it’s Orlando’s turn. He’s made 49 white crosses and drove 1,200 miles to Orlando Health Medical Centre, just a couple of blocks from Pulse nightclub. Most of the victims were taken to this hospital.

I went there one week after the atrocity against gay people in Orlando to see these beautiful crosses and to pay my respects to the victims. It’s the least I could do.

People were solemn, people were silent, people were private in their respect and grief. I watched an elderly Japanese man bow to every single one of the 49 crosses. All I could hear was the water from the waterfall and the wind in the trees. There was no traffic to speak of because of the road closures still in place.

I wrote on one of the crosses, that of Alejandro Martinez, who was only just born at the time I was coming out at university. The man from Illinois will, after a while, deliver each of the crosses to their respective families.

Rest in peace, my 49 brothers and sisters.

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Diamond Jubilee 2012

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The Queen’s 60th Jubilee celebrations took place over the weekend of 2nd to 5th June. Although my primary focus for this weekend was Birmingham Pride, I also took time to enjoy these celebrations, which, although not once-in-a-lifetime like having the Olympics hosted on home soil, are rare in that they only happen once every ten years. I remember my late mother being very much into the Golden Jubilee celebrations  in 2002, the same year in which she later died, whereas I was quite indifferent to them. Since then I’ve become more patriotic and royalist and so this time I took more of an interest, for these reasons and also because my mother no longer can.

I put bunting out on the balcony and I watched the television coverage of the events during the weekend. I was appalled as many others were at the shocking BBC coverage of the river pageant, but I won’t dwell on that. There’s every change that Queen Elizabeth will spend another ten years on the throne and so the BBC will have a chance to make amends. Unfortunately because Birmingham Pride was taking place during the same weekend I was unable to attend a street party that my family was involved with in Walton-On-Thames, which was a shame, but I couldn’t miss Pride given that I was more heavily involved with it this year.

I wasn’t too sure about the concert, however. It’s not like we need any more reasons to give the usual celebrity suspects more air-time, we get more than enough of them as it is, and the whole Gary Barlow angling for a knighthood thing was just plain crass. He also isn’t going to get it, his concert may well have been held on the Queen’s driveway but it’s going to be nothing compared to the Olympics opening ceremony in July. That all said, respect to the Queen for allowing it to take place, even if she did show up late!

Respect to the Queen from me doesn’t end there. I think she is an outstanding asset to this country. She may well have led a life of absolute privilege but that does not mean she does not work hard for this country and care about it. I also think that she’s become much better at this over the past fifteen years since the death of Princess Diana, demonstrating consistently that the monarchy has the ability to modernise with its subjects. The British monarchy is the envy of the world and no other monarchy can hold a candle to it, indeed, most other monarchs around the world are unpopular despots. Nothing could be further from the truth with ours, and I hope that these ridiculous Republic people saw that laid bare during the royal wedding last year and the jubilee celebrations this year.

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2011 Review

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I’ve not done one of these for some time, mainly because I’ve had nothing that I would particularly want to write home about over the past few years, but not only has 2011 been a little different but I’ve also written “blog more” on my list of New Year’s resolutions, the rest of which I won’t reveal for fear of jinxing them. So here goes:

My year

For me it’s been a relatively good year, which is a welcome change. Every year since 2006 when my business failed up to and including 2010 was unpleasant and negatively stressful in some way. I say “negatively stressful” because there is such thing as “positive stress”, which is what I have been thriving on this year. Those previous years brought nothing but stressful losses, whether financial, of personal relationships, of employment and even my home. I can’t say that I’ve regained all of those things because that would be far from the truth, but I do believe to be on my way in a sustainable and realistic manner.

I started 2011 unsure about my current job and I was tempted by a very extraordinary opportunity that came across my path. I wasn’t offered the position in the end, I fell at the last hurdle during the recruitment process. I’m glad that happened now because my position at Glide developed and improved dramatically throughout the rest of the year and I am very settled there now. I see myself staying with the company and being involved in its development and future diversification for some time. Although I have been in higher paying positions in the past I can quite honestly say that it is the most rewarding job I have ever had and I really wouldn’t swap either it or the people I work with for anything less than something that I’d simply be an idiot to pass up.

With greater happiness in my job came greater acceptance and belief that my move from Manchester to Birmingham was a positive step, because for a while I quite honestly wasn’t sure, and this lead me to be able to move in to a place of my own in the middle of the city in November, which has made me immensely happy. Living on my own, on my own terms, in the middle of another fantastic city and with everything in walking distance again is a dream come true and I cherish it every day, whereas when I was living in Manchester I took it for granted. I’d like to thank all those who were so instrumental in helping make it happen for me.

2012

As I mentioned before I’ve a list of New Year’s resolutions and I’m so determined to stick to them that I have designed a spreadsheet that measures my success with each on a month by month basis. By that you can obviously infer that “be less anally retentive” isn’t one of them. However, also as mentioned before I’m not sharing them.

I’ve high hopes for my job and my team as the company I work for grows. We’re moving offices at the start of March to the Alpha Tower from our current base in the Jewellery Quarter, which should make things a little easier although I’ll actually have a smaller desk and my team will lose the separate room that we greatly enjoy at the moment. My team will expand (probably two-fold) and the company’s diversification plans are thoroughly exciting. A pay rise would be nice but Rome wasn’t built in a day.

I want to continue to improve and expand my skill set and experience as you might expect. As mentioned before I’ve learnt more in my current position than in any other position so I don’t expect that curve will get any shallower any time soon, nor would I want it to. I want to get into mobile applications if possible as it would be nice to have something that just earns money for me while I sleep, but as with most software development you typically (but not always) need a problem before you can come up with a solution.

There are some demons still haunting me from the collapse of my business that I want to put to rest this year, finally, I think if I carry those over to 2013 I really will be doing something wrong.

The rest is all personal, really. Yes, I’d quite like to meet another fella, before you ask, but this isn’t high on my list of priorities, mainly because I’m old and ugly enough to realise that such things will happen to you when you least expect and whether you like it or not, so to seek them out would be a futile waste of precious time. That said, I’ve not been as “eligible” as I am now for some time now, so who knows.

I wish everyone who’s bothered to read this far a fabulous 2012. Let’s hope it doesn’t all end horribly on 12th December, eh?

Notable despatches

This section is a footnote really in the absence of a full review of news events this year. I would note that I actually read and/or watch the news every day with a keen interest and during my early days of blogging I would blog almost every day with my comment on whatever was going on, however, more recently Facebook and subsequently Twitter have provided more effective means of comment, meaning that rare is now the occasion where I will create a full blog about current affairs.

Banned shopping

Col. Gadaffi, the Libyan despot who ruled for 42 years since taking power in a military coup. An unpleasant relic from the 20th Century, no doubt, but I think many people will secretly miss the entertainment that he used to provide to the rest of the world. Modern world leaders may well be safe, responsible (Gordon Brown notwithstanding) and largely democratically elected but I can’t think of a single one who I would describe as “a character”, nor will any of them be remembered much beyond their tenures, not that I’m suggesting infamy to be something to aspire to. The circumstances surrounding Gadaffi’s death, however, raises worrying questions about Libya’s brave new future.

Invented nuclear fusion

Kim Jong-Il, the “Dear Leader” of the bizarre world that is the North Korea, itself also a haunting relic of the 20th Century that the world could well do without. Kim’s death was not unexpected, and although he was an abysmal failure as a leader, despite what North Korea state media insist, his passing on is not necessarily a good thing. The pampered idiot he’s left in charge is just that and nobody in the rest of the world wants a nasty coup in a rogue, pariah state armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and the world’s fifth largest army. Orwellian societies were never designed to leave the printed page.

Bins taken out on Bank Holiday


Osama Bin Laden, the criminal mastermind behind the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States, who was tracked down to a compound in the middle of an affluent area of Pakistan near to a military academy, which embarrassed the Pakistani authorities immensely and has since strained relations between the two countries. This news was not entirely surprising what with the tenth anniversary of September 11th and Obama’s pledge to remove US troops from Iraq looming large. His elimination was a necessary pre-requisite of being able to say the job was done. May America’s wounds now heal properly.

Also mad

Steve Jobs, the visionary creator of Apple, now the world’s most successful company. I’ve been an Apple user for coming up to 6 years now and I have never looked back. Jobs initially tempted me away with the iPod and Intel-based Macs, and has continued to deliver ever since. The world needs more people like Steve Jobs. He has no clear heirs-apparent in the computer industry. There are contenders, without a doubt, but only time will tell if they end up making the sort of difference that he did.

The BBC have a slideshow on more notable deaths in 2011.