Month: March 2016

It’s All Double Dutch to Me

A couple of weeks ago I popped over to the low land of dykes, bikes, canals, tall thin blonds and tall thin buildings. I’ve been to old Amsterdam many, many times before. Back in the day, Amsterdam was a blesséd escape from finger-wagging, buttoned-up Britain, and a place where I could feel totally free. I won’t regale you with ripe tales of how I expressed that freedom – this is a family show, after all. Needless to say, it rarely involved a cultural troll round the marvellous galleries of the Rijks Museum.

Here’s an ancient image of me in the naughty nineties on one of my gayfests.

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I’m standing on the Homomonument, a memorial to those persecuted for their sexuality. Opened in 1987, the monument takes the form of a large pink triangle jutting out into the Keizersgracht canal. It’s a potent symbol: the pink triangle was the badge of shame gay men were forced to wear in the Nazi concentration camps during World War Two. And we all know what happened in those places.

This time I was there on business. I was attending the 2016 Families in Global Transition Conference (#FIGT16NL), a gig that brought together people from far flung corners, all concerned with issues affecting global families. The current refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East added an extra layer of complexity to this year’s august jamboree.

Why me? You may well ask. I’m neither an expat, nor a family in transition (not anymore anyway). In fact, I was there as part of my work with Summertime Publishing and Springtime Books, specialists in expat titles. And I was asked to lead a social media workshop for writers. It was a bit of a hit, I’m told. I even got to sell signed copies of my books in the FIGT bookshop – and was more than chuffed when they flew off the shelves and soon sold out. Clearly some people like a dash of camp with their esoteric.

Here’s me flapping my hands about in the social media workshop.

And me on the right grinning inanely in the bookshop.

After a hectic few days navigating through the talkers, walkers, cars, trams and manic cyclists on a mission coming at me from every which way, I landed back at Norwich Airport at ten to nine in the evening. I was home with a large glass of Pinot in hand twenty minutes later. Now that’s the way to travel.

If you’d like to know more about Families in Global Transition and their valuable work, check out their website. In the meantime, here are some pretty pictures I took of the pretty city.

The conference pictures are courtesy of FIGT.

In Rude Health

17 miles west of Norwich in Norfolk’s rural heartlands lies the sleepy market town of Hingham, home to just under 2,500 country cousins. Not much happens in Hingham. The sun rises, the sun sets and the seasons turn. That’s about it. The town’s main claim to fame is as the ancestral seat of two famous Yankee clans – the Lincolns (as in Abraham) and the Gilmans (as in Nicholas Gilman, signatory to the US Constitution). But that was a long, long time ago. Now, heavy-eyed Hingham has woken up to a newsflash. Nothing scandalous, you understand. If anything salacious is going on, it’s kept firmly behind the neat net curtains. It wouldn’t do to frighten the horses. No, I’m delighted to say the local doctors’ surgery has come eighth in a national poll of GP practices commissioned by NHS England. That’s 8th out of 7,709. It got the hacks from the county rag rushing in for a photo call. And, yes, that’s my Liam second from the right. He wore his best pale pink shirt for the occasion.

Hingham Surgery

A round of applause, please.

The image is courtesy of the Eastern Daily Press and you can read their article here.

Talented Hands

Liam lived in Wales for 15 years. With a music degree under his arm, he chucked himself into the local choirs and carols scene. In 1990, Liam won the Wales on Sunday Christmas Carol Competition with his composition ‘Bethlehem Star’. The competition was broadcast live on HTV, one of the (now defunct) regional TV channels at the time. Liam didn’t expect to win and when they presented the prize, he was a bit squiffy from one too many in the Green Room. Following an all too brief flirtation with fame, Liam satisfied his creative juices with the Mountain Ash and District Choral Society who commissioned him to compose jolly Yuletide tunes. And they still do.

Cascade CraftsOn his last trip to the Valleys, Liam was introduced to Les Barker, the son-in-law of a special friend and Mountain Ash chorister. In recent years, Les has taken up wood carving. And what a wood carver he’s turned out to be. Les’ extraordinary pieces are one-offs, lovingly made to order. Intricate traditional Welsh lovespoons are his stock in trade but he can turn his chisel to pretty much anything. Trouble was, Les wasn’t visible on the web. So I knocked up a website for him. Now the amazing Les can take commissions from Toronto to Timbuktu, Bodrum to Beijing. Sorted.

Cascade Crafts

Please take a look at Les’ wares at Cascade Crafts. I think you’ll be impressed. I know I was.

And who can resist a man with talented hands?

Anne Reid, I Love to Sing

Anne Reid, I Love to Sing

A couple of weeks back, Liam treated us both to a slice of cabaret at Norwich’s trendy Playhouse Theatre. We were front and centre for a night of song and gossip from veteran actress and national treasure, Anne Reid.

Ms Reid first electrified  the nation when she was fried by a dodgy hair dryer in Coronation Street, Britain’s longest running soap. It was 1971 and the untimely death of her character, Valerie Barlow, had 18 million viewers on the edge of their lurid orange velour sofas – about 30% of the entire UK population at the time. After taking time out to do the family thing, Ms Reid returned to the boards and popped up all over the place in film and television. Later, as a 66-year-old jobbing actress, she bedded the future 007 Daniel Craig in the 2003 film, ‘The Mother’. She received a BAFTA nomination for her performance. I would too, if I had the chance to bonk James Bond.

Anne Reid hasn’t looked back since. These days, she’s better known as Celia, the Daily Mail reading bigot with a lesbian daughter in the romantic drama ‘Last Tango in Halifax’, playing opposite old-school socialist Alan (Derek Jacobi). It’s an engrossing tale of family dysfunction with tight, fast dialogue. The show’s been an unexpected worldwide hit for the BBC.

Last Tango in Halifax

Back to the Norwich Playhouse. Thanks to Ms Reid’s touching renditions and recollections, we left the theatre on a nippy night feeling nothing but warm inside.