Category: Family & Friends

Ask for Clive

An ‘Ask for Clive’ poster recently appeared on my Faceache feed. Why ask for Clive? Living in our semi-rural bubble, we’re a bit out of touch with the big bad world beyond our fields of burnt gold. So I did some digging. It turns out that ‘Ask for Clive’ is an amazing nationwide campaign working with pubs and other venues to promote inclusion and provide safe spaces for LGBT people. It started with a sticker and a simple idea. Now thousands of supporters have joined up to stamp out hate and make inclusion a reality. It’s a welcome and much-needed antidote to today’s toxic politics supercharged by the rise of far-right nutters who, given half a chance, would lock us back into the closet – or worse.

Coincidentally, Clive also happens to be the name of my oldest friend who died suddenly in 2020. I think my Clive would be chuffed to see his name associated with an inspirational anti-hate campaign.

Ironically, adopting the name ‘Clive’ also now serves up a massive dollop of dark humour, an entirely unintended nod to ‘Tip Toe’, Russell T Davies’* recent psychological thriller which took gay bashing to a whole new, deeply disturbing level – a portent of things to come if we don’t watch our backs. If you’ve not seen it, Clive is the mad baddie you definitely wouldn’t ask for. The first episode features a lynching. We couldn’t watch the finale; it was simply too much.

* Russell T Davies is the supremely talented writer of the original pioneering Manchester-based ‘Queer as Folk’ series and the ground-breaking AIDS-era drama ‘It’s a Sin’, both for Channel 4, among many others.

Family Values

An old pal of over four decades has just sold her gorgeous Victorian house in a leafy corner of old London Town. Down the years, hot gossip and saucy nudge-nudge, wink-wink titbits in her pretty city garden had become a firm and fabulous fixture in our social calendar – washed down with way too much fancy fizz. And so came the finale, our last performance. I shall miss it.

For the girl from the Welsh valleys who became quite the leading lady in high-end fashion, clearing out the accumulated designer wear and wares of a life in the fast lane was daunting – what to keep, what to flog, what to chuck – from Conran chairs (keep) and Vivienne Westwood (flog) to back issues of glossy magazines (chuck).

As we travelled down the memory lanes of many good times past, we spotted a 1994 dog-eared edition of Vanity Fair in the chuck pile with the smarmy face of Don the Con splashed all over the front cover with his unfortunate second wife, Marla Maples, and the headline ‘Trump Family Values’. The irony was not lost. Our garden party hostess is moving back to Wales to keep a closer eye on her mother. That’s what I call ‘family values’.

Sun, Fun and the Footie

We’ve finally recovered from our latest Hellenic odyssey to pretty Paxos and the Venetian glory of Corfu Old Town. While old Blighty baked under cloudless skies, we basked in Greek heat around a warm pool topped off by ouzo-fuelled steamy evenings of mirth and hot gossip with our travel companions. Thank you, you know who you are. A memory to savour was watching England beat Norway at the footie. We joined the rowdy crowd of many nations squeezed into cafés along the Liston, Corfu’s iconic Parisian-inspired arcade. Business was brisk as the drinks kept clinking and the tills kept ringing. Let’s not dwell on England’s later defeat by Argentina.

As for the rest, I’ll let the snaps do the talking…

Thanks to ‘Linda’ our official royal photographer for most of the pics.

Given the scorcher at home, I fretted that our little plot might wilt in the relentless heat. I needn’t have worried. Our neighbour did a splendid job with the watering can. Thank you!

And Then There Was One

I received sad news of the sudden and unexpected death of someone I once knew well. Paul and I were firm friends at secondary school. We were in the same first year and bonded over comparing packed lunches in a ‘you show me yours and I’ll show you mine’ kinda way as we walked around the playing fields at break time. His sarnies were always more upper crust. It was 1972 and salami and other fancy foreign fillings weren’t on the menu in my working-class home. But Mum made up for it by slipping a chocolate bar into my box. Together with my old mucker, Clive, we were ‘The Three Fey Musketeers’, a phrase I first used in 2011 when I wrote…

Clive and I know one another from our salad days. In those distant times we were two of the three fey musketeers. Our third partner in camp crime was Paul who jumped the good ship Blighty many decades ago to dwell in a Parisian garret and chain-smoke Gitanes. Birds of a feather flock together. We somehow knew we were different and so did everyone else. We were relentlessly teased from the moment we entered the school gates. Nothing physical, you understand. That would be unseemly at a traditional grammar school with 400 years of history. Besides, beatings were reserved for the teachers to discharge. I suppose we hardly helped our cause by being rubbish at rugby and lip-synching to the backing vocals of Mott the Hoople’s Roll Away the Stone in Clive’s front room. Our sex education consisted of lecturing hormonal adolescents on the evils of masturbation. It nearly caused a riot.

It’ll Make You Go Blind

After school, Paul and I gradually grew apart as life took us down very different paths. Clive and I, on the other hand, remained close. After Paul left for gay Paree, I only saw him once in a rare blue moon. But I hope he died as he had lived, holding court in a French café with a fruity little red in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Back in 2020, Clive died suddenly, and my last brief encounter with Paul was at Clive’s funeral. Clive’s death hit me hard; Paul’s not so much. But even so, it was still a shock. It got me thinking of our teen years when the three of us were practically joined at the hip. Here’s the only photo I have of Paul and Clive together. I took it while waiting to catch the 37 bus home, probably during that long hot summer of ’76. Clive’s on the right playing the ghoul and Paul’s in the middle wearing the Bowie badge. The boy on the left is Carl, another old school chum. I wonder where he is now. The fuzzy old pic stirred up memories of the fun times and made me regret that we hadn’t made more of an effort to keep in touch.

I must confess, the tragic news of Paul’s death has also got me thinking about my own mortality as the last man standing. And then there was one 😔

London, City of Hope

We saw in 2026 with a proverbial bang at a house party thrown in style by two of our favourite village people. It was a banter-filled evening of merriment, with never-empty glasses, great grub and terrific company. As the midnight hour approached, Big Ben chimed in the New Year and we all crossed hands for an exuberant, if well-oiled, rendition of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Thank you to our generous hosts with the most; you know who you are.

The following day, nursing the first hangover of 2026 (one of many to come, no doubt), we watched London’s epic New Year’s fireworks display – the largest in Europe – on the BBC iPlayer. As usual, the Mayor put on a spectacular pyrotechnic extravaganza of shock and awe. ‘How do they do that?’ said Liam.

London had a vital story to tell and it came through loud and clear – a profound message of fairness and inclusion in troubling times, a city of hope and a place for everyone – the perfect antidote to the flag-shaggers who diminish us all. Amen to that. Cue the video…

Top of the Pansy Pops 2025

Yes, folks, it’s that time again when I look back at another year of my missives from the sticks. The most popular broadcasts of 2025 have a distinctly nostalgic feel, with the leader-board dominated by anniversaries and commemorations, righting wrongs, resurrected traditions, memory lanes and old haunts, and topped with a trip to the seaside.

Numbers-wise, Perking the Pansies enjoyed the best year since 2014, so there’s still some life in the old blog yet. Blimey!

Oh, I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside

What better way to spend a sunny spring afternoon than a trip to the seaside? We’d never been to Southwold, the classy resort on the Suffolk coast because, without our own wheels, it’s a bit of a trek. So an equally classy neighbour took pity on us and offered to take us. We had a…

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Idyllic Ithaca – the Return

It’s taken quite a while but we’ve finally recovered from our frolic-filled sojourn on Ithaca. For our second expedition, we were accompanied by a couple of fellow village people who added an extra helping of spice to the mix. We had a ball. We haven’t laughed so much in years. It was well worth the…

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Nowt as Queer as Folk

ours is a quiet little village where little happens except for occasional (but mercifully rare) low-level anti-social behaviour – like bored teens on the wacky baccy and cheap cider mucking about down by the river.But there’s one misdemeanour guaranteed to get everyone’s blood boiling – dog poo. Man’s (and woman’s) best friend is big business…

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Turkey Street with Bettany Hughes

People who know me know that I love an old ruin. Nothing gets me going more than a pile of ancient tumbledown stones. When I can’t visit ’em, I watch programmes about ’em on the box. And few TV pundits get the sap rising better than classical scholar Bettany Hughes. Buxom Bettany flits and flirts…

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End of a Vera

I am bereft. After 14 series over 13 years, we’ve just watched the final two episodes of Vera, featuring the dishevelled and irascible detective from the fictitious Northumberland and City Police Force, played with great panache by the wonderful Brenda Blethyn. Based in and around England’s most northerly county, Vera blends the gritty streets of…

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Okay, You, One Sentence Should Do It

Our double anniversary has sneaked up on us again – 19 years since our eyes met across a busy West End gay bar fit to bursting with a gossipy after-work crowd, and 17 years since we got hitched. This year, we’ve decided to push the boat out and paddle down the Seine. Yes, we’re off…

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Lest We Forget

We joined the enthusiastic crowd of locals gathered on Church Plain in front of the Loddon War Memorial to celebrate the 80th anniversary of VE Day – the end of the Second World War in Europe. The organisers did a splendid job. So too did the kids from the local primary school who serenaded us…

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Happy Birthday, Perking the Pansies

“In the beginning there was work and work was God. After 35 years in the business, the endless predictability made me question the Faith. Liam, on the other hand, was neither bored nor unchallenged but was routinely subjected to the ephemeral demands of a capricious boss, a soft and warm Christmas tree fairy with a…

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LGBT Armed Forces Memorial – No More Shame

Last month, His Maj, King Charles, dedicated the first national memorial honouring LGBT armed forces personnel, 25 years after the ban on LGBT people serving in the military was lifted. Before this, those who were – or who were thought to be – gay or transgender were subjected to interrogation and discharge, a brutal and utterly needless…

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Dwile Flonking

A couple of summers ago, I wrote a tongue in cheek piece about Dwile flonking, a notorious East Anglian pub game involving two teams of twelve players, each taking a turn to girt (dance) around the other while attempting to avoid a beer-soaked dwile (cloth) flonked (flung) by the non-girting team. Imagine my amazement to…

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Once again, a five-year-old tongue twisting post about a game old bird fit for the pot took centre stage – all thanks to the magic of AI. In fact, it’s currently the most popular post of all time. Blimey!

I’m Not a Pheasant Plucker

When I put food out for the birds, I don’t expect a big fat pheasant to waddle along and scoff the lot. Bold as brass it was. Where’s the pheasant plucker when you need him? I feel a tongue twister coming on. I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s mate, And I’m only…

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And what was the most popular image of the year? Drum roll please…

This image of John Garner and me from our first holiday together – to Majorca. Anything that keeps alive the memory of an extraordinary young man is fine by me. As I once wrote in a book…

I remembered John cuddling a weeping stranger at London Pride after the red balloons had been released, each one commemorating someone who had died of AIDS. I remembered John buying a McDonald’s Happy Meal and handing it, without a word, to a beggar on the street. I remembered John helping a drunken tramp to his feet because he’d fallen over and cut his face. I remembered his quick wit and winning smile that lit up my life.

Perking the Pansies, Chapter 15, Jack’s Guardian Angel

Happy New Year to one and all. If I were the praying kind, I’d be straight down on my knees wishing for a lot more peace, goodwill and glad tidings in 2026.

Dancing Queens No More

As our birthdays are just two weeks apart, each year Liam and I tend to mark them together. Nowadays, as befits our budding dotage, our jollies resemble more of a pensioners’ outing than the bop-til-you-drop of our yesteryears. 2025 also marks me reaching my latest chronological milestone – 65 – so Liam planned some fancy ticklers to get me in the mood. First on the menu was a glass of overpriced plonk in a Canary Wharf wine bar followed by a surprise dinner date with family. We dined on Italian, washed down with copious amounts of gossip and scandal – naughty but nice!

 The next morning Liam took me up this…

… for a full-on full English with a show-stopping view at the Sky Garden. Perched on top of the Leadenhall Building – affectionately known as the Walkie Talkie – the Sky Garden is London’s highest public green space, with panoramic views of the city. It was a gorgeous crisp day with the sun hanging low in the wispy blue, so our snaps aren’t all that. But you get the picture.

After breakfast, we wandered through the City in a vain attempt to burn off the calories, passing ‘the Monument’, the enormous column commemorating the Great Fire of London of 1666, and then across the Thames to Southwark – pronounced suth-erk – via London Bridge. We strolled along the busy Queen’s Walk, passed HMS Belfast and through Hays Galleria before crossing back into the City via Tower Bridge.

Our final destination was St Katharine Docks, immediately downstream from the Tower. Once part of the Port of London, the docks have since been repurposed as a place to work, sleep, shop and sup, centred around an upmarket yachting marina. After a quick gander, we found a place to sink a bottle and watch the world sail by.

Afternoon drinking can be exhausting even for these two old lushes, so it was back to our Westferry digs for a kip. We had to be fresh and fragrant for the main event, which was…

This was our second visit to the breathtaking ABBA Voyage, located by the deliciously named Pudding Mill Lane Station. Our debut performance was in 2023 as part of a birthday bash for the good wife of our local pub’s (now ex) landlord. Back then, we wiggled about like has-been dancing queens to the ageless ABBA classics. This time round we booked comfy seats in the auditorium. This old codger has finally hung up his dad-dancing shoes, much to the relief of all those around. Well, I don’t want to put my back out.

Idyllic Ithaca – the Return

It’s taken quite a while but we’ve finally recovered from our frolic-filled sojourn on Ithaca. For our second expedition, we were accompanied by a couple of fellow village people who added an extra helping of spice to the mix. We had a ball. We haven’t laughed so much in years. It was well worth the hour-and-a-half delay at Stansted Airport, the three-and-a-half-hour flight to gorgeous Kefalonia, the hour-long taxi trek across the island to the pretty port of Sami, the two-hour wait for the thirty-minute ferry to Ithaca – enough time for a liquid lunch – and, finally, the half-hour cab ride to Frikes.

Even the ferocious squadron of wasps sharing our breakfast buffet each morning didn’t manage to spoil our picnic. Neither did the nasty mozzie bite on my once pert posterior.

Our ouzo-fuelled romp was liberally sprinkled with hot-off-the-press gossip, laced with the lewd and the rude. Here’s a few choice phrases chucked into the drunken conversations. A bit of camp old nonsense, I think, but if bawdy double entendre ain’t your thing, then best change channels now.  

“Need to get some water on my aubergines.”

“Our neighbour’s always going up my back passage.”

“Well, there was that time when my friend shat in a Pringles tube.”

“Apparently, Keira Knightley buys her onions from a veg shop in Bungay.”

“So, the doctor just shone his torch up my backside and said, nice and clean.”

“Oooo, you’ve got a lovely little foible!”

“You gotta keep your own hair on your own seat, right?”

“It’s true! She came home with a pickled foetus in a jam jar.”

“So there I was, just standing there holding my swimming teacher’s long pole.”

“It’s like butter off a water’s back.”

And the evergreen classic…

“So, is your cervico intacto?”

 “Oo-er. Didn’t know you spoke Latin.”

Massive hugs to our splendid travelling buddies. Thank you for the good times to be treasured. You know who you are.

Idyllic Ithaca, we shall return again.

Top of the Pansy Pops 2024

The 2024 top of the crop had a distinctly thespian theme – gays and the arts. Could it be any more of a cliché? Or maybe it just reflects a need for a distraction in worrying times. Who knows? Also thrown into the mix were celebrating the life of a dearly departed, a fond memory from our lotus-eating days in Turkey, and a few Greek postcards from gorgeous old Corfu Town. Oh, and then there was the little piece about my money-making side hustle as an Only Fans porn star. If only.

For some inexplicable reason, a 2020 post about a game old bird fit for the pot waddling around our modest small holding took off. Why? It’s a mystery.

Also, numbers-wise, Perking the Pansies enjoyed the best year since 2016, so there’s still life in the old blog yet. I thank you.

Happy New Year. Let’s hope for a lot more peace for 2025.

Ask for Clive

An ‘Ask for Clive’ poster recently appeared on my Faceache feed. Why ask for Clive? Living in our semi-rural bubble, we’re a bit out of touch with the big bad world beyond our fields of burnt gold. So I did some digging. It turns out that ‘Ask for Clive’ is an amazing nationwide campaign working…

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How Did Henry Get His Hampton Court?

What’s a couple of loose-end gay boys to do on a hot and cloudless summer’s day in old London Town? Pub or palace? We tossed a coin. Tails for the pub, heads for the palace. Her Maj won, so off we went to visit the glorious Hampton Court Palace, which graces a pretty stretch of…

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Pride, the Musical

In my ever-so-humble opinion the 2014 comedy-drama, Pride, is one of the best British films ever made. It’s based on the (almost unbelievably) true story of a small group of London activists calling themselves ‘Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners’ who, in the darkening AIDS days of 1984, raised thousands to help the families of…

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Pantos and Parties

Storm Darragh barrelling across angry skies couldn’t keep us from our annual panto and party pre-Christmas pilgrimage to The Smoke. The London Palladium pantomime this year is Robin Hood, starring the outrageous queen of high and low camp, Julian Clary, and his usual cast of merrie men and women. The vocal act is Jane McDonald – every pensioner’s favourite cruise-line crooner – as Maid Marion. And the likely lass from Yorkshire can really belt out a tune. Lavish, filthy and with a plot as flimsy as a Christmas twig, the show is a belly-laugh sacrament that’s become a firm festive fixture for these two village people.

The gusty winds and horizontal rain drove us into various watering holes to dry off and warm up. Everywhere was rammed. But even these two old merry men don’t drink before midday, so we spent one morning wandering around the splendid Museum of Science, one of the holy trinity of world-class museums along Exhibition Road in South Kensington – the V&A and the Natural History Museum being the other two must-sees. Like the pubs, the various galleries were rammed, not with dripping trippers but with wide-eyed kiddies in backpacks and waterproofs. It’s a fascinating place to spend a few hours, whatever the weather.

We also had the good fortune to catch up with family for much-missed hot gossip and to meet the latest editions to the clan – twin girls. And gorgeous they are too! It made these two old festive fairies very proud great uncles.