St Andrew’s and Blackfriars’ Halls (known collectively as ‘The Halls’) is a 13th century medieval complex at the end of our street and the best preserved friary in England. The riot of sturdy buttresses, hammer beams and Gothic arches is one of the ‘Norwich 12‘ – a list of the most iconic buildings in the city. When Henry VIII decided to strip the Catholic Church of all its power and wealth, the friary was dissolved, the friars were cast out into the cold and the buildings were put up for sale. They were saved by the intervention of the Mayor of Norwich who took them off fat Harry’s hands for £81, pledging to use the halls “…for the good of the citizens, for fairs and feasting.” The Halls have been used for secular knees-ups ever since. Carrying on the 450 year old party tradition, St Andrew’s Hall has just played grand host to the Norwich Beer Festival, a six day piss-up sponsored by the Norwich and Norfolk branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). Real ales are for real males judging by the herd of nerds in knitwear corralled outside a side door having a quick fag before resuming their drunken orgy and sucking the kegs dry. I was so fascinated by the species that I walked straight into a lamp post and nearly knocked myself out. And I was the sober one. Cheers!
Another lovely old face after it walked into a lamp post
Two years in the making and, just as Liam and I celebrated the blog’s second birthday with a drop of bubbly, Perking the Pansies received its 250,000th hit*. This may be skinny fry for the big hitters but this fat little sprat is delighted. I had fretted that our move – a wrench from the warm bosom of Bodrum to a quick-step along Norwich’s ancient cobbled lanes – might put people off. I thought I might end up talking to myself. I thought I might end up in therapy. Well, I needn’t have worried, readers have stayed the course, I’ve actually picked up a few more punters along the street and the book is still dropping into the shopping basket. So, whoever you are out there, friends and strangers alike, thank you.
Who knows what the terrible twos will bring? For a start, the equal sequel to the book will be out in 2013. Gird your loins. If you thought the first book was an eye opener, well… Thank you for all the enquiries; watch this space. I will also be releasing two e-books this month, and of course, I’ll continue to bombard you with rambling posts and the occasional bit of not so subtle PR.
On that very subject, the people at iWriteReadRate have shortlisted Perking the Pansies for their book of the month competition. If you can be bothered, please vote. You’ll have to register though, which is a bit of a drag. Who knows? You might like this fancy new book site and stick around. Aw, go on.
* combined with my original Google blog that was blocked in Turkey in December 2010, blah, blah, blah …
With familiar names like Charing Cross, Blackfriars Bridge, Spitalfields, Haymarket and Pudding Lane, you could mistake Norwich for London. But, during all my years in the Smoke, I never spotted a tree swathed in wrapping paper or a multi-coloured tea set wafting in the leaves, not even when flying high on recreational smarties. Other city streets have a distinctive rural feel – Upper Goat Lane (quite Turkish, when you think about it), Golden Dog Lane, Lobster Lane, Rampant Horse Street and my ecclesiastical favourite, St Gregory’s Back Alley. Who was the saintly Greg and why was his back alley so popular? I think those naughty monks should dish the dirt.
Liam and I attended the No to Hate candle-lit vigil in Norwich’s Chapelfield Gardens on Saturday evening which commemorated the savage homophobic murder of Ian Baynham in Trafalgar Square in September 2009. He was set upon by a feral trio of two drunken girls and a lashed-up boy, all minors at the time. They kicked him unconscious and stamped on him, screaming homophobic abuse as he lay defenceless on the ground. He died of his injuries 18 days later. This was not a case of the dispossessed hitting out at a callous society (not that this is a valid excuse). One of thugs had been to public school. Depressingly, queer bashing is nothing new and used to be quite de rigeur back in the day. We may live in more enlightened times, with the likes of the Daily Mail being slightly less incendiary and a Tory Government (of all things) struggling to introduce marriage equality against the bitter opposition of the bigots of the Right and the Cloth. But, the times are not enlightened enough to prevent vicious bullying in our schools and hate crime on our streets (total recorded crime may be down but reported hate crime is up).
The vigil was organised by Norwich Pride and coincided with events held up and down the realm and the mother of all tributes in Trafalgar Square with a cast of thousands. Our event was a little more modest with about 100 or so huddled around one side of the bandstand. Small is beautiful. The scene was lit by dozens of tea lights flickering away in hand-painted rainbow-coloured holders. There were a few speeches, a tuneful set by the Sing With Pride Choir and a two minute silence heralded by the striking of the City Hall clock. For me, the most tender moment was the last speaker, a young man call Kai (I hope I have spelt this correctly), who told us of his struggle as a man born in a woman’s body. I’m a cynical old queen these days but it brought a tear to my eye. Of course, that could just have been the pain from the hot wax dripping down my fingers.
Ian as I remember him
The remembrance was particularly poignant for me as I knew Ian Baynham. We had a brief fling way, way back in 1980. I still have a photograph of him in a dusty old album that’s miraculously survived being dragged across country and foreign field. Ian’s murder has come to represent the campaign against all hate crimes of whatever hue. Perhaps his untimely demise was not in vain. I can only hope for the best. I can’t help wondering, though, where were the trendy young things? It was a Saturday night and there was plenty of time to swing by before heading to the bars for a bit of boozing and cruising. It’s not that much to ask.
I checked out the coverage of the event in the local press. Norwich Evening News Online did a nice piece. However, I was rather incensed by the comment from Noah Vale who wrote:
“It’s a shame that the constabulary doesn’t have the same attitude to ALL reported crime – not just trendy “right-on” minority group PC crime. How about clearing the streets of aggressive beggars , unlicenced buskers with various animals , illegally riding dangerous cyclists & other assorted drunks & litter louts.”
I was moved to register and reply. I wrote:
“Is this for real? No one ever died from excessive litter. There’s nothing trendy or right-on about being kicked to death by a baying mob or blown to pieces by a nail bomb.”
One late evening, Liam popped out for a pint of semi-skimmed for our morning cuppa and a bottle of cheap red. As he turned an ancient corner, he found himself leaping for his life as an elderly Norfolk broad sped towards him in a motorised wheelchair. She had what Liam described as a “unique” look: coal black hair long enough to sit on (though at the time, it flapped wildly in the tail wind) and a plump, chalk-white face, daringly decorated with randomly applied scarlet rouge. The F1 racing chair was festooned with blue fairy lights and an ice-cream van tune chimed from speakers hidden beneath her witch’s weaves. Fancy dress or magic mushrooms? Fleeing the wardens or just late for the coven? Who knows? One thing’s for sure, Liam will never complain again about the mad moped boys of Bodrum.
A few days later, I swanned along the cobbled street to the post box, entrusting another signed book into the care of the Royal Mail. As I popped the package into the slot, a hunched and hefty Norfolk broad swaggered past, weighed down by two fat Tesco’s bags. Gusset-sagging black and white leggings led up to a booty-hugging canary yellow micro-skirt. Think a couple of cows wrestling in a sack rather than two little piglets. Perhaps the most striking element of the arresting ensemble was the ruffled blond bob, an ill-fitting wig, curling precariously around a bumpy builder’s complexion and hanging on for dear life. This remarkable piece of living art was bravely topped with a pretty yellow dahlia poking out from a white Alice band. Personally, I thought the plastic flower was a bit OTT.
A few weeks ago I wrote a little piece on the etymology of Norwich’s River Wensum (old English wandsum). I got quite excited at the prospect of a poetic connection between my current digs and Wandsworth, in South London, where I spent my late childhood and most of my teens. I saw a link between ‘wandsum’ and ‘Wandle’, the Thames tributary that runs through the heart of the London borough. It was not to be. Ye Olde Wandsworth was known as Wandesorde or Wendelesorde at the time of the Domesday Book which means ‘enclosure of (a man called) Waendel’. Shame, but it did take me on a gentle mince down memory lane.
After my father was discharged from the army, he took the tenancy of an off licence cum general grocers. It was called a ‘Bottle and Basket’ for those who may remember the chain, part of the Watney Mann brewery company. We lived above the shop and it surely must have been the start of my love affair with the Devil’s sauce. I used to pilfer bottles of Bulmer’s cider from the shelves to share with my spotty pubescent pals. The liquor trade provided a decent living and kept me in booty hugging florescent loon pants and five inch platform shoes. My canny Dad made a killing during the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977. We had a booze, bench and bunting beano in the street and Geordie Jack wisely kept the tills ringing for the duration. For my sins, I earned an honest crust as a Clark’s shoe shop Saturday boy in the Arndale Shopping Centre. It was the scene of my undoing and a slippery slope from which I was never to recover (thank the Peter Lord). I had a torrid fling with one of the maintenance men. His name was Dave. Dave was married, of course; it was always the way back in the day. My midday breaks were misspent sampling his greasy cut lunch in a lift shaft machine room on the roof, giving a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘Going down?’
Dedicated Pansyfan, Alan, decided to take Perking the Pansies on a grand book tour of Charlemagne’s old domain. He flashed my inane witterings at the fragrant French, waffling Belgians and orderly Germans. Have I seen sales soar among our continental cousins as they rush to empty the virtual shelves of the best expat book to come out of Turkey since the Fall of Constantinople? Who knows? Not me. I won’t get the sales figures for six months. In the meantime, our local Waterstone’s here in old Norwich is stocking the book. I’ll drink to that.
Liam has made friends with the Theatre Royal which means he’ll be dragging me along to every passing production doing the provincial rounds. As a taste of things to come, we popped along to catch the latest re-working of a treasured old favourite. Deliciously dark and tragically ironic, Cabaret is poignantly set within the doomed metrosexual decadence of Weimar Berlin before the monstrous social cleansing of Nazi Germany. These days, it takes big money to put on big shows and the best way to get bums on seats is to roll out the big names. This time round, the Kit Kat Club starred Pop Idol winner and grannies’ favourite, Will Young, as theEmcee and ex-Eastender, ex-Bionic Woman, Michelle Ryan as Sally Bowles. Putting pop names in the frame isn’t always a recipe for success. Young Will was a tasty revelation. He stepped along with camp Teutonic aplomb and wowed the audience with voice and perfectly paced pathos. Michelle Ryan, on the other hand, was barely serviceable as Sally. Her voice simply isn’t strong or distinct enough to carry off the big numbers and her Julie Andrew’s impersonation had to be propped up by a more talented chorus line. In between the big budget numbers, the dislocated scenes with the run-of-the-mill supporting cast were pedestrian and the deliberate pregnant pauses gave the impression that lines had been fluffed or forgotten. Of course, I’m a small gun critic so what do I know? But I suspect that when the show hits the West End, the big guns may well turn on at least one of the the big names.
Mother’s inaugural royal visit to the weaver’s croft went without a hitch. She was escorted across country by my nephew and namesake, Jack Junior. I wondered if she’d be able to climb the narrow winding steps up to the attic boudoirs. I needn’t have worried. She remains a spritely 83 year and still runs for buses, despite a touch of arthritis. She had a good root around and gave her seal of approval. Fed and brandy’d, she retired for the evening with ‘Fifty Shades Darker’. We took young Jack to the bar at the Playhouse Theatre to discuss his exam results and flourishing love life. This popular watering hole by the water is always bursting with fresh-faced students and earnest artists with a dash of old homos thrown into the mix. The next morning, as Liam fixed breakfast, Mother noticed a timeworn photo of her wedding I keep in a frame on the window ledge. We looked at it together. Handsome Dad looked dapper and proud in his dress uniform and the old girl looked stunning and radiant in her classic cut wedding dress and virginal veil. “But who,” I asked “was the drag queen in the fur next to Dad?”
The talented folk at Future Radio must have thought my debut gig on Pride Live wasn’t too embarrassing as they asked me back for a repeat performance. This time, I wasn’t plugging the book. As the Pride season draws to a close and rainbow flags across the realm are folded away for yet another year, I was invited to bang my drum about paying to be proud at Brighton Pride. Towards the end of the piece, my train of thought was fatally derailed by my new-fangled smart phone throbbing in my pants. It turned me into a rambling wreck. Despite my momentary bout of bumbling amnesia, I hope I came across as the voice of moderation. You can be the judge by clicking on the big poofy pink radio.
Perking the Pansies 