Brenda: Part 2

Sunday is Club Brenda at the Ruby Lounge and very nearly every gay friend I’ve had in Manchester is in attendance somewhere which is the loveliest thing, and not a one of them wearing a Pride wristband pass for the Village. Thank god for Brenda and the like giving us an alternative to 3 days of monotonous house music in the rain to ‘celebrate’ our diversity. And only six quid!

The mighty Hidden Cameras

The Hidden Cameras play a glorious set, us down the front in this tiniest of venues and just SO exciting and sweaty with a little mosh pit in front of beautiful Joel Gibb and his lovely music. Dozens of sweaty queers shouting ‘Ban Marriage!’ is the highlight of my Pride weekend. We meet the band afterwards and they’re the sweetest, fun people, Joel is fawned over by everyone but remains modest and unassuming even when Thom tells him that he saw a bit of his cock and balls in the Attitude Sex issue.

Joel Gibb and me

The night takes a bad turn for me when, lured drunkenly into the Invest in Property DJ lounge to wig out, I think, God forgive me, to ‘Sussudio’, I have to thereafter repeatedly kick myself for missing David Hoyle. I know! Bloody Phil Collins. I’m absolutely furious with myself. I did get to see David MC a little though, looking amazing in fright wig and floral print frock, and he also took the stage to play tambourine with the Cameras. My disappointment was curbed a little when we went to his dressing room after and I had a lovely chat with him, we’re both Blackpool boys and it turns out he only lives down the road from Neil in Longsight. Such a wit, such a gentlemen and so full of the kind of free gay spirit that I love and that is sorely missing from Pride. God bless him. I’m going to get Neil to cook him a lovely dinner now that he has a dining table so at least one of my fantasy dinner party guests may actually come to pass in my lifetime.

Me, Sir David Hoyle, Neil

Soundtrack: Belle & Sebastian, Hidden Cameras, Babybird, ‘Wired for Sound’, Connie Francis

If I only had a brain, a heart, the nerve …

You get nothing for ages then a flurry of blogging activity all at once. What gives? Well first off it matters not because my compadre Thom has been doing some top notch blogging of late, including typically spot-on musical recommendations, check it out at once. And secondly my silence here is testament to the large amounts of work I’ve been doing on The Novel, at the expense of work, sleep, play, rest, fun, friends, food (well, no, not food) and Manhattanchester. I’ve made some pleasing inroads into the writing and have less than 10 short chapters to complete before I get stuck into editing proper. Unfortunately I’ve gone a bit mad doing it, in fact for the time being at least I seem to have lost my bottle entirely. In short, I’m no longer sure I can pull it off.

To get reassurances or at the very least, the blunt truth, I’ve sent chapters to various loved ones, none of whom are duty-bound to say nice things of course, and the responses have included the following:

“I was impressed”

“I read this last night and I want more! The characters are so well observed and the writing is tight, witty and involving. I haven't honestly read anything this good in ages …”

“I love her but I hate her too! I want to find out what happens …”

It is these precious words that will sustain me through completion of the wretched thing. It’s not even a 300 page opus or anything, it’ll only be about fifty thousand words all told, but when you have to commit yourself to it around the nine to five it can seem insurmountable.

So, I’m having a few days break from words and am off home to Blackpool to attend my lovely Nana’s 80th birthday. I’ve bought her a lovely lavender towelling dressing gown with a floral motif down the front. BHS, you just can’t fail can you? Then it’s back to Manc on Sunday in time for Club Brenda featuring David Hoyle and The Hidden Cameras. I’m more excited by this than I’ve been about anything for ages. It will be my only outing over the Pride weekend, about which I’m obviously feeling horribly cynical, though I’m glad it’s there too in a funny way, but there must always be room for dissent. I hate feeling like a target market and I feel about Pride the way I feel about capitalism in general, that if I didn’t have the money to spend I would be gladly left to die in the street. Aren’t I a killjoy? Lefty, can’t be helped. Somebody has written elsewhere that if one person contracts HIV over the drink and drug and unsafe sex addled weekend the amount of money raised by the whole event will sustain their care for abut 5 years. See? Some people are even more cynical than I am.

Anyway, as I planned to do months ago I intend to scour the writer’s blogs and see how fellow scribes deal with the pitfalls of fiction. I will report back with my findings. The Manchester Blog Awards are on the horizon too so I shall be on the lookout for nominees while I’m about it.