Tuesday, August 10, 2004
I don't understand how you can have a day and a half of heavy rain and it not make one degree of difference to the temperature. But it was very obliging to wait until Pride weekend had finished before the deluge began. I brought my umbrella rather than sunglassed to work this morning, by lunchtime it was clear the rain is over for now.
It was my first Pride and I enjoyed it immensely. I was marching with Plums and the Brighton Bothways group which graciously adopted me for a few hours. It did feel empowering, but then it felt somewhat hardwork when I volunteered to take one side of their massive banner which caught the wind that we were walking into most of the way, until the point where we were frequently pushing with all our strength to make it down the street. And it wasn't even that windy... for Brighton.
I'm trying to organise some sort of online photo album when I can find a decent service as my pictures will say it better than I could. We were marching for a lot of the way in front of a load of buff boys and girls wearing very little at all and emblazoned with Gaydar tattoos, so frequently had people looking past us.
I preferred the march to the park to be honest. But then I've gradually got less interested in fairgrounds and fetes as I've got older, and that's more or less what the Pride in the Park bit was, just with amyl nitrate and vegan bondage gear. It wasn't bad, we met up with some friends that had also come down from London for the day, and later on sat under the trees with some of the south-east Bicon crowd and watched a woman urinate behind a sports car. I must shamefully admit that I did go into the Brighton Library van and talk to them about their stock, which contains not only LB and B support material but also a developing T stock too, which I think must be pretty rare in the country at the moment. If I had to leave London I could see myself looking for a job in a Brighton library.
The only downside was I rubbed the insides of my legs ferociously raw so by the end of the day was hobbling along the road practically bow-legged as we made our way back to Plums flat. But the weather was bakingly hot all day. As we marched to the park people were squirting us with pump-action water pistols. On any other day this may have been a nuisance, on Saturday it was welcome relief!
It was my first Pride and I enjoyed it immensely. I was marching with Plums and the Brighton Bothways group which graciously adopted me for a few hours. It did feel empowering, but then it felt somewhat hardwork when I volunteered to take one side of their massive banner which caught the wind that we were walking into most of the way, until the point where we were frequently pushing with all our strength to make it down the street. And it wasn't even that windy... for Brighton.
I'm trying to organise some sort of online photo album when I can find a decent service as my pictures will say it better than I could. We were marching for a lot of the way in front of a load of buff boys and girls wearing very little at all and emblazoned with Gaydar tattoos, so frequently had people looking past us.
I preferred the march to the park to be honest. But then I've gradually got less interested in fairgrounds and fetes as I've got older, and that's more or less what the Pride in the Park bit was, just with amyl nitrate and vegan bondage gear. It wasn't bad, we met up with some friends that had also come down from London for the day, and later on sat under the trees with some of the south-east Bicon crowd and watched a woman urinate behind a sports car. I must shamefully admit that I did go into the Brighton Library van and talk to them about their stock, which contains not only LB and B support material but also a developing T stock too, which I think must be pretty rare in the country at the moment. If I had to leave London I could see myself looking for a job in a Brighton library.
The only downside was I rubbed the insides of my legs ferociously raw so by the end of the day was hobbling along the road practically bow-legged as we made our way back to Plums flat. But the weather was bakingly hot all day. As we marched to the park people were squirting us with pump-action water pistols. On any other day this may have been a nuisance, on Saturday it was welcome relief!
