Blah Blah Flowers

Had several fun and exciting days, so much so that I'm just about ready to head back to work so I can relax for a bit. On Thursday was the demo outside the Stonewall Awards at the V&A, Aunty Sarah has more here and here. A fun time was had by all, except Ben Summerskill and Julie Bindel. I have emailed Stonewall to see whether they are now more open to discussing how this sort of situation might be avoided in future. They were presumably too busy nursing hangovers on Friday to reply so that's something to look forward to in the coming week.

Julie responded to events on Saturday in her usual way, a column in the Guardian. In a national newspaper she misrepresented every fact she possibly could, slagged off more people and then demanded to be left alone. She seems to take a view of separatism that allows her to make full use of what society offers but doesn't allow society to talk back to her. Luckily that's not how it tends to work. The comments thread for her article is heartening in that her fanclub didn't really get themselves motivated to post defending her, so it consists mainly of people telling her how foolish she is being. I posted twice in the comments and also sent a letter to the paper, they really need to stop enabling her like this, it's also terrible that the one person they give space to talk about transgender issues is someone ignorant of the facts and who is virulently anti-transgender. And anti-gay. And anti-kink. And anti-lesbian.

And then, yesterday evening to the Ravenscourt Park fireworks display over in Hammersmith with friends and a friend of friends. Seeing a proper professional display like this makes me wonder why anyone buys fireworks and does them on their own in the back garden, the two events cannot compare and back garden Dad has just wasted far more money than taking his family to a professional event. Every couple of years I go to proper events but this was the biggest and best event I've seen, despite the drizzle and the inflicting of bad music (David Gray, an awful new version of Van Halen's 'Jump' with a disco beat and, oddly, 'I Want to Ride my Bicycle' by Queen) it was a spectacular display, finishing with a carefully choreographed series of explosions that seemed to fill the entire sky with colour. Then back to the FOAF's for gin, food and arguments about 11/09/01 conspiracy theories before trudging to the tube station for the journey home.

Today we're off to the cinema to see Quantum of Solace. Should be fun!

Labels: Flickr, Julie Bindel, London, Stonewall, The Guardian, transgenderism, transphobia