2020 review – it’s been a bit shit

Despite having more time then ever I have neglected my diary at home but also this blog. This is the least amount of posts I have ever written on this site in a year a grand total of two.

January and February were two of the craziest months I have had in a long time. Last year I ditched dating but came crawling back to some apps with a vengeance. I thought to myself I will never actually meet anyone. No one thinks that I am sexy, smart, funny and witty.

I decide to turn up the “whore-bag” level to ten and see what life could throw at me. And boy it did. I met some nice people to have lunch with some were kind, some were okay and some decided after the second meeting to completely ghost me they disappeared out of my life without a single word; no apology or the pathetic excuse “it’s not you – it’s me”.

This happened not once, not twice, but thrice in ten months. If you want to start a conversion you damn well should be grown up enough to end one as well. That’s the one thing I certainly have learned this year men are pathetic at communicating feelings end emotions.

My favourite band, Pet Shop Boys, released a new album “Hotspot” and in my biased opinion is one of their best albums in the last 20 years. The opening song on the album ‘Will-o-the-Wisp’ takes the crown as my favourite song of the year second comes ‘Blinding Lights – The Weeknd’ a cracking tune.

Pet Shop Boys – Hotspot

The looming pandemic arrived and we were placed into lockdown. It amazed me how many elderly people weren’t taking it seriously at all and I saw a large number going about their business in Chester-le-Street like it was just an ordinary day. Like a lot of people I was worried about how it would affect my mental health and apart from being a little bit lonely now again I saw the bigger picture.

This symbol of hope this year. The rainbow stolen by the gays from the Christians only to be stolen by those clapping for the NHS.

My small supply of hand sanitiser soon ran out and I was left one day with hands that looked like had been run up and down on a cheese grater.

One of the benefits of being made to stay at home this year was having a stab at proper cooking. You know branching out from the microwave and creating something different using a recipe. Thanks to the 79 million cook books I inherited I turned to the internet and eventually mastered Yorkshire puddings. From a recipe by someone I follow on twitter.

I also had a bash at making my own soup as I was appalled at how tasteless some tinned soup I had consumed. Managed to cook a combination of onion and leek; ended cooking chicken soup.

This year around my birthday I turned 50. I kept saying to myself I can’t be 50 I was 18 two seconds ago and now I am 50? My body was telling my otherwise. Experiencing a heart attack a couple of years ago I am aware that I am not a teenager anymore and if I want to see another decade I need to do less of the booze more exercise. But I got it mixed up and did less exercise and did more booze. Even the warnings from County Durham’s twitter feed about the harm too much alcohol can do did nothing to dent the gin-soaked evenings.

Driving into Scotland on my 50th birthday.

Now I have started to have not just days but weeks abstinence. I joke that I am not 22 anymore and my body when getting out of bed reminds me each day.

I fixed the oven this year. Having zero confidence in my DIY skills as I decided that it wasn’t worth calling out a company at 80-100 quid just to come and look at it, kick it and to be told “It’s fucked.” I bought an element that needed replacing from eBay and struggled for two hours wrestling an oven and the most fucking fiddly connections But I won and the oven is now operational again.’

With all the crap that’s happened this year December proved to be an even shitter month. With my fridge freezer going to the big council landfill in the sky and the car throwing error codes left right and centre it’s been a time when things have not got been good. Friends family being ill with serious conditions just made 2020 a crap year.

So whatever you’re doing. Fat, thin, tall or small. Black, white, gay or bi. I hope this next year is decent for you. A happy and blessed 2021 !

COVID19

I haven’t thought about this blog for months. I only really write stuff when I feel like it or … well that’s it I couldn’t think of another reason. I don’t like to write because I have to, it’s not a job but a hobby I pick up and put down whenever I want then it becomes a pleasure and not a chore.

What can I say? We are already hurtling towards the end of April in the year 2020 and what a year it’s been so far. I am sitting here thinking shout the world and the situation we all find ourselves in now. It’s supposed to be that weekend of the year where we all emerge from the winter a bit bleary-eyed and bloated from the hibernation of the winter months. Fat chance.

Life is on hold while the Government scrambles desperately to find a vaccination to COVID19. I am trying to not watch too much news. I get despondent when hearing the grim daily death toll being announced seeing the numbers creep higher with each passing day.

It is usually when you have heard someone you know who has lost a relative to the virus does it become real. I said at the beginning of this pandemic that people will only take seriously when it starts to directly affect them or they know someone who has been affected. 

It is at this time when I looked to countries who have the ways and means to cope with the pandemic and take privilege, arrogance, selfishness, and superiority to a whole new level. Parts of the US have seen protests down to being ‘told what to do’. I can understand the need and want to work and provide for your family but when it comes to the expense of a nation’s health it is downright reckless and stupid. 

Even when you complain that the measures taken are too draconian and you end up losing your own life do some still believe it is some political ploy to remove ‘civil liberties’. 

My question would be to these protesters is if they could see the enemy and know it’s dangerous to leave their homes due to being taken out by a sniper or bomb and the government told them to stay indoors would they still complain about diminishing civil liberties?

The UK response to COVID-19 has been extraordinary where people have been organizing social events and looking out for each other in ways we haven’t seen for decades. The tremendous outpouring of heart-felt thanks for NHS has been amazing to hear. We are a nation who should be proud that we can rely on a service where at the end of the treatment we don’t have to worry about how we are able to pay for such life-saving remedies. 

 

 

 

My grindr experience

I thought I would give it a go, meet someone, who knows it could turn out to be something good. I was wrong. 

I don’t date. I said in my last post that its not for me and I am sticking to that because dating (in my opinion) is such a silly thing to do. I had a great day in Newcastle and thought it was nice to be able to walk around the city and have a few around people watching and maybe get some food and a drink.

The day was good – I like that Newcastle has changed so much (for the better) it has become a cosmopolitan and vibrant city. It has embraced a modern approach to life, where everyone is accepted and it has been hosting the World Transplant Games this week and it was great to see so many people from all around the world decend to the north east in competing in various sports.

So I trundled back to my home in Chester-le-Street ready to settle in for a evening in front of the television. I know that my life isn’t exciting. Not going parties every weekend plus I don’t mind having a dull social life. Not interested in clubs and busy bars; just aint my scene.

Previously, I was talking to a guy on grindr and was asked to go out in my town to meet  him. I thought to myself ‘why not?’, there can be no harm. Right? It could be a start of something good if I give it a chance. This positively, Philip.

I am a big lad, I have tattoos and usually when I walk into bars these days I get a quiet nod and an “alreet”. It’s a northern thing men do when they want to acknowledge your masculinity and presence. They don’t know I am a raging homo.

So I met up with this guy and we got chatting in a rather crowded bar. The music that was being played wasn’t great and I thought we were connecting pretty well, he seemed engaged enough to think I wasn’t too hideous and ugly to look at. I jokingly made a comment about how the music was shit and he didn’t respond much.

I had offered to buy him a drink but he declined. Thinking that this was a sign that he didn’t realise the protocols of meeting someone for the first time and how to conduct yourself when you first meet. Never the less I got myself one and about two minutes later he walks to the bar to get a drink. Very odd.

I saw him talking to the DJ and he had gone outside to have a smoke but then didn’t come back to where we were sitting. He eventually returned to the bar and sat with some friends he had met. I didn’t want to make scene or think anything of it but I bumped into him later on and told him he was rude. He shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

Now this is one of the reasons I don’t do dates. Even if something goes wrong you are polite and decline and say it probably isn’t going work out. Not stomp off like a petulant child and act like a baby.

I really think some have lost the art of conversation of allowing yourself to get to know one another. It’s instant world of hookups, one night stands and now disposable people. You don’t like what you have so let’s just get another one.

It will be a long time and maybe even never, until I next decide, to meet anyone from dating apps.

Social media – Amberlynn Reid

Social media is a great place it can lead us to find out about so much. Whether it’s local events happening near or a breaking news item, it has revolutionised the world. But there are the exceptions to this …

This post isn’t to bully or be nasty to a person who is super-morbidly obese. But the Youtuber known as Amberlynn Reid is an American 28-year-old woman who started her channel marketing her “weight loss journey” and invited the whole world along on this adventure.

I have only been following this journey (not subscribed to her channel) for a few months now and she started her venture in 2011 and since then hasn’t lost any weight that she has already gained back. In fact, she has gained a further two hundred pounds so now in fact in near to 600lb although she has continuously denied she had reached it.

What people find toxic about is that she continually lies and manipulates the audience into feeling sorry her. She starts a new programme to try to lose weight and gives up on them after a very short time. People believe that she is only continuing her channel and uploading because of the money she is making. She doesn’t have a job outside youtube and physically not even able to stand for a few minutes which doesn’t allow her to apply for many jobs, not that she is willing or wanting to get into any viable employment.

No sponsors have appeared on her channel as of the date and I really believe none will. Her brand is too toxic for any product or company to be associated with her. Unlike other YouTubers who have courted numerous controversies and continued to grow in revenue and views, Amberlynn continues without any endorsement.

Sadly, I believe, she will go down in notoriety for being the first to live and slowly die on the platform as her size is now dangerously high. Despite numerous people offering to help her from everyday viewers to weightloss channels dedicated to losing weight, she has declined help.

It is only a matter of time before her gluttony finally catches up with her.

I’m coming out

I have decided after many years I hate going on dates. I despise them. Bear with me I have a reason for this and I will explain. 

You don’t have to look very far when people talk about finding love. People immediately talk about speed-dating or meeting up with someone going on a ‘first date’. When I was young the idea of finding a significant other didn’t interest me at all. It was all part of the expectations my parents had and automatically assumed I would follow.

A few years ago I thought it was the right way to go to finding love and I was wrong. The person turned out to be utterly wrong for me. I think it put me off completely. The inability to have a conversation to understand someones sense of humour and the art of actually listening to what the other person is saying rather than getting to have your turn to complain about something not relevant to what is being said.

Maybe I am being a little harsh or too judgemental – too quick to give up on the idea of finding the right one is this way. It’s not because I am ‘asocial’, far from it. I love the idea of meeting up with someone going for a drink or food, maybe a walk or to the cinema (which is the suckiest of places to go on a date) and spending time with the person you really like.

People all over the world want to find the right person, but they have high expectations, it’s never approached as what can I add to a relationship but what can I find to get out of another person.

I want them to talk in a certain way have a certain sense of humour and have their lives sorted too. I want them to be dressed smartly, have perfect teeth, be tanned and have a six-pack. I want them to be good in bed, to be attentive when I am down, talkative when I am up and have the power of telepathy. I want want want …

Isn’t it a wonder that a huge percentages of marriages end in divorce. Bad behaviour, inability to communicate, expectations that don’t match reality and wanting different things out of life. How many people walk away from just a friendship alone when things get slightly tough. Relate that to any close relationship and you can understand marriage isn’t for everyone.

So I am coming out as a ‘Non-dater’. I am a person who doesn’t go on dates. Not that I am closed to the idea of a relationship it’s just I would rather get to know someone else in a less formal structured manner. Let’s be friends and see how it goes.

Tommy Robinson – tics

This video was taken from a person who works for a right-wing Rebel media company. I was going through videos trying to find some reactions to how Tommy Robinson lost his campaign to become an MEP. 

I thought long and hard before posting this video I don’t want to mock or make fun off people who have tics or any form of Tourettes, as it isn’t what I am about, even when it comes to someone as abhorrent as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

Watching a number of his videos prior to this I have never been able to capture any moments where Tommy has exhibited his tics. This is really apparent in this video and became very noticeable in the three minute clip. I hope even on my worst enemy his isn’t ill or a sign of something more serious.

 

Tommy Robinson – EU Elections

I didn’t want to jump to conclusions or even speak about Tommy Robinson on my site until the results of the election came in. The more oxygen he is given the more he claimed he is being silenced but somehow we all got to know what was happening with him over the past few weeks.

Milkshakes placed to one side for a moment I wanted to comment on his campaigning. He made many claims and counter claims which usually turned out to be false. He started his campaign not surprisingly asking for donations for a bus. In a video laughing like a demented hyena he claimed, “I just know the the reaction when this (the bus) rocks up in your city centres … I’m going to tell you about what’s going on in your cities … I am going to tell about what’s happening in your cities I am going to tell you about the corruption in your cities … I am going to name shame show people up with this new weapon.”

Tommy then goes on to explain that one donor has already given ten thousand pounds towards buying the vehicle and another that had donate half this amount. He explains that he wants to create ‘The Tommy Robinson Show’ where he will interview guests in this ‘mobile TV studio’ and people will be able to watch this from the outside on a large screen attached to the side of the bus.

We didn’t see this bus unfortunately throughout his campaign we saw a hired van with a screen on it but there was no sign of his bus. I might be wrong and unlike his supporters I don’t mind accepting if I got the information wrong. In this clip below we see the sheer bravado and arrogance of the man. ‘I am going to be your MEP’ as he bounces up and down like a petulant child. If you notice his body language he blocks the man who says ‘That’s not going to happy Stephen’ by turning his back towards him therefore unofficially cutting off his communication with the man he obviously doesn’t want to listen to or accept what he is saying.

Out of a possible 7.2m people who had voting right in the north west Tommy Robinson got a laughable 38k. After all the campaigning and complaining that he has been ‘deplatformed’ (in other words removed from three social media platforms). He is still on youtube but not able to make any money out of it and still has access to his website and emails sending out to people beginning for money.

The overall message that Tommy tried to bring to the north west was widely and rightly rejected. There is no place in any normal functioning democracy. We could even say that his sort of ideology has ‘no place in western society or culture’ a phrase he has used numerous times to claim about Islam.

People now should think long and hard about parting with their money to fund the politics of hatred.

 

Durham Pride – thoughts

Last year I wrote about Newcastle Pride and how I didn’t think it was my cup of tea. I returned to another Pride march this and this one took place in the City I was born – Durham. 

The pile of sick I stepped over in front of a Champagne bar in Durham might have been a foreboding to what I was going to experience throughout the day. I had travelled from my home into Durham city and made my way down to ‘The Sands’ which is a field next to the river Wear.

Durham Pride is in its infancy and we must take that into consideration. The fact that it was founded in 2014 and only has been running for 5 years makes us realise that this event does have a few problems and stuff that needs, in my opinion, ironing out.

I arrived about 2.30pm an hour and half after it officially opened to see some stall holders already starting to pack up. The event itself is only running for half a day from 1-6pm at The Sands. I thought it was a bit mean of those people who had decided to put their stall out to start dismantling things not even half way through the afternoon.

It was good to see organisations like Police, NHS and Samaritans get involved in promoting their cause and even local bus services had brought a vehicle designed in a LGBT theme celebrating pride.

The music was okay I am not a huge fan of every song being the dance version of every hit you have ever heard. The queue for the bar was about ten minutes long and overall the prices where reasonable for this sort of event. The only thing that I thought was a bit steep was the price of a full bottle of wine at £18. Strangely I didn’t witness anyone take up this offer and people mainly stuck to pints or shots with a mixer.

At around 5pm people were leaving in droves and it was only when I was walking back to catch a bus home did I catch the headlining act (albeit via facebook live) of Sonique. They had decided to put her on about 5.50pm when the majority of the people had gone home.

I think overall people were happy with the event. It’s manly attended by the 16-30 crowd which is great if you are that age, but someone who is knocking on the door of middle age and reluctant to go inside, it does make me feel that once you have passed the milestone of thirty in gay terms you are in retirement.

There was nothing I could see for people past thirty we all aren’t interesting in drag queens and repeating infinitum the mantra that we are ‘having a good time’ at the host requests.

This for me is where Pride events fall down. The ageist opinions of not just the attendees but the mindset that people in organisation make invisible those who have experienced the 80s and 90s and have the grey hair to prove our non-existent status in LGBT world.

Good points – young people ready to embrace their sexuality and others willing to support them

Bad points – 15 toilets for 25 thousand. Not enough variety of food. Stalls packing up way before the end.

 

 

Milkshakes – Farage and the far-right

Tomorrow people will vote in European Elections something we shouldn’t have been a part of due to the UK supposedly leaving the European Union. 

In the previous few weeks of campaigning we have seen high profile incidents where MEP candidates have had milkshakes thrown at them. Some have seen as a childish pranks and others have classified it as ‘domestic terrorism’. What ever your views on this doesn’t take away the real issue people should be talking about. Why are they people being covered in fast food drinks?

Far-right commentators are quick to blame ‘militant far-left agitators’ and see it as a divisional argument where two sides of a political debate are waring for attention and support. This divisive tactic for me makes people believe that there are competing enemies ready to defend their beliefs and use varying methods of protest. I think there is a simpler point that’s being made.

People are utterly fed up of hearing hatred and vilification of various communities and minorities. Conspiracy theories are now so engrained in some that they have become part and parcel of everyday life. In a blog post last year I wrote about how the conspiracy theory is the new religion. We have accepted revisionist history lessons as if they were fact. Happy to embrace far-right tropes such as ‘Islam isn’t a race therefore it’s not racist to criticise it’ (or demonise an entire religion).

As I explained about confirmation bias we look for possible information to back up our own beliefs without actually thinking rationally about a situation or event. We are constantly on the search for material that panders to our own fears and prejudices. For example, say I am afraid of spiders I see a story about a man who was hospitalised due to a bite from a spider on holiday and we confirm in our minds the reasons that we hate spiders, and don’t read the rest of the story that explains the man was hospitalised due to the wound being infected, rather than the actual spider bite. The danger doesn’t come from the spider but the infection that is caused and could have happened in any other way in which skin is broken and allowed germs breed and spread.

I try to look at a situation rationally and objectively. See the reasons behind someone’s actions. I don’t follow any religions and dismiss conspiracies and theories not facts. The recent increase in measles is without a doubt down to parents listening to lies that vaccines cause autism. They don’t. There is no proof just one discredited medic with an opinion.

These theories that can spread quickly over social media and they become irrational when parents are willing to endanger their own children but not getting them vaccinated against deadly but treatable diseases. Rational thought is dismissed and science thrown away. If make this rational statement on social media I can guarantee within a few minutes I will have someone popping up on my timeline to argue the case that the ‘conspiracy’ is true and vaccines are bad for the world.

For me Farage is the arse-end of politics. He has used the theory of leaving the EU as a basis of political debate and whether you agree with him or not, it is clear the far-right xenophobes have latched on to believing that if the UK does eventually leave then the freedom of people to come in to the country will some how be immediately stopped – it won’t.

I know all those who voted to leave the EU aren’t racist but all the racists voted to leave.

Walking in the park