Canvey Island is a real place even though it sounds a little bit made-up to most people. We took our mothers out for fish and chips there on Saturday as it was Jamie’s mum’s birthday weekend and my mum used to go there as a child (we are a big old Essex family). I like the bright but grey aspect of this seaside town where there there is not a lot of seaside related activity anymore, maybe because it reminds me of that year I did the arty farty foundation in Southend on Sea. This time round I decided to bring my camera and capture some of the vibe. I may have succeeded:

We resisted the paddling option.

We went to Ye Olde Brentwood Town yesterday to see my nice brother (as opposed to nasty brother) and his husband (gay power!), where we wandered around the town a little bit in a kind of Heritage Walk style. Of interest to nobody except me was the discovery that my childhood dentist was still A) practicing and B) alive although A couldn’t relaly happen without B. But anyway, other excitement was to be found in the ‘new’ shopping precinct which was like the old one only with a lid on it and just as many empty shops as before (someone may have seen the Victoria centre in southend and had a lightbulb go off in their head), a mini mooch past some all-new-all-exciting shops and oh so many bars and restaurants. In my day a pizza in Pizza Hut would have been considered exotic (especially if it had chilli on it), how we have grown as a town. Quite a nice place but don’t tell anybody I said that.

I also admired their massive garden (lovely shed) and conservatory (middle class) and spent some time in the loft conversion (fancy) rummaging through boxes that contained some of my old old tat. I took ghome a large plastic tub of mostly the 80s and here are some of the highlights:

Google image search is my friend.

Human League: Dare album on vinyl bought in Belgium in 1882 (cool kid) with four faces on front instead of usual one.

Sonia: You’ll Never Stop Me From Loving You 12″ remix to the music of French Kiss by Lil’ Louis (I still love this).

Yazoo: Upstairs At Eric’s vinyl album also bought in Belgium, when I stayed with my lesbian ‘aunties.’

Propaganda: A Secret Wish album on cassette (chrome for quality, ya know) and the singles on 7″ vinyl.

More ZTT singles including ones by Act and Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Never found my Two Tribes variants though.

Sponsored walk certificate from Pilgrim’s Hatch Junior School 1981. 20 laps!

Wee Papa Girl Rappers: Blow The House Down 12″ single with cut out extra outer sleeve in the shape of a house. Shite.

Father Abraham In Smurfland album with my name written on the front so I could not pretend it was not mine.

Jesus Loves You: One On One 12″ remix by Massive Attack (scratched at the beginning of side A).

She Hulk graphic novel. Camp.

Wild Bunch (proto Massive Attack) vinyl EP featuring Shara Nelson and a lot of rapping.

Lisa Stansfield: Time To Make You Mine 12″ with remixes by Youth & The Orb and Masters At Work. Nudey cover!

It’s good to share:

So now you know.

It is/was Christmas Day (depending on when you read this) and we went to Sexy Brentwood for Day One of Famerlee Christmas. Day Two is Boxing Day in/on Canvey Island but that hasn’t happened yet. I took a few photos there and a few at home so here they are. I warn you, they are not thrilling as they do not adequately capture things like not watching any telly because it is rubbish, eating/drinking four bowls of soup for a starter, receiving (and giving) some lovely presents, wondering why my sister had gift wrapped loads of bananas (maybe for a celebrity cactus?), teasing my mother about the lack of grand children supplied by gay sons, slightly zoning out every time Belgium was mentioned, getting that too much wine feeling or the surprisingly easy M25 journey…

At home: As our lounge is a decoratingesque mess the cards live on the fridge this year, held in place by Doctor Who fridge magnets.

Also at home: One of my lovely new cacti got some bananas from the Torchwood Deaceased Action Figures. Bannakaffalatta sounds a bit like a banana but is not. He is, however, a bit like those coincidental aliens who cropped up later in Doctor Who.

My mother loves her apron and posed with the wok I bought her but that photo was shit so here is a different one.

Lovely table set for dinner in the conservatory. I want one (conservatory not table).

The Goth Archaeologist and her assistant dug some presents out of the wrapping paper. Lots of glasses (of the drinking out of variety).

I got Wii Fit Plus and a big cake, which should cancel each other out nicely.

We got home in plenty of time for Doctor Who. It may have been an after effect of the wine (I may have had mini dozes) but I felt the episode didn’t gel all that well. Too many new plot strands and coincidences for my liking but the big dramatic bits (no spoilers here) were fun, silly and dramatic and I look forward to part two next week.

Eastenders was amusingly Eastendersy where you could play along at home with your Eastenders Cliche Tick Sheet. As is the rule when somebody is going to get murdered off, you have to set up a dozen suspects by having them all get rather annoyed with the vistom then pay him a visit one at a time and go grrr at him. Lots of angry faces, lots of crying acting (except from Westbrook who cannot do the crying face dur to having no nose) and some great slaps. It was full of potential TV Burp clip moments of joy. Also: the Everyone in soap can fit all of their belongings into one average sized bag rule was used brilliantly once more, as was the Pregnant actress can disguise it with big all-weathers coat and permanent massive shoulder bag rule. So many rules.

It’s not often that we get to go to a big old famerlee knees up so when my brother announced he was getting married I got rather excited. Bonus points for being asked to do witness duties…

Ten hours of socialising in one great big chunk? Not bad at all. Highlights included a lovely ceremony (they were much more ‘professional’ than me and Jamie with an A4 schedule on every chair. Resisted calling it a Gay Agenda), the bit where I cocked up the witness form in front of everyone by forgetting what a full name meant, meeting lots of nice new people, having just enough white wine (officially “my” drink) , failing the best man’s “gay test” by knowing bugger all about gay bars or gay clubs, and taking literally hundreds of photographs. The photos got ecited down to over 100 and the grooms (and my family) will shortly be receiving a set plus some nice 10x8s of the best shots. Hurrah!

Here are some highlights:

Confetti! But never the film of the same name.

My mum and dad and a lot of sunlight.

With my husband, inbetween getting told I have my brother’s mannerisms. As you would.

I thought getting my sister to use some of her hair to make me a combover wig would be funny.

We had a little rest and a cup of tea inbetween the afternoon meal and evening reception.

I don’t feel like dancing. Ever. But luckily there were others who did.

I bloody love weddings, but will also not give you evils for “living in sin.”

What an odd few days. We now have an extra bit of space in the lounge which needs sorting aaahhht and before that project we have a ceiling and skirting to paint after I move a bookcase full of graphic novels to another room but who knows where? Bloody DIY when living in a house is not in my repetroire. Moving my Tardis playset upstairs was enough of a trauma what with most of the action figures flinging themselves onto the floor as I carried it slowly up the stairs. Sarah Jane almost lost her sonic lipstick! The new uber-TV is a sexy beast and we can actually see things now which helps when Jamie tries to do the boffin wall on Only Connect. Watched Caves of Androzani and Blink again, the former was a bit stretched as I am too mush of a luddite to work out how to put the black bars on either end of the picture when watching ye olde format. The magma beast looked decidedly unfearsome but Peri’s boobs impressed. Next up is the DVD of The Keys of Marinus. There are six episodes of this stuff? Bloody hell. Watched part one this evening and there were two great Hartnell fluffs in the first two minutes. Brilliant. I mean no offence, I love this old stuff. Susan appears to have been to 1985 and is channelling the spirit of Jennifer Saunders’ character in Girls On Top, which is nice. All the child geniuses end up being idiots in Who. Might review the disc when I get through the other five episodes… oh the horror.

In other news, a nice surprise happened and I don’t usually like surprises. Let’s just say that a plotline involving someone I care about has been fast-tracked and I am pleased and proud.

If only some of my family could stop living in the bloody 1950s (was that decade really so good that the Daily Mail wish to preserve it forever?) they might actually have some fun and be proud of how most of their children turned out. Even the goth archeologist (joke, she is lovely).

I have been given the honour of being a wedding witness next month and am thrilled by this as long as I don’t have to do a speech later as I don’t really have a clue how to act like a normal person. Some say that is part of my charm. Let’s see…

Along those lines, here’s this week’s Shut The F**k Up moment on the Mail comments:

Sorted.

Jamie has been making me watch How I Met Your Mother which he insists is not like Friends but it is really. It’s a sitcom about five friends who are alcoholics which is handy as they spend most of their time in the pub. The main character is single because he has no charisma (and probably is shit in bed. No, not defecating in the bed but…) and always wears a t-shirt/shirt combo. He hangs around with Dr Horrible from the Emmy award winning Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog who plays a ‘hilarious’ sex pest who his pals think is endearing but in reality would probably get put on the sex offenders register by the premiere of season two. Main character’s other friends are Willow from Buffy doing a face and too much skapstick and Nick from Freaks & Geeks playing Nick from Freaks and Geeks who owns some books. They have a another friend who is a lady and er… I am told it impproves but it didn’t win a comedy Emmy unlike 30 Rock, United States of Tara, Pushing Daisies or, er, Two And A Half Men. Huh?

Damn him, Chris was right and Parks & Recreation is indeed very funny. The first episode of the second series was rather special, unlike the new episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia which was relatively mirth-free.

See?

I don’t just sit on my chair at work and eat, sit on my chair at home and eat, do exercise on the Wii Fit (badly) and read comics and listen to music and watch teevee, honest. Here’s some real world stuff to thrill precisely nobody:

Lovely!

Jamie had to go to Leicester to be available for the evil ex-employer of mine from 2001 to , erm, 2001 because they were evil when they needed someone from his company to do clever computery things for their web server on their one day tat bonanza so I took the opportunity to visit fellow geeknerds Chris and Kylie who happen to live there. They were lovely, the place was lovely, the shops were lovely and the pubs were lovely.

Abbaominable (no, not really)!

Jamie’s company had their Summer Fandango up in a posho hotel location in the midlands where we were surrounded by wedding parties as we arrived (damn the country club location and its attraction for flamboyant slightly-orange people doing the do and having a do) , found wasps to be a popular choice of nuisance along with drunk work wives who “always wanted a gay best friend” until they discarded me for not ticking any of the poofy boxes:

• Gay Pride? Too lazy but I live the life every bleedin’ day so hardly ashamed.
• Clubbing? Seals only, and unruly children on buses.
• Fashion? Yeah, right.
• Vanity? Have you seen my teeth / shiny baldie head /scruffy beard.
• Dancing? I am the anti-Nolans. Sorry.

It was a good hotel, we had a fun evening and fled from the Abba tribute act into the other bar where the bloody Kevin Shitting Bishop Show was on the big screen. Such a dilemma! Met lots of nice people we had met before and some good new ones too. The company has even employed some women now that they have gained the vote and are allowed to drive cars so I was not the only male work wife. All good and I look forward to the Christmas do. Can I be Santa Claus please?

School trippy!

We did the BBC Audience Studio Tours thing which was like being in an episode of Coach Trip but without Brendan. And no coach. The tour guides were very enthusiastic and great at their jobs so it was well worth it, even though I was too lazy to get involved in the ‘hilarious’ tasks like presenting a weather report in front of a dodgy chromakey screen circa 1972 Doctor Who (no Drashigs were harmed) or pressing noisy buttons, but we did get to go to the BBC Shop afterwards and pretend that we had not already been there 20 times before. I recommend it to all TV geeks. We then went to Fancy Westfield Shopping Hell just down the road where Jamie bought a nice coat. Glamour!

Quizzical!

Then it was off to the pub quiz at the Drayton Court as usual. We never win but there are about 15-20 teams and we do OK. Almost win the music round every time and did well with this week’s Hiphop (is it one word or two? and why do I care?) themed one. Yes, really. Hiphop is the best.

Barbie!

Pete had a barbecue in his Fancy London flat yesterday (I suppose it should be called an appartment but we are bloody English) but as it is on the top floor of the very big building somewhere in the Fancy Docklands area there is a big outdoors balcony so it didn’t burn down. I did vegeburgers in the oven because I am sensible. Jamie liked having a big meaty treat… Hmmm…

… and then today we went to Canvey Island where photography is banned for legal reasons. It was warm and we went to Pitsea where we found a pub that did average food that repeated on me all day, looked at super massive TVs and decided what number of inches would be best for us (it was 37) and I got given an excellent Davros bag full of Doctor Who Adventures tat from Other Mother. All good.

Back to work tomorrow.Bah.

It was Bank holiday Monday so we went to see the family and learnt many exciting things on the journey and in the houses:

The BNP billboard slogan is ‘People like you voting’ which is not accompanied by a photograph of a big old racist so I do not understand. It certainly is not people like us*

There is a Christian Party running in the elections too. They do not like the BNP (they called their mums slags apparently) so therefore I am agreeing with the church for the first time ever in the history of me.

*Series 1 is on DVD and well worth a watch.

My mother will only drink tea if it is boiling hot but coffee has to be colder. Soya milk is better than long life milk. My dad is immune to caffeine with approximately a dozen cups of coffee drunk every day. They think I enjoyed our childhood family holidays that were mostly in a caravan in Belgium. I did not: the chemical toilet alone was reason enough to dislike and they now know.

Jamie’s mother did not know what LOL meant but she does now. She also knows that it is only used by dickheads and that becoming a fan of laughing at people falling over on Facebook is not acceptable.

Cakes are nice. Bacon is a nice treat if your vegetarian husband does not allow it at home and taking a chunk of a freshly cooked chicken home in the boot of the car will lead to chickeny smells. I will make him eat it in the garden.

Andi Peters’ choice of the top pop songs of the 1990s on 4Music was marvellously poor (C&C Music Factory, Chaka Demus and Pliers, Corona…) as was the advert every 10 minutes for Dizzee Rascal’s top 100 pop videos with sexy ladies in them, co-presented by something called a High Street Honey who was just a disinterested model sort.

We learnt that Billie Piper’s video for Because We Want To definitely inspired Russell ‘Tea’ Davies’ Doctor Who many years later:

A big old spaceship flies over a street and Billie is beamed down. Hmm…

Billie points at the bin and her magic powers make it start to melt but not like an Auton…

The bin is not an Auton but becomes a silver man who does a little dance and does not shoot her.

Billie goes to a club where the bouncer is a man with a rhino’s head. But not a Judoon…

The not Judoon lets her in even though she is underage. Nil points, space police rhino!

Next week: Vespiform in Honey To the Bee?

Ignoring the Morrissey video link, the old Southend on Sea place was allowed to be like Sunday today because it was Sunday. It tends to be like the song quite a lot though, and going there takes me back to olden times when I was a poor art student running around the sea front with a video camera. Happy days of making ‘sculptures’ in the refectory out of cups, pens and crisp packets, afternoons in the edit suite with 1980s TOTP effects on full whack, morninfs spent doing sketches of half-knocked-down buildings, evenings of drinking too much and shock horror having a proper social life for the first time ever in a meaningful way.

The Victoria Shopping Centre used to be crumbly and crappy, with pointless shops and a pub on the lower floor (The Cork & Cheese) but now it’s all swish and paved but with almost no bloody shops. And no pub. How silly. They have a comic shop but someone in power decided to be closed on Sundays. Grr…
So much has changed in the last 15 years (yes, 15 years since I befriended a girl from Southminster with bright hair and made a lifelong chum), but there were still some typical Southendy people out today. A Bible-bashing lady with a microphone near WH Smith preaching to nobody at all. The emos on the benches were more concerned with how flat their hair was or the super-skinniness of their black jeans. In my day it was all fat goths of course. The man with the owls was out too, down by The Royals, where we went to Debenhams and had a lunch that was more like dinner as it was aubergine and walnut bake with potatoes and beans. Mmm… well nobody else had bought any of the vegetarian special of the day and I felt sorry for it. After that I bought a new grown-up shirt and tie for my next work adventure which happens in a few weeks and involves me, a popular-ish philposophy author who also happens to be a doctor of something and a string of London bookshops. I am enjoying this variety instead of dealing with puny humans face to face all day long. No more “does this ‘half price’ sticker mean half the price on the book?” for me, thank you.

I am now on holiday and not as ill as yesterday which was cancelled due to being a zombie. Jamie was pampered for his birthday with lunch, dinner and ice cream plus a bubble bath. I slept a lot but not in a fun way, so I am now behind on my internet noodlings that will be finished tomorrow but should be done instead of this right now. Whatever, i have the time…

So we went to Essex this morning and drank a whole lotta tea. Got given a whole lotta Belgian food. Ate a whole lotta English food. Did a whole lotta shopping where I was disturbed by a leaflet about entering the Tesco Mother Of The Year as most of the women in that particular shop had aggressive hair and wide load rears. But they must have been entered by somebody as they mostly had unruly children with them who were misbehaving due to a diet of additives and a pattern of being screamed and sworn at by their lovely parents. I ain’t entering no Tesco lady, even if there is a cash prize! Sat in a whole lotta traffic. Got home at 7 after popping to The Husband’s office on his day off and going slow on the roads and got nudged by a white van but not in a sexy way. Not in a damage to the car way neither, which was nice, although another knock would just give it more character, to be honest. Bah. So that’s Saturday pretty much gone already.

I have no picture (yet) to illustrate Day 58 of the McCanns On The Express Front Page Bonanza but they woz there, I tell ya. Today it was something like ‘Madeleine taken by people traffickers’ but without the quotation marks so it read as fact. So that’s 58 days in a row of using random ideas that a person thought or random words that a person said and making that one of the most important things in the world. There may have been a Diana on there too but there were definitely ‘free dance lessons for every reader’ which is nice if you are disabled or have guilty feet that ain’t got no rhythm *cough*McCanns*cough*… It’s gonna take a nuclear war to move the young blonde and the old blonde off the front page… not that I am suggesting we have one just to test the theory.

Is it Starlight Express for chavs who are in fact rather posh? No. It’s some Mouthwash, innit?

How about that Moonlight ? Hmmm, I thought… It’s a new show about a good vampire who lives in Los Angeles and is a private detective. Sounds completely new and original to me! I should give it a go, shouldn’t I? So I did and found the cast somewhat familiar…

… and I’ll save that for tomorrow or I’ll have no blog then.

So I woke up with a sinus headache and had to go to Essex. Stuck in traffic listening to Transvision Vamp and Rick James might be smi-fun but it’s tiresome when your neck aches from falling asleep on the sofa the night before while watching another episode of The Hand Of Fear (I fell asleep during episode 1 too, damnit!) and you just want to have a rest. My evil side came out when my uncle was at the parents’ house and my inner monologue (don’t we all have these?) found me in a smug place. Uncle has always been a slightly superior type and when I was a kid his family (who are all lovely by the way) were, in his mind, a bit better than ours, for reasons unknown. Nicer house, nicer things, all the really important stuff like superficial luxury items and wealth. So all the stuff I didn’t really care about. Well it is Essex, innit? And he loves them Gays (and them Blacks, Asians, Jews, Chinese..) too. I think I learnt more homophobic terms off him than anyone else, such a nice kind-hearted fellow. Maybe me being the token gay vegetarian Guardian reader while he was the owner of a butcher’s shop who read The Sun and was more intolerant than my Belligerent Dad didn’t really endear me to him. Needless to say he completely ignored Husband Jamie and didn’t seem to want to talk to me either. His dog, however, was very friendly and just goes to disprove that animals/owners cliche. Anyway, my point (and I do have one)? Is it evil of me to feel a bit of ‘haha!’ when I hear that My Perfect Cousin (no not the song) is currently living in a council flat on his lonesome and is slightly estranged from his children (and more than estranged from one of them so there are at least two different mothers from what I could gather) while I, the immoral Evil Gay One, is living happily married in a three bedroom house that we own? Not that I think this makes me superior to anybody else. It’s just nice to see the judgemental people be in a position that they would find highly judge-able if it were happening to somebody else. I blame the parents!

While at the parentals we learnt that The Daily Mail is outraged that some police officers have been posting funny pictures of themselves in uniform on Facebook when they should have been out and about catching criminals. I don’t know who these police think they are, having a bit of fun in a quiet moment during what must be a rather stressful time at work. I say ban all computers! They are statistically proven to give you cancer and make unmarried women 3 times more likely to get up the duff, leaving them taking our taxi-paying monies to bring up their ASBO babies as we all know. Stop these evil Facebooks at once!

The pilot of the ‘reimagined’ Bionic Woman has been watched. It was not bad actually, and was exactly how I thought it would be. Bartender Lady Zoe From Eastenders As An American lives with her stroppy deaf sister Anne From Arrested Development and is frakking her college lecturer, as all American telly students do. Then whoops a big truck hits their car and he has a few scratches but she wakes up in the Big Secret Location That Is Not A Real Hospital and does the “why can’t I feel my legs?” thing. Oh dear, College Lecturer Who She Is Frakking is involved in Shady Secret Organisation With Morally Grey Areas and has replaced her legs and one arm (plus an eye and other bits) with funky bionic parts like in that 1970s teevee show. So she gets a bit upset, buggers off in a bionic running scene and meets Starbuck From BSG Who Is Evil who just so happens to have been driving that truck that smooshed her up and just so happens to be The Previous Bionic Woman Who They Thought Was Dead. Evil Bionic Starbuck and Bionic Zoe From Eastenders have this weird kind of lesbiany flirty thing in the bar where she still works and then end up having the Obligatory Chick Fight (In The Rain) for a bit, as you do in these kind of things. Secret Grey Morallled Organisation tries the softly softly approach to get Bionic Zoe From Eastenders to become their new agent but she tells them to frakk off. Meanwhile, a shady man with a foreign accent threatens Chief Tyrol From BSG who works in a top secret prison and lo and behold a Very Evil Man is mysteriously released and they plot a Secret Very Bad Thing… then it goes all ‘to be continued.’

So now you know. It’s kind of Alias meets Coyote Ugly meets Spider-Man.

I was wondering how Bionic Woman is going to cope with having her non-bionic arm repeatedly broken in those big bionic fight scenes every week. Hmmm…

Another new Sia song has leaked. Messy!

News alert! While having dinner and watching BBC News 24 a very fat woman talked about how the floods affected her house until a ‘breaking news’ graphic appeared onscreen: Mike Reid has only gone and died! So here’s our mini tribute to the great cockernee man, a few YouTube clips that we lurve:



Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!

I also made a quiz about me on Facebook. If you like that sort of thing you know where it is.