Don't let the bastards get to you

Brace yourself everyone. If you think we’ve had to put up with quite a lot of abuse over the last few months, then it’s no doubt going to get worse over the next week. Parliament is to debate the same sex marriage bill on February 5^th, and our opponents’ attacks are about to get nastier and ever more virulent, in their attempt to have their minority view heard and to stop progress.

This is probably the most important piece of LGBT regulation since 1967, when it finally became legal for two consenting men to have sex in private (it had never been illegal for women), and, though the personnel may have changed, our opponents are the same as the ones who objected then. What worries me most though is the effect all this negative campaigning (by certain conservative Christian groups and certain churches) is having on the rest of us. One of my friends, out, happy and proud, has actually deleted the PinkNews app from his phone, unable to cope any longer with the barrage of news stories in which this bishop or that MP spews out their bigotry. Of course PinkNews, thegayUk and all other sites need to keep us informed about what our enemies are up to, but it can become a bit wearing; and if it’s having such a negative effect on someone who is out and happy, what do you think it might be doing to a teenager, still struggling with his or her sexuality?

This was brought home to me a couple of days ago, when reading a blog post by Queerily in response to Anthony Ozimic’s appearance on Breakfast TV. Anthony Ozimic is the Communiucations Manager of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, and is worried about children being taught that homosexuality is a “valid” lifestyle. As Queerily points out, Mr Ozimic professes to want to protect children, when what he is actually doing is making life harder for them. It’s hard enough coming to terms with one’s homosexuality in a heterosexual world already, without the likes of Anthony Ozimic telling young people that their feelings are wrong and sinful, without him reinforcing the attitudes that get children bullied, bullying which sometimes leads to young, vulnerable people, both gay and straight, taking their own lives. It astounds me that these idiots never seem to make the connection. People don’t commit suicide because they are gay; they do it because they feel outcast and rejected. Higher levels of drug abuse and alcoholism in gay men are not a direct result of being gay, but they are a direct result of society’s negative attitude to homosexuality.

Marriage equality is not going to change people’s attitudes overnight of course, but it is a hugely important step on the road to equality. So don’t let the bastards get you down. However much hate and bigotry we have to deal with in the next few weeks, remember that the louder our opponents get, the closer we get to success. They are dinosaurs, still living in a pre-1967 world, and we cannot let them win. Keep up the pressure. If you do nothing else, write to your MP. He or she is voting on your future. It’s easy enough to do. Just follow this link.

You can't please all of the people all of the time

I’m a tantric masseur. My mission is to make people feel good.  I’m good at what I do and I enjoy it. I love it when someone arrives tense and nervous, but leaves relaxed and happy, almost a completely different person. However, every now and then I will come across a client, who confounds all my attempts to get through to him, and he remains as locked in and closed off to himself as when he arrived. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, I find myself momentarily questioning my abilities and wondering if I did something wrong.

A few days ago I received a call from a new client. He evidently had little experience of tantric massage, so I explained to him that it was a sexual, sensual massage. Was this what he was looking for? Yes. I asked him which of the two massages I offered he wanted (with or without digital internal prostate). Unhesitating, he opted for the prostate massage, so I booked him in for later that evening and said I would look forward to seeing him later. When he arrived, he was extremely tense, uptight and nervous, so, as I usually do, I asked him to sit down while I gave him a brief description of how the massage would progress. I explained in detail about the digital prostate massage and asked him if he was sure that was what he wanted. He was sure.

Before my client gets on the table, I usually start with a short ritual, assuming of course if they are ok with it. This ritual consists of some deep breathing, mutual touch while still clothed and then slowly undressing each other. During the mutual touching phase, I put my arms round my client and hug him. It is at this point I can usually tell how the massage will go. Most men give themselves up to the hug, hug me back and we remain locked in embrace for a few moments, breathing in sync. It is a moment I particularly enjoy. This client remained rigid. He half-heartedly put his arms around me, but I could tell he wasn’t giving in to the experience so I swiftly moved to get him onto the table. I started to massage his back, but every time I went anywhere near his buttocks he tensed up and clenched them. I quickly abandoned any idea of internal prostate, and decided to just massage the perineum area. However, having already spent a substantial amount of time on his legs, as I slid my finger between his inner thighs, he screamed out as if in pain, enjoining me to stop. Believe me I wasn’t even anywhere near the opening of his anus. I decided to go back to basic massage.

Eventually I asked him to turn over. Judging by the tumescent state of his penis, something was turning him on, but it was as if he refused to acknowledge it. When I massage a person’s arms, I usually hold their hand and lower arm up against me, whilst I massage the upper arm and shoulder. When I tried this with him, he pulled his arm away from me, the very opposite of relaxed submission. I decided the only thing to do was to give him a basic massage for the remaining time and then leave it at that. As I moved on to his chest though, his penis started to swell and grow. I moved down to his stomach, occasionally brushing his penis with my hand and it got even harder. OK, so maybe he would give in to some penis massage. As I took it in my hand, gently massaging its length, he took hold of my penis and started furiously wanking it. I quickened my strokes on his and it wasn’t long before he exploded all over his chest and stomach. Usually at this point, I clean up the client, have him lie there a little longer, while I gently caress his body, do a little head massage and generally relax them. Often at this point, they fall asleep. On this occasion this was not a possibility. He sat up immediately, asked if he could have a shower and disappeared into the bathroom. He was gone quite a while, so maybe he was trying to wash away his sin. I really don’t know.

When he came back from the bathroom, I tried to engage him in conversation in an attempt to discover what had gone wrong, even offering to reduce the fee, as he hadn’t really got what he paid for. He refused and grunted that everything was fine and that he was quite happy. After he left I felt awful, as if I had somehow let him down.

Fortunately the next day redressed the balance. My first client of the day was also very nervous, and admitted to it when he arrived.  How different from the previous day, though. The moment he gave himself up to the hug, I knew we would be ok, and indeed he told me, after the massage, that he was completely taken by surprise by his own reaction, and how he’d felt at one point that he was almost lifting off the table, so intense was his pleasure. I remarked on the fact that he had made my job easier by totally giving in to the experience, and he told me that this too had surprised him, as he was normally such a reserved person. Clearly I had got through to him in a way that was impossible with the other man. He was so closed off to himself and anyone around him, that there was nothing I could do. For all that, I did feel bad that he had not received the service of which I am capable, and felt that I had let him down, so I’d like to say thank you to the second of these two men for restoring my belief in myself.

I should have remembered something my father used to say to me.  “Son,” he would say, “you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” It’s definitely something worth remembering.

www.sensualself.co.uk

Merry Christmas from the Church

Well Christmas is over for another year, and what did we learn from it? We learnt that the attitude of the  Church towards us, and particularly the Catholic Church, would continue to be one of closed minded bigotry even at this time of year. The message came over loud and clear. “Peace and goodwill to all men – except the gay ones.” The barrage of hatred and abuse started with the Pope’s annual Christmas address to the Vatican, in which he stated that people were manipulating their sexual orientation to manipulate God-given nature, and it continued with the Bishop of Westminster’s Christmas sermon, in which he called the Government’s equal marriage plan an Orwellian shambles.

Over the last few months we have been compared to Nazi fascists, accused of undermining the heterosexual fundamentals of society, and, most recently compared to communists, the idea of marriage equality apparently stemming from” the egalitarian utopia that did so much damage during the 20th century … deceiving humanity as socialism did in the past.” (Lucetta Scaraffia in L’Osservatorio Romano).

The religious bigots believe they are winning, but, so far, fortunately, they are not. Spain’s courts recently threw out an attempt by conservatives to overturn the country’s seven year- long marriage equality law, more and more US states are introducing marriage equality, and, over here, David Cameron has vowed to make marriage equality law before the end of the year.

 What does bother me though is the way that the media and the press treat all their ridiculous pronouncements with such reverence, the pervading impression being that a belief in God is an indication of someone’s veracity and moral character. My attitude is completely different. How on earth can you take seriously the views of someone who believes that Christ was the result of a union between a virgin and a mythical God, for whom there is no scientific evidence? Now I am prepared to believe that Christ existed. I am also prepared to believe that he was an extraordinary man, well ahead of his time, with some very interesting ideas (too bad the Church tends to ignore most of them), but believing he was the son of God is too much of a stretch for my imagination. It’s a bit like believing in Peter Pan and Neverland. It’s a nice idea, but we know it’s just a good story.

Bypassing mass murderers, suicide bombers, war mongers and all sorts of evils in society, the Church has chosen to make us the enemy. I am not aware of many gay people who go out straight bashing on a Friday night, who go around bombing innocent individuals in the name of their cause, who hound and bully young straight teenagers until they find no other way out other than to commit suicide, but somehow we have become the root of all evil in society. The Church has blood on its hands, but it doesn’t care because it is more concerned about losing its power. Paradoxically it doesn’t seem to realise that, in the West at least, its draconian stance is losing them followers as more and more people become disillusioned with them. Apparently a Dutch website, which gives information about how to de-register as a Catholic received around 10,000 hits per day over the Christmas period. Normally it receives only 10. Clearly things aren’t working for them here in the more enlightened and educated West. One has to wonder why they see us a such a threat, and, the only conclusion I can come to is their preoccupation with sex. The Church, as Stephen Fry once put it, is obsessed with sex, and they can’t cope with a generation that increasingly sees sex more as a channel for pleasure than procreation. This, presumably, is the reasoning behind the bizarre decision taken by the Church of England recently, to allow gay clergy to become Bishops, as long as they affirm that they are not having sex. What are they going to do? Install CCTV in their bedrooms? And what about straight couples who can’t, or don’t want to, have children? Should they be forbidden from having sex too? Their thinking on this seems very muddled to me.

Unfortunately the gradual erosion of the power of the Church in the West, means that they are working hard to increase their stranglehold in less developed countries, particularly in the African continent, where people are less well educated, and more prone to believe the mumbo jumbo they come out with, a direct of result of which is the notorious Ugandan Kill the Gays bill. Only recently the Pope was pictured blessing Rebecca Kadanga, the Speaker of the Ugandan Parlaiment, who vowed to pass the bill as a “Christmas gift”.

Where will it all end I wonder? I was certainly very angry over Christmas, angry that the press gave the Church such a platform, angry at the incredibly biased reporting by the BBC, which made the story of the Bishop of Westminster’s Christmas Day attack their main news item without including one dissenting voice, just plain angry and I’ve had just about as much as I can stomach. I just wanted to scream at the TV.  “Don’t you get it? We don’t care. We don’t actually care what a bunch of crazy bible bashers think. Just go away and leave us alone. It actually has nothing to do with you.” The Bishop of Westminster, and hundreds of other Catholic ministers around the country, enjoined their congregations to bombard the government with letters protesting their plans to legalise gay marriage. I just hope that members of parliament realise that for every letter they get from “disgusted of Wells”, there are hundreds of other people, a lot of them straight, who won’t write because they don’t really care! Remember only about 2% of the population go to church regularly on a Sunday. They just happen to be a very vocal 2%.

Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty

Here is a review I did for Matthew Bourne's new Sleeping Beauty at Sadlers Wells, which I did for www.thegayuk.com

With his new ballet, Matthew Bourne completes his trilogy of great Tchaikovsky ballets, which started with The Nutcracker back in 1992. This was quickly followed by his internationally acclaimed male version of Swan Lake, in 1995, but it has taken him another 17 years to tackle Tchaikovsky’s greatest ballet, Sleeping Beauty.  According to the programme notes, Bourne had struggled to come up with the perfect idea, a way of re-imagining a work associated with the pinnacle of classical ballet form and grandeur. When in Moscow with his company last spring, he was offered the chance of a private tour of Tchaikovsky’s country retreat. Bourne had been searching for inspiration for his next project and it was when standing in the composer’s bedroom, with its tiny iron bed and simple wooden table that the idea of doing Sleeping Beauty came to him.

It has certainly been worth the wait. Bourne responds to Tchaikovsky’s inspired music with his best work since Swan Lake. After the disappointment (for me anyway) of Edward Scissorhands, I had worried that he had run out of steam, but, with this re-telling of the classic fairy tale he is back on form. He is helped immeasurably of course by Tchaikovsky’s gloriously symphonic score, though I was a little disappointed at first to find that the music had been pre-recorded. Nothing can ever quite replace the frisson of a live orchestra, but I was soon so caught up in the action on stage, that I ceased to notice the absence of musicians in a pit.

I don’t want to give away too much of Bourne’s re-working of the plot, but suffice it to say he retains Carabosse, the curse and the Lilac Fairy’s moderation of death to one hundred years, only the Lilac Fairy is now Count Lilac (an enigmatic Christopher Marney), who is attended by what can only be called a group of benevolent vampires, the reasons for which become clear later in the plot. Aurora’s coming of age party takes place in 1911, so that after her 100 year sleep, we are brought right back to date. He also introduces us to Carabosse’s son, Caradoc, played by the same dancer as Carabosse herself. Deliciously malevolent as Carabosse, Ben Bunce transforms himself into a darkly evil Caraboc in one of the key portrayals of the evening. The lovers, in this version, have to work hard to find happiness, and they are superbly danced by Hannah Vassallo and Dominic North. It is in the pas de deux for these two (more than one in this version) that Bourne’s choreography finds it’s truest lyricism, a wonderful realisation of the beauty and lyricism in the score, their final duet was truly moving, an apotheosis similar to that for the lovers in Cinderella. Elsewhere Bourne’s choreography is as inventive as it was in Swan Lake, integrating waltz and more modern dance forms into the Edwardian sequences in 1911 and finding a different style and language for the final scene set in 2011. The benevolent vampires have a language all their own, which stays with them throughout the ballet.

Lez Brotherston has created wonderfully evocative sets and costumes, which span a period of 121 years. Gothic Victorian for Act I, an Edwardian palace garden for Act II, a nightmarish dream sequence for Act III and a modern club setting, all reds and blacks for Act IV. In the end though, it is Bourne’s gift for telling a story that grips the imagination, and here there are none of those annoying winking asides to the audience, that we get in The Nutcracker and (to a lesser extent) Swan Lake.  I was swept up in the drama from start to finish. Miss it at your peril. 

Barebacking - you mean you want to use a condom?

Did I miss something? Has there been some enormous breakthrough while I wasn’t looking? Are HIV and Hep C now as easy to deal with as gonorrhoea or chlamydia? I ask because it seems everyone is barebacking these days. Honestly, it’s the new black. How do I know this? Well these days I find I have to brace myself for the inevitable look of disappointment when I bring out a condom, or even mention safe sex. Do they all know something I don’t?

Though nowadays most of my work revolves around risk free tantric massage, I do still escort occasionally. Whereas not so many years ago, clients looked for reassurance that everything would be safe; these days the reverse is more likely to be true. Let me give you an example. Recently I received a text from a potential client, asking about availability and prices. I gave him the required information and then he asked if I would agree to bareback. I politely responded that I don’t have bareback sex with clients under any circumstances. I got a sad face emoticon in return and assumed that was the end of it. A few minutes later the phone rang. I recognised the number but the person on the line proceeded as if we had had no previous communication. The conversation went something like this.

“Could you give me your prices, please?”

“You messaged me a couple of minutes ago, didn’t you?”

“Yes I did. When can you be free?”

Thinking that he must have reconsidered, I told him that I could see him later that afternoon.

“Just one thing though. Can we go bareback?” he asked.

“I believe I already told you that I don’t do bareback….I’m negative,” I offered by way of explanation.

“Oh, ok,” he sounded disappointed as he put down the phone.

A couple of days later this same guy called again. I recognised the voice and the number straight away. He asked again about availability and then came the inevitable, “But I want to go bareback.”

“I’ve already told you, I don’t do bareback.”

“Are you sure?” he said in the cajoling voice one might use on a child.

“Absolutely,” I said, abruptly ending the call. He hasn’t rung again, so maybe he finally got the message.

Quite often, when I tell someone I’m negative, I’ll get the response, “That’s ok then, because I am too.” So I ask when they last got tested, and how many times they’ve had bareback sex in the last 3 months. “A few,” they will say. “Then you can’t possibly know that you’re still negative,” is my response. Worst of all are those that offer more money for bareback sex. What price exactly do they put on possibly infecting me with an incurable disease, which, though it is now manageable, will be with me for the rest of my life? £50? A hundred?

Now I know that we have made great strides since the days of those early tombstone ads. I know that HIV is no longer a death sentence. I know neg/pos couples who don’t use condoms. They are even now conducting clinical trials on this very subject. I know that if you are positive, on meds, and have an undetectable viral load, then the chances of you passing on the virus are virtually nil. So, yes, I do have unprotected sex sometimes, but only with someone I know well, who, like me has regular checks and is honest about their sexual history. Admittedly there is some risk involved, but it is calculated. I am not about to play Russian roulette with a total stranger. 

However it would appear that some people are of the opinion that HIV is not really a problem anymore. After all, if they do get it, they just have to take a pill, and they’ll be fine. Would that it were that simple. As for Hep C, I doubt they even consider it.

So when did this change happen? Is my attitude so unusual? Out of my generation, I’m one of the lucky ones. I am a survivor. I lived through the dark days, when friends around me were dropping like flies. Only 10 years ago, a very good friend of mine died of AIDS, though, to be blunt, he really did die of ignorance, as the tombstone ads put it. Too frightened of a positive diagnosis to get tested, when he did find out, he had already contracted severe pneumonia, and had no immune system left to fight the disease. He was a talented and beautiful man, only in his 30s and the fact that his death was preventable made it very hard to bear.  But I understood his fear. He too came from a generation that equated HIV with death. When he died, I had never been tested either, though I had regular check-ups for everything else. His death certainly shook me up. I now always include HIV in my regular sexual health checks, even though I am fairly sure that I’m still negative. As with most diseases, early diagnosis will give you the best chances. That said, there is still no cure. You will be on medication for the rest of your life. Like diabetes, it may now be manageable, but it is definitely not like a simple case of gonorrhoea.

The term “barebacking” only came into provenance in the post AIDS generation. Before that we didn’t have a word for it, because, although we weren’t using condoms, we weren’t having bareback sex; we were just having sex. In those halcyon days sex for gay men was remarkably risk free. Why would we use condoms? It’s not as if we could get each other pregnant, and any other little nasty we might pick up could be instantly cleared up by a visit to the local clap clinic.  Heady days indeed. It took a long time and a lot of campaigning to convince gay men to change their behaviour. I remember the fear, the scary government “Don’t Die Of Ignorance” ad campaign, the stories of young men dying alone in isolation wards, attended only by the occasional nurse in the kind of protective clothing you’d normally see on people entering a nuclear plant. Not surprisingly, for a long time, I didn’t have sex at all.

What we know about HIV transmission and treatment has come on a long way since then of course, and the fact that people with HIV can now live normal, healthy lives has obviously had a lot to do with changing attitudes; that, and the fact that many young people have never experienced the horrors of those early years.

Let’s face it though; the very word “barebacking” carries with it a sense of risk. Quite aside from the fact that sex without condoms feels much nicer (whatever anyone tries to tell you), is that inherent risk part of its attraction? And that risk is surely the raison d’etre behind the re-emergence of bareback movies in the late 1990s, as personified in films made by Treasure Island Media and Hot Desert Knights. I remember the first time I happened on one of these. I was appalled, and excited all at the same time. I even felt guilty to be watching others take risks I wasn’t prepared to take myself. In those days, all new porn very obviously used condoms. It was almost educational. I remember particularly a scene in one of Chi Chi La Rue’s “Link” movies, which featured a line of guys on hands and knees, each with a condom on his back. A single top guy went down the line, fucking each one in turn. We clearly saw him roll on a condom before fucking the first guy in the row. He would then pull out, remove the condom, then pick up the one on the next guy’s back and roll it on before fucking him. See what I mean? Horny and educational at the same time. Nowadays you’d be much more likely to see a scene with a line of tops fucking a single bottom, not a condom in sight, while the camera hones in on the semen dripping from his arse. Whereas in the old, pre AIDS movies, the guys always pulled out for the cum shot the new ones glory in the fact that guys are ejaculating inside their partner, often re-inserting their cocks to make sure we truly get the message. The danger is all part of the excitement. Now, just over 10 years later, bareback movies and studios are proliferating, and even some of the majors, who for long resisted the demand for bareback, are starting to cave in. It may have been easy for me to turn down an offer from Treasure Island a few years ago, but, with most porn companies now battling for survival against the deluge of free stuff on the net, I doubt any emerging porn stars will have that luxury in the future.

Those companies defending their decision to do bareback movies will no doubt tell you that they are only responding to demand, that what they are offering is fantasy, and that people should always make informed choices with regard to their sex lives. They have a point of course. Ultimately we are all responsible for our own health, but I know that all those years ago, when health officials were striving to get the safe sex message across, the sudden appearance of condoms in gay porn helped to change behaviour. Is it too much of a stretch to assume that the reverse could be true? Admittedly it may not be the only reason more and more people are eschewing condoms, but it could quite easily be a contributing factor.

Something else I have noticed in recent years is the way that the bareback community almost sneers at those of us who still have safe sex. Recently I came across a facebook page called simply “Bareback”. It has 13,500 likes. Let me quote from their description.

One of the first things you face when you become HIV + is the stigma and discrimination, not only from society in general but especially from the gay community itself. 

Many do not understand that the bareback community is a community where you can be free, be yourself and not be judged by the status you have. This is the reason why I created this site, here you can feel safe and not judged, and hopefully meet other people to have fun.

From time to time we get hate messages from people saying that we promote aids and diseases ... F. them! They don't get it.
An adult is responsible of his actions, you can't blame the rest.

This page can only be accessed by people 18 and over. We do not promote "bugchasers," if you are negative you should do your best to stay that way. If you are positive you are not alone, there are many like you around, all colors, all sizes, and we won't judge you.
It's important to seek professional help and stay in control


I totally understand that first paragraph. I have friends who have had to go through the pain of rejection after disclosing their status, even when having safer sex. There are still too many people out there who are completely ignorant of the disease and its method of transmission. No doubt some of these people are having unsafe sex with partners who don’t divulge their status, and yet the minute someone is honest with them, they run a mile rather than just taking the requisite precautions.

But there is also another underlying message here and on the posts on their page. They seem to be saying, “safe sex is boring so it’s great that we don’t have to bother with it anymore”. (They’re wrong of course. I know of quite a few HIV positive guys who decided to give up safe sex, and then went on to contract Hep C, which has a habit of piggybacking on HIV. The treatment for Hep C, is far worse than that for HIV, and there is no guarantee it will work. So maybe barebacking isn’t quite as risk free for HIV positive guys as they’d like to believe.) It also suggests that it is quite ok for them to turn down a prospective sexual partner on discovering that he is negative, so a kind of reverse discrimination is taking place.

From this facebook page, I followed a link to a blog called “Iblastinside”. There are lots of links to this blog from the page. The first link I clicked on took me to a post in which the writer described a casual sex encounter with a young man, who would only agree to safe sex. The utter disdain with which he treats this young man is quite shocking. He goes ahead with the sex, whilst all the time complaining about how boring it is, how little he enjoyed it, so boring that he ejaculates quite quickly  inside the guy (even though wearing a condom). After he pulls out, he glories in telling us how he pulls off the condom and then proceeds to deep finger fuck the guy using his semen from the condom as lube. The young man is in ecstasy unaware of any risk to himself, and the writer is loving every minute. He couldn’t care less about his partner. And, though he rightly says elsewhere in his blog, that it is up to all of us to take care of ourselves, that if we take risks then we must suffer the consequences, what also comes across is a total lack of interest in any of his partners, a total disregard for them as human beings. They are all just holes waiting for him to dump inside. Beyond that they have no use for him.

I assume, hope, that this blog is just fantasy, wank fodder if you like, but I confess to finding it deeply disturbing, which neatly takes me back to my original point. All those people offering extra money for bareback sex, or pestering in the hope that I will finally give in are really no better than Iblastinside. They too have a complete disregard for their partners. Yes, we should all take care of ourselves. Yes, we are all responsible for ourselves. If we take risks then we should face the outcome of our risky behaviour and not go round blaming others. On the other hand, it would be nice for me not to have to face that look of disappointment the next time I pull out a condom!

To Hell with Halloween

Everyone, it seems, loves a good party. It’s October and all the shops are full of party ideas and of course gifts, for Halloween. Maybe I’m just a killjoy, but I don’t really get very excited about it. As a child I was only peripherally aware of Halloween. Bonfire Night was the big party I used to get excited about. If I ever recognised the day at all, it would be spending it with my childhood friends, furtively reading ghost stories by torchlight, whilst listening to Mussorgsky’s “Night on the Bare Mountain”, in the hope that my mother wouldn’t come in and break up the party. All quite innocent and we’d all be safely tucked up in bed before the witching hour struck. 

In recent years, though, I’ve become increasingly aware of the proliferation of tacky ghoulish merchandise in the shops at this time of year, and I was astonished to read a few days ago that Halloween is now the second most popular family occasion in the UK behind Christmas, with parents likely to spend more than £100 on parties for their children this year. Apparently the money we spend on Halloween has soared by a massive 2,300% over the last 10 years to be worth £280 million. What on earth has precipitated this change? When did Halloween take over from Bonfire Night, a peculiarly British tradition, which celebrated the day Guy Fawkes failed in his attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament way back in 1605? When I was young, I loved Bonfire Night. Whilst our fathers went about building a bonfire out of old furniture and dead wood, our mothers would be preparing food for the feast – jacket potatoes, sausages and all manner of warming treats. The men were also responsible for the fireworks display and we, the children created the effigy of Guy Fawkes who would be ceremonially burned on the bonfire. After Christmas, Bonfire Night was the most eagerly anticipated festival of the year, for all that we didn’t get any extra school holiday. It was a big, low cost, community event.

So what happened? When did Halloween take over from Bonfire Night?

I suppose one theory would be that tripping around in a naff witch’s costume is infinitely less dangerous than burning bonfires and setting off fireworks (the Fire Service are no doubt relieved) but I have a sneaking suspicion that it has more to do with money, or rather commercialism, and where there is commercialism, you don’t have to look far to see the influence of the USA.

Halloween is absolutely huge over there, and the bigger the festival becomes, the easier it is to get people to spend vast amounts of money on things they don’t need and will no doubt throw away the following week.

Hang on, isn’t that what happens at Christmas? Indeed it is, and guess what? The modern day Santa Claus is generally believed to be the invention of Washington Irving, a nineteenth century New Yorker, who wished to create a benign figure that might help calm down riotous Christmas celebrations and refocus them on the family. Loosely based on a Dutch gift giving Sinterklaas, Santa Claus was actually a secular figure, and it is the work of various advertisers that has created the image we recognise as Santa Claus today. The English Father Christmas was not a gift giver, but rather a personification of Christmas and a Yule-tide visitor. It is only from the 1870s that he became increasingly associated with the American Santa Claus, and it is the American Santa Claus who now dominates Christmas in all those countries that celebrate it. Now I wouldn’t want to suggest that dear old Washington Irving cynically adopted the idea of a gift giving Santa Claus, in order to bolster the coffers of Macy’s, but I have no doubt Macy’s seized on Santa like manna from heaven, the actual child of heaven (Jesus) being somewhat less interesting.

In case you wondered, I hate Christmas too. What we get in the run up to Christmas is the absolute opposite of the spirit of good will, the kind of good will that permeated London, during the Olympics this year, for instance. What we do get is millions of people trailing round shops, pushing through the crowds, desperately trying to think of presents for relations they won’t see for another year. The adverts start early, exhorting us to spend! spend! spend!, as we worship the god of commercialism; and if, like me, you decide you’d rather just ignore the whole thing and go away to somewhere they don’t celebrate it, you’ll find the price of a plane ticket out of the country has quadrupled! 

Where will it end? Other minor festivals are now much bigger than they ever were. Valentine’s Day might once have been considered a bit of fun, but now it is big business. Why? Well it’s big business in the US, so why not here too? How about Easter? As children, we of course loved Easter. What child wouldn’t? All those delicious chocolate eggs, but now it seems children expect Easter gifts too. Mother’s Day was a day on which we children got our mother some flowers and maybe wrote her a card. Nowadays, woe betide the husband who doesn’t buy his wife a big present or take her out for dinner. Where America went before, it seems we follow, and I, for one, am tiring of it, as attempts to part us from our hard earned cash become ever more aggressive. I don’t want anyone to get the idea I’m some miserly old grump, who never enjoys a party and never buys anyone a gift. I enjoy a good time as much as anyone and I love giving presents. I just don’t want some American corporation telling me when I should be doing it.

Does anyone actually listen to bigots anymore?

Oh dear oh dear. It seems Lord Ken Macginnis (above) has been getting his Stonewalls and his TheGayUKs mixed up. As far as he is concerned, gay news groups, lobbying groups, pressure groups and charities are all the same  - ‘an aggressive, perverse and corrupting influence on susceptible and vulnerable young people.’ 

 Having been nominated by Stonewall for their prestigious Bigot of the Year award, he got very hot under the collar when approached by TheGayUK for a reaction to his nomination and thus re-affirmed his credentials. If you, or indeed Lord Macginnis, are not sure what a bigot is, let me enlighten you. According to Merriam-Webster a bigot is a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance. Guilty as charged, I say, but bigots, and particularly religious bigots, seem to get very upset when you point it out to them. 

We’ve been here before of course. Why only a couple of weeks ago Nick Clegg apologised to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of Westminster over claims he was prepared to call the opponents of equal marriage “bigots” in a speech at an LGBT reception. Allegedly he never actually used that word, but even if he did wouldn’t he be just saying it like it is? Bigot is exactly the right word in this context. I just wish he’d had the courage of his convictions, but he doesn’t seem to have been very good at that recently, does he? 

It is certainly looking as if the church and its various representatives are losing the battle over gay marriage, and, as they do so, their attacks on the gay community have become ever more virulent and ever more ridiculous. Only recently, the Christian Institute came up with the not  very Christian statement that, as we only represented a very small percentage of the population,  we didn’t deserve the same human rights. The great thing is that the more outlandish their arguments become, the less likely it is that anybody, except their small band of blinkered followers, will take them seriously. Really, I am beginning to hope that it won’t be long before the church is so completely marginalised, that we will at last live in a secular country and the church will be completely separate from the state. What business has this outmoded institution meddling in the private lives of people who don’t believe in their teachings?

So, why be outraged or offended by what Lord Macginnis has to say? He is a dinosaur, one of the last of a dying breed. He’s already been expelled from his own political party. It’s not surprising that the more marginalised he and his cronies become, the louder they will scream, but is anybody really listening anymore?