people are people

After a leisurely walk through town and along the south bank Allan and I went to the World Press Photo exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall yesterday evening. I was overwhelmed by the images of human suffering. Many caused by war and fighting. It saddened me to think what people do to other people for whatever belief system they hold dear.
For instance Self-immolation by Azia a 15 year old girl [Warning this picture is a bit gruesome]. It made me wonder what culture makes 15 year olds marry, feel so obliged to their husbands that they would rather burn themselves than risk the wrath of upsetting him.

It’s not grim up north

So Manchester was lots of fun. :o)
I spent a lovely friday afternoon in Green Park with my folks. We had a large picnic and lots of fun.
I then speeded across town to Leyton to meet Allan and drive up north. The new M6 Toll road was excellent and saved us heaps of time.
We checked into The Place and marvelled at the size of the apartment they had put us in. My two bedroom flat in Balham would fit into the lounge! The entrance hall was bigger than my bedroom. Anyway enough of the apartment.
We headed immediately to meet the boys on Canal Street. They were in Manto and due to the ridiculously inexpensive 2 for 1 offer on drinks we managed to get merry quite quickly.
Next item was food before heading to Via Fossa for more drinks and some disco dancing.
Saturday was spent mostly shopping and wandering around town after a leisurely lunch checking out the straight scally boys in the food hall.
A trip to Holmes Place in town for some much needed exercise, swimming and then some sauna action and steam room fun. Nothing seedy though I should report even though there was a rather nice young man in the steam room.
Allan and I managed to get some food for breakfast the following morning (planning ahead) and then we met at Velvet for food and drinks before heading to Queer and ending up at Essential.
Essential was excellent. Although being filmed for their TV show was not so much fun ;o) Mike and I stayed upstairs mostly but the rest stayed downstairs. The club is open to 8 and all in all I must say was very fun! More and more I’m thinking living in London isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Sunday was a leisurely breakfast at the apartment before a leisurely beer or three down Canal Street in the sun (something London definitely misses is outdoor seating on Old Compton Street) before we discovered the park and sat with the other boyz and girlz soaking up the sun and fun.
All in all a very relaxing and fun weekend away. I might have to do that more often. Brighton & Hove Pride, Manchester Pride in fact weekends away in general I think are the order of the day.

UK Childrens Words

I just used the phrase bagsy in an email – then wondered if it was actually a real word. So Matt looked it up and…

bags

verb {T} (ALSO bagsy) UK CHILD’S WORD

to have the right to have or do something because you say you want it first:

– Bags I sit in the front seat! (= I said I wanted to do it first, so I should do it, not you.)

See also bag (OBTAIN).

Influencing

I’ve been away all week on an influencing skills course. So can I influence any better? I’ll have to wait and see. I did learn an awful lot about myself and my learning styles and thinking styles though. I came down 100% on the visual thinking scale. So I think in pictures and describe things with picture type adjectives. Which makes it really hard to communicate to people who don’t.
Ah well who said communication was easy?

Sony ‘Standards’

Having bought a number of Sony electronics bits and bobs in my past I know how they like to live in their own world with their own set of standards and cables and the like.
Now they are launching connect.com to rival iTunes Store. Tracks downloaded through Sony Connect are sold in ATRAC3 format which will play only on Sony brand players, not on iPods or many other digital music players. So erm am I missing the point here – yet another ‘standard’ from Sony.