Mike's Alive?!

Hello Gentle Reader!

Yes, I’m back, from outer space. You just logged in to find me here with these sad typos in blogspace? Well, I’m sorry I’ve been away for so long but since ‘stepping out for a pack of smokes’ last summer I’ve been ever so busy, and the thing about life is it can sometimes get in the way of living.

A quick summary: I’m still cheerful, frumpy and a fairy. Fella and I are still very much together, and still on track for our civil partnership in May. Gypsy the goldfish and Morag the Volkswagen are still very much alive which tells us more about their resilience rather than my tender care.

My last post, oh so long ago, was me showing off a bit about my dissertation survey progress. Since then I’ve written it, submitted it and by some fucking miracle I passed it. I’ve edited it for public consumption and after just one more ikkle read-through am going to post a link it here soon on STRICT condition that, like all feedback, any comments are purely expressed in terms of adulation and hyperbole.

Now I’m not really one for blowing my own trumpet – I’d be on a rather different website – but I’m extraordinarily impressed with myself. After handing it in I went through ha phase of how it is the most awful dissertation in the history of everything ever, but now I’ve passed I realise it’s totes amaze balls.

… and let that be an end to going on about that ;-)

The big news is I’ve secured a new job. With seven weeks to go until my current employer is shut down and the new world takes over, I have handily been appointed to that self same new world. I’ll be part time until the swtich over in both worlds, but of course they expect full time work anyway each so it’s a lot of 12 hour days and seven day weeks. What the hell – it’s truly exciting to be at the beginning of an organisation that is genuinely starting from scratch and being able to influence that and all the learning that has to go with it. I’m sure I’ll be able to tell you more as time and posts allow.

 

Fella and I are still on course for the civil partnership. Three months to go and the wedding jitters are beginning to set in! Again, so much more to post on this. Suffice it to say, having studied physics for four years failed to teach me that the world turns or not based on decisions about chair-covers (bow down to the power of the Cheerful Fairy!) and that something as simple as giving a florist money and getting flowers in return is of course grossly jeune and naïve.

 
On a final and more serious note the time I’ve taken to compose this stream of consciousness it available to me because Fella is away visiting his family home for the first anniversary for his mother’s death. I’m not going because the few hours I could be there coincide with the catholic mass they’ll be attending and I don’t think it’s right for me to go to that. I don’t know the rites and I don’t enjoy religion so it would be disingenuous and distracting of me to go. This of course could just be an excuse for more to avoid an awkward situation and stick in Strumpetville like the cowardly custard that I am. Nevertheless I am of course thinking of him and them all.

Showoff

I’m quite pleased with myself, oh yes; or more accurately I am pleased with the progress of my dissertation survey. More than 250 respondents so far with nearly three months to go until I close it, which I think is pretty good.

Response rates are tapering off and I am considering strategies to increase them – not least taking advantage of London Pride in early July.  

I was worried that my responses would be limited in so many ways; demographically, geographically, etc – but it seems, in general, not to be the case.

With so many responses I have been able to dip in and perform some preliminary analyses, which are producing some interesting results. I won’t bore you, gentle reader, by going into detail – yet. However, a review of the geographical spread of my respondents suggests focussing on an online questionnaire was the right way of getting responses, although it also suggests going out and visiting various places also pays dividends.

As part of my analysis, and idly thinking about the structure and content of my dissertation, I produced the graphic below to illustrate the spread of responses.

The white areas indicate postal districts where no responses have been received. Rural Wales, Scotland and Wessex don't concern me too much - although I am surprised that areas near London like Watford and Dartford haven't had anyone take part.

It's interesting, and gratifying, to see how many responses I've got from areas like Manchester, Galsgow and Ediunburgh - where I haven't visited - and Cardiff and Brighton, where I have. I also have a lot of friends to thank for spreading the word!

I would really like to break 1000 responses, but if responses can be kept to their long term average then I should hit somewhere around the 750 mark. If I can get 500 I will be double-plus pleased. In the meantime gentle reader I think I done good – and thank you for your help with that :-)

Sunshine

I can't believe another month has flown by. Where does the time go, gentle reader? Well, I've certainly been busy. I had my first exam a couple of weeks ago. It didn't go as well as I had hoped by I'm harshly marking myself down do who knows? It just goes to show how much time I need to study! This is what has consumed most of my time, gentle reader, and made me a dull fairy indeed. I hope you can forgive em...

In celebration of fairyness Fella and I went to Brighton last weekend. The gayest town on Eurovision, the gayest holiday... Fella, who loathes Eurovision, was not amused! But we had a great time and somehow manged to get sunburn on the back of my left leg and nowhere else.

Unfortunately news on the job front has been less good. I know my organisation is shutting down but it seems they are in the process of merging some departments and my job is going to be cut early. As I'm out on secondment I'm not quite sure how it works. I am ready to move on to my next career move... but I was looking at next year, not this. My adopted team like me and want to keep me so are looking at how I can stay until March (if not longer) but it's a bit of a difficult situation.

The secondment itself is keeping me super busy - another reason why time to blog is in short supply. But I'm enjoying it, very much. I know I need to apply for something new soon, but it will have to wait until my exams are finished and that will be late June.

The really good news is that my dissertation survey is going double plus well. I got my 250th respondent today! I'm really keen to get as many as possible, natch, so after a positive experience leafleting in Brighton for a while I'm looking forward to doing the same at Pride in July. In my heart of heart I want 1000 responses but I think as it goes I'll get 500. However, that's still a huge response compared to some of the other surveys on which other research I've seen has been based.

So there we have it. Strumpetville is sunny and hot and life continues with its typical ups and downs. I hope your life is mostly up!

Booked it!

Well, gentle reader, we’ve done it: the venue is booked and we are well and truly in civil-partnership planning mode.

The 15 May marks our third anniversary and one year exactly until the ceremony itself. As I’m in the middle of exam preparation and dissertation research it has been difficult to find time to even post about it, let alone do anything but this is progress at last.

The next steps for us are to set up our marriage website (some friends of ours set one up and it really helps with RSVPs, telling people about the venue etc), and organise some save the date cards. And perhaps figure out where the mind-bubbling amount of money it’s going to cost us will come from. My initial estimate was less than half of what it will really cost and our reserve fund is looking stretched-thin.

Personally I have no real objection to just trotting down to the town hall, filling in the relevant paperwork, and taking all of our friends out for a massive party in town for about half the money but needs must when Fella is all romantically minded.

That of course makes him out to be Bridezilla which couldn’t be further from the truth; and I think we are very lucky to have a venue that is enthusiastic and helpful and will take on a fair bit of the organising (but, importantly, not decision making) itself.

We have a friend making the rings and another friend making the cake. Fella delegated these tasks without really discussing it with me, which is OK to a point, but fortunately I had a chat with the friend making the rings this weekend and she is very sound about making something appropriate and that we both like rather than going off in a creative frenzy. Cake lady is next!

The ceremony will be on a Wednesday so I am keen to get ‘save the date’ cards out to people sooner rather than later, particularly as his family will be travelling from Scotland and mine from Germany. There will be a fair bit of organising around accommodation and transport, which will be quite a large part of the budget – our plan is for any family staying over to be put up that night at our expense at a hotel close to the venue.

One other idea that occurred to me was also around the ‘theme’ of the wedding. One of the things important to me about it is that everyone has a good time and it is as relaxed as possible. This means, for example, that we won’t have ‘day’ and ‘evening’ invitations but people can come and go as they please (which also helps get around the work-day problem).

My idea is to theme it around all the fun times Fella and I have had with the invitees – photos and momentos of holidays, nights out, places we been and various adventures we’ve had together.  A good idea, don’t you think?

Controversy

Now gentle reader it is not often that the Cheerful Fairy wades into the murk of politics. Very much an armchair fairy about that sort of thing. Usually.

Over the last few months Stonewall has been running ads on the side of Strumpetville’s shiney red buses “some people are gay: get over it!”. A very simple and effective message, and part of a campaign that is complemented with posters and leaflets and T-shirts etc.

But that is of course never the end of it. A counter campaign has been formulated: “not gay, ex gay, post gay and proud. Get over it!”. These were also due to be plastered on our shiny buses, right up until yesterday the Mayor had the campaign stopped.

Ensue much hullabaloo and stroking of beards, oh yes indeed.

A group called the Core Issues Trust, supported by Anglican Mainstream, The largely unsought battle between religious faith and sexual orientation continues apace, it appears.

So what’s the issue? Well, the nominal reason is the suggestion the ad promotes gay cures. We know, I think, that such ‘cures’ are utter rubbish, and if anything actively cause a lot of harm.

Does the advertisement itself claim to offer, or support, “gay cures”? No, not really. But I think the man in the street would reasonably infer that such a thing were possible, or at least that sexual orientation is mutable. And we cannot ignore both Core Issues trust and Anglican Mainstream focus on offering gay cures. Certainly the advertisement goes further than arguing, as this article in the Daily Mail suggests, that homosexuality as an aberration and as such we gayers need to “get over” our 'agenda'.

The Advertising Standards Authority, the regulator of advertisements in the UK, has come in for much criticism for not banning the ads itself. But should it? I used to work for the ASA and grapple with issues such as these. It is implausible to ban advertisements because you disagree with their content or message in principle; but on the other hand you can be so offensive that in limited instances freedom of speech can, and should, be restricted.

The ASA cannot arbitrate on this before an advertisement is run. Such a thing is censorship. If after seeing an advertisement someone has grounds for complaint, that complaint should be fully considered and a decision made in favour of one party or  the other. That is what regulators do; they are in the business of disappointing people. Not protecting them, on the grounds of some moral code nobody agreed, from things they might not like.

The timing of the advertisement, and the decision to ban it, can also not be ignored. The Mayor is running for re-election on 3 May, and up to now the campaign has been a mud-slinging vileathon with no debate about real issues. Of the party (right of centre) that is the main partner in the unpopular national coalition government, and one that is consistently considered to be sleazy and nasty, and in an incredibly diverse and largely left leaning city… I strongly suspect he’ll have swung some of those swing votes. Being sued by people who are to me clearly a hate group (although I’m sure they sincerely don’t see themselves as such, take out the words gay or homosexual in what they write and replace them with black of Jewish and see how it reads then) won’t hurt either, methinks.

Cynical? Perhaps. But should then the advert be run? Well, freedom of speech is a right for those who understand, as all sane adult men and women do, their responsibilities. We must think before we speak, and sometimes consider whether we need to speak at all. So it can’t always be absolute.

If I were Mayor of Strumpetville – or better still, king and tyrant – then I would let the advert run, but publicly and loudly voice my disagreement with its message and my view of those behind it. I would use it as a reason to keep equality, rights (and obligations), tackling hatred, and proper education about sexual health sand orientation high on the list of social priorities

In the meantime we have to accept that there are those who disagree with, or simply hate, homosexuality, and this must be tackled through open and honest debate. It creates climate of fear that stops people freely living their lives. Those, like the Anglican Mainstream or the Daily Mail, who clearly have an agenda all their own that is closer to something far more right wing and pernicious than sleaziness or nastiness must not be driven underground or simply banned. They have to be shown to be wrong.

There's a time and a place

Unbelievably Fella and I have got off our pert arses and actually started planning our civil partnership.

Immediately off on a rambling tangent – Fella calls it the “wedding” and that we are getting “married”. I call it registering a civil partnership; because that is what it is. So there. But if you are 'interested in participating in the UK Government’s consultation on giving us cheerful band of shirt lifting fairy types the upgrade, then you can do so here: http://homeoffice.gov.uk/equalities/

We have visited a few venues near to where we live: TheTudor Barn in Eltham, Eltham Palace, and Hall Place in Bexley.

Now, we love Eltham Palace, but we can’t really afford it – and we’d have to change our plans to accommodate the venue which I get a bit sniffy about considering what they’re asking.
The Tudor Barn is highly affordable and quite nice in its own way… but it didn’t set my world on fire. It’s not likely to be the place we pick.

Hall Place, however, is the Goldicocks venue. Affordable, beautiful, available, and enthusiastic about us being wedded there. The accommodation is just right and very flexible. And they appeal to our innate laziness by pretty much throwing everything in to the price, including the flowers. They have a nice package where they corral the suppliers, but we work with them each individually to meet our requirements which is just great. There’s even a hotel next door.

When I write ‘everything’ I of course use the word quite wrongly; they won’t do the cake or the rings, which Fella has farmed out to friends of ours – and the results of this I await with some trepidation…

Anyhoo. Because our families will be coming from Germany and Scotland, and our chosen day – our anniversary – happens to be a Wednesday so we think that the numbers will be quite small. Our initial guest list is about 60 something, and it may be many of them won’t be able to take the time off.

What we’re planning is an afternoon ceremony, and then a meal, drinks and dancing and then people can totter off in their own good time. At least that way people will only need to take half a day off work, and people can join us in the evening if they wish.

The next day… honeymoon.

We might look at one or two other places but I think we’re going to settle on this one… Have a look and tell me what you think J

I’m already thinking about the invites, what we’ll wear and sending out ‘save the date’ cards. What the hey; a project manager civil partnering an events planner – I think we’ll do alright. In the meantime Fella and I will be living like hermits for the next year to pay for it!

186

Looking at the stats each and every year the number of posts I write goes down. Partly it's because I've achieved much of what I set out to achieve; and there's only so much you can post about that. Partly it's because I've been busy. Done a master's degree, dangnamit!

Still, I want to continue this blog. I'm wedding planning, and Fella and I have a lot of life experiences ahead which are totally unprecedented for both of us; and of course there's a reasonable chance I'll fuck it all up and I'll be back at square one, slightly the frumpier for it.
 

Nevertheless, I've decided to do something that may appear counter-intuitive, and that is start another blog. It will run for a few months alongside this one, but will be focussed on my research for my dissertation.


The idea appeals to me because, as part of my research, I should keep a reflexive journal, the function of which will be to record my experiences, thoughts and ideas as I go forward.

For example, I've had 186 valid responses to my questionnaire so far but a huge proportion - nearly 50% - are under 25. No problem with that, except it means I can't easily correlate behaviour with life experience for the simple reason they haven't had many! They've had plenty of sex drugs and rock and roll, but not too many kids, not too much of an income and PhDs, civil partnerships and mortgages will be thin on the ground. However, homophobic bullying in schools is really coming out as an unexpectedly major theme around which I will need to do a lot of background reading and self-directed learning.


Also of concern is that I’m not getting any black respondents at all. This is clearly partly due to the way I’ve marketed my research, and I need to think about how best to address that.


Oh, I could go on and on… but I don’t think it quite proper, or of enough general interest, to do so here. Hence the other blog. My idea, simply, is that the feedback and comments I’ve had on my own blogged life experiences have been so valuable from you all, I could gain a lot from people’s views of my experiences doing my research – just as feedback from those who have taken the questionnaire has helped me tweak my questions.


186 though – I’m pleased to get so many in just over three weeks. In my wildest dreams I imagine bursting through the 1000 barrier by August. We shall see, gentle reader.


In the meantime, if you are at all interest, my other blog is http://socres.blogspot.co.uk/