One Day Like This

More than a million people present. Over 600 LGBT+ community, activist and protest groups. Representatives of threatened Pride and other gay rights groups from countries across the world including many African states, Iran, China, Pakistan, India, the Caribbean, the Middle East and of course, Ukraine. Proud gay men, lesbians, trans and all other denominations, family and friends, fetishits, nelly queens, dykes on bikes, twinks and drag queens. And of course, the sponsors. The London Mayor's office has described it as the biggest Pride in the capital ever...

...and we were there!

Three years almost to the day since the last one, you can imagine the sense of anticipation and excitement that had been building for months. Our outfits were sorted - most of "our gang" had "got the memo" and remembered the theme we'd chosen [every year, at either the annual birthday picnic or at another late-season mass gathering such as Proms in the Park, we convene a "committee", take suggestions and cast a vote on what we're going to wear at the following year's Pride] back in 2019: black, silver and diamonds - well in advance, so it was like a ticking countdown to the big day.

So came the gathering of the clans at Our Sal's pub early on Saturday, and the festivities began in earnest.

The whole world and his/her/their significant other had turned out for the day, or so it seemed! On the parade - among the cavalcade of rainbows, unicorns, pink, glitter, sequins, feathers, fouf and faff - were nurses and other emergency services [although the police were forbidden to march in uniform this year, after a succession of scandals including the mishandling of the investigation into a serial killer of young gay men in London], all branches of the miltary, council workers and civil servants, lawyers, librarians and archivists, politicos, actuaries, estate agents and architects, players and supporters of an exhausting range of sports (including representatives of all the capital's biggest football teams like Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs and West Ham), hairdressers, hardware manufacturers, supermarket cashiers, and punters and staff of several gay bars - and a few celebs, to boot. We spotted the newly-out Olympic champion Dame Kelly Holmes and TV hosts Phillip Schofield, Alison Hammond, Lorraine Kelly, Gok Wan and Linda Robson, and were greeted by the Mayor Sajid Javid [apparently several Labour front-benchers including Sir Kier Starmer were also there].

We cheered like fuck for the original pioneers of the Gay Liberation Front, who organised the original march and led the front of this year's 50th anniversary parade. We were thrilled by the Band of the Grenadier Guards playing the UK's Eurovision runner-up Sam Ryder's Spaceman, and in equal measure the cornucopia of music from all genres on offer - from clubland to Kylie to Bhangra and Afrobeat and beyond.

We were also chuffed at the amount of attention [notwithstanding that from the media] we got on the sidelines from those actually participating in the parade [it was another wristband-only-or-else-join-at-the-back event again this year, more's the pity], of course! And speaking of all that...

Wow. Just WOW!!!!

Beverley Knight - Marvellous Party

It's no wonder today has been a bit of a lazy one...

[click any pic to embiggen]