50 shades of Crouch End, sci-fi erotica, rude poems, multiple "Ida"s and Alan Bennett in the bath

Before I begin, if you're wondering what happened to my blog about last month's event - it is here.

So - in the words of Imelda Staunton in her tremendous performance in Gypsy - "Curtain up! Light the lights! You got nothing to hit but the heights!" And on with the show...



Thus Mr Paul Burston introduced our friend and fellow Polari regular Wayne Herbert to the podium. He opened with one of the classic tales from his blog of elderly bitchery and shenanigans in his locality of Crouch End, 50 Shades of Grey Power, in the unlikely setting of a crochet blanket stall at the local craft fair:

‘I can guarantee there are 50 shades of grey in this design,’ said Lil with a wink. Cyril disappeared behind the back boards. The potential customer didn’t know where to look, fumbled in his pocket for change, and selected a small black and yellow blanket directly in front of him.

‘That one looks like a wasp,’ Lil said through gritted teeth as she took the patron’s payment. He moved on quickly.

‘Bloody prude,’ Lil said as he walked away – hopefully too quiet for him to hear.

‘Lil.’ I placed the morning refreshments down with a start.

‘Cake – delicious.’ She accepted the napkin-wrapped item in front of her. ‘I was building up a good appetite.’

‘For what?’ asked Cyril as he emerged from his hiding place. Lil let out an enormous hall filling cackle. I noticed her customer scrambling for the door with his buggy taking the corner on two wheels.

‘Not you as well.’

‘Have you read 50 shades?’ I asked.

‘No, but I’ve heard it’s a bit saucy which I added to my sales’ banter.’

‘I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard enough to know that it’s more than saucy. It’s blue in a deviant sort of way…’ I said.

‘What sort of way?’ Lil asked as her cheeks starting to flush deeper than the already existing rouge.

‘In an S & M way,’ Cyril said.

‘Bondage?’ announced Lil loud enough to elicit odd looks from a number of others in our vicinity. Cyril and I nodded.

‘Well I never.’ She took a large bite from the cake and sat down.

‘Crochet and bondage and all before luncheon,’ Cyril said.

Fab - and followed by sneak preview of some of Wayne's "other" work (he's working on a first novel as we speak), too...



Chris Williams was next up - a newcomer to Polari [and it is impossible to find anything on the web about him] - his tale was an intriguing and convoluted (and wry) account of a writer struggling to balance his life with his writing (of what sounds like a rather dreadful pulp sci-fi slice of gay erotica). Entertaining, and well-written, but I don't think I was the only one in the audience who probably got "lost" somewhere in the middle of the reading, trying to work out which bits were the "real" story and where it overlapped with the "book within a book"...



Annabel Pribelszki concluded the first half with a very energetic snatch (and I use that word deliberately) of lesbian erotic performance poetry. It was very - ahem - "in yer face". I just felt uncomfortable.

Hey ho.

After a suitably hilarious break, bantering with Bryanne and Simon, it was time for John-John, our Paul, little Tony and I to resume our places for the second half, with our opener the very charming Ms Amy Mason, reading from her début novel The Other Ida.



It's certainly an interesting story - a wayward girl (who in the opening passage tries to drown her own sister), scarred by being named after a notorious play written by her un-motherly mother Bridie, and drawn into the maelstrom of its film adaptation. Set in several timelines, there's a hinted-at development of a lesbian encounter with the film's star, then, years later the impending doom of the adult Ida having to shake herself out of her drunken sluttery and return home to face the sister again and discover some home truths... Very enjoyable, I thought.



However, nothing quite compares with a Polari with headliner Karen McLeod! She is such a multitalented writer and performer, and, although we were a tad disappointed at the non-appearance of Barbara Brownskirt (Karen's humourless lesbian "writer-in-Residence at 197 bus stop on Croydon Road" alter-ego - probably just as well, as it might have been seen as a direct piss-take of Ms Pribelszki's poetry), it was a sheer joy to hear her read from a variety of "correspondence-based" writings, including her musings on Penge, which she wrote for local South London magazine The Transmitter. Here's an extract:

The thought of Beckenham makes me defensive. I went to school there. It was really white, well off and stiflingly suburban. David Bowie escaped as soon as he could. People from there take the mickey out of my beloved Penge. It's something to do with the word sounding like minge. I realised a long time back that the word Penge is a cross between penis and minge (coarse I know). And it's where we're all from.

She also (hilariously) recounted her habit of talking to famous people while in the bath:

Often when I am having a good soak I chat away to Alan Bennett, mimicking him and replying to myself giving advice or about some issue or other. I have a tendency to think that people such as Alan Bennett are a bit God-like and not real in bodily form. I mean I have never met him, so it is safe to think this. I know he has hands and feet, but really, letter writing isn’t as risky as a phone call in the fact that it is a monologue addressed to the person reading it. And when you address something to Alan Bennett I believe there is a back and forth going on between you. Even if he will never be there, he is the Alan Bennett version of myself. In the absence of a belief in God I have my own way of communicating.

Other times in the bath, with more female issues I have a bath-chat with Jenni Murray from Radio Four fame. She is often a bit abrupt with me. I think I am drawn to people with regional accents which are a bit more exotic than my plain South-London accent. Over and over, these wise voices tell me to get real and get on with it and out of the bath because the water is no longer hot.

Wonderful. Simply wonderful - and a great uplifting note on which to conclude another remarkable evening...



I love Polari. It may have its ups and downs, but it's an institution in my life - and an unmissable one!

It's a bit of a longer gap till the next one in 26th May, when our headline reader will be the extraordinarily good Gerry Potter. Also featured are Rowan Coleman, Gavin McCrea, Karen Campbell and Iain Finlayson.

Polari website

Ghosts, Gods, Blue Peter, Proustian brothels and a sausage on the side

After a little hiatus (thanks to the complications of this darned house move, unfortunately) it was with great excitement that I, in the company of Paul, Jim, little Tony and John-John (whose own hiatus, due to a lot of family problems, had been a bit longer than that - he hadn't been since last October!), ventured off on a gloriously hot evening yesterday (too hot in the 5th floor function room of the Royal Festival Hall, truth be told, but that's incidental) for the final summer outing for "London's premier gay literary salon" Polari.

Our host Paul Burston was bursting with energy as usual as he opened proceedings - to a packed house including Emma and Toby, Lauren Henderson aka Rebecca Chance and her coterie of "safety gays", Anni, Val, Bryanne and Simon, and assorted literati, regulars and otherwise, as well as Polari virgins" Dug (who I used to work with) and boyf Simon.



We were extremely proud that our chum, esteemed fellow blogger and "friend to the famous" (it was he to whom I am eternally grateful for arranging tickets for the Mari Wilson concert at Soho Jazz Café in January) Wayne Herbert was occupying the "first-timer slot", as our opening reader.

The audience was enraptured as he read an extract from his fabulous blog Introspections of a displaced Boulevardier, set around the minutiae of eccentric (real-life-I'm-sure) characters in North London's up-and-coming Crouch Hill district, where he lives:

‘Who’s Cyril?’ I asked.

‘Don’t you listen to a word I say Wayne? Cyril, the guy who lives in my block.’

‘Lil I promise you haven’t mentioned him before.’ Lil told so many stories it was difficult to retain the detail. They were invariably colourful, contained drama or tragedy or both. I’m not sure I’d have forgotten hearing about her other gay friends though.

‘Well anyway, he’s in his late sixties and a confirmed bachelor, or so he says.’ Lil released a mammoth cackle, ‘I wasn’t fooled. I managed to wheedle it out of him.’

I was glad I’d ordered a vegetarian breakfast, with a sausage on the side; listening to Lil on a roll was hungry work. I sliced a juicy grilled tomato and pressed it against a sliver of Halloumi. I raised the loaded fork to my mouth and looked expectantly at Lil to continue.

‘He moved in three years ago and wears yellow Marks’ trousers with floral shirts and silk scarves and I knew straight away. He’d lived in Brighton and done a flat swap.

I asked him if he watched Downton Abbey. He said he did, and then I asked who his favourite character was, and do you know who he said?’

‘No idea Lil.’ I didn’t know where our conversation was going or how many clichés we would be embracing.

‘Thomas the Under-butler.’ Lil’s response was perspicacious from her tone but I wasn’t so sure.

‘Thomas is a conniving, sly manipulator. Perhaps Cyril likes those qualities. I don’t think identifying with a character in a TV show gives certainty Lil, although the clothing you describe could tell a different story,’ I said. I started to laugh and thought I’d been funny. Lil wasn’t laughing.

‘No, Cyril is a nice chap. He’s drawn to Thomas as he hides his sexuality too.’ Lil was orating as if a University Professor. ‘And I’m certain that Thomas would be your favourite character too Mr Boulevardier.’ Lil crowed again.

‘I like the Dowager Countess. Maggie Smith has all the best lines,’ I said. In fact I liked Maggie Smith in most of her roles, ‘Tea with Mussolini’ being my favourite.

‘Exactly. That’s precisely the same,’ Lil wasn’t for turning today.

Following Wayne's triumphal debut was another newbie, Mr Vernal Scott (former Head of Equality and Diversity for Islington Council, no less; admittedly before I started work there). His seminal work God's Other Children - A London Memoir has (impressively) forewords by Lord Paul Boateng, Sir Nick Partridge and Peter Tatchell, and covers not only his nasty upbringing in a stiflingly gospel-church-y household (whose brethren had a distinctly pervy method of "excising the demons" that were associated - by them - with his coming out as gay), but also chronicles the devastation that AIDS cut through a whole generation of gorgeous and talented young men in the 80s and 90s.

Familiar - and very upsetting at points - territory, his reading really summed up an era of sadness and survival quite magnificently, I thought. I could hardly breathe by the end.

Here he is in person, talking about the book:

[2019 UPDATE - video gone from the interwebs]



Providing a little (needed) light relief, next up was a familiar face to us Polari-ites - Tiffany Murray, a very entertaining woman whose readings from her memoir Diamond Star Halo enthralled us back in 2012. She's ventured into the world of fiction of late (specifically the genre of ghost stories) with her new book Sugar Hall, which tells the tale of a German-born family whose straitened circumstances force them to desert the comforts of London for a spooky old house on the Welsh borders.

Miss Murray's writing is sublime, as is evidenced by these passages. First, the wistful (and ever-so-slightly camp) cogitations of the novel's central character, the boy Dieter:

Not long ago Ma had been so glamorous.

Glamour was a word Dieter loved because he had read it in a thick-as-a-brick magazine called Vogue that Ma kept between her mattress and bedsprings at 52C Shelley House, Churchill Gardens, SW1. ‘Glamour’ was a word Dieter loved because when you said it the words made your face smile at the first ‘gla’ and then they made you blow a kiss on the ‘mour’.

‘Gla-mour.’

Dieter liked that. He liked it so much he once practised the word in the bathroom mirror, wearing Ma’s Siren Red lipstick.

‘Gla-mour.’

And, as young Dieter tries to tell his mother and sister about the ghostly boy he has seen:

‘I’m not making it up. He just popped into the air, from nothing, and he stared at me and didn’t say a word, and he looked so ill, and I felt dreadfully funny all over. There is a strange boy out there.’

Dieter pointed to the bay window and the wild red gardens. He squinted; it was all too bright in the countryside and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like this house: he hated the fact it was home now. London was his place to be. By the river: Churchill Gardens.

‘He just appeared, and he wore a silver collar…’ Dieter’s voice tailed off.

Saskia latched onto these last words and snorted. ‘Don’t be silly, Dee. Boys don’t wear collars. Vicars do and dogs do.’ She glared at him and Dieter felt his fear settle, a burrowing toad. The points of the toad’s wet, sharp feet, its warty sides, all dug deep into Dieter’s belly; his breath went and he collapsed into his grandfather’s lime-green armchair.

Dust puffed.

Remarkable.

After a break for a fag and a top-up of booze, it was time for the ever-wonderful VG (Val) Lee, one of the panel of judges, to take to the stage to announce the longlist for this year's Polari First Book Prize. The titles are:

• I Am Nobody's Nigger by Dean Atta (Westbourne Press)
• Stephen Dearsley’s Summer of Love by Colin Bell (Ward Wood Publishing)
• The Girl with The Treasure Chest by VA Fearon (VIllage Books)
• The Palace of Curiosities by Rosie Garland (Harper Collins)
• The Falling Sky by Pippa Goldschmidt (Freight Books)
• Petite Mort by Beatrice Hitchman (Serpent’s Tail)
• Hainault via Newbury Park and Other Broken Tracks by Keith Jarrett (self-published)
• The Birds That Never Flew by Margot McCuaig (ThunderPoint Publishing)
• Fairytales for Lost Children by Diriye Osman (Team Angelica)
• God's Other Children - A London Memoir by Vernal W. Scott (self-published)
• The Rubbish Lesbian by Sarah Westwood (Mimwood Press)
• Out in the Army by James Wharton (Biteback Publishing)

All very worthy, I'm sure - and the shortlist will be unveiled in September.



But next up was a big surprise! For opening the second half with an extract from her new, and as yet unpublished, historical work was none other than former Blue Peter presenter (and mother of house fave Sophie Ellis-Bexter) Miss Janet Ellis!

The piece she read was very amusing, in a creepy-sort-of-way given its subject matter, as a naive young girl in the Georgian era is given a little more of an extra-curricular anatomy lesson from her lascivious home tutor than she could have bargained for...

I look forward to reading/hearing more from the lovely Miss Ellis's new chosen career move [no clips or extracts appear to be online as yet, more's the pity].

Our headliner, however, was a real treat (again). Looking rather physically frail these days, but nonetheless with every iota of wit and subtlety fully intact, Mr Paul Bailey is a true veteran of literature. Twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, he was awarded the EM Forster Award in 1974 and, forty years on, is still writing magnificent classics. He treated us to one of his pithy readings last year (when the combination of Celia Imrie, Fidelis Morgan and Rebecca Chance, who preceded his arrival, were a formidable act to follow), and is an all-round charming person.

He read a passage from his first solidly gay-themed masterwork The Prince's Boy , a convoluted tale of a Parisian brothel part-founded by Marcel Proust, a former "favourite boy" of a Romanian minor royal who now turns "tricks", and the randy encounters of the tale's narrator (another émigré - "Romanian by birth, French by choice, English by accident") with him, in the fantastically decadent and dangerous world just before the rise of fascism. Read an extract online.



It was utterly fabulous, and the audience rightly gave him a heartfelt ovation.

And that, unfortunately, was it - until September! [Featuring Joanna Briscoe, Colin Kelley, Carole Morin, Trudy Howson and more, apparently. I can't wait.]

Polari