Queer Religion

You've almost got to feel sorry for the religions currently struggling to get exempted from homosexual equality laws. I mean they're stuck with this God-awful book of rules, written a particularly long time ago, most of which the majority of us would now regard as twaddle.

I mean there's good enough stuff in there I suppose, 'thou shall not kill' etc etc, stating the obvious... but it's the rules they didn't quite think through back then that kind of jar nowadays, isn't it? The whole gay thing being a glaring example. So you have the rather unhappy vision of men in religious uniforms on tv, desperately trying to fudge around the fact that they're supposed to be jolly good sorts all around, but they just happen to belong to this organisation that doesn't tolerate gays. Hmmm. We cannot exempt them, surely? They're a dangerous minority now, trying to exert their will on the majority using the same sort of tricks as astrologers. The irony too, I suspect, someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but they probably work in organisations which contain higher than average numbers of homosexuals. Which is fine. Just ironic.

Cuppa Soup

People were looking at my a bit oddly yesterday. I was stood with the other parents waiting for our kids to emerge from school. No one said anything, they just did a double take. My 8 year old was not so kind. "What's that on your nose?" were his first words to me. I'd spent the morning painting a ceiling, so I guessed it was a bit of paint and made light of it.

But it wasn't paint, it was tomato soup. I'd drunk a mug of it just before I left, and somehow left a great long streak of orange all up my nose. Is this the onset of old age? Have I now got to check myself for unfortunate food stainings every time I go out? Probably. It's all downhill from here then. And I was thinking, from now on I don't want anyone else to die. (Soup to death... how did that happen?) Anyway.

I was listening to James Taylor, who I love, and I thought, he's older than me, one day it'll be on the radio that he's gone and I'll be so upset. So, no, I don't want a single person on the whole planet to die before I do.

After I'm gone, do what you like, I don't give a monkey's.

So... no more dead. Not even people I don't like. Not even, say, Tony Blair, who I consider a complete plonker. Pity he hasn't got the same attitude as me, huh?

The thing about Tony of course, is that he's only a weeny bit older than me. I'd prefer it if people making those tough decisions to be way, way older, then you can fool yourself into thinking they know what they're doing. They will have passed through the clumsy phase I'm now entering, and emerged all dignified... they will have slowed themselves up a bit, and gained gravitas.

People my age, like Tony, well I know what he'll be like... he'll make mistakes, he may even turn up at a press conference with an orange streak down his nose... you mark my soup. Words. Sorry.