Categories
Gay Health

Pilgrimage

Dawn.  Crows cawing.  Dawn chorus.

There is so much dew it looks and smells as there has been heavy rain.   I spend an hour every morning watering whatever I can from the path at the top of the house.   I enjoy this.

There are so many snails.

Had lunch in Hollywood yesterday with a writer.  Actually, we didn’t eat lunch.  I drank some iced tea. Met the man who owns Mama Shelter in Paris.  I have known him for years but I just didn’t know that he owned that hotel.  You know we stayed there don’t you?  This time last year.

How can I spend so much time wishing away the past?

Long conversation with a man in Sonoma who makes chicken coops.  They are expensive but look great.

Jennifer bought fresh garbanzo beans which seem like they might be easy to grow in my garden.  The melons are growing.  The black tomatoes are doing well.  Something ate the pumpkin seedlings.  The lemon trees, after the wet winter, are laden with fruit.  There are figs and plums and ruby grapefruit.

There are roses blooming all over the property.

What else can I tell you? I write my novel as per suggestion.  It gets better and better.  Perhaps I get better?  It started as one thing and already, with a little intelligent coaxing, is evolving into something quite different.  It started with vengeful intentions. Now it is getting funny.  It started with a view to kill.   Now it embraces the will to live.  These are not my ideas.

I would prefer my original plan.

I have just a few weeks to finish writing The Scarlett Empress. It is by far the most commercial thing I have ever written.  It is helping me though.  Helping me think in a different sort of way.

The more I write the other stuff…the less I want to write this.  Yet, this spurs me into action.

Three days until the ‘Big Adventure’.   The Dane arrives from NYC on Sunday.

Becoming a Pilgrim.  You’ll enjoy reading about it.  I have had to keep the plan a big secret.  I don’t want anyone ruining it.

The twins are running around the house in their boxers.

Pains in chest and arm.  Balls ache once again.  Nasty cough.

Categories
Whitstable

Georgina

Darling Georgina, my Whitstable buddy, is sick with pneumonia.   I am gravely worried about her.  She works every hour God sends in her charming bed and breakfast, Copeland House on Island Wall.

She is a generous, kind, strong woman.  A great friend to me and many, many others.

Please, Whitstable people make sure she is safe and well.  Look out for her.  Keep her in your prayers.

Like most people in Whitstable, I have known her for most of my life.  We have been on all sorts of adventures together.  Had our ups and downs.  Who doesn’t?

She needs peace and quiet to recuperate.

I wish I could be there with her now to help but I am here.  Perhaps I should get a flight this afternoon?

I am thinking of you darling.  Thinking hard.  Good, kind thoughts.

Categories
Death

LOUD AND DIM

Gary Winick (Tadpole 2002) died.  He was 49-years-old.

Gary once introduced me to Mark Ruffalo.  Mark wouldn’t remember me, Gary would.

Gary was one of the forward thinking guys who set up the ground breaking film production company InDigEnt.  He was a really, really sweet man.  No news as to how he died but I think, from what I can remember, he may have had a serious illness that he kept quiet about.

He was very discreet.

Crikey, so many deaths!  I just diligently report them.  It’s rewarding to find something nice to say about the recently departed like poor Wally in Whitstable.

In Jean’s case, it was quite hard.  We hadn’t spoken for ages because we had a money issue that neither of us wanted to resolve.  He was a terrible drain on his friends and family.  Let’s put it this way: it was very hard for Jean to enjoy his gifted life without endlessly complaining or taking drugs.

People die.  I just put on my bombazine shift and write the bleeding obituary.

Perhaps I should try writing my own?

I would entitle it:  WEAK TEA  or  LOUD AND DIM or NOTHING REMARKABLE.

To be run in the Whitstable Times in the event of my death:

Surly Duncan Roy (65) found dead in his Swalecliffe bed sitting room.  Former Lord of The Lies refused medication for obvious mental illness and made unremarkable films.   Campaigned for the Red Spider Cafe.  He will not be missed.

I have not written a last will and testament so the fuckers can squabble over what is left.   I may leave it all to that little girl or to a bat charity or Jake’s ex-girl friend.  That would be funny.

Watched Oscars.  Was James Franco stoned?  No!  He’s been sober for YEARS.  He just looked a bit unprepared.  I would have preferred if Social Network had won best film.  It deserved to.  The Kings Speech is constipated TV tosh.   Tom Hooper is a director of no importance.  Why does Colin Firth KEEP telling the world how important Tom Ford is to him and how he wouldn’t be receiving these awards without having met him?  I thought that Firth had a rather long and distinguished career before meeting Ford?  Are they or have they been…fucking?

It occurred to me why Portman trumped Benning…Portman has more mileage in her and will generate more cash for CAA.  Poor Annette Bening so obviously deserved that Best Actress Academy Award but she’s an old mare and who writes great roles for old mares that Meryl Streep isn’t getting first refusal?

Clip Clop Annette.

Categories
Death Whitstable

Tudor Tea Rooms Whitstable

You know how much I love Whitstable?  That would be one of my ‘weak tea‘ successes:  my relationship with Whitstable.

I love it there.  I know everyone.  We really know each other.  For good and for bad.

Well, today I received some very, very sad news.  My Mother‘s friend Carol who owns the Tudor Tea Rooms on Harbour Street…well..and this is terrible…her son Tony died.

Known affectionately as Wally to everyone who knew him, he was only 40 years old, tall, gentle, ran his mother’s business with aplomb.

When you order a pot of tea at The Tudor Tea Rooms you get a pot of tea made with loose tea and a strainer.  Quality.

We used to say that they served school dinners at the Tudor but we loved going in there.  Fire burning in the hearth all winter.  Closed on a Wednesday.  Real steak and kidney pudding with a thick suet crust.

Wally was killed during the day on the train tracks at the end of Glebe Way.  Struck by the coast-bound 11.22am Victoria to Ramsgate train just before 1pm.  I have no idea if he committed suicide or not.  That’s what people are saying but I really don’t want to believe it.

He was such a nice man.  Wally and his sister Sue had run that Tudor Tea Room since they were kids.  Since we were all kids.  Serving Steak and Kidney Pudding…opening the tea garden.  He was the sort of bloke you’d see in Prezzo Pizza Place with his young family.

As every Whitstable pub and every other shop front became yet another super chic gastro pub or seasonal/organic eaterie…the Tudor kept the same decor, the same menu, serving the same Whitstable us who didn’t want the bother of seared scallops or poached samphire.

My Mother and I saw Wally just a few weeks ago when I was home for Christmas.  He served us a good old-fashioned English roast.   My mother mocked me for drinking tea with my lunch…like ‘some one from a council house‘ she said.

He stood at the till and asked after my life in LA.  I felt embarrassed to tell him what my life was like in California.  What he didn’t know…what he could never have known…was what I was thinking that cold December day a week before Christmas:  that I would have quite easily traded my life in Malibu for a chance at running the Tudor Tea Rooms.

From where I was standing…his life looked perfect.

When I was a kid we would sit in the Tudor Tea Rooms and spy on Peter Cushing eating his poached eggs.

Poached eggs on toast.  Every day.

My mother accidentally pushed Peter Cushing off his bike one day when she was getting off the bus from Canterbury.

Anyway, Wally was killed on the railway lines.  The third person killed in the same spot in less than two months.  What’s happening?  What a waste of a good life, a sweet family man.  I feel for his wife and children, his sister Sue and his lovely mum Carol.

If you get the chance listen to this Jellybotty’s track, Peter Cushing Lives in Whitstable.

It mentions the Tudor Tea Rooms.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wpGPqWrjeQ].

Goodbye Wally.

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Categories
Dogs

Tea and Times

Tim and Duncan Tea and Times December 2010

Well and truly stranded in Whitstable with the temperature plummeting below minus 5 degrees celsius.

The snow has frozen into crisp, wind-swept  gullies, the car iced into its space in the car park, the dog makes its way cautiously into the biting air, pisses then runs back inside.

Bleak mid winter, frosty winds made moan…

Bought a shoulder of lamb yesterday.  Cooked it slowly in the oven on a bed of rosemary and garlic.  Slow roasting it to perfection.  We sat around the table heartily carving the great piece of meat, eating it with cabbage and roast potatoes.

After the lamb we scoffed great hunks of Stollen and mugs of tea.  This is Whitstable living and I love it.

I spent the day, as I mentioned yesterday, walking the dog..meeting old friends and keeping warm.

I had a slight HIM relapse.  Entitled prick made his way back into my mind.

This is addiction at it’s very worst.