We're having a heatwave. Yes, a heatwave has descended over England bringing temperatures to a shocking 86 degrees! It sounds ludricrous -- especially after Davis summers of 110+ -- but it's quite serious. The Queen Mum has heat exhaustion ("she certainly can can-can"), the beaches were thronged with people, people on the Tube are collapsing, and there's a lot of talk about avoiding sunstroke in the media. Bless this little country so not used to the sun. Fret not, it's all said to be disappearing tomorrow and we're back to our regularly scheduled gloom. Still, it's nice to see the throngs of pasty white bodies in the parks.



IXL and Scient merged today. Oddly, they chose to keep the Scient brand for the company. I wonder if Lance still has a job.

Art buying day. I just two pieces of photographic art. The first as a present, so I can't give too many details, but you can see Chris Honeysett's work online. A work colleauge told me about his images, which he painstakingly prints himself. I also bought a Datura photograph from my former mentor and friend, Doris Mitsch. Her work, besides being visually beautiful has an intriguing concept: the datura flowers are both a hallucinagetic aphrodiasiac and a heart-stopping poison.



Spent the weekend doing as little as possible. We went to the Willliam IV on Friday night for a big boozy dinner and stayed until after midnight. Then I had a leisurely afternoon shopping and having coffee in a Kensington cafe, enjoying the very brief appearance of the sun.



I'm embarrassed. At the other end of the cultural scale I not only watched, but l laughed my way through Jackass, MTV's adolescent show of people doing remarkably stupid stunts -- riding tricycles down steep cliffs and unicycles near polluted cestpools. There's very little redeeming about it, but it help let off some steam. Maybe I'm becoming lowbrow.

Black day. Yesterday we had to let some people go. It was probably the hardest thing I've done in this job, and not my favourite moment. It's hard to tell people you're forcing them into a change then acknolwedge that it's for the good of the office. Very upsetting. I want to still have faith in what we're doing here, what we're working towards, but yesterday made it very hard.

Art. I don't why I hadn't seen Yasmina Reeza's play, "Art" before last night. I had meant to, and there have been a parade of remarkable actors in and out of the play I wanted to see. I just hadn't gotten around to it, so was pleased when Lance recommended going. Currently, George Segal headlines the play and was brilliant. Very natural and focussed despite the staggering heat of the theatre. But even he was upstaged by Richard Griffiths giving a staggering funny/sad performance as the passive victim Yvan. There's a machine gun monologue half way through that instantly won the hearts of the audience, and a bit of stage business with olives that had me giggling uncontrollably. But there are inherent problems in the production. The psychological insight and deconstruction (carefully chosen word) of the male friend's relationships was undeniably feminine in form and seemed oddly placed on the soldiers of these variants of masculine control, and the string of angry shouts and retrievals. This is a play which probably has a bigger impact when performed by the French as it makes sense of the exchanges of temper, reaching out, and silence. That said, it was wonderful to see these three men, so different, related to this material which is essentially about the disruption of a relationship that happens because one of them buys a white painting for 200,000 francs.

Happy fourth. The American posse in the office managed to pull together a pretty astounding barbecue on our back balcony. Budweiser, Oscar Meyer hot dogs and watermelon were hunted down and found in odd corners of London and brought to bucolic Queen's Park to do more celebration for America's independence from our own host country. Ironic, no? But we had a great time sitting in the sunshine on a precious mild evening shooting the breeze. It could have been Nantucket or Fresno or Cincinnati with the ringing American voices and Budweiser beer. I spent the afternoon making potato salad (negotiating a lack of french mustard and dill pickles with suitable English replacements) in a steaming hot kitchen.



We talked about how living here has changed what some of us think of ourselves as Americans. It's easy to be critical -- moments on the Tube when you've heard and spotted the loud American tourists spritzing in their tourist gear trying to negotiated the proper pronounciation for Leicester Square and criticisng the food, the trains, the British, or the prices. You hide deeper into yourself hoping no one else realises your American and join the group sneering wishing they would get off, disappear, or at the very least shut up. It's easy to see the reflection of America across an international landscape and the truths that spotlight the stereotypes.



But it also fundamentally changed my critical view of America. I was a cynic in my own homeland painting wide strokes across people, ideas, and regions and not seeing were foundations were strong and were intentions were good. Having a place to have one's own identity mirrored back to one is a healthy, chilling thing. I can respect it more, especially as I'm fortunate enough to be away from it, but can also clearly see the good and bad bits of it I took inside of myself -- the belief in the individual, the centrist view of the world, the materialism. I'm still horrified about the death penalty, America's actions towards China and the backhanded condescension of the President. There is, however, a bit of me that grows in pride.

Happy pride. This weekend was London's gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, gender confused, gender unconcerned, polysexual, gay curious, ex-lesbian, latina dragqueen, and everyone else festival. It draws an enormous crowd but manages none of the style, excitement or level of pride that other cities do (San Francisco.) Sure, there's a parade meandering through the streets of Westminster where you can go and gawk at the awkwardly ungawkworthy paraders ("I'm a lesbian Tube driver and all I got was this stupid tshirt") or the club queens who clearly didn't feel any more pride with go-go dancing on a float in the middle of chaos than with dry humping an out-of-towner at Trade. Then you can end up in Finsbury Park -- if you pay your ticket and can manage to find the flipping bus from King's Cross -- to listen to the newest round of vaguely ambiguous boy bands ("Are they interesting or not? I just can't tell") and has-been gay icons whilst paying too much money at corporate sponsored lager stands and cruising either the same boys you cruise who ignore you on Old Compton Street or the small village gays who've snuck out of a Beatrix Potter book to stand around like a group of Miss Marple movie extras but secretly like to be spanked by canoe paddles whilst bleating like a foot and mouth diseased ridden sheep.



Wow, do I sound bitter. I didn't even go. I was recovering from a second night in a row of pretending I'm young enough to stay out past two am. Friday night we did the usual, went to the local gastro-pub to drink bottles of white wine and eat olives and chat with Geroge, the bar manager who knows our names, our regular drinks, and anything else we've told him in a vino haze. Then went onto John's private club, Home House, the stunning 18th century mansion that was home to the French Embassy and Courtauld Institute, but which is now the hunting ground for the wealthy and terribly uninteresting, and the ravenous peroxide anorexics who clearly think that sucking down gin and tonics is foreplay and that vomit is an aphrodesiac. An awful thing to happen to such nice architecture. But then, I guess I would never really be happy there until I could sweept through the neo-classical halls in pantaloons and powdered wigs.



Saturday, foregoing the hoopla above, I had dinner with Kirsten at the always amazing Rasa Kurmuda in Charlotte Street which specialises in seafood from the Kerala district of India -- crab in masala spice and tamarind, a delicious flatbread stuffed with crab omelette and curry leaves. We quizzed our waiter about the various mysteries of smoked tamarinds and spicy okras and licked the spicy paste of our finders. Then went to the Charlotte Street Hotel bar, den of trendy american new media types, to gawk at the hunky Australian bartender with the hairy forearms (what is it about those accents?). So I didn't march in a parade, but still managed a bit of gay and a bit of pride.