Shocking.

At the end of the holiday So, four days off and it's back to the grind and routine of working.



John and Jason are here, crashing on my floor. I'm not sure if they're having a good time -- it's all very casual and unplanned and, perhaps, anti-climatic(?). It was a relatively quiet weekend. I cooked a leg of lamb on Sunday in honour of Easter which was wolfed down in front of the television. Other than that, some shopping, a museum, a disastrous dinner at l'Abbaye. I fear I'm becoming a boring host.



But tonight we're off to see Duran Duran at Wembley Arena. I'm partly horrified. I was never more than interested in Duran Duran. I've not been to a concert in a stadium since I was 24. I'm more worried about how we're getting back than I am about having a good time. Some days I feel my age. But John and Jason are looking forward to it, and it's always fun to hang out with Tim, so who knows.

Sound the trumpets My little goddaughter, Sophie, was born on Saturday at 9pm with a head of dark hair and brown/grey eyes. Kelly says that childbirth wasn't as bad as she had heard, but we both think that was probably the drugs.



kelly seems to be doing well. Little Sophie, however, is still in the hospital with some mild breathing problems, probably due to acid reflux.



I haven't seen pictures yet, but I'm thrilled beyond words for Kelly and Michael and hope they get Sophie home soon.

Time to talk trash I'm loathed to admit it, but after watching the so-so last Matrix movie, I switched channels and became engrossed in the season finale of ITV's paean to naked, trashy satire, Footballers' Wives



Besides the obvious allure of half-naked athletic bodies, the show is quite good fun. Camp acting, ludicrous storylines, and laugh-out-loud dramatic moments (the hemaphrodite baby!). Now that Jason's gone, I don't really think there are any fanciable men, but Zoe Lucker deserves an award for being so over-the-top trashy. Classic moment last night, Tanya discovering her dead sugar-daddy had been sabotaging their condoms. Fantastic.



Now, as penance, I'm going to have to read the entire oeuvre of French existentialism to redress an aesthetic balance, but it was worth it.

The Da Vinci Code Reading Dan Brown's the Da Vinci Code. It's an interesting book. Not brilliant literature. A reliance on unnecessary adjectives. A lot of predictable sentences in italics. I don't know if there's a lot of fact behind it, but it's an intriguing idea that there are forces in the Catholic Church that seek to erase substantial parts of the early days of the church. I won't give more than that away. It brings back memories of worries about Opus Dei's shadowy operations -- they have spies who report on anything unconventional. At uni, I went to a very progressive student church that was in constant fear of espionage by these conversative hypocrites. It's very satisfying, therefore, to see them so maligned.

I'm surrounded, but can't surrender Friday night, expecting to be overwhelmed by the competitiveness of our quarterly games of mah jongg (well, overwhelmed by the wine we drink as well as the task of remembering how mah jongg is played). I, instead, sat whilst K. & A. and L. & A. filled the conversation with pregnancies and babies and house repairs. Even when they attempted to about something else under the guise of not leave me out it sprinted back to those topics. We didn't even play mah jongg.



I've became that rarest of animal. A gay man in a sea of breeding homeowners.



I'm not being judgmental. I don't begrudge them anything. I don't find it tiresome. I don't pout and push the conversation back to me.



I'm envious. Louise and Andrew have a new stunning home. Acres of bedrooms. A bathroom the size of my entire flat with a sunken tub. Kirsten and Andrew took that first leap onto the property ladder and fill their weekends at B&Q and bloody Mothercare and await a little Rose.



Me, I bought a rug. A 3x5 foot Kashmiri tribal rug. It's now the most significant thing I own, besides the television. Yes, a tv and a rug are my most worthy domestic purchases.



Pathetic.

To miss someone

For the last year and some months T.'s shouldered the burden of daily pesterings about things great and small. The weather, television, work frustrations, my fears and insecurities. Well, he's been on holiday for two weeks and the emails have been unwritten, unsent, unexpressed. They fester and grow like a grit of sand in an oyster inside my chest and now I'm looking at this thing, this object as imaginary as hope and as real as despair and wondering what the hell I do with it.



But beyond that, I begin to think what I've not been doing or needing or searching out or expressing or dealing with because, for whatever purpose or willingness or aptitude, T.'s become my outlet of intimacy. Is it a rope tying me to a phantom pier or is it a tether keeping me from being adrift? Is it too heavy a burden for something that's essentially an email friendship -- another example of my ability to mis-aim with precision and intensity?



And why the drama? Why not enjoy what it is, ignore what it doesn't mean, stop seeking the shadows and dark corners? Feed the hunger, not the ache. Get some sleep. Stop dreaming of hibernation and smile at Spring.