News round up So, Coronation Street gets it's first gay kiss, drawing 14 million people to the Sunday episode to watch the dimpled puppy dog Todd lay one on the dreadfully wooden and orange Nick played by former gay icon, pop has-been Adam Rickett. Unfortunately, the ensuing episodes are a mess. First we have to deal with the menacing Nick calling Todd "a sick mind game player" and forcing him to out himself. Then, the endlessly shrill Sarah finding out her cute boyfriend is confused about his sexuality (or maybe just realising how common she actually is.) All around a mess, and annoying that Corrie is seeing more man-on-man action than I am.



Years ago I worked on the Mirage Resorts website. We put Siegfried and Roy on the web, meaning we had to sit through hours of digitised video and the endless loop of Michael Jackson's rank theme song. They seemed ancient by-products of plastic surgery then, but now it's the sad news that Roy Horn was mauled by one their famous, and endangered, white tigers. I'm increasingly against these types of animal shows having done the backstage tour of the chained elephants and caged lions of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. It's hard to be surprised that these animals act, well, like animals.



I have so little to say about Arnold as governor. Don't forget that California was responsible for hoisting Ronald Reagan into politics. He'll be a disaster of course, but the world is indeed a scary place.



The Independent, one of England's traditional broadsheets is experimenting with a tabloid format within the M25 (Greater London). Unfortuantely, they've kept Janet Street-Porter.



Lastly, ratings are in on the thoroughly disturbing Russian Roulette where "magician" Derren Brown whittles down a group of volunteers to the one who will load a single bullet into gun which Brown holds to his head or to a haystack depending on where he thinks the bullet is. I didn't watch, but 4M of my fellow citizens did. Now, if he was pointing the bullet at the wires holding David Blaine above the ground I'd have watched that.

Kiss 34 goodbye. And gladly too. The week in review: end of holiday, a hospital scare, too much social drinking, an awkward business dinner, falling asleep sitting in a chair when I was meant to be out clubbing, spending my birthday with charming, but straight, people discussing birth/baby constipation/marriage/house renovations/work, the heartbreak of realising a crush was going to always be one-sided, waking up the morning after wanting to pull the duvet over my head.



Looking forward to 35. Getting a life coach, getting over "it", getting some goals and a purpose, getting a flat I like living in, getting mentally and physically healthy, getting my shit together so that I deserve getting a boyfriend who's not fictional, getting this site updated, getting to a point where 36 will be a celebration.



I've got a lot of work to do.

I'm officially old.I was going to go to XXL, London's club for the more-than-stick-figurish. Instead I fell asleep in the chair at 9 and work up long after it was over. Hopefully I'll stay awake for my birthday drinks later this afternoon.

My horoscope says I should hire a babysitter to spend time tonight with my loved one. Ok, how many things are wrong with that statement?

Sweet relief Tuesday I found a small, painless lump in my groin whilst showering. Panic and fear immediately set in. I didn't have a GP so I called the NHS who told me to rush to the clinic in Soho. It's quite embarrassing having to repeat over and over what was found where to various nurses, receptionists, advisors, doctors, etc. I can see why men would be tempted to ignore it, to not have to describe it or think about it or tell a complete stranger that one found a lump when touching one's scrotum. The clinic sent me on to UCL Hospital. I sat fearing I had some sort of cancer. Then wondering how I would deal with cancer. Could I stay in the UK and be treated? Would I have to move back to the US? If they had to remove the testicle, would they replace it with something or just leave an empty space? How would I walk up two flights of stairs with a stitched up groin? How much work would I miss? Who would I call and tell? Who would I ring to visit me in hospital, or bring me a toothbrush, or just be support in a difficult time?



I felt very alone, scared, sad.



The doctor sent me upstairs for an ultrasound. I laid half naked on a bed whilst some doctor squirted cold jelly on my private parts to run a plastic wand all over. I got to watch the ultrasound. The foreign, greyscaled voyage through one's internal parts is quite compelling -- and terrifying. I gulped everytime she stopped to scan a dark spot, or revisited an area of the groin. I stared, wondering if I was watching some form of cancerous tumour in my body, wondering what was normal and what was abnormal.



The good news is that the lump is absoutely benign and commonplace. Embarrassingly, it's a vericose vein. How one gets a vericose vein in that area, I've no idea, but it's common in men of my age. There's nothing to do about it -- it will just come and go for the rest of my life. The NHS were quite good about it, reinforcing that I'd done absoutely the right thing. If it had been cancerous, then earliest treatment is best. My sense of relief was palpable -- it grabbed my body and squeezed hard. I wanted to stand on Tottenham Court Road and have a good cry. I wanted to call and tell everyone I was ok, that I'd had a brush with mortality that had been postponed a while longer.



As quickly as the relief comes, it goes, and life becomes ordinary again. And one has to get up in the morning and fight the Tube and buy a cup of coffee and check their emails and write their presentations and find lunch and answer phone calls and go all the usual things and all the usual crutches and doubts and small satisfactions and life-crap. It was sweet -- and fleeting.

Ciao!



I know Kelly and Robert and I were in Florence for a day in the 80s. I know that. But don't remember a thing about the city. I can't remember what we did. Did we see the Duomo? Go to the Uffizi? Walk over the Ponte Vecchio? Or did we just fight in the train station? Anyway, it was all new to me.



You can view the pictures here.



I arrived in Florence on Friday and was taken to my hotel, which is really an "apart'hotel" on the river Arno near the Ponte Vecchio. Standing on the bridge one has lovely views up and down the Arno, but the real joy of Florence is the city centre, the Medieval and Renaissance areas which are compact and walkable and crowded with groups of tourists.



Friday I walked around and slept. Saturday I went to the Uffizi Gallery,Near the Uffizi is the Piazza della Signoria where Michelangelo's David once stood. There is now a copy -- under scaffolding. The original is in the Palazzo dell'Academia and is also under scaffolding. I'm just now clearly seeing how homoerotic the marble sculpture from that time was. It's also bulging muscle, lithesome stance, erotic wrestling.



Steps away is the cathedral, il Duomo, the dome of which was the first dome built during the Renaissance. You see the dome from all over the city, capping tiny alleyways. The tiny alleyways can be confusing, but they also keep the city cool and breezy. One also sees, hanging in the small alleyaways, number of rainbow flags. At first I thought, "how nice that they so clearly mark the many gay businesses and bars" but soon realised to my embarassment that they're anti-war flags printed with the word, "pace". I must ask Tim if they're anti Iraq war flags or anti-violence, but it's still wonderful to see so many of them.



Sunday I was going to go to Siena, but it rained so instead I took a bus to the small town of Fiesole where one can get brilliant views of Florence from the foothills. Unfortunately, it was too hazy for decent pictures so that will have to stay in my memory. Sunday night I went out to a small and rather dismal bar (the nightlife in Florence isn't so wonderful) but stumbled into an outdoor jazz concert in the Piazza della Signoria which was lovely. besides the rain on Sunday the weather has been really lovely.



Monday everything closed it seemed, so I went to the Palazzo Pitti. The Pitti is an enormous fortress like palazzo built by a wooltrader who was a rival of the Medicis. Unfrotuantely, he died before the palazzo was finished and the Medicis took it over. Ah, irony. Behind the Palazzo is the Boboli Gardens, which claim to be the largest and best-kept gardens in Italy. Parts of it are lovely, but my anglophilia is firmly in place and I found a lot of the gardens to be shambolic.



So, the food is stunning, although I'm sick of eating carbohydrates. Everything comes with bread. I had a rather fantastic meal of osso busco (stewed veal shank) and roasted potatoes. I also had some sort of white fish stewed with wine and tomatoes that was quite nice. Otherwise, I tend to mostly snack -- little panini from open air cafes and calzone, little tomato and mozzarella pockets. Then, of course, there is gelateria on every corner -- selling sweet, sticky, cold gelato. Melon has been my favourite, although I sampled a range, of course.



I haven't interacted much with people. They seem more polite than the French, but it's hard to tell. I'm learning very little Italian, but enough for the basics. I was surprised, although shouldn't have been on reflection, by how much I can surmise about the written language from the French I know. Once you start to see patterns the root of the words are quite similar that I can guess my way through some of it. So I'm not as hopeless as feared. Also, one knows the food lingua quite well.



So Florence was idyllic and artful. Rome was a mess. I had some sort of breakdown. Spent two days in bed with a fever. The hotel was small and dark. The city was humid and heaving with tourists. I queued for hours to see the Sistine Chapel. It was packed with people sushing each other. You walk through miles of muraled hallways so that the chapel itself is anti-climatic. One also gets a bit, oh I don't know, jaded, about the conspicuous wealth in the vatican when so much of the world is starving. Hypocrisy at it's height.



I came back early, glad to be sick in my own bed. Glad for the cold and the clouds and London itself.

Words I promise to never use, no. 1: Esconced