A walk along the Thames

A Friday with Shaz.

From the Embankment
A quiet Westminster

A walk from the centre of London along the south bank to Barnes bridge and then along to Chiswick to catch the E3!

A total of about 19km- with resulting acting legs and cold muscles.

Peace Pagoda, Battersea park

IQ and his rugby team

Joining the world’s first gay rugby team changed my life. So I made a film about it

At school, the homophobic bullying was worst on the rugby pitch. But the Steelers helped me rediscover my love for the game – and myselfA screenshot from Steelers: the World’s First Gay Rugby Club about the UK rugby team, the Kings Cross Steelers.‘Over time the Steelers won the respect of these straight burly British men because not only did they beat them on occasion, they showed them that we’re all pretty much the same.’

So you can imagine my surprise when years later, a rugby club would go on to change my life. Not just any rugby club, the world’s first gay rugby club, the Kings Cross Steelers in London.

First trip to Griffin Park- revisited

I have previously written about my memories of going to GP for my first game. I managed to track down the game with the use of THE ENGLISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL ARCHIVE. I narrowed it down to the Boxing Day match in 1971.

Now I have found more information after buying book about Griffin Park.

From that I can see that it was a big match with a remarkably large crowd of 18,000+.

No one that I recognise

This also invokes the memory of once queuing for ages to get in with my Dad. So maybe this was the match and it was almost a family day out!

Peter

Tuesday 20 October was the funeral of Peter.

He was diagnosed with his cancer in early 2018 and unfortunately curative treatment did not work out for him.

The service was held within he limitations of the Covid-19 pandemic rules, do there was no function afterwards. One of the readings in the service makes you think about the important things in life:

Les Miserables revisited

The long running LesMis production has just moved to the Sondheim theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. So Joe’s and my return to the show was at a different venue to the one that Shaz and I watched in last year.

As with these it events it was full. We were near the top rung again but not so high and uncomfortable as with other shows.

The show was great and the apparent innovations introduced worked very well in my eyes. The projection of the sewers and the falling off the wall of the policeman to his death.

A wonderful experience for both of us. I would happily see again.