UK Soap to get Gay Wedding!
January 10, 2011 by Jason Shaw · Leave a Comment
Top UK soap, Coronation Street is to hold its first gay ‘wedding’ according to media reports circulating around the UK. Read more
Homotopia Not Homophobia!
November 1, 2010 by Jason Shaw · Leave a Comment
This week see’s the start of the 7th Homotopia festival in the UK’s top northern city of Liverpool.
This month long festival is designed to showcases the very best in Lesbian, Gay Bi and Treans art and culture, which includes dance, film, cabaret, writing, poetry, literature, and a few exhibitions.
This year for the very first time there is a youth strand in the festival, called Right To Love, which promises to offer an interesting insight to the mind of the young.
Other highlights include a reading by leading lesbian author Stella Duffy, the comedy and music night Lavender Girls and the play Mother/Son by Jeffrey Solomon.
The pull of this event is widening, with a an exhibition in Turku, Finland, while the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and British Embassy in Ankara are funding research into the possibility of holding a Homotopia festival in Turkey.
Festival director Gary Everett said: “Homotopia offers a veritable smorgasbord of entertainment for everyone of all ages. From the hilarious, outrageous and subversive to the thought-provoking and challenging. International artists from Italy, Mexico and the US rub shoulders with writers and performers from Wales, Scotland and Liverpool. We are now the only LGBT cultural festival in the north of England – come and find out why.”
Jason Shaw
A Brit Abroad’s View
October 24, 2010 by Jason Shaw · Leave a Comment
The whole of America is in the run up to the mid-term elections, which are happening next month and it’s pretty much dominating the TV, so much so it’s damn near driving me insane! Read more
Flirty Flirty – Forty Forty
August 11, 2010 by Jason Shaw · Leave a Comment
The True Mark Of Friendship?
August 10, 2010 by Jason Shaw · Leave a Comment
Best If Used On or Before?
June 5, 2010 by Jason Shaw · Leave a Comment
I’m a little puzzled, which yes I grant you , is not an unusual state of mind, any regular here at Best Gay Blogs, or over at The Seafront Diaries, will tell you I’m often that way! In fact as life zips by the more and more puzzled I become! It’s true, life is mucking fuddling to say the very least!
But, right now, I’m pondering this – Do you think humans have a ‘Best Before’ date? You know like most food items have. Or perhaps it’s a more formal, more strict Use By date? After which it’s no longer safe to consume, it’s gone off, gone bad, become inedible and unusable.
I was pondering this yesterday during my day job, by which I really mean in the early hours of this morning and during my night job. For as regular readers will know, I am a creature of darkness, in that, I work nights, So really, the night job is the so called ‘proper’ job that pays the bills and the writing is the day and ‘fun’ job that pays peanuts, buts gives most enjoyment.
But, I’m beginning to stray from the point, what I mean, though seriously, do us human beings have such things, I mean certain dates where things are good, delightful and juicy and then a date of a period when they are no longer the sweet tasty product they once were, but still perfectly edible, before the inevitable toss out date when everything goes bad? Are we like a nice fresh banana, or a squeezed out old satsuma sitting at the bottom of the bowl?
It’s a wonder? Are we like food? I mean, I’m a great one of for checking the date on my food stuffs, I’ll even calculate my weekly menu based on what days my food goes passed it’s best before and before it’s use by’s. I stick to them, usually religiously, the obvious exceptions would be cheesecake and well cake in general, which can routinely be used well after it’s best before date, though usually how anyone can leave cake that long is beyond my reasonable understanding. Cake, like wine, has no left overs and is to be consumed within a day of purchase, that’s the law, Jason’s law! (Which may obviously directly contribute to why I’m the size I am!)
As I say, I was sitting at work, when I mentioned I felt a little bit of a tightness in the chest, a small ache or pain on the left side. I informed the gang and had a laugh and giggle about it, me joking that I was having a heart attack. I know I wasn’t, and yes, one shouldn’t joke about such things, and to be honest, it was probably a pulled muscle, or as D suggested wind or indigestion or other such silly frailty, which I am known to have. But, one of the girls, the lovely K, did look sternly at me and told me that, that I really should have gotten myself up to the hospital to be checked out, that a man, my age, is ripe for such things, it’s about this time that the onslaught of dilapidation should start!
You know what though, as harsh as her words may sound, although she said them with jest , care, and consideration, she is right, she’s bloody well right! I am now older, I am now heading to that age, that period of life, when things do go wrong, bits drop off, shrivel up, stop working and give out. I am, me thinks, perhaps reaching that Best Before date!
When you’re young, things like heart attacks, strokes, dementia, Alzheimer’s seem so far off, they happen to old people mostly, people in their middle age, which is years and years away. You always think you’re invincible, that such things are never going to happen. Then you get older, things start aching for no reason, things start going wrong, hair starts to turn grey, eyesight fades, memory develops holes, jean’s shrink without being washed, it takes longer to recover from a night out – longer than the night out itself!
So perhaps, we do, have a best before date, which, I think I’ve possibly hit, , but hey my old china, I’m a long way off my Use By date. So, whilst I may not be the youngest, juiciest fruit on the shelf, I’ve still got plenty of substance left to offer, I may be a little more bitter and sharper than I once was, but hey some people like that, right? but I’ve still got a great taste! Snap it up before the Use By date!
Jason blogs his heart out on The Seafront Diaries on an almost daily basis, you can catch him there before his UBD arrives and he’s thrown out with the rest of the dodgy old stock in the dumpster of life!
23, Gay & Mayor
June 3, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
There was a time, not too many years ago that it was simply unheard of for an openly gay man or woman to become an elected official. But, there’s been a lot of progress made over the past couple decades and the U.K. is no exception. Read more
It’s A Waist?
June 2, 2010 by Jason Shaw · Leave a Comment
However, today was different, and not in a good way, I guess I should have, at that time have realized, something was a miss. I struggled a little to get them over my thighs, but the real moment of sadness arrived when I came to do up those shiny buttons at the fly, the first one, the one at the bottom, perhaps that should be termed the last one and not the first, but, it’s the first one you do up, or at least, the first one most people do up. Anyway, that one was easy, as was the second, the third was a problem. Now, I pulled and pulled and breathed in, forced all the air out of me, made myself as skinny as I possibly could, so much so that I think I might have given myself piles, but no amount of trying was going to get that top button in and through that hole.
I sat on the bed, red in the face from my efforts to get in my jeans with a sad look upon my face. I hate it when you shrink a pair of favorite jeans, it’s just sad. But hey, rather like spilled milk, there’s not point crying over it. So off they came and flung back into the wardrobe, not to the shelf, but to the bottom, which houses a rather tragic pile of clothing items which I no longer it into for one reason or another.
I reached in and pulled a darker pair out from the storage place, on I pulled them, these a pair of faded 505′s, but relatively new, purchased the last time I was over in America.
I cursed my horrid bad luck as I struggled a for a good few moments trying to get that zipper up and the top waistband button done up. I mean, to shrink two pairs of jeans in two serpentine washes on two separate occasions was pretty darn bad luck.
Ok, so thing’s slowly started to dawn ad I rapidly tried on another pair, which fitted, indeed I could do the top button up, but only if the circulation to my lower half was cut off and I didn’t move! But, yes, the realization that perhaps Jason’s laundry routine was not to blame for shrinking the jeans, but rather his love of cheesecake had in fact expanded his waistline!
I looked down at my belly, it didn’t look any bigger, but then again, it didn’t look exactly smaller either. I know I put weight on when I spent three months in Illinois, the massive portions and no exercise saw to that, and I know I’ve tried to knock some off with a little blast of diet like behavior here and there, but the pounds, well, I guess you could say, hung around.
I looked at the pile of trousers, jeans and the like in the wardrobe, and almost let out a silent sob, I’m 40 and I will almost certainly never get into my D&G 30 inch waist jeans ever again. I am, officially a bit of a bloater , with a big belly and little of no willpower. I’m not even going to slip into those Armarni 32″ slinky black boot cut’s that have only had one ware! Life is, as they say not fair!
I clearly remember when I was a 28″ and so desperately wanted to be a little
bigger and a more healthy 30″ and activily had to pretty much overeat to put on even a quarter of one pound. But that was when I was young and pretty, when going to the gym for two hours after work seemed like an easy let out!
Now, I need to only as much as sniff a cream cake, or look at a bar of chocolate and the pounds pile on. Never more so has the phrase ‘A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips’ been proved so accurate. It’s the curse of the middle age man begets the middle age spread, it’s well, it’s nature, unkind yes, but nature.
‘No one loves a fairy when their fat and forty’ a so called ‘friend’ said on Twitter the other day, when I told them that I was now struggling to make it in to a 34″ waist and rather a bit more that 13 stone! Which has prompted two things, firstly them being blocked on twitter and two, Jason’s mother of all diets – I am now, totally 101% OFF cheesecake, do not, under any circumstances let me have any, not evening a tiny wee bit. But obviously, that starts tomorrow!
© 2010 Copyright Jason Shaw
Time Flies……
June 1, 2010 by Jason Shaw · Leave a Comment
Hey hey hey, can you blooming well believe this, it’s June already? I mean really, my Best Gay Blog friends, we are now in the month of June, the 6th month of the year, and you know what that mean’s, yep half the year has almost already gone! 2010 is half over, half done, half completed and we’re all another half year nearer the grave! Oh I am a cheery soul today!
But, then again, on a more positive note, I used to marvel at the fact that during my one hour lunch time, I could queue up for what seemed like the whole hour, to get lunch in the dining hall, find at least, a semi empty table that didn’t have second year vomit or first year blood on it. Sit and eat lunch whilst all the time trying to dodge someone else’s incoming sausage, or low flying potatoes, in an invariable food fight that always seemed to be going on somewhere in the hall! Then after food was consumed, empty plates scraped or licked depending on the dish, and piled up high by the dinner ladies, it was time to go outside for some fresh air. I’d suck on the straw of my little apple juice carton (back then there were a novelty!) as I walked round the playground, not to join friends, or class or house mates, but in order to get to the back, near the fence, so I could sneak off behind the netball courts. Once there, out of sight of the main buildings, I’d either cadge a smoke off one of the hard lads from the council estate that went to mu school. Or I’d spark up one of my own that I’d pilfered from my mother than morning, without her noticing of course. I’d also have time to have a piss, avoiding the blue/brown goldfish, the fights, the football games and the dirty first years. On the way, I’d eat an apple, bung the core at an unsuspecting first or second year back, then suck a couple of extra strong’s, so my breathe didn’t stink of ciggies and still arrive at the classroom early for the post lunch hell that was afternoon lessons! 
© 2010 Copyright Jason Shaw
You’re Out of Time – Almost!
May 17, 2010 by Jason Shaw · Leave a Comment
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© 2010 Copyright Jason Shaw
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