Thames Festival '08

Boris holding the dog on a string.

This dog can drink out of a sports bottle.

Most years I go and help out homeless people's samba band Cardboard Citizens to play in the Thames Festival Parade. Some of them are good drummers but have lost the plot due to various reasons, generally alcoholism, drug addiction or mental health problems. Or all three. Most of the drummers however are beginners, and need a bit of support.

The parade itself starts on the northern side of Waterloo bridge, goes alongside the Thames, crosses Blackfriars bridge and ends up at the National Theatre. It's a pretty good hike, especially with a large drum. Cardboard citizens colours are black and orange. This year they had made costumes for all of us, with orange day-glo sticks sewn in and a giant puppet. We even had the pre-requisite dog on a string in band colours.

Every year the Mayor of London comes to have his picture taken with the homeless band. Up to now it's been Ken Livingstone of course. This year it was Bojo...Boris Johnson, London's very own pin-up blonde.

Now this guys a Tory and although we were expecting his visit, people were muttering that they wouldn't want to have their picture taken with him because of his right wing politics. That is, until he turned up. Suddenly everybody was crowded around him and my flirtatious friend L (who I have to confess I encouraged to have a snog with Boris) couldn't resist planting a juicy kiss on his cheek.

Anyway it's provided a great deal of entertainment on Facebook with L having to justify herself to all her right-on mates. Sometimes activists can be sooo humourless. Boris looks a bit grin and bear it though, doesn't he?

L was quite restrained. One woman started to leg-hump him. I wonder if he knew that becoming Mayor would involve this kind of thing? I wonder also if it's worse for him than Ken because of his randy reputation?
On this march the surdo section started out quite ropey but by the second half they'd got it, they were in the groove. Doing a march like this is like doing a 4 hour practice session. You make so much progress.

Gay Pride

Eros

Amy with samba dancer

More Amy's...

Bo Jo at Pride

Gay pride march in London 2008...leading the parade with Barking Bateria. The theme was myths and fairytales. I went as a slutty fairy. Band colours were black and red. (1) Just before kick off, Bo Jo (Boris Johnson, our newly crowned Mayor of London), no doubt in an attempt to rival Ken Livingstone's inclusivity credentials, arrived to give his blessing to the whole she-bang. 

At the start of the march, the actor Sir Ian Mckellen, better known as Gandalf, stood beaming at us as we thumped past him. Tourists and gay people thronged the route along Oxford Street, down to Piccadilly Circus, terminating in Trafalgar Square. Funniest moment for me were the three friendly rubber clad gimps in full face masks, no doubt melting in the heat, rattling their chains in time to the music. Couldn't get a picture and keep the beat though...

There are floats from gay ambulance drivers, gay National Health Service workers, gay police, gay firemen...

If there was any doubt that Amy Winehouse has made it as a popular culture icon, it was confirmed by the fact that I saw at least 8 men dressed as Amy's. The tall black beehive studded with cocktail umbrella's, skinny legs atop teetering heels, was shorthand for a certain shambolic nihilist glamour admired by the gay fraternity. (Close up as I was at Glastonbury, it was clear that her beehive was entirely fake. I guess they are now selling Amy hairpieces. Her look has become a joke shop outfit. In addition, my daughter's drum teacher who is friends with Amy's band, gossiped that she is a total mess, constantly forgetting lyrics).

There was, of course, the alternative event in Vauxhall, Gay Shame, the annual festival of masculine misery, which stated the following in its flyer:

On Gay P**de night 2008 it's time to make men pay. Collect your wad of nine bob notes on the door and spend them in the market place as Duckie turns consumers into real men.

Take part in over 30 stalls that test your masculinity.

fighting
fucking
football
boxing
boozing
betting

Effeminate homosexuals will be barred and women vaguely tolerated as designer Robin Whitmore turns The Coronet into an interactive nightclub-theatre with the aesthetics of a giant fucking mini-cab office: sticky, brown, stained, a bit pongy and distinctly lacking a feminine touch. 
Dress code: straight blokes, plumbers, fat darts players, dads, butch lesbians.
Patrons please note: No pink, no make up, no heels, no floral patterns, no humanity.

which sounded like a laugh, but at the end of the march, my hands full of blisters, I did not have the energy to attend...

We did busk a while in the back streets of Soho (London's gay quarter) until a fire started in the building above us and we were interrupted by the arrival of the fire brigade, whose uniformed bod's, skillful hose-work and masculine bravery, delighted the appreciative onlookers...

(1) Each samba band has their own colours: Rhythms of Resistance London, (other bands in the anarchist RoR franchise, which is spreading all over the world, from Torino and Amsterdam to Mexico City, wear different colours) wears pink and silver; London School of Samba: green and white; ect ect. Each samba school has different functions: RoR is political and does actions and demo's; Barking Bateria is the party band; London School of Samba (LSS) is the official British samba band, and does the Notting Hill Carnival; Paraiso is in it for the money; Rhythms of the City are technically superb but rather boring. Of course we all cross over and sometimes get together for huge marches. You cannot imagine the thrill of drumming with 60 other drummers! You also get your gig tarts, who just take their pick of juicy gigs with each band. The Samba scene is very incestuous: several marriages and samba babies have resulted...Barking Bateria, unfortunately before I joined, used to have, it is said, massive orgies in which everyone had it off with everyone else. There was one point at which the entire band had to get treatment for VD en masse.