Donkeyshott & Xuitlacoche

Gary was gay and in those days we were all part gay, weren't we? According to Gary one-in-four men were gay, and so I thought well, be friends, don't be prejudiced. He took me round Madrid. "Cibeles", he said, is a gay pick up point." "The Retiro ," he said: "is a gay pick up point." "Plaza Espanya," he said is a gay pick up point (in fact it is the symbolic centre of fascism in Spain) ....until my whole map of Madrid became Gary's gay map. "How would you describe your sexuality" , he asked me: "Well, to some extent, I suppose I am polymorphously perverse." - I was taking the Mickey. "Aha!" He said. "That means you are gay. The only place they mention that word is in the gay literature." "Well actually" , I said, (my pretentiousness still gongs back to me over the years) "I read it in a book by Freud and not the gay literature." But what shocked me was this overlay

We went to lake Naivasha occasionally, The Elzaki's had a Peugeot 404 and we had white Volkswagen Beetle (number plates: KGB 778). There are smooth straight stretches of road on the way to Naivasha and the Elzakis were in front. Dad decided we would race them: As he accelerated the VW engine clatter got louder and we went past blowing raspberries at the Elzaki children, who looked shocked and piqued. We shouted in triumph. But then the Elzakis entered the game and after a few minutes a dangerously rocking Peugeot 404 overtook us in turn, with the Elzaki children staring back at us in our upstart Beetle. In those days Peugeots were wonderful cars. The toughest rally in the world was the East African Safari rally . It was an important occasion for Kenyans. We used to drive out into the countryside and choose a promising corner with a hump and a high bank and sit and watch the rally cars as they approached. T he cars geared down, flew up, spun round and accelerated away in one s

The Dangers of Remote Controlled Education Essentially, Labour's education policies amounted to a de-skilling of teachers by forcing every school to follow a National Curriculum in the questionable pursuit of standardisation. This National Curriculum was supposed to be an example of "best practice". This was a term borrowed from quality management. The National Curriculum reads as if it was thought up by one particularly conformist pedagogue in the bath. Why should every teacher follow the lead of a "paragon' s" ? It doesn't work in theory or practice. Some of the best teachers are incredibly eccentric. The vital thing you have to understand about teaching, and I speak as a teacher trainer who started training in 1988, is that every teacher needs to be aware of their own teaching style when they teach. Different teaching styles derive from different personalities and outlooks on teaching. Where does conforming to the ideas and thoughts of one personali

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Rijeka-view-2.jpg J'Attendrai 1 , JAttendrai 2 Dover 1939, on the ferry to France Mahler Symphony No 1 Hove, the smell of night flowers Natty Dread Rijeka crossing into Trieste 1976 Every grain of sand Play that at my funeral, Chicks Blue Brighton 1977 Sisters of Mercy Nairobi 1974 Ring of Fire Nice Mexican lilt to this Hurt 2008 February, London Where e're you walk At mom's funeral in Nelspruit, the song sung by John Moondance I977 Boulevard of Broken Dreams My children's music Pissing in a River Lowest Low No. 2 1978 Super Ape Brighton 1979 The Wind India and Tolworth Fire 2009 Heartbeats Tolworth 2007 Don't tell me Uruapan with Tere and family Christmas 2000 La Negra Tomasa with Teserita in 1989 Wish you were here India 1975 Buckets of Rain New Delhi 1975 If you want me, honey baby I'll be there. Willie the Pimp In India, preparing for O'Level examinations, 1976 Song for Sharon , Black Crow Brighton 1978

These composers blow me away. Olivier Messiaen Juan Gutierrez de Padilla - a 16th century Mexican composer Morton Feldman Alfred Schnittke Fazil Say Gyorgy Ligeti Zoltan Kodaly Lou Harrison Iannis Xenakis Pierre Boulez Giacinto Scelsi Johannes Brahms John Cage János Bartók Edgard Varèse Mauricio Kagel John Adams Terry Riley Steve Reich Alvin Lucier Morton Subotnik Luciano Berio Thanks to Alpay and Last.fm

It should go without saying... ....that we condemn the scummy prat who called Liskula Cohen : "a psychotic, lying, whoring ... skank" But I disagree with Kate Harding , (in my view a pseudo blogger), posting her blog in the Guardian attacking bloggers. It's a case of set a thief to catch a thief. The mainstream media is irritated by bloggers because they steal its thunder and so they comission people like Kate Harding , people with nothing to say for themselves, apparently, other than that they are feminists, to attack bloggers. I'm black. So I can legitimately attack "angry white old men". I'm a feminist, so I have carte blanche to call all anonymous bloggers "prats." Because yes, that is her erudite response to bloggers. No I don't say that the blogging medium can't be used to attack progressives in whatever context. Of course it can. But to applaud the censorship of a blogger by a billion dollar corporate like Google, and moreov

Picture by Aranxata I fell in love with a Purepecha of Tzintzunzan. I have a picture of her clearly in my mind - sitting on top of the largest round Yacata, overlooking the lake; there is a hoop of silver in her ear; she is an expectant, confident young queen dressed in an embroidered white cotton shirt. Across from us on our left we can see a weathered cathedral and monastry, it's sweet yellow stone is visible through the trees. The breeze blows off the lake, combs into the pines and then washes back - bringing the scent of winumo.