I noticed that yesterday's Sunday Express (or Express on Sunday or whatever it's called) had a headline item about two schoolgirls who had been kicked off a bus because they didn't have the right fare "even at this time of heightened fear about child abductions". Can I just mention that I'm heartily sick of this ongoing campaign the media's got on to make every parent a paranoid lunatic and every child out playing a potential abductee. I've written about this at length elsewhere, so I'm not going to dwell on it again here, but just for the record, child abductions are incredibly rare, and children's murders are many, many times more likely to be commited by family members or carers than by strangers.
Which of course is the truth that the media are really afraid to tell us about.
Two threads that tie together later (which is ironic, as you'll see shortly):
Thread one: Ask any gay man who'se seen the film Beautiful Thing what he thought of it, and I'll put quite a bit of money on the likelihood that at some point he'll break into a broad smile, assuming he didn't start out with one. It's that kind of film - heart-warming, uplifting, and basically, feelgood. (It's likely that lesbians and straight people have similar reactions to it, of course, but I can't speak for them.) For anyone who doesn't know, it's the story of two teenage boys in the exotic surroundings of south-east London's Thamesmead Estate who fall in love one summer. It's how I suspect a lot of us wish our experience of first love had gone: That's certainly a part of my own response to it. I was pretty much in denial through the period in the boys' life the film depicts, and went on to have my first relationship with a rather older man, which meant I never had the experience of sharing that confused and confusing time, nor of slowly growing into the realisation that someone I'd come to know in one way might become something quite different to me. I obviously recommend the film in a big way.
Thread two: I used to be a fairly regular viewer of the TV series The Bill - more than anything because it was such a brilliant example of disciplined writing for television: No scene was ever shown that didn't directly involve one of the police officers, meaning the audience never knew any more than the characters, and the writers didn't have the convenient expository device of discussions between the bad guys. Also, the storylines were constructed tightly within each single episode (or occasional two- or three-parter), and were initiated and concluded within its running time, often running two plots parallel with each other and often tying them together at the end. (See where the irony's coming in?) I got a bit out of the viewing habit when they started making things a bit 'soapier', delving into the characters' private lives and running subplots on over months and months. It just became too much effort to stick with it.
I've vaguely started dipping in and out again recently, as a couple of people have said that it was getting stronger in both character and plots again, and that although ongoing storylines were still the norm, they were being done quite well. I haven't seen enough to judge whether it's as well-done as it used to be, but nevertheless, I've seen enough to get a certain resonance from one of the storylines. I mentioned a couple of days ago that there'd been complaints about a kiss between two male officers, and the way they've presented it is that one established gay character (a sergeant) has quietly been falling in love with an apparently straight new constable (oh the number of times we've all done something similar....). They've worked together and got to know each other, and the sergeant has tried to mask his feelings by means of a rather antagonistic manner. Progressively, they've nevertheless become closer, and ultimately, the sergeant confessed his feelings, and the constable initiated the infamous kiss. According to the press comment, this is the start of a period of confusion for the characters, involving the female officer the constable also has feelings for.
The resonance is a lot to do with some very similar stuff to the Beautiful Thing reactions. It, too (starting to tie the two threads together now) has to do with the development of friendship before the development of a 'relationship'. Like very many gay people, (and I'm not ashamed to say it), pretty well all of my relationships have started when I've met people in bars or clubs. It's a useful shorthand, since in the 'real world', statistically the men you meet are more likely to be straight than gay, so you have to negotiate that first awkwardness before you can even go near the topic of whether there's any mutual interest. Meeting in a gay bar at least saves the palaver of that first stage. But the downside is that you almost never get to know someone that well *before* you're in some form of relationship, and what then frequently happens is that you find you really don't have very much in common beyond some mutual attraction, and that's not the best basis for a long term commitment. I know that straight people who meet in similar circumstances face similar issues, of course, but at least there is that potential for some other kind of acquaintenceship being formed. Not one of the gay men or lesbians I know is in a relationship with someone they got to know as a person before they knew them as a potential partner. So I hope they manage to work things out on The Bill - it might give me and some others a degree of hope. There's a weirdly, unexpectedly romantic part of me that likes the idea of having that happen.
The most ironic thing about all this, by the way (wrapping it all up beautifully in one "you couldn't make it up" package), is that the actor playing the constable, Scott Neal, also played one half of the pair in Beautiful Thing. How's that for tying two threads together?