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Wednesday, 25 April 2007
Peers of the realm
 A “senior gay Conservative”, according to The Times, is claiming that former British Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath propositioned men for sex in the 1950s. “Senior gay Conservative” indeed. Is he a “senior gay” who happens to be Conservative or a senior Conservative who happens to be gay? I regard homosexuality as a matter of indifference. I simply do not care whether Ted Heath was gay or not. He took us into the EU, or Common Market, as it was then. Now that’s a real sin. Being gay does not make somebody interesting, funny, kind or clever, nor does being straight. This story caught my eye for other reasons. Before you read further, an explanatory note. “Cottaging” in – as it were – the Queen’s English, denotes casual gay sex in public toilets. I doubt whether this word is used in America – given the relative sizes of our countries, perhaps Americans call it ranching. Anyway, back to the story: Brian Coleman, chairman of the London Assembly, claimed that the former Prime Minister curbed his behaviour after he was warned that it would harm his career… “It was certainly not a secret that he was an old queen. I have been told that he was warned about his behaviour and then stopped.” In a column for the online edition of the New Statesman, Mr Coleman wrote that Sir Edward was one of a number of gay men who have thrived in government. He wrote: “The late Ted Heath managed to obtain the highest Office of State after he was supposedly advised to cease his cottaging activities in the 1950s when he became a Privy Counsellor,” he wrote. Those who can, do; those who can’t, counsel. Heath would not be the first British Prime Minister to be connected with toilets. Churchill’s Private Secretary came looking for him to announce the arrival of the Lord Privy Seal. Churchill was in the toilet, and replied: “Tell the Lord Privy Seal that the Prime Minister is sealed in the privy and can only deal with one sh*t at a time.” Then there was Neville Chamberlain, who was overheard while in the toilet saying: “I have in my hand a piece of paper.” Posted on 04/25/2007 8:08 AM by Mary Jackson
Comments
25 Apr 2007
 Hugh Fitzgerald
"Cottaging"? To an American, that word evokes a Cape Cod weathered now grey-shingled small house, with a little white picket fence, beach plums and roses, and a view of the dunes and the sea beyond. And possibly vines, of the twining woodbine -(not Twining's tea, not Woodbine 's fags) -- sort. Keats: "love in a hut." 25 Apr 2007
Reactionry I Have In My Hand A Piece Of Birch Bark
Or: Feces In Our Time
Or: Oops -Down The Memory Hole
Or: Love In A Fog
Or: Old Boy Behrani
I've got a sieve for a memory and most of my back issues of Scientific American are relatively inaccessible, but I believe that privies preserved documents many hundreds of years old(waiting the long years through in the dust below that little "chair") in Novgorod. There might have been nothing found about "dogging", but scrolling down to a picture on
gives rise to the notion that some schoolchildren could have honestly given a twist to the less ancient, "The dog ate my homework."
Hugh has neglected to mention that the Cape Cod cottage is back on the market. The original owner has lost some of her crust and the nice Iranian (Muslim-for-identification-purposes only)couple and their Islamist son have taken the high road back to "Old Tehran." The ashes and cinders have been swept away and the furniture has been covered with plastic as was the turned-to-blue head of the tin-pot soldier who no longer lies sturdy and staunch -or stiff- with his wife -who once was passing fair- since he kissed her and put her there.
26 Apr 2007
Reactionry O...Kaayyyyy....how about "Looking for Mr. Heath Bar"?
Just some pre-emptive apologies - I don't know if "my" cottage had dunes -I saw only part of the film on cable -though it surely had sand. It did have a white fence, but as this picture of Kingsley shows, something is clearly Amis -it isn't picketed:
Mine does resemble a hut more than Hugh's, though one shouldn't even ask how much either would cost today.
It was fatuous to use a children's poem for a theme linking the disparate parts of the post below, and presumptuous to put rosy cheeks by Keats. My old man read "Wynken, Blynken and Nod", which ridiculously anthropomorphizes two eyes and a head into "fishermen three" to us tykes, and more to the point, also recited Eugene Field's "Little Boy Blue"(no, not the one with narcolepsy)which did much the same with toys, using a heapin' helpin' of maudlin, schmalzy, bathos.
It still makes me blub. |
