Danskcolin: Wednesday June 19th 2024 "I'll be out soon! Can't you just wait ONE MINUTE haha!"

Dear reader, do you sometimes get one of those "life-affirming moments"? They may not happen very often but they're very powerful when they do, aren't they. Like it was this week for local man Ethan Finney from the lovely Worcestershire village of Nob End.

Poor Ethan!!!!

Yet, today I myself get one of those sudden "flashes", just like Ethan.

No, I'm not going through the 'male menopause', despite the rumours haha(!) and yet today is sort-of a bit of a turning-point, a sudden realisation that there's a light at the end of a tunnel; and that I'm at last really really really and actually actually actually getting over my hip replacement operation of April 3rd, and that I'm coming to see that, amazingly, there's life in the old dog yet [I'd like to see some evidence,, Colin, before I accept that level of heady statement! - Ed], a kind of Freddie Mercury moment that's saying "Don't stop me now!" [That's it! I'm definitely going to have to ask your physician to up your medication again, Colin! - Ed]

flashback to early April: me in my hospital bed at Redditch

recovering from my hip operation, and getting a visit

from my daughter Sarah and granddaughter Lily - awwwww!!!!

"When was that "moment", that sudden realisation that life was opening up for you again, Colin?", I hear you ask. [Not me! - Ed]

Yes, when was it exactly? Was it this morning when my long-suffering wife Lois and I were "road-testing" our new motorised patio awning by having a cup of coffee under it?

Or was it when we were having our delayed-to-avoid-the-crowds Father's Day lunch at local country pub The Plough and Harrow with all the other local old codgers? Maybe.

Ever since my operation, when Lois and I have gone out of the house, I've made sure I had my stick with me, even if just on the back seat of the car, as back-up more mental than physical. Today, however, for the first time I didn't even think of taking it with me. As we sat down at our table at lunchtime today, I realised that, for the first time, I didn't need to find a place to "park" my stick, somewhere where it wouldn't come crashing to the floor with a resounding "thwack", always a bit of an embarrassment, to put it mildly!

It may have been starting then, I think, that "light at the end of the tunnel" moment, while we were at the pub, because Lois and I were having a bit of fun with the pub's lovely waitress, when she was boasting about how many different gins they stock there, and we asked her teasingly for some "Wicked Wolf" - they didn't have it of course, it's more of a local Devon and Cornwall tipple.

flashback to 2018: I buy my first ever bottle of the local

"Wicked Wolf" gin at Lynton's Food and Drink Festival

October 2018: back home in Cheltenham, Lois and I experienced

one of our early "Wicked Wolf" moments, which was nice.

No, it wasn't at the pub, on reflection. I think my "light at the end of the tunnel" moment happened in bed during the afternoon, after we got home.

I had my hip-replacement operation on April 3rd, but, despite having a shiny-new hip, the expected "bounce back to normal life" didn't happen for a few weeks, and I got used to thinking that I would be "sort of okay but not able to do a whole bunch of things things I used to do before".

Gradually in the last 2 months, however, I've found that I've started to be able to do more and more of the activities I'd had to give up. Now today I have been suddenly conscious of a weird new sense of freedom, and the conviction that I can now beat pretty much most of these restrictions I've been under, and if there's something I really want to do, I'm suddenly getting the feeling that I can do it, if not at once, then eventually.

[That's it - I'm calling your GP right now! - Ed]

So that was it - my "light at the end of the tunnel" moment, in bed, here in Malvern at about 3pm on Wednesday June 19th - historians please note haha! It's just a pity that my long-suffering wife Lois wasn't there to share the moment with me, but she had some urgent work to do on the computer as treasurer for her local church. So yet again, for the third time this week, our usual afternoon nap routine is disrupted, and we haven't done it now since Sunday, which seems a lifetime ago.

Let's hope for better things tomorrow!

21:00 We wind down with an interesting documentary, presented by Sandi Toksvig, the UK's favourite Dane, all about a lesbian club in London, the Gateways, which closed in 1985.

The club, founded in the late 1940's, became known primarily as a place with a bar and a very crowded dance-floor, where large numbers of young women could meet and dance together in embarrassingly close proximity.

But what exactly was the "Gateways Grind", in the title of tonight's programme? Lois and I are wondering about this, but we soon find out - my goodness!!!!

Ironically the club found it had to close, in 1985, because attitudes to LGBTQ people were getting more liberal, not less, and the need to have a club for specifically lesbians seemed to have dissolved. However, this is now conceived as a step backwards by presenter Sandi and her contributors to the programme. At least they were places where you could be guaranteed to meet somebody of your own "persuasion", they say.

And it's interesting to hear that there had been a history of clashes between the Gateways Club, in its latter years, and the Gay Liberation Front, which wanted lesbians to be more public about their sexuality.

The club's management, on the other hand, was all for protecting lesbians' right to privacy, and their right not to "come out". And with good reason - after all, this was a time when, for instance, divorce courts were still taking children away from their mothers if there was evidence that they were lesbians or bisexual, and award the custody to the fathers. Women found to be lesbians could sometimes even lose their jobs, or be evicted from their flats.

Now where are lesbians to go, if they want to meet somebody guaranteed to be another lesbian? Long-time activist Lisa Power has the answer.

And there's currently a battle on for permission to instal an official English Heritage blue plaque outside the Gateways Club's old premises in London.

Apparently a huge majority of blue plaques commemorating "so-and-so slept here" or "so-and-so lived here" or "died here" are for men, including quite a few gay men, we're told.