Manners please, you’re at my table

Dear readers, welcome back to my world of perfect homosexual domesticity for all, that’s right, even the straights, because we are very inclusive here. Normal service has resumed after a political few weeks in these pages. As much as I believe in affirmative political action, we simply cannot further our cause without a perfectly laid table and exemplary etiquette. Those of you in the UK who don’t live in a whole in the ground, will have noticed the recent circus made by the media over a survey of the nations eating habits.

I can hardly say I am surprised by the results. We threw away any hope of maintaining a civilized society when the middle classes stopped dreaming of sending their daughters to Finishing Schools and resorted to ITV2 programs like “From Ladette to Lady” to learn proper etiquette. Now only the very rich attend these venerable institutions, which inevitably fail them because the rich have still not worked out nothing is more vulgar than being rich, charity not training can only solve that problem.

However, I digress. I hardly dare go to a restaurant these days for fear of being scolded by flying Lobster Bisque or witnessing some oaf land their chubby elbow in a red onion & stilton tart. Well, dear readers, on this rare occasion the papers are correct. As a nation we are lost in culinary obscurity. We have forgotten how to eat and enjoy the process, instead we fuel up in the most efficient manner possible, abandoning taste, texture, variety on the palate, the tension between flavors, aroma and of course the power a good glass of wine has to make or break a meal. I accept that there is not always time to prepare a full three course meal if one is heading out to, say the Opera, but to make a regular habit of dining on food from plastic wrappers bought only to fill the hole in your stomach and not enlighten your sole is sad way to live ones life, in fact you may as well pack up and fuck off to Hull or a nasty suburb somewhere with a KFC handy for your vile tastes! Dear readers, the gay housewife has no place for instant food.

In my previous columns regarding where it is acceptable for the gay House wife to both live and shop you will have noticed shops and areas fresh, organic, fairly traded produce are readily available have been championed. One shop that has not been mentioned but is often found in many a pleasant area is Marks and Spencer’s. This, my dear readers, is because I believe M&S is at the forefront of the nations failure to up hold its previously high standards in etiquette. For my dear readers further ashore than Britain and main-land Europe, it is hard to explain Marks and Spencer’s because it is less a shop and more a British institution gone wrong. It is best explained as a department store with a supermarket in the basement. And it is this basement supermarket I blame for our nations failure.

M&S have made it dangerously easy for us to convince ourselves we are eating quality food made conveniently available in attractive packaging. To take a look at the average menu from Marks and Spencer’s, you can buy steak, with ready prepared sauce for twice the price of your local organic butchers, you can buy ready-mashed potatoes for £3.20 and a ready prepared chocolate mouse for four times the cost of a bit sugar, eggs, cream and coco. All of this food tumbles out the microwave and on to the plate, and where do people eat it – ON THEIR SOFAS!! I know, I was disgusted to find this too. Had I been caught eating on a sofa at finishing school I would have been booted out with no hope of appeal. However, it is not just M&S who are to blame for this inexcusable drop in standards. Even my dear Waitroes is guilty of selling, I darkly write the word, ready-meals.

Gay Housewives of the world, your respective countries need you to save them from descending into culinary anarchy! Britains and Americans how did we get it so wrong and my dear Europeans how did you get it so rite? In Spain you have the siesta to sleep of lunch, in some parts of France you have the two hour lunch break, in Germany the staff canteen is full of epicurean delights, in Italy anything you eat sets a fire of excitement in your stomach and what do we have? Marks and Fucking Spencers!

We need to bring delight back to our tables, palate and noses and once more make eating a social occasion, not just a stop at the fuel pump of the stomach. If we all spent more time eating at an actual table, instead of off our knees people might know it is an offence to put your elbows on the table, chew loudly or with your fucking mouth open! Dear god the less educated may even learn the difference between a butter and a fish knife if we really try! But small steps first, Poof, Lezzies, Breeders, cook your man or woman a good meal tonight, eat it at the table, maybe try some advanced items of cutlery, keep your elbows of the table cloth and for god sake put your fork in your left hand! To motivate you in your quest I leave you with some rather terrifying statistics! Together, with gay homemaking we can save the world from slobbery!

Percentage of those Questioned Admitted to:
Holding fork in right hand 73% What did their mothers teach them?

Elbows on Table 67% Would they put their feet or buttocks on the table too?

Failing to remain at the table
while everyone is eating 67% Just plane rude

Eating Straight out of packaging 64% Common, probably from Hull

Talking with mouth full 36% We may be busy but there is enough time to both talk and chew

Using fingers to scoop up
last bits of food 34% Ever heard of bread?

Pointing at someone with knife/fork 27% Having never seen this happen I can only imagine the horror!

Burping at Table 25% Would they fart in public too?

Licking plate clean 24% Again, ever heard of bread

Blowing nose on napkin 20% Does no one have monogrammed handkerchiefs anymore?

Putting too much food in mouth 20% We’re people, not dogs

Forgetting to than host for meal 19% I would throw the offending cunt from polite society

Not knowing what cutlery to use 19% I wouldn’t dine at my table if I were in this position!

Throwing food at across table 8% Isn’t that what monkeys do?


Love to you all,
(m)Arthur

Say hello at MySpace or email me.

A Small yet Insulting Follow-up
Dear readers, following my previous blog and complaint to the BBC, I have a little up date for you. In response to my comments on their negative use of gay stereotypes they chose to ignore my staggering intellect and explain what comedy is. In Response to my letter:

"I found your use of gay stereotypes in last night transmission of Extras deeply offensive. I do not believe such extreme stereotyping is required in this day and age. Gay men and woman take all shapes and forms but one thing they do not do is behave as they were portrayed in last night..s program.

We are not all flouncing panto dames, we perform a wide variety of roles through out society and often come across daily obstacles because of our sexual orientation. Portraying gay behaviour in a manner reminiscent of black peoples treatment at the hands of "the Black and White Minstrel Show" does nothing to help anyone, other than achieving a few easy, cheap and offensive gags.

I believe the BBC should be producing programming for all but this is not the case. Adoring to a recent survey by Stonewall the BBC is five times more likely to present a negative portrayal of a gay man or woman than any other channel and when ever a gay characters appear on the BBC he or she is most likely to be the butt of a joke and a deeply clichéd stereotype.

With all this in mind and when making future programming decisions you should consider the £192 million gay people contribute to the BBC each year and as a public broadcaster the duty you have to present a fair picture of the UK. If the BBC would like to make a formal apology for its appalling use of gay clichés it would be the start on a long road to making quality, inclusive programming."

I received this:

'Extras' is a comedy show which parodies some of the eccentricities of British society to an absurd degree. We appreciate that some viewers won't like the style of the programme but for others its appeal lies in its exhibition of bad taste. It relies on comic exaggeration and is highly satirical. The humour in the programme is largely uninhibited by some of the traditional taboos surrounding comedy but we encourage an awareness of the boundaries of acceptable taste.

Well, fuck me, while watching that episode I must of forgotten my lengthily and expensive education, my MA..s & PhD and common sense to not notice the premise on which the program works! And in regards to everything else I had to say; nothing. I..m not going to turn this column, intended to spread happiness and joy through out the homosexual word into my personal soap box, I just thought you might be interested to see how our national broadcasting organisation has adopted an ostrich like approach to answering disgruntled viewers queries!

Normal service will resume next time with the gay housewife..s indispensable guide to table manners!

Perfect Homosexual Domesticity to you all,
(m)Arthur
x
Say hello at MySpace or email me.

Fat Witless Homophobia

Dear readers, I warn you now, I am angry and this is about to get political. I was enjoying a pleasant evening in front of my exquisite high definition television with the lovely husband, he wanted to watch Ricky Gervaises “The Extras” on BBC 2, not liking said comedians work myself I decided to indulge my deer man and put up no resistance to viewing what turned out to be publicly sanctioned homophobia. Even more staggering was Sir Ian “I like a young boy” McKellen’s Participation in this work of ill conception. No more than twenty minutes in my dear readers I was forced to leave the room because the bloated cunt Gervais had offended me, the gentile creature that I am, so deeply.

What enraged me thus involved Gervaises, useless actor character, Andy Milman, landing a role in a “gay” play, directed by Sir Ian “I’m here to pull in the pink audience” McKellen. Standing by the stage door on the opening night, some of his butch, city type, uber hetro, rugby type friends from school come to watch the show, he can’t bring himself to divulge the nurture of the play when a flock of egregiously & disgustingly stereotyped gay men parade past our line of stereotyped hetro rugger buggers flaunting all their panto dame credentials in the most appalling display of stereotyping I have seen since “The Black and White Minstrel Show”. Gervais simply cringes and to cut a long story short learns and gains nothing from the experience.

My grudge here is not with the nature of Gervaises comedy or the love him hate him side of his work, in fact I have enjoyed some of the episodes of Extras and have a great respect for the talent of his cohort in the series, the rather lovely Ashley Jensen. What has vexed me thus is I can find no reason for anyone in the public eye to present homosexual behavior in such a two dimensional light other than for cheap gags at a social demographic it is still ok to openly abuse. Clashing two extreme stereotypes on national television can achieve nothing because at the end of the day neither group can learn anything from the exercise and to say you are making a point about using stereotypes in comedy by, gasp, using them in comedy is misguided. To use stereotypes that truly belong in Jim Davidson or Roy Chubby Browns territory is cheap and unnecessary. If Gervaise were doing the same thing with women, ethnic minorities, religions or disabled people he would never have got the script past its first reading. Thankfully in the UK, since 2003, it has been illegal to discriminate in the work place against someone on the basis of his or her sexuality, and name calling and teasing is regarded as harassment. However it should be noted these laws do not affect religious organizations, and the last time I checked the BBC has no religious affiliation.

However the point here is not a legal or spiritual one, it is cultural. As a gay man, I don’t necessarily want to live in London’s gay ghettos of Soho or Stoke-Newington. I want to live where I chose and go places that aren’t just the domain of the homosexual. I wish to live in as much of a heterosexual as homosexual society, and until seeing the extras last night I had never thought this an issue. I have friends who have darling little country cottages where the rural community has welcomed us queer homemakers with cups of tea and open arms; on this evidence I had hoped as a culture we had made it past open season on queers for cheap laughs and easy gags. I was even believing on the evidence of play’s like Angels in America & Bent, films like Happiness or Hedwig and the Angry Inch, books like The Long Firm or Running with Scissors and music like Anthony and the Johnston’s we could move beyond “the gay play/film/book/song” and have arts that presented the full spectrum of gay life with real people and real situations, not flouncing stereotypes stuck in a vicious circle of coming of age story’s, coming out sags and badly dressed drag drams.

How are young gay men and women going to feel safe if blatant homophobia is presented on national television on a Sunday night when they walk into school the following Monday for all their nasty small minded fellow pupils to have such a fixed idea of how the boy or girl who is a bit odd, maybe a bit gay will finally end up? And how is the young gay man or woman to find any reasonable role models when all they are presented is a dumbed down panto dame for a gay man and a bull dyke for a gay woman?

This is an issue that needs to be addressed by the media at large, not just the BBC. The Media’s power to influence public oppinon has never been more powerful and check and balances must be put upon their work. It is worth noting, of all the British terrestrial channels the BBC is the worst of all broad casters in its treatment of Gays in the media. A recent Stonewall survey of the Media found the BBC was five times more likely to present a negative portrayal of a gay man or woman than any other channel and when ever a gay character appears on the BBC he or she is most likely to be both the butt of a joke and a deeply clichéd stereotype. Our only response to this is when ever we see such offence being committed be it in print, on the screen or radio we must make our feelings known by addressing complaint to the relevant bodies and flag it up to Stonewalls Media Monitoring unit.

For us, as gay housewifes to reach our true potentials, we need to live in a society in which we are seen as complete human beings, not two dimensional beings wheeled out when ever a script writer is too lazy to write a real joke. That is my tirade against the media over for today dear readers. It should not be forgotten that the gay housewife is not only a bastion of domestic perfection but a political figure too. We have huge spending power, a large political and media influence and a increasing acceptance, all of which have taken many years of campaigning to change hearts and minds by many men and women who go largely ignored today. We have come so far it would be foolish to stop fighting for a better, fairer life in which we can live happily with our heterosexual counter parts. Normal service shall resume shortly my dear, when we move back to the happier aspects of gay housewifery, but to make this a truly valuable guide sometime we have to step off the marked path a look a little deeper at everything a gay housewife can be.

Love to you all,
(m)Arthur

Say hello at MySpace or email me.

Umbrella Etiquette
Dear Readers, some of you may have noticed we are heading in to Autumn in the UK which unfortunately means a lot of rain. With rain comes many things such as ruined hair do’s, unsightly rain coats on poor people, Granny’s wearing those funny plastic things on their heads and of course Umbrellas.

While strolling down the street this morning on my way to the Local Organic Bakery to pick up some Olive Focaccia for lunch I had to run a Gauntlet of terror! Yes, dear readers, Londoners seem to forget all their manners the minute it begins to rain and whip out their umbrellas faster than Posh and Beck’s posing for yet another photograph. I nearly had my eye gouged out several times by the prong of many a cheap umbrella hastily purchased from Boots. This could be because I am of course the perfect 6’ 2” male therefore my eye level tends to be above that of the plebs. However, it could also be my heritage, you see dears I was born in Scotland where rain is a permanent fixture of life so I tend to not notice when a few drops fall from the sky, unlike the hordes who try to take my eyes out the minute they feel their internal barometer tripping the scales.

To save you my dears from becoming one of these umbrella-toting hooligans I offer the following guidance for when it rains:
- Why are you somewhere it is raining? Surely one should only spend May through to September in the UK, fleeing to warmer climbs for the winter months. If you have to live here all year round have a word with your husband about freeing up some assets to purchase some property in the sun.
- Obviously you won’t be using public transport, so make sure you drive, or are driven, between covered areas only.
- Have someone carry your umbrella for you, at least then you won’t be responsible for forking out someone’s eye.
- Stay in Selfridges / Harvey Nicks / Harrods / Waitrose (delete as appropriate) until it stops raining.
- Carry some hand painted bamboo chopsticks for poking the eyes of the bastards who skewer you with their umbrellas. You may as well get some finely accessorized revenge.

So my dears, please follow this advice and stop yourselves from becoming animals with umbrellas! Love and dryness to you all!

Love to you all

Arthur
x

Say hello at MySpace or email me.

Gay Divorce – Who gets the Bone China?
This week’s topic has an unusual gravity my dears. Being a gay housewife is not all bright smiles and well-decorated cakes, no my dears, it can mean tackling serious and troubling issues. As I have previously mentioned, my studies at Cambridge concentrated on the application of gay housewifery to alleviate social injustice. This led me to chair many worthy charities such as “Bake Sales for Justice” and “Embroidery for the Emancipation Women”, plus many more causes worthy of any gay housewife’s attentions.

Gay Divorce is no exception to the cannon of the gay housewife’s attentions. While only a few weeks ago I was exalting the merits of gay marriage I feel it is only fair I should give due attention to the sad subject of gay divorce, something I hope neither myself nor any of you my dears has to experience. The build up can be protracted, the break up chaotic, the recriminations deeply unpleasant and the fight over the bone china last months in a court of law. It must be remembered, after a few years of running a home with the kind of iron fisted determination it takes to create perfection, when wronged the gay housewife is well placed to exact his revenge.

There are generally 4 causes of Gay Divorce, all usually the partners’ fault, rarely the gay housewife’s and all grounds for serious compensation. From my studies I have concluded these are:
- Slobbery; the husband is discovered to be a slob, and most likely from Hull. Despite counseling and shock therapy he still wants to travel on Ryan Air or shop at IKEA. Divorce is inevitable.
- Relocation; the husbands work wants to take him to some god forsaken Island in the middle of the north sea or Birmingham, reasoning with him fails. Again divorce is inevitable.
- Financial; the husband refuses to give you a suitable allowance or allow you to work. Clearly the man is stuck in the Victorian ages and has no clue how to treat a gentleman. Skip any kind of discussion and reach for the decree nici.
- Violence or Infidelity. Neither are nice or acceptable but you will get more in the divorce settlement.

Whatever the cause, if you find yourself facing a divorce it is essential the settlement rules in your favor. Often as a gay housewife you will have little or no money of your own because you have forsaken your own career to care and nurture for your husband, therefore, his achievements, promotions, possessions and money are as much yours as they are his. It is important to make this very clear when you begin divorce proceedings. I suggest making a long list of everything you have done to further your man and presenting this to your divorce attorney. This may be painful but now it is time for revenge, not sniveling over a bottle of Chablis with Streisand playing in the background. Remember your man has betrayed your trust; he may have hidden his slobbery, beaten you or failed to listen to your reasoned arguments for an increase in your allowance. This kind of betrayal must not be easily forgotten and can only be forgiven with a 40 to 50% settlement sum. If you’re looking for hints, take a look at this list. All those housewives did a fine job of milking their former husbands for a very respectable sum. It must also be remembered that recently judges have been ruling that maintenance costs can go beyond that of living costs and the sum should reflect the contribution the housewife made to the marriage. So at least if you have to endure such an unpleasant process the law is stacked in your favor!

However, the real dilemma is not a financial one, it is a social one. The Corbusier sideboard is one thing, but who gets the friends is another. For some reason ex-husbands seem to think they are entitled to a fair share in this area, after all, you are only taking half of his money not all of it so why should you have all the friends? Simply put: who’s cooking, decorating, charm and social poise made them your friends in the first place? Your husband, working all day, simply walking into a Dinner Party, or you, who spent hours lovingly preparing party after party, charming the right neighbors and thrilling his boss with your diamond sharp whit? There’s no real discussion here. You take it all. No doubt when he finds his next husband the poor fool will create a circle of friends for him as sublime as before for him only to lose them again when his nasty little habits surface.

So fellow poofs, please for your own dignity make sure you get as much money and as many assets as you can and leave no friend behind, and if one of your dear friends is going through an ugly divorce please pass this advice on. Remember, we have each other as well as our husbands so stick together my dears and you’ll be down the isle with a true gentleman in no time. Please name and shame your ex-husbands at MySpace or email me and together we will create perfect homosexual domesticity for all.

Love you all
(m)Arthur
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