Mardi Gras

This evening we headed out to the Mardi Gras parade once Ella was asleep (we got a babysitter). We were fortunate to find a decent vantage point in time for the start of the parade down Oxford Street (through luck rather than good judgement) and watched with absolute delight as hundreds of gay folk pranced about in feathers and leopard skin and very little else, to the sound of fireworks and Abba and Kyle and the Village People. My favourites were the old guy dressed in cardinal’s robes, spinning circles in a mobility trolley, and the ladies dressed in burkas, minus the middle section, which they wore completely topless, carrying banners reading “Fuck Religious Bigotry”. We nearly didn’t go out, so were really pleased to have been part of the spectacle.

What an experience – for a moment I quite fancied being gay, though would prefer to be a gay man than a woman because I see myself prancing about in feathers and heels more than stomping about in hob-nail boots. At least one reader of this blog will now be mortally offended and may never speak to me again unless I qualify this by saying that, of course, not all lesbians wear hobnail boots. No, they don’t, but there were quite a lot of them on parade last night, and not, I suspect, simply through issues of comfort.

Stop digging Sarah, stop digging.