JUNE 10th, 2017 The streets and Dane John Gardens of Canterbury were brightened and enlightened with rainbow colours. Rainbow scarves, rainbow kerchiefs and rainbow waistcoats…and that was just the dogs. The children ran with rainbow flags and rainbow wings. One pair of two week old twins were wearing rainbow onesies. Wheelchairs, walking sticks and crutches were covered with rainbow ribbons. Ambulance staff, fire officers, and police wore rainbow stickers, ribbons and garlands. It was the first time I have ever seen armed police officers with rainbow ribbons decorating their machine guns! Yes, there really were armed police as well as the usual ones, plus security staff. (They didn't wear any rainbow decorations but I did see a female one darting into their little tent in order to dance wildly to one of the drag singers). And then us LGBTQ people were of every age, every colour, every sort, all happy and beautiful. Some were so incredibly beautiful that it was like watching a show, but don't ask me if these were male or female. Sometimes I couldn't have told you anyway, which I found quite disconcerting! “Ooh! She’s hot. Oops. She’s a he!”
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19/6/2017 0 Comments Wake: The RisingJust one impression June 17, 2017-11-18 ]performance space[Training as a P.E. teacher meant that I also had to do what was then called ‘Modern Dance’. I was very much a gymnast, a trampolinist, a sports player, but definitely not a dance person. In fact, I was the worst in our year. Unfortunately, to pass the course overall we had to pass the Modern Dance module, so my tutor gained several grey hairs on my behalf. ‘Let's find you a final exam piece where you can thrash about, fall over and not have to do anything gentle or artistic. Nothing which suggests grace or pretty.’ So I was a river! I did a few tippy tippy steps to represent my river’s spring, then a few bigger steps to be rivulets as I grew. Then the good bit when I could crash about and fight my rapids. Then I slowed right down and oozed down to the floor as I became my final moments, spread out into the estuary and flowed into the sea. I passed! ‘Never again!’ I thought, ‘No more dancing or trying to represent anything remotely elegant or fluid.’
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