You Don't Live Like I Do

After my holiday to Fuerteventura with cosmolinguist, I've been feeling a bit more energised about some activist projects so I thought I'd talk about them here.

A long time ago I had the idea to build some Corsi-Rosenthal air filter boxes, which I could loan out to LGBT+ groups for their meetings to make them less risky and more accessible. I did a lot of prep work for this, including coming up with a brand name ("Breathe Out"), some talking points (us queers should be used to the Government ignoring epidemics) and so on. But as I started reaching out to groups I found that nobody was interested and got disheartened.

This weekend I went to the Onion Social Centre, a squat in a former Sure Start centre in Longsight. A couple of friends of mine are helping out there and they'd asked me and cosmolinguist for advice on Covid risk reduction. I ended up writing a reasonably long case study / briefing for them, suggesting that the best starting point is providing free masks (possibly courtesy of the local Mask Bloc) and education. Ideally they'd have C-R boxes in each room but that's a big ask as they have a lot of rooms. Natural ventilation is a bit of a non-starter - they're already struggling to keep the place warm in January, and to make sure the ventilation is effective you need moderately expensive CO2 monitors and the time to take readings.

Anyway, when I got home I took the plunge and bought a bunch of parts to make two 100W 20-inch C-R boxes. They work out at about £60 each. They should be able to filter pretty big rooms, so I'm thinking of providing one for the "main room" at the squat, and maybe another for the reception. In future I can look at smaller boxes (maybe using 8" or 12" fans instead of 20") which might be cheaper, for the smaller rooms. And hopefully I'll get them back if / when the squat folds, which means I'll have them on hand to provide to other spaces.

It's not exactly world changing, but it seems that making small corners safer for my fellow queers might be something I can actually contribute, and I'm pretty excited about that.

This weekend just gone was pretty quiet. We had a few plans but just didn't get round to them due to a lack of energy all round.

I did take cosmolinguist to the gym on Saturday morning, but I couldn't go myself as the session was fully booked. Turns out that only about 6 people showed up so I totally could have gone. I'll bear that in mind for future sessions.

I had slept really badly so I crashed out when I got home. We ended up missing the last day of the David Hockney exhibition at Factory International. On Sunday, E wasn't feeling up to going to Sparkle Sanctuary and V didn't want to go on their own.

The trouble with weekends like that is that they don't feel like much of a break when you're back at work on Monday. And we don't even have any plans for the next one. I worry that this is a reinforcing cycle where we're too tired to do anything so we don't feel like we've had a break and end up more tired...

Back in April I went to a friend's birthday picnic, and some of the other people were wearing Solovair boots. They're basically old-school Doc Martens, nothing fancy. But unlike Doc Martens, they actually come in my size. Occasionally. I could have bought some 11-hole boots back then, but I decided to hold out for 14-hole which were out of stock. I signed up to be informed when they came back in, and got an email just before Christmas.

Obviously with everything else going on, it took me a while to notice the email. But once I did I rushed to the online shop and bought them. I have been a good boy and deserve a treat! They arrived today and they look great! Since this photo I've done a bit more work to tension the laces properly. They have side zips so I don't have to unlace them every time to take them off.

And yes it hasn't escaped my attention that there are certain clubs full of gentlemen who would really appreciate these boots. Nor the risk of being mistaken for a neo-Nazi TBH, but I'll be extra queer and camp to mitigate that.

( Pet Death )

Alabama 3 at the Ritz in Manchester tonight was an excellent gig. A little bit under-rehearsed in places perhaps, but the band were on strong form with a more country-rock oriented take on their back catalogue of sweet, pretty, acid house country music. Sadly bright_helpings couldn't make it, but I met up with a dear old friend from my Oxford days a quarter century ago.

First up as support, we had Sonny Eriksson performing his "cyberbilly" - a mixture of electronica and psychobilly. It sounded a bit like Lux Interior fronting KMDFM, with heavy use of samples. The specific use of samples for crowd interaction reminded me of Public Service Broadcasting too. Weirdest revelation of the night is that Sonny E. is a pseudonym of the artist also known as Adamski. Yes, that Adamski.

With the unfortunate passing of the Very Reverend D. Wayne Love in 2019, it's kind of weird to go to a gig which is a retrospective of their first two albums without one of the singers on stage (though his recorded voice did lead us during Hypo Full Of Love among other songs). What we got instead was a more stripped down version of the songs, with a country rock edge courtesy of female vocalist Devlin Love.

It didn't sound like the albums, and it didn't sound like the last time I saw them, shortly after D. Wayne's death, when they had adopted a more gospel-focused sound. But the power of the music shone through, particularly on "Peace in the Valley", a gloriously minimal "The Thrills Have Gone", and personal favourite "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlife". They bravely knocked out their most famous song, "Woke Up This Morning", early in the set to leave the audience wondering what would come next.

Larry Love's banter was on good form, asking us to petition Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham for an "acid house country" category in the Country Music Awards, and dedicating "The Old Purple Tin" to the Spice addicts of Manchester. Apparently the song is named for the purple cans of Tennent's Super lager. They ended that number with a musical segue into Prince's "Purple Rain" which was good fun.

I moved a lot during the gig, shouting through my FFP2 mask, singing along and waving my hands in the air. I left the venue feeling in some way refreshed and restored. In the words of "Ain't Goin' to Goa", my consciousness expanded by singing at the local tabernacle.

They're playing Bristol on 13th December and London on the 14th, catch them (and their support!) if you can.

The local Queer Club had their Halloween party last night. They meet in an old library - it's a big room, and they have an air filter, so it's relatively low risk activity. I've been once or twice before and had a nice time - there's usually enough structure that it doesn't feel awkward. The Queer Club had a "costumes optional but welcome" thing on their party flier, and I've not dressed up for Halloween since I was at Uni. I always end up over-thinking it and not managing to do something that lives up to my expectations, or to get around to organising things. I've been planning to do a really good Hellboy cosplay for about 20 years now...

So I thought about doing something deliberately low-key and mediocre - getting one of the boxes out of the loft from when we moved house, and making a robot costume out of it. This is a proper five year old kid level of costume, so I picked up some cheap poster paints from B&M for decoration. I happened to crack open a large cardboard box full of Diet Coke cans, which I could repurpose as a helmet. As it happens, work was too busy (or rather, I slacked too much earlier in the week) to even decorate as minimally as I had planned and I ended up largely scribbling with a few markers. Also, I got down two boxes in case I messed one up, and cosmolinguist claimed the other for his own robot outfit. He put more effort into decoration than me, as I was focussed on putting enough sellotape on the cardboard shoulder "straps" to make sure the outfits didn't collapse around us.

About half the people at Queer Club had dressed up, mostly as various characters from film etc. One of the club hosts was dressed up as Section 28, having literally printed out the relevant legislative clause in really big text on a A1-sized board around his neck. Our robot costumes were well received, and I added "beep/boop" to the pronouns on our name stickers. About halfway through the evening I took the costume off, because I couldn't sit down and I was getting too hot. We mingled and chatted and snacked.

Just as we were about to leave, the organisers called for a group photo so we put our costumes back on for that... then they reminded us that the flier had also talked about a prize for best costume, and E won for his better-decorated robot! All in all, it was a good evening. I felt good about the costumes - about having actually done something, however imperfectly.

Since the start of the pandemic I have been to very few gigs. Gigs last for several hours, in poorly-ventilated venues, and it's simply not worth the risk most of the time. But the balance with my mental health is precarious, particularly with the dark nights drawing in, and some of my very favorite bands are playing gigs this autumn.

I had failed to get tickets to see Godspeed You! Black Emperor at the Ritz before they sold out. But on the evening of the gig, about an hour before the doors opened, a friend mentioned on Facebook that she had a spare ticket. Which was fine but I didn't really want to go without cosmolinguist. Usually one ticket would be enough for this - I can often be his PA for the gig and get in for free myself, but this needs prior discussion with the venue (and isn't really cheating; I don't think he'd go to gigs without my help). But one of her friends said he also had a spare ticket! So we made the appropriate requests and jumped on a bus. After food and a pint we got into the venue on just one ticket - they looked at E's white cane and him taking my arm, and just waved us through! I wouldn't want to count on that though.

Inside, the CO2 numbers were predictably horrible, but my new AusAir mask is comfortable for longer durations. We ended up sat at the side on the balcony, with no view of the stage but it didn't matter too much. The support act whose name I didn't catch started slowly and quietly, just an acoustic guitar and a lot of effects pedals. The crowd was talking loud enough to impact the music, and I was worried this would end up like the time I saw GYBE at the Manchester Academy, where hipsters chatting and filming on their smartphones rather spoiled things for me. Fortunately the artist seemed to pick up on this as well, and got louder, bleeding into the resonant frequency of the building in a way that made my trousers vibrate. It was fairly experimental at times, pushing at the envelope of what can be considered music, in a way that I enjoyed.

Then Godspeed You! Black Emperor came on, and I spent two hours blissing out. For all I hadn't wanted to go without E, we mostly sat next to each other in silence, often with eyes closed, barely touching and just vibing with the music. I found myself moving at times, almost involuntarily, and trying to follow patterns within the music. It was beautiful. The claustrophobia of wearing a mask throughout the gig wasn't great, but it was definitely worth it. I wasn't moved as much as the Academy gig, and I doubt any performance of theirs will match up for me to seeing them in Birmingham, blissed out on the wooden floor of the Q Club, leaning into a dear friend. However, I felt a kind of peace by the end of the performance, and I'm very glad I went.

Afterwards we went back to the Thirsty Scholar with our friend who'd originally posted about the spare ticket, buying her a Red Bull as a thank-you. She gave us a lift home and stopped in briefly to pet Gary, but it was around midnight at that point and we were all knackered.

A while ago I was talking about house improvements to lower energy bills, including fitting a smart meter to see if I could benefit from a dynamic tariff. One of the things I talked about was an air-source heat pump to replace our gas boiler, and one of the requirements for that is that your house is well-insulated. When I bought our house, it was during the brief window when house sales included a "house report" with an energy efficiency rating, and my house was rated "D". This meant that we were potentially eligible for improvements under the "Great British Insulation Scheme", so I applied through our energy provider, Octopus, and got fobbed off for many months.

A few weeks ago, some young lads came round on behalf of the GBIS and said they could sign us up directly, so we went with them. This has progressed much quicker - the surveyor came round about a week later and confirmed that there's no cavity insulation in the older part of the house. We've had new extractor fan fitted in the bathroom this week, and today some nice men are installing the cavity wall insulation and putting trickle vents near all the windows. And all of this has been free because the house was in such a poor state when I bought it!

I'm really happy with how quickly this has all progressed, and it helps lay the groundwork for future improvements. Also, there's a weird trick - of the things offered by the GBIS it seems like you can only apply for one, but it's one per energy provider and you don't have to go through your own provider. So once this is done I might be able to hassle Octopus to install underfloor insulation in the kitchen, or top up the loft insulation to the currently-recommended 30cm.

In addition, the surveyor said he was expecting the new Labour Government to bring back some subsidies for domestic solar installation in future!

I've finally got round to installing Home Assistant on my file server. This is the first time I've played with virtual machines since transplanting the hard drives from an Intel box to an AMD box, and I needed to purge and reinstall bits of KVM / QEMU to get it to work.

Of course now it's up and running it doesn't do very much on its own. There are various things it can theoretically do which I'm interested in, including tracking Gary around the house using a tag on his harness. But my starting point is pretty simple - measuring temperature and humidity in every room in the house.

The design principle is pretty solid - I plug a USB Zigbee stick into my fileserver, and it should be able to reach devices across the house. I buy some Zigbee sensor units from AliExpress for about a fiver a pop, pair them with the contoller, and deploy them around the house. Home Assistant handles monitoring, logging, graphing and alerting. Maybe I need a Zigbee router/repeater unit on the landing because my house is basically a Faraday cage, but that should be the only complication.

In practice, I've pretty much immediately hit a brick wall with this. Either I choose between ready-to-use units (which tend to use WiFi and are much more expensive per-unit), or I go for something slightly more homebrew and run into a host of problems. I've seen advice that you shouldn't use Bluetooth (as Linux support isn't good enough) or Zigbee (as Linux support is too good for the devices out there), the two cheap low-power alternatives. Or I go the ESPHome approach and solder things together myself, which is pretty much a non-starter at my skill level.

I suspect I'll end up just buying some random units from AliExpress and seeing what works, but it's frustrating that I either have to do this kind of expensive, slow trial-and-error or pay through the nose for what should be cheap kit.

This weekend I went to the local queer clothes shop with cosmolinguist and mother_bones. They had lots of femme clothes to get rid of, and I was just browsing. I didn't find much that I liked, and looking at clothes with the intention of putting them on my body, even in such a friendly and welcoming space, still makes me uncomfortable.

I spent much of the time we were there outside playing Pokémon on my phone. I might have been OK if it were more crowded, but there were just the right amount of people there for me to feel like everyone could see everyone else. I know that nobody actually gave a shit or was judging me, but I couldn't convince my brain of that.

Ah well, I'll try again next time.