The evening was also Olly Pike’s new book launch with the exciting opportunity to get a copy of Have You Ever Seen a Normal? This is self-described as ‘a delightful rhyming story designed to spark conversations about diversity and acceptance’. Some of the prose made up the beginning of Pike’s speech. It contains about a hundred uses of the word ‘normal’. Did you know there’s no such thing as normal? For example, there is no such thing as normal food, normal houses, normal families, normal kids, being a normal height, normal love or normal heat. Et cetera. Normal isn’t real. The implication being, of course, is that there is no such thing as abnormal [behaviour] and that everything is relative.
Review of play: Spit It Out
‘Call me Emily, just one of you, please …’
… said ‘Emily’, with an imploring look to his audience. I don’t think we learnt what his ‘deadname’ was, so the plea didn’t really make sense, as we were already calling him ‘Emily’ in our heads (though it was ‘useless tosser’ in mine).
Review: Participatory performance with Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley
Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley (hereafter DBS) first came to my attention because Travis Alabanza (where art thou, my love?) has spoken approvingly many times, then the opportunity to attend this ‘participatory performance’ came up. Like Travis, DBS is a well spoken, middle class, black- & trans-identified male, who makes art focussed on ‘archiving the black trans experience’ (groan) and hailed as a genius by some (okay, possibly just Travis). On the artist’s website there’s a chance to play the computer games that have bought the gaming nerd so much kudos. I have to say, they’re rather intriguing, often terminating abruptly in the way trains of thought do but perhaps also thought-terminating? Anyway, very dream-like and other worldly. They definitely require patience as they are slow paced. However, such praise does come with a qualification: it’s pure propaganda.
Review of documentary: Will & Harper
Plodding with no illuminating moments. ‘Will Ferrell and his close friend, former head writer at SNL, Harper Steele embark on a cross-country road trip together
The Cardboard People
Always give a wide berth to any organisation which demands lower caps where upper caps should be observed. In the case of akt (previously the Albert Kennedy Trust), it was originally a charity which helped same sex attracted teens with housing problems. Nowadays, of course, it is LGBTQ+ focussed and has the heterosexual trans activist celebrity couple Hannah and Jake Graf as patrons. akt makes a lot of income from partnerships with companies like M&S, Morrisons, Hello Fresh, Whitbread, and Pret, etc. akt claims that ‘24% of young homeless people aged 16-25 identify as being LGBTQ+’ and currently runs a trans-specific project, helping those made homeless by ‘transphobia’.
Trans people in Russia
Seminar on the state of things for ‘trans’ people in Russia, held at London Metropolitan University in February 2024. Legislation of 24 July 2023 Unlike
The Lies They Tell 
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