GLBTGI Friday in Stoke Newington

Did you know it's GLBTG month this month? Did you know that GLBTG means Gay Lesbian Bisexual [and] Trans-Gendered? Yes, they all go together and they have their very own unwieldy Initial Thing going on! I guess I did sort of know that. But what ever happened to, you know, words?

And is it just me, or is there a big fat difference between "bisexual" and someone with collagen lip implants and a sex change operation? Am I just prejudiced? Or could it possibly be somehow objectifying, to lump everyone except mom-&-pop heterosexuals like me into some enormous amorphous category like a huge, ungainly sack squirming with unbeloved kittens?

Anyway, that aside. You must be wondering how this fascinating news filtered into the joyously straight, though admittedly sometimes quite camp, Halls of Baroque. (Not that we don't love that Oscar Wilde in here! Oh no. And that EM Forster. And that Anthony, though I wouldn't say so much for those Johnsons. Boring married couple. And that Madonna! But who was the girl she kissed again? Not Tracey Emin, was it?) Well, here's how: Mlle B came home last night and said to me, as I was washing up a baked-bean-encrusted saucepan and an egg-besmirched frying pan so that we could cook some chicken slices with spinach and a bit of basmati rice (henceforth to be known as CSWS/BOBR): "Hey Mummy, you'll never guess what we're learning in singing."

"What?" I not surprisingly said.

"We're doing that song 'you spin me round like a record baby'," she said. "It's for GLBTG month."

Can you imagine. Where to start.

1. It's for WHAT?
2. Whose idea was it to learn that bloody annoying song? And who recorded it in the first place all those years ago, anyway, as I seem to have successfully blocked that out?
3. Is that really the best the gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-gendered community can offer our children? I mean really??

Answers:
1. As above.
2. Somebody or other's. And it was that weird guy, Pete whatsit with the lips. Who was on Big Brother.* "That's why," she says: "Everybody knows who he is."

Oh, great, then.

"You can't imagine what it's like to have to listen to that song over and over and over on a loop, for the whole afternoon! It's soooo annoying. But we're hoping to perform it at the Hackney Empire, there's this Hackney-wide event, right, and all the schools are participating and we're putting ourselves forward, with kids from each class in my year! It'll be soooo cool, and we're doing a rock version, anyway, not the disco version."
3. "Oh lighten up, it's like a joke, yeah, it's just supposed to be a bit of fun."

Yeah, but you could have sung an Elton John song even.

Stony glare.

You don't want me to go into one of my rants, do you.

"Not particularly. Anyway," she concludes. "It's not like we're not doing other things as well - we're covering GLBTG Month in every single class."

Oh good! So she will be reading Baudelaire. Or maybe covering the theme of androgyny in Virginia Woolf's Orlando. Phew!*


* I've resisted the tempation to link to him and the so-called 'Respect' [sic] 'MP' [sic] George Galloway in their lycra leotards - but only because I don't even want a picture of that man linked to this blog.

** (Somehow, I think not...)