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APRIL
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APRIL Wednesday 1 A clear, cold day. The bees have settled, I cleared the hive - last night I dropped a honey super and they got so angry they chased me up to the house. I extricated myself from the beekeeper's suit with only one sting. HB and Howard arrived at eleven. They brought the papers, the court case of Jason Donovan - Straight as Hell, while the rest of us are Queer as Fuck. If Jason makes any money out of this it can only prove that for years we have laboured against the odds. The Oscars are on TVand Queer Nation demonstrates. Jodie Foster - also the subject of an outing campaign - receives her Oscar; meanwhile two young fans of Jason who've been to see him in the Technicolor Dreamcoat forty-five times say: 'We don't care if he's gay, we love him.' Down the lanes to Great Dixter, HB tickling my head from the back seat. The woods spangled with star-white anemones turning their faces to the sun and primroses, batter bright. We spotted two yellow brimstones, whichflew alongside the car on a lane to Bodiam. HB got out and chased them. At Dixter we bought lavender and rosemary, and later at a supermarket of a nursery Santolina vivens - the green kind. Peacock and tortoiseshell butterflies amongst the heathers. Lunch in the fish and chip restaurant at Hastings before one last nursery, Madrona, and home. HB and Howard walked to the Long Pits while I packed for London. It was a beautiful day. Thursday 2 London. Our drive along the Sussex lanes seems an age ago. The rain has set in and I walk to the bank in my- HB's - duffle coat with hood well up against the cold. Dr Mark's new pills seem to have got the better of my itching - I slept quite soundly last night, rested for the first time in months. In the record shop I'm asked about my health -1said it was like describing a will-o'-the-wisp. The tickling drives meto distraction - it covers mywhole 109 SMILING IN SLOWMOTION body from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, it stops all my concentration, makes it impossible to sit and read, to watch a film, I find myself with my trousers rolled up like a grandad paddling on one of those comic seaside cards. I found a great card in Hastings of a boy holding a large stick of pink rock, wearing only the briefest pants, with the title: What a Sweetie. Bought their entire stock. Late in the afternoon HB walked with me to Heal's looking for coffee cups. We passed a large shouting lady who looked like Divine. Richard had cleared both his studios for his party to celebrate the five years of his gallery. I found a corner with Tom Kalin, Christine Vachon and HB, smart in his pinstriped suit. Tom had brought rubber trousers, Christine her Geordie girlfriend. Norman and Nicky like Gog and Magog. Simon Watney with his hair brushed forward over his glasses like a Roman emperor. What did we all talk about? The election?No. Art? No. AIDS? Thank God, no. Mostly old scandal. Richard banished EIIR Sex Boys for Sale at Queen's Grocers as Lady Helen 'Melons' Windsor was expected. Tom regretted there was no sleaze in the salon and certainly no boys as good-looking as the surroundings. We all left for the Ragam where we had a very happy dinner, with Christine snogging her girlfriend to the surprise of the clientele. A great evening. Friday 3 Some days start in panic, today was one. The phone rang with a friend asking for a huge sum of money. HB, I think quite rightly, got cross. An interview at ten with the Guardian with a pit in the stomach. I could feel there were going to be no smiles or jokes. The interviewer was so obviously disturbed by AYOR. HB banished bythe interviewer - 'I can't conduct an interview when there is someone else in the room' - to the kitchen. He got angrier, packing for Newcastle. She finally insisted that we were left alone, so he is evicted into the rain. At the beginning of AYOR I wrote: 'Those who have not lived this might think the world I'm describing distant.' My interviewer had all the facts but seemed unable to understand - on a day when a second-string actor was...