I’m delighted to be able to devote an episode of The London Ear to Pride and all things LGBTQ+ on today’s show.
Pride is a little different this year as we can’t have parades and wave our flags but it’s still really important, even virtually, to remember why we have a Pride parade. It started as a protest march for equality for all LGBTQ+ people and it’s really important that we don’t forget that. Now, more than ever and no one is excluded.
It’s great that I got to play an array of artists, International and Irish. This week’s #FromTheVault track was one I’m guessing hasn’t been played on Irish radio before, but is in my music vault as a great. It comes from a UK based act called Infamy, which basically featured George Michael, his cousin Andros and also Pepsi, of Pepsi and Shirlie, on vocals. I’m playing the Forthright mix of Infamy’s cover of Dead or Alive’s ‘You Spin Me Round’. Not sure you can get much more LGBTQ.
Conversation with Dyvr
I was truly honoured to chat to Dyvr for this week’s show. At first, the chat was going to be just about his new single. ‘Ocean’ with St. Bishop. But, the London born, Belfast based musician is more than a musician. He’s an activist, also working to provide LGBTQ+ musicians and artists with safe spaces.
He’s also launched a range of ‘Quearrings by Dyvr’ and also runs a Queer storytime on Instagram every Saturday, where people talk about their lives and stories.
1. Scissor Sisters: Let’s Have a Kiki
2. Pillow Queens: Handsome Wife
3. The Late David Turpin: Fur
4. Ailbhe Reddy: Time Difference
5. Chat with DYVR
6. Diana Ross: I’m Coming Out
7. Chat with DYVR
8. DYVR feat St Bishop: Ocean
9. Zapho & Tolu Makay ft Jenny Browne: Collide
10. Infamy (George Michael): You Spin Me Round
Listen On Demand to The London Ear
Thanks for listening, The London Ear broadcast on DAB radio, Saorview, nationwide in Ireland and outside Ireland you can listen online. You can listen to the show again on the RTÉ player including all previous episodes. The show is broadcast every Saturday at 1300.
I really didn’t want to take any photos. I didn’t have the motivation to actually get my camera out. I think that could be for two reasons.
Reason Number One: I was working everyday from home. Believe me, I know I’m lucky to have been able to work from home and lucky that I have a job. That meant that everyday, between Monday to Friday, 930-530 I was sitting at my computer, in my bedroom doing what I would be doing if there was no lockdown. When work was over, I just wanted to get away from the computer, from editing from all that stuff.
Reason Number Two: As I was shielding, thanks to my dodgy immune system, I didn’t leave the house for almost two months. I went to the supermarket once a week for three weeks. My last day out was April 11. I was indoors until June 6. Although I didn’t mind being indoors, at all, (I actually quite liked it), the world became a smaller place so I just wanted to chill.
In the last week or so, I’ve started delving into my phone to see what photos I have that I hadn’t put online. When I get the phone photos uploaded, I’m, going to start raiding my hard drives.
I like finishing something once I’ve started. Here’s the next batch of photos.
It’s been six weeks since St Patrick’s Day. Six weeks and one day since I was last in the office. I’ve left the apartment five times since then. Four times to go to the supermarket, once to go to the park. But now, it’s seventeen days since I left the apartment.
In that time, almost 21000 people have died in the United Kingdom. That’s over 3 times the population of my hometown, Kells, in Co. Meath in Ireland.
About two weeks into all this, I had a conversation with someone about how I genuinely couldn’t understand the tone of the media in the UK. Everything was about the talk of the crisis in Italy and Spain. I couldn’t understand how they were not getting and choosing not look at what was and still is happening on their own doorstep. These figures aren’t just numbers, they are lives.
Now, four weeks later, BoJo is out of hospital and back at work. I wouldn’t wish anyone to be ill with Covid but it does seem that when BoJo was admitted to hospital, that was when the UK government decided it was time to take this seriously.
In my opinion, they were too slow.
Having a Routine
Today, yesterday and the day before. 70km done.
I’ve been really lucky during all this. I’m working from home which makes evenings and weekends seem like evenings and weekends.
Myself and Talulah have been getting up every morning, doing a bit on the exercise bike and then doing our bits for the day. The first week or two was all about getting used to the fact that even though I was at home all day, this wasn’t all free time. I still had a days work to do. So Monday – Friday 930-530 aren’t my hours. The extra time I have is the time that I save from not having to commute, which is a godsend. I hate commuting at the best of times.
Home Deliveries
As I mentioned in my last post, my immune system doesn’t work properly and then isn’t good in pandemic times. It’s also not good that I almost died from smoke inhalation when this Covid-19 thing attacks your lungs.
I attend a rheumatologist in Ireland, one of the reasons is because the medication I take daily, isn’t licensed in the UK. So I registered with gov.uk to say I was in a more high risk group. This has proven to be of immense help as I was then added to the priority list for online grocery shopping. It took a while to happen, but I genuinely have no words to describe how beneficial this has been.
Myself and Talulah initially went to the local Lidl and stocked up on what we could on St Patrick’s Day, during times when we thought that people would still be at work. The only other place we had been was our local Sainsbury’s, which is a small shop, once a week for the next two weeks. The first time was ok, social distancing etc. The second time was crazy. Social distancing measures outside, we queued up to get into the store, but mayhem inside. Plus, there were a lot of items they didn’t have. We ended up ordering all our veg online from a local market supplier.
Three weeks ago, an early Saturday morning visit to Tesco proved very helpful and relaxing but the following week, there were too many people in each aisle. I just wasn’t happy being there.
We’re now getting our groceries delivered on a Friday evening, so it feels like a weekend.
As a side note to this, I had a phone call from the National Screening centre who are monitoring all the people in vulnerable groups. They asked if I was ok, if I had enough supplies, if I needed someone to drop round with a box of food. All extremely nice of them. I don’t need their food boxes, there are more entitled and needy people who deserve to receive these food parcels. Good job though, they will definitely help a lot of people in this shitty situation.
Online Life
The first couple of weeks of the lockdown were crazy for social media / online activities. I had decided that I would try doing a daily vlog and I would try doing some Insta chats with musicians in the evenings. I found these to be near impossible to do. Not that I didn’t want to chat to these incredibly talented people but I found that are dealing with people during the day and during the difficulties of a pandemic, I was physically drained by the evening and I could just about muster the energy to keep up.
I had hoped I would write more etc etc but as well as doing my day job, I had to chill, decompress and look after myself for a bit.
That hasn’t stopped me in my spare time, working with an artist to help them promote their music using my Nessymon Media moniker. There have been a couple of releases, which have gone down a storm, which is great. It’s a bit of fun and I enjoy it.
However, after six weeks, I do want to write more myself and I do want to try and do more with the blog.
I think in the next post, I will tell you more about what I’ve been doing in the evenings and weekends to keep myself entertained.
I was trying to upload 365 photos before April 1st 2020. I’ve failed but I’m still going to keep on uploading!
I am going to finish this. I swear.
The whole Covid-19 thing has really thrown me off with my photography. I’m going to see what I can do to get back on track over the next couple of weeks.
