Not Live8

Helen with flyers and pals - Mich, Nicola, Caroline + Karen (by Jane Scanlan)

Just back from LGBT Pride London with Jenny and Ann who came down from York for it. Great march, full of pride and celebration. We handed out flyers for the York Lesbian Arts Festival to about 800 wonderful women.

Lot of interest in the fact that the fabulous fingersmith Sarah Waters will be appearing at the festival to read from her next book. One young woman said Sarah is her role model. And a pretty good role model for our young folk, I think you'll agree. [grizzled nodding] All right, someone did ask whether she's a singer, but hey, that was just one person among tens of thousands.

After the march we headed to Soho's famed Candy Bar where the women were pouring out into the street. Standing next to me as I queued at the bar was a woman with three different, brightly coloured cocktails, who kept accidentally knocking her head against mine while speaking. She'd drunk half each of two of the drinks but said the bright yellow one was for her girlfriend who had b*ggered off (wonder why?).

She offered to sell said drink to me for three pounds. I knocked her down to two and slurped away. This did run counter to police advice about accepting drinks from strangers, but it was delicious. Then a beautiful woman asked me to go to a club and said I was gorgeous. Still unsure whether it was some kind of acid trip from spiked drink but it was a nice moment either way.

Now we are home watching News 24 all about Live8, Live8 and Live8. Seems like we didn't pick the best day to get news coverage for a Pride march. No, wait, we picked it first.

Heigh-ho.

Helen

www.ylaf.org.uk