Gay Camberwell

by Layla

In our quest for quirky and delightful entertainment, Roz and I have recently been breaching the boundaries of SE5 and sampling the offerings of other locales like tourists in a strange land. And we have come to the conclusion that Camberwell is only missing two things. 

One is trapeze club nights. Roz and I recently went to a French Victorian cabaret club night in East London - as you do - which involved scantily-clad ladies and muscular gentlemen swinging and twirling from the rafters in a most entertaining fashion. It has made me think that no evening entertainment is really complete without a trapeze artist. And indeed, at Camberwell Gay Book Group, one of the members recently announced that she was a trapeze artist, limited only in providing Camberwell-based trapeze entertainment by lack of a sufficiently high ceiling with a good strong hook. Forget cinemas - clearly this is the real gap in the market!

The other is storytelling. For a while we've been venturing to the far north of Little Venice to attend the extremely popular, sell-out storytelling events run by Spark. Our interest was born on our New York honeymoon where storytelling is the current cool phenomenon and queues for storytelling nights snake round the block, crammed with cool young things and cool older things alike. Trying to recreate the experience in London, we found that there is a storytelling scene here, but how horrible to have to venture north and west! A few weeks ago, Spark held a brilliant storytelling-and-dinner event in the lovely Soho venue Bar Chocolate. People told 7-minute true stories about their lives between courses of an excellent meal. Funny, sad, interesting, illuminating... and one by a woman from Blackheath who fled her Polish village to escape the concentration camps in WW2 at the age of 7 that left me sobbing. Storytelling is still a bit of an underground entertainment in London. Roz and I were lamenting the lack of storytelling in Camberwell when, randomly, Spark announced they are doing a 5-day storytelling festival at our very own Blue Elephant Theatre! From Monday 7th til Friday 11th June, go along at 8pm to hear true stories on a different theme every night. Take proof you live in Southwark and get in for £5. See one show, get the rest half price. And if you're lucky, you might get to hear the story of my first ever lesbian first date...

So that just leaves the challenge of finding a venue for a trapeze club night...

by Layla

With just hours til the polling booths open, we at Gay Camberwell are truly flummoxed. We had rather considered Camberwell a microcosm of the UK, with Labour getting in, Tories being the baddies, and Lib Dem being the goodies. We are well aware of the parties' voting history for gay issues. But, like the rest of the UK, this election looks to be rather more interesting than some of the previous ones, and our preconceptions are thrown in the air. 

Camberwell and Peckham is apparently one of Labour's safest seats, but the tides are turning against them. Certainly they have made Britain a better place for gay people , and Harriet's Gay Camberwell response was well thought out (if somewhat smug, and with a spelling mistake in the first answer) but I found it hard to forget the ill-conceived enthusiasm for the War on Terror and certainly it feels that change is - or needs to be - in the air. So what's a non-Labour-voting gay to do?

Well, the obvious answer would be Lib Dem. I have voted for them in the past, and a Nick Clegg government would, overall, be a good thing. But... until proportional representation comes in, helping England to a Lib Dem majority means voting in Columba Blango to Camberwell. And I'm not sure I've ever seen a more uninspiring candidate. His main qualifications seem to be that he was an Olympic athlete. And he started up some sports things in Southwark. If I was voting for a sporting leader, I'd be happy to vote for him. But as an MP he seems a thoroughly unimpressive option. I haven't met him, but those I know who have are unimpressed. His Gay Camberwell response was riddled with errors, making me rather concerned about how he would represent us (and embarrass us) in Parliament. 'I live in the camberwell' is a bad start for us English pedants, but even the less pedantic amongst you readers surely cringed when he replied to the question about the top 3 priorities for Camberwell by citing a generic five, entitled A, B, C, E, H... And his answer about his favourite place in Camberwell was a cop out - 'all of it'? It makes him sound like he's never really been here. I'm not sure I could justify voting for Lib Dem as it means voting for this man to represent us.

And so to the Tories. Reassuringly the baddies, especially when it comes to gay rights. In this election alone, the Tories have been addled with homophobic scandals, from Chris Grayling wanting businesses to be able to refuse to serve gay people, to Philippa Stroud running a church to 'cure' gay people. And yet, our own Tory candidate is a bit unusual. Living on a council estate, living with cerebral palsy, and practicing what he preaches, he is a fascinating candidate, and hardly a typical Tory. And his Gay Camberwell answers were pretty sensible and well thought out. He clearly knows the area. But at the end of the day, voting for him is voting to elect a Tory government, and can anyone really do that in all good conscience?

Which brings us to the Green party. And in my opinion, Jenny Jones is the most credible local candidate of all. Considered and intelligent answers to our questions, clearly local and sensible, and she doesn't embarrass herself with any demonstrations of poor literacy. But the Greens are unlikely to be part of governing our country. Well, not this time around. And I probably wouldn't have considered them, were it not for this fascinating website. Still don't know who to vote for? Vote for Policies separates the parties from the policies so you can choose the policies you think are most sensible without prejudice. At the end they tell you which party you should vote for if considering their policies alone. And as I sat back, expecting a Lib Dem result, I was surprised by a firmly Green choice. 

And so, I'll be off to the Lomond Grove polling station tomorrow and checking the 'Green' box. Well, maybe...