Gay Camberwell

by Layla

“What? No new visits to Camberwell bars or restaurants this week? The suspense! How are we supposed to decide whether or not to visit the Silver Buckle?!” I hear you cry indignantly, clicking "refresh" on the bar and restaurant review pages. But do you know, life has been so busy in the last few days that apart from walking repeatedly up and down Denmark Hill, en route to study sessions at the Institute of Psychiatry (this world renowned, major psychiatry research centre lies unobtrusively in the heart of our very own neighbourhood, you  know), I don’t seem to have had time to sample the delights of our local establishments this week. It’s all phone calls, web updates, e-mailing, visiting, and wondering how on earth Gay Camberwell has turned into such an extravaganza.

When we set up the website, I thought we might launch it by clicking the “publish” button with a festive “ta-daaa”. I didn’t imagine a launch month mini-festival involving six venues, nine events, and a who’s who list of gay Londoners flocking to SE5. And yet, here we are. This thing is getting bigger and bigger. It makes me rather wish I wasn’t simultaneously trying to impress at a new job, study for and sit a major professional exam, and prepare for a possibly ill-advised holiday to Eritrea (we just heard there’s a famine...), all in November. But on the other hand, isn’t it fantastic! Especially as lots of the venues holding events as part of the launch month plan to have continuing gay-themed events in future. Following a flurry of design demands upon our long suffering designer Sam, we sent off for our first batch of launch month flyers and received them with much excitement on Monday. Despite the microscopic writing (we have almost too many events to fit on one postcard, it seems!) we were quite delighted and immediately zoomed out to Soho and East Dulwich to flyer appropriate venues for Camberwell wannabes (and Camberwellians who bizarrely choose to socialise outside the confines of SE5), before returning to Camberwell itself for the beginning of a flyering extravaganza, finishing up with a G&T in the Sun and Doves (alas, being still October, their Gay Camberwell cocktail not yet available...). The flyering continues tomorrow... The 1st November: the start of the grand Launch Month itself. So, it’ll be off to the new lesbian club night at the Redstar for us (haven’t been to a club for some time... am so out of practice I may require a mid-afternoon nap if I am to cope with the excitement) and to check out the LGBT book display at the library, if it’s up yet (if not, it’s probably my fault for not having yet delivered the flyers). Speaking of which, if you want any flyers to distribute amongst friends, groups or suchlike, let us know! In the meantime, I shall return to my study books, pull out the Gay Camberwell flyer I’m using as a bookmark, and look forward to my first Gay Camberwell cocktail... I think I might need it!

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