By Sunday 18th June, I was just back in London:
Back from Ibiza, far too much to say about it, but it’ll wait. Up to the Heath with Joe tonight, there was a great atmosphere, I am realising its quite unique to London. Some insights about the Heath; two types of men cruising 1. for sex 2 for fantasy. Sometimes how we dress is far, far, more important than how we look.
From writing a lot about work, it seems I had actually gone to the opposite extreme by then and wasn’t adding very much at all about it. In retrospect I think things were quieter there for a time- but not for too long. On Sunday 1st July though it gets a small mention:
I can‘t believe the bisexual work will have taken a year before it finally comes out. But that’s it. But on the 14th July: A good debrief from the HEA Research department‘s post testing of the gay work, it went down quite well, actually quite cheering.
and again on Friday 14th July :
Three tiring days at work, particularly today. Lunch with BMP creatives to talk about developing the calendar promotion (we were going to put together a 1990 Safer sex calendar). They’re trying to get Bruce Weber. Some hope, I don’t think he’ll touch ‘gay work ‘ with a bargepole but it would be very nice to be proved wrong.
Both ideas (the calendar & Weber) eventually fell by the wayside. On Monday 17th July:
Up to the Heath tonight and semi off with three guys.The second very sweet and young, 18. Is sucking nipples in or something? Suddenly everybody seems to be automatically doing it now, which they certainly didn’t a few years ago. I blame our posters, haha. Still, a very safe thing to be doing of course, so that may well be part of it. I don’t know why I’m so surprised as, after all, it is what we’ve( Cleancut, HEA) been encouraging people to do for ages!
We got to look at the first bisexual ads from the BMP Creatives today. Picture of a plug with the strap: ‘AC/DC , it isn‘t just an electric current or a rock band’. Oh, please! Just tacky. Try again, we said, and yes, this is 6 months in. It feels like we are banging our heads against a brick wall sometimes. I feel quite depressed tonight, and fed up with getting pilloried at work. It does feel like that at least.
On Friday 21st July:
Gave a talk about planning for the work at the Dept (of Health) today. It seemed to go down really well. Are we making some progress convincing people we have the right strategy finally? Felt generally quite cheered by it.
And on Sunday 23rd July, I was writing about good times:
What a shattering weekend. My 32nd birthday party here in the flat at Somerstown, about 60–70 turned up. It just had to also be the hottest day since 1910 didn‘t it, with a max here of 34.5C. After lots of noise and at one time, ten screaming queens on our balcony, being outrageous, I finally got to bed at 5am. Nothing major broken luckily. Will probably have to apologise to our neighbours tomorrow.
But by Monday 7th August
Didn‘t go in to work today as I said I was feeling low from the weekend. Joe and I went out to Cafe Delancey in Camden for a meal, was nice. But we got ‘bashed on the way home by a group of 6 lads looking for trouble. Joe quite shaken up by it. I got a nervous ache in neck immediately. Could have been a lot worse but still feels shakey.
Back at work things were progressing slowly but surely it seemed; on Thursday 10th August
Tiring but productive days at work, things firming up slowly. Looks as though the leaflet will be ready in about two weeks, the new gay work in September and the Bisexual work (finally) in early October. Tiring meeting as always with the advisory group, no Jonathon Grimshaw, who is still very unwell.
On Wednesday 20th September, as my first anniversary of working there approached, things came to a head and to one of their regular ‘crunches’ however:
Two difficult work days discussing MESMAC and the ad portfolio. Esther Rantzen put her foot down at the Authority meeting yesterday and said ‘No, No, No’ to the Bisexual work. Too humorous and not enough information she said. Sir Donald (Sir Donald Acheson, the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) backed her up. Susan Perl & Derek to have lunch with them to try and soften her up a bit.
I thought they were on our side but who knows who got a word in with them first.
´Men who have sex with men´ Bisexual advert, often criticised by educators but the bottom line is where it was going.. national magazines , personally I STILL don´t like it very much (not many of us did, despite what has been written about how much the HEA supposedly loved it) but it had to be arresting.
I´ll cover it in more detail in book 2, as it didnt finally appear until Spring 1990.
