That’s what my cousin’s six year old son asked her before the BF and I came round for dinner. I visit my cousin and her children quite regularly, and most of the time I’m with the BF. My cousin had explained to her son that cousin Liam was coming with *the BF* and that was when he asked that question.

She said yes a  man can love a man like a man loves a woman, and that cousin, Liam and *the BF* loved each other. Her six year old nodded and said OK.

This shows how children react when they’re told about same sex relationships. They really couldn’t give a monkeys. To children it’s a *shrugs* OK, that’s that, I’m off to play with my Ben 10/Spongebob Squarepants.

Children learn their reaction to things from their parents. I am scared of spiders, because Mum is scared of spiders. I remember seeing her jump on the sofa as one scurried across the floor, when I was a child. Mum is scared of swimming out of her depth, and she deliberately didn’t tell us about this when my brother and I were learning to swim as little children. I am not scared of swimming out of my depth.

Children are not homophobic. For children it is about love. Do these two men love each other like mummy and daddy love each other? Yes, ok. As young children they don’t know about the sexual ins and outs of their parents’ relationship, nor do they know about the sexual ins and outs of their uncle Bob and Dave either. Because actually it doesn’t matter.

It’s adults who get all hung up about who does what to whom, and it’s that which results in homophobia. When actually it’s none of anyone else’s business what people get up to in the bedroom.

I watched Gogglebox the week of the legal change in England, and it was really interesting seeing the viewers’ reaction to the gay marriages. Some people looked away from the TV, saying they didn’t like to watch two men kissing.

It was interesting to watch because all the reactions were pretty moderate, probably due to the fact it was being filmed. In the UK now, there’s a general acceptance that being homophobic is as unacceptable as being racist. And none of the Gogglebox people would say anything overtly racist, so any overt homophobic comments weren’t shared either.

Same Sex Marriage

I’ve heard it described as, ‘The final piece of the legislative jigsaw for gay people.’ Because a civil partnership is not the same as a marriage, as this Gay Star article shows, there are seven differences between the two.

And in contrast Andrea Williams, CEO of Christian Concern said, ‘We can’t just redefine an institution – redefine something that always has been – because we say it’s something that we want. This is actually very self-centred. This is not about rights, it’s about seeking cultural dominance and seeking to redefine marriage for all of us.’

Things change. Nothing ‘always has been’ - wives used to be thought of as goods. People used to be sold to other people like you sell cars nowadays. And as for ‘cultural dominance’ come back to me when two men holding hands in public is as acceptable as a man and a woman holding hands. A statement about cultural dominance by gay people could only come from the mouth of a person who has no idea what it’s like living in a world where the norm, the assumption is straight, because statistically there are more straight people than gay people. This cultural dominance is everywhere: every time a workman asks me what my girlfriend thinks about the work; every time I’m asked if I want to add my wife to an insurance policy; even down to buying a two pack of toothbrushes where one is blue and one pink. I'm not criticising this cultural dominance, merely pointing it out to show how ridiculous Williams' statement is.

Interestingly the definition of adultery has not been changed in the law. Adultery is still having sex with someone of the opposite gender. So a gay married couple could not site adultery as the reason for divorce if one of the guys slept with another man. They could site adultery in the divorce if one of them slept with a woman. Of course ‘unreasonable behaviour’ is still grounds for divorce, and I’m guessing if one of the men slept with another man, that would be defined as ‘unreasonable behaviour’ and grounds for divorce.

The language of marriage
I’ve been to quite a few civil partnerships and they have all been described on invites, at the time and afterwards as a wedding. The people involved do not refer to their partners as ‘my civil partner’ because that sounds like some business model like a limited company. No, they all refer to their husbands.

I think it’s important that gay couples can now legitimately and legally describe their joining together as ‘marriage’. The wording used by organisations to conduct marriages has been changed from "marriage is the union of one man with one woman" to now read "Marriage in this country means the union of two people, voluntarily entered into for life, to the exclusion of all others." Sounds sensible to me.

Like most things, this change is about choice. Now gay people have a choice, they can get married if they want to. I have friends, straight and gay, who’ve been in long term relationships for ten years or more, and some have got married, others haven’t, but now they all have the choice to get married, or not.

Until next time,

Liam Livings   

While in the attic, finding Gummidge Mk 1, I found a suitcase of things I’d rescued from my maternal grandfather’s home in 2007 after he passed away. He was the only grandparent I knew, the other three passed away before I was born. At the time of his death it was all too much to deal with, so I had left the photos and letters in the attic. Since 2007 I’ve used his mixing bowl, cutting board and some random plates, but the letters and photos proved too hard to see at the time.

Among the photos I found a yellow exercise book, in which he’d written his account of working as an auxiliary nurse in a field surgical hospital, working just behind the frontline. Mum explained that he didn’t tell any of his family about what he’d done in the war. The only account of that was in the yellow exercise book he’d written to me.

Nowadays we call an auxiliary nurse, a health care assistant, and Mum explained that my grandfather worked as an auxiliary after the war, but because he wasn’t allowed to do nearly as much as he’d done during the war – operations, dressings etc – he stopped that work and got other jobs instead.

I wasn’t too sure what to do with this, 2200 word account, so at first I typed it up, keeping the phrases and words he’d used, and only breaking it up into paragraphs and sections to help reading it later. I wanted to retain his voice, and as I typed it, I could hear him saying it, which was moving. What was even more impressive, is that he wasn't really one for writing, so for him to have filled an exercise book would have been a major under-taking for him.

I contacted Charlie Cochrane and Jean Fullerton as they write historical novels, and asked for suggestions about what I could do with this memoir.

The Guardian wrote a story about it – The Epping Forest Guardian, but I wanted to do a Margot Leadbetter from The Good Life for a moment ;-)

The only slight issue is that the woman next to him in the photo is not his wife, Margaret ‘Peg’ Livings, who died in 1978, but in fact his sister-in-law, or my Great Auntie – the Great Auntie, who I help look after with Mum.

After I’d regained my composure about this mistake, I was able to see the funnier side. At least it’s not some random person, it is at least a member of the family in the photo. 

My typed version of his memoir has been accepted by the Imperial War Museum and I’m still finding out some more information about what my grandfather and his brothers did during World War Two.

Mum called some family to check details about my grandfather's life, as the Imperial War Museum have asked for further information. The positive outcome from this is that she's got back in touch with her auntie, and we're going to visit her this summer. I'm sending Great Auntie D, a copy of the newspaper article.

It's been an emotional journey but I'm glad I've been on it, and that I've done something positive with my grandfather's memoirs.

I really hope my grandfather is pleased I picked his surname as part of my pen name.

Until next time,

Liam Livings xx

Hi,

The UK Meet has been featured on the above website which aims to highlight other LGBTQ romance events across the world, to share how great it is to get together and talk all things about this genre of fiction.

Gay Romance North West spoke to us fine folks 'across the pond' and this is the full post. It talks about the aims of the event, what's different from 2013, and has an summary of the plans for the 2014 UK Meet.

Enjoy
Until next time,
Liam Livings

As you’ll probably know, I love a good autobiography – the more salacious, peek-through-your-fingers, the better. Brand did not disappoint.

This starts with him in a sex addicts camp where he’s had to sign a contract forbidding any sexual activity with others or himself.

Sometimes these autobiographies are a bit dull during the childhood phase. Not Brand. His school reports are scanned as well as his behaviour as a teenager and child. He seems to have always been pretty rebellious. He was at a garden with a friendly old man who had shown him the skills in gardening. The old man left to get something and said, ‘Don’t stand on the flowers.’ To which Brand responded by trampling all over the flowers. It was as if the old man had said, ‘Please jump on the flowers.’

He has a rich vocabulary and beautiful turn of phrase. He describes how we each have different versions of ourselves: ‘I had a sense of formulating a papier machier version of myself to send out in the world, while I sat controlling it remotely, from some snug suburban barracks.’

It’s stuffed full of stories about drunken nights out, drug fuelled partying, sex with hundreds, and probably thousands of women, but even during this his phrases are so beautiful. He describes an orgy he went to in the suburbs, as being like a Mike Leigh film. Another night is ‘...one of those nights when everything feels like it’s broken.’

He lets us into a secret about the ‘To my shame’ technique in Narcotics Anonymous circles. Basically you can get away with any admission, however bad it is, as long as you precede it with ‘to my shame.’

I lost count how many times his belongings are thrown out of bedroom windows in black bin bags by disgusted girlfriends or flatmates.

You’ve heard the stories about Brand’s antics, you may have heard him talking about it on TV, but you haven’t read it in all its detailed colour, as it’s presented in this no holds barred account of his life. I admire his honesty and openness to his previous addictions.

He was a vegetarian, and even during his worst drug addiction phases, he refused to put ‘death  into’ his body in the form of meat or fish – he’s a proper vegetarian and proud of it – despite taking crack cocaine, heroin, alcohol and ketamin. He recognises that’s an interesting paradox.

If you want a roller coaster ride through his life, in all its omnishambles richness, expressed in beautiful phrases, I can thoroughly recommend this book.

Guilty pleasures don’t come much guiltier than this.

Have you read this book? Would you not be seen dead reading it?

I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time,

Liam Livings xx

"My name is August. I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse.'

Auggie wants to be an ordinary ten-year-old. He does ordinary things - eating ice cream, playing on his Xbox. He feels ordinary - inside. But ordinary kids don't make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. Ordinary kids aren't stared at wherever they go.

Born with a terrible facial abnormality, Auggie has been home-schooled by his parents his whole life. Now, for the first time, he's being sent to a real school - and he's dreading it. All he wants is to be accepted - but can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, underneath it all?

• I was recommended this by Jo Jo Moyes on Twitter. It’s a young adult novel, but at no point do you feel spoken down to.
• I cried, loudly, while on a flight. The cabin crew checked to see if I was alright. I nodded, wiping tears from my face, and explained it was the book.
• It’s very easy to read, written in the first person from the point of view of August, the young boy. The narrative skips along as he starts at school dropping in back story about his face and what others do around him or how his family is
• It shows how cruel kids can be to other kids. I don’t know why, but this still surprised me, even though I had a taste of it at secondary school
• The point of view then moves to August’s sister, then to Summer, August’s friend
• The changing points of view means you see how August's facial disfiguring affects people differently
• Returns to August's perspective and it is interesting to see how he is received in the school including going to the school trip which is pivotal moment
• The character is described as a wonder, both medically for how rare his condition is, and emotionally for how he deals with his 1st year in school
• This story is simple, honest and a wonder

Does this sound like something you'd like to read? have you read anHonestly, I normally don't read YA books, but this, was amazing.

Until next time,
Liam Livings xx