London Pride 2017
So London Pride was amaaaaazing, as ever :D I showed up at 3 to start marching at 4, because London Pride is massive and our streets are narrow so even Section C didn’t get started for a good three hours. I marched with the National Union of Teachers - I was with two of my best friends, who’re both in the NUT, and my god I’d like to be unionised. So it was me, Violet and the Dark Lady (this was their first married Pride! ♥), Miss Godfrey, and Miss Godfrey’s lovely colleague and his husband. Lovely Colleague is a newly-qualified teacher and has been told Miss Godfrey is a bad influence (their school is a HORRORSHOW to the extent that Miss Godfrey is probably about to blow the whistle on SATS-results-fiddling). His lovely Korean husband was having his FIRST PRIDE EVER and they both clearly had a blast.
I dressed as the bi flag: raspberry pink crop-top, lavender petticoat, deep blue fishnets. (Plus a bi-flag necklace made for me by the darling
creatoremagico, although I wore it backwards most of the day so it wouldn’t obscure the tit window in my lace-up top, hahaha.) Then rainbow Converse at the bottom and dangly rainbow earrings, because I am BOTH. I’ve been getting more and more aggressively bisexual in general queer spaces. I was a tiiiny bit worried because two years ago there were people shouting BREEDER at the bi groups marching, and this year there were zero specifically bi groups marching (because they didn’t get their paperwork in by the deadline -- nobody was meaning to be an arsehole, but given the lack of funds bi groups are working with, Pride should’ve been on top of making sure to reach out to the volunteers running them. Ebay and Tesco and that have PR professionals to get that shit done). But actually it was great.
There were like a dozen bi flag people, maybe more, watching. (And more trans flags than ever!!! This adorable baby trans boy looked STUNNED when I saw it and was like TRANS FLAG! HIGH FIVE FOR YOU! God baby queers kill me. There were several happy groups of teenagers watching the march, covered in rainbows, and one teenage girl between her parents, and I almost cried.) Me and the bi-flag peeps totally did the queer-people-are-like-dogs thing but more so. They’d catch sight of me and scream, or I’d see them and scream, and then I’d run up and we’d high five or hug and yell BI PRIDE! :D :D :D I managed to hug or high-five pretty much everyone with bi stuff on the route!
Plus:
Super cute lesbian with short hair: Points at me. YOU!
Loki: cocks head
SCL: You’re so beautiful!
:D :D :D
My friends and I had been discussing how we don’t know how people go all night post-Pride, we’re always fucking exhausted. And at one point in the march we’d paused and everyone was basically standing around waving flags and me and my friends were leading a mini dance party, and I looked round and was like “this. This is why.” Plus obviously lots of marching and running around as I tried to hug and high-five everybody and wave my rainbow flag at all the little kids and sexy adults. Miss Godfrey’s colleague was so funny and cute, he kept running round high-fiving people. At first he was all I’M SO AWKWARD and I was like NOBODY’S AWKWARD AT PRIDE (I totally missed a high-five in a line-up once but it’s fine! etc) and soon he was like I’M INTERACTING WITH PEOPLE! I’M LIKING THEM! #relatable His husband was taking pics of him hugging the people watching :D
He was like IT’S LIKE BEING FAMOUS. Which it totally is, people’s faces light up when they see you and they scream and cheer. Especially marching with the NUT -- liberal bastion that London Pride is, there were a couple of people yelling FUCK THE TORIES as we passed, so we yelled it back. (NUT Pride’s official t-shirt was EDUCATION CUTS DON’T HEAL in rainbow text.) Plus literally all of us experienced some amount of horrible homophobia at school so the teachers’ union at Pride makes people emotional I think.
Speaking of emotional! The music from the NUT bus was good but not great (the Disney people were right ahead of us so we got to do Let It Go while we were waiting to head off). Definitely some lovely moments, and I’m becoming reconciled to I Kissed A Girl by Violet and Miss Godfrey kissing a bunch during it ♥ (Also because Miss Godfrey and I spent the first half singing the lyrics to Feelin’ Kinda Naughty, which totally fits, obvs.) At one point they played Titanium, and everyone sang along. We were marching along, this group of happy queers waving our flags, singing in unison: you take your aim, fire away, fire away… shoot me down, but I won’t fall, I am titanium and I saw a guy crying while he watched and I was like I KNOW RIGHT.
Plus I always have a bit of a ~moment when you get to the curve in the road at the end of Regent Street and you suddenly realise how many thousands of people are there marching with you, being with you, one with you, and how many people are there cheering.
Afterwards we went to collapse in St James Park and drink all the water that’d been left in the picked-clean Tesco. We ended up chilling there for hours, drinking wine, which was lovely. Then we went over to a different bit of the park where some guy had set up speakers. It was totally random and unofficial and awesome, this big group of people dancing while it got dark.
More hanging out with a random group, as ya do at Pride, then a late dinner with Violet and Miss Godfrey. It was almost midnight by then and I debated staying out, but I knew with Violet and Miss Godfrey going home my group wouldn’t be headed to an indie night with lots of women, it’d be a Soho cheese-factory stuffed with shirtless boys, and I decided that wasn’t worth it. I ended up crashing hard at half-one. I’ve been working so much, it’s not really a surprise.
Great day :D
This was originally posted at http://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/362050.html. Comment wherever you like :)
I dressed as the bi flag: raspberry pink crop-top, lavender petticoat, deep blue fishnets. (Plus a bi-flag necklace made for me by the darling
creatoremagico, although I wore it backwards most of the day so it wouldn’t obscure the tit window in my lace-up top, hahaha.) Then rainbow Converse at the bottom and dangly rainbow earrings, because I am BOTH. I’ve been getting more and more aggressively bisexual in general queer spaces. I was a tiiiny bit worried because two years ago there were people shouting BREEDER at the bi groups marching, and this year there were zero specifically bi groups marching (because they didn’t get their paperwork in by the deadline -- nobody was meaning to be an arsehole, but given the lack of funds bi groups are working with, Pride should’ve been on top of making sure to reach out to the volunteers running them. Ebay and Tesco and that have PR professionals to get that shit done). But actually it was great.
There were like a dozen bi flag people, maybe more, watching. (And more trans flags than ever!!! This adorable baby trans boy looked STUNNED when I saw it and was like TRANS FLAG! HIGH FIVE FOR YOU! God baby queers kill me. There were several happy groups of teenagers watching the march, covered in rainbows, and one teenage girl between her parents, and I almost cried.) Me and the bi-flag peeps totally did the queer-people-are-like-dogs thing but more so. They’d catch sight of me and scream, or I’d see them and scream, and then I’d run up and we’d high five or hug and yell BI PRIDE! :D :D :D I managed to hug or high-five pretty much everyone with bi stuff on the route!
Plus:
Super cute lesbian with short hair: Points at me. YOU!
Loki: cocks head
SCL: You’re so beautiful!
:D :D :D
My friends and I had been discussing how we don’t know how people go all night post-Pride, we’re always fucking exhausted. And at one point in the march we’d paused and everyone was basically standing around waving flags and me and my friends were leading a mini dance party, and I looked round and was like “this. This is why.” Plus obviously lots of marching and running around as I tried to hug and high-five everybody and wave my rainbow flag at all the little kids and sexy adults. Miss Godfrey’s colleague was so funny and cute, he kept running round high-fiving people. At first he was all I’M SO AWKWARD and I was like NOBODY’S AWKWARD AT PRIDE (I totally missed a high-five in a line-up once but it’s fine! etc) and soon he was like I’M INTERACTING WITH PEOPLE! I’M LIKING THEM! #relatable His husband was taking pics of him hugging the people watching :D
He was like IT’S LIKE BEING FAMOUS. Which it totally is, people’s faces light up when they see you and they scream and cheer. Especially marching with the NUT -- liberal bastion that London Pride is, there were a couple of people yelling FUCK THE TORIES as we passed, so we yelled it back. (NUT Pride’s official t-shirt was EDUCATION CUTS DON’T HEAL in rainbow text.) Plus literally all of us experienced some amount of horrible homophobia at school so the teachers’ union at Pride makes people emotional I think.
Speaking of emotional! The music from the NUT bus was good but not great (the Disney people were right ahead of us so we got to do Let It Go while we were waiting to head off). Definitely some lovely moments, and I’m becoming reconciled to I Kissed A Girl by Violet and Miss Godfrey kissing a bunch during it ♥ (Also because Miss Godfrey and I spent the first half singing the lyrics to Feelin’ Kinda Naughty, which totally fits, obvs.) At one point they played Titanium, and everyone sang along. We were marching along, this group of happy queers waving our flags, singing in unison: you take your aim, fire away, fire away… shoot me down, but I won’t fall, I am titanium and I saw a guy crying while he watched and I was like I KNOW RIGHT.
Plus I always have a bit of a ~moment when you get to the curve in the road at the end of Regent Street and you suddenly realise how many thousands of people are there marching with you, being with you, one with you, and how many people are there cheering.
Afterwards we went to collapse in St James Park and drink all the water that’d been left in the picked-clean Tesco. We ended up chilling there for hours, drinking wine, which was lovely. Then we went over to a different bit of the park where some guy had set up speakers. It was totally random and unofficial and awesome, this big group of people dancing while it got dark.
More hanging out with a random group, as ya do at Pride, then a late dinner with Violet and Miss Godfrey. It was almost midnight by then and I debated staying out, but I knew with Violet and Miss Godfrey going home my group wouldn’t be headed to an indie night with lots of women, it’d be a Soho cheese-factory stuffed with shirtless boys, and I decided that wasn’t worth it. I ended up crashing hard at half-one. I’ve been working so much, it’s not really a surprise.
Great day :D
This was originally posted at http://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/362050.html. Comment wherever you like :)