Magazine

Homosexual acts between consenting adults (only two at a time) over the age of twenty-one and conducted behind closed doors were finally made legal in England and Wales in 1967, ten years after the Wolfenden Report had proposed it.

The legislation was promoted in parliament by its sponsors, Leo Abse and Lord Arran (named after a species of cardigan, he could never have imagined...) as an act of kindness to the poor homosexual whose preposterous sexual urges were certain to lead to a life of abject misery and quite possibly to incarceration in a closed institution with other men, which for some probably lifted the abject misery a bit. Prison isn't for everyone, though, so decriminalisation was quite the radical idea.

Before this time, to society at large, gay men didn't exist. I used to meet people who claimed it was better before 1967. I'm pretty sure they'd never been to prison or they might have thought differently. There were also those who told us young radicals that we shouldn't rock the boat and that having pubs and clubs that were only occasionally raided and friends who were only occasionally beaten up, was something for which we should have been grateful; that sticking our heads above the parapets was counterproductive. Of course, the very existence of such limited freedoms was entirely due to people sticking their heads above the parapet, but they never really understood this.

Arran Cardigan, worn by gay cardigan enthusiasts to recognise Lord Arran's contribution to law reform.

Wearing a cardigan has never been a radical act, unfortunately. It is however nice to think that Lord Arran's efforts on our behalf have been commemorated by the Arran cardigan.

Before and even after the '67 act there were subversive activities going on. There were code words used in ads in the straight press (I met a very nice man back in 1978 through the NME personal ads which were awash at that time with “Tom Robinson fans”, all, as I was, under age and excluded from other media). The radio, or as we used to call it back then, the radio, had requests for records on Housewives Choice to celebrate ruby weddings, which was code. There was also Julian and Sandy on Round the Horne whose outrageous polari went over most people's heads. And who could forget the Jimmy Savile Violent Non-Consensual Sodomy Hour on the Light Programme on Saturday mornings (only kidding, he did a lot of great work for charidee...).

There were also magazines, not many though. One was called Jeremy and ran for a while, available hardly anywhere. For the cardigan aficionado there was Men's Cardigans, four issues a year of men wearing knitted cardigans, smoking pipes and looking frightfully normal. It could have been mistaken for knitting patterns but there was not much knit-one-purl-one going on, just a load of code amid a sea of innocuousness and, naturally, tobacco advertisements as well as ads for car coats and driving gloves.

Men's Cardigan from 1965. Rather nice card modelled by someone thankfully not smoking a pipe. I'm betting it's in his pocket.

Arran cardigans were undoubtedly featured, but back in 1965 they had little to celebrate.

Happy new year.

Pink

There's something about pink. When I was younger a taste for pink or an inclination to wear it was a sure sign of homosexuality. The pop psychologists were all over that one, along with body language and the distant father thing; utter bullshit all of it and still is. Nevertheless it was important not to wear anything pink, lest it be thought... you know. 

Why anyone thought there should be some subcultural code going on, I can't imagine. Obviously there are and always have been subcultural codes, but to work they really need to confine themselves to the subculture and be unambiguous. Asking my new line manager when I first started work if he'd like me to suck his dick was not a mistake I would make twice; why else would he wear a pink tie? Saucy little tart, he had it coming to him.

That said I must admit I have an affinity for pink. More along the deliberate outrage line than some innate desire to have the decorative taste of a ten year old girl. I obviously have no such taste, I am a grown up man with mature tastes. Temper tantrums on the other hand...

So here are a couple of cardigans, one red with pink buttons and one pink with pink buttons.

Does that look much less butch than red with red I wonder? The real question is about the semiology of the cardigan in general and I'm saving that for my magnum opus (I'll be inviting people home to see that!). 

In this day and age would the pop psychologist read too much into wearing a pink cardigan? I would, for certain but then objectivity in the cardigan department has never been my strong point. I'm going to go out to the bank when I've finished writing this. Let's find out.

A Wildean Excursion

Let's get off to a good start with a Stars in Their Eyes reference; today, Matthew, I'm going to be Oscar Wilde.

“To wear one cardigan, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune, to wear two looks like carelessness.” Horribly mauled, but captures the essence of a predicament I find myself placed in by the cowboy who installed my central heating boiler. I'm having to wear two cardigans, not through carelessness (at least not my own) but through simple erotic delight and a lack of central heating.

The inner one is a sleeveless number with those faux leather football style buttons and the outer a Uniqlo lambswool with, well, I don't have to say do I ? Very nice, too bulky for going out, but nice indoors.

My Oscar Wilde doesn't end there, though, as I'm sure he told Bosie on many an occasion. You see, having, in my Lady Bracknell quote, laid myself open to accusations of carelessness, I'm going to excuse myself in the character of Canon Chasuble from The Importance of Being Ernest, “None of us are perfect. I myself am peculiarly susceptible to draughts.”. The canon needs to wear a cardigan, or two. I can recommend it.

Winter Draws On

That's a rather weak pun that doesn't work when it's written down. Obviously it should be drawers. It is the sort of rudery that was once forbidden by the BBC. Wikipedia tells me it was proscribed by a document called The Green Book, a guide for light entertainment producers to promote wholesome family values. It merited a specific listing, so it must have been considered utterly unspeakable. Other things that were strictly verboten were effeminacy in men and immorality of any kind.

The article says that the book was kept under lock and key. I fail to understand how this worked; why would you want to keep your rules and guidelines secret from the people who had to abide by them? Still, this was the forties and fifties, the BBC was run by men who wore tweed jackets and smoked pipes, so obviously they knew.

Which brings me seamlessly onto my favourite topic of cardigans. The temperature has dropped noticeably in the last couple of days, which prompted me to seek out an oldie but goody.

I bought it on fleabay some years back, it's knitted by hand (on a machine) and is all knit, so it curls. Aficionados of the knitter's art will appreciate this is why most patterns go knit one - pearl one. This is about the full extent of my knowledge of knitting. It has fisheye buttons arranged horizontally, I think they're supposed to keep you warmer that way.

I imagine a knowledge of knitting, however slight, would be enough to bring down upon me the full weight of opprobrium available to a wielder of The Green Book. Such knowledge in a man would be a sure sign of the very effeminacy that the book would strongly disapprove of. As well as making me unsuitable for the wireless, it would probably have attracted the attention of the local constabulary too, being so obviously an affront to civilised society, not to mention a security risk. While it was never, as I recall from my more radical days, a stated aim that gay people should be able to get married, it gives me much pleasure to call back to that period and shout, we can fucking well get married now!

Rant over. As a bonus, here's a picture of the cardigans I have had my valet lay out ready to be worn next week. I dare say when it comes to the one with the badge he will advise me along the lines of, “May I suggest that sir forego the badge with today's outfit.”. I will of course slap him soundly for his impertinence, he'd be disappointed and upset if I didn't.

Locked Out.

Been a bit of a lacuna in posting and picking up the flood of comment. Sorry about that.

Google locked me out of my account by demanding a phone number which I wasn't about to give them. Thought about it for a couple of weeks. Got a 50p sim from Asda today to get a disposable phone number, went to log in and I'm straight in with no demand for a number, bastards!

Anyway, normal service has been resumed. I'll be posting again as soon as I think of something interesting to say (that'll be a first).

Go Cardless, Indeed!

Last week saw me doing a bit of research on direct debits, a way to enable institutions, usually, to take money out of your bank account. I am not a financial adviser and will not be offering any such advice here. I write only because I stumbled upon a site called Go Cardless (link, if you're interested). The very notion struck me as being utterly preposterous and anti cardiganist. Go cardless? But, but, I always wear a card. Really, absolutely, most of the time.

A little confession. It has been quite warm here in the north west the last few days, so I've only managed to wear one in the evenings. Even that has been more out of a sense of duty than any real challenge to thermal homoeostasis (online Oxford dictionary offers that as a proper spelling. Might be a bit archaic, in which case, good!).

Red Arnold Palmer

I’ve settled on a red Arnold Palmer golf number from back in the days when I seemed always to be buying them on Ebay in the US. Orlon is such a seductive material (sarcasm, they tell me, is very difficult to convey on the web so I leave that one as an exercise for the reader).

Which reminds me, here are the answers to last weeks quiz for those of you who partook. I've had to wade through literally no replies, so here are the answers.

• A. Less than twenty seconds, but it only had five buttons
• 2. Vigorously from behind.
• iii. Dry cleaning, obviously.

Nobody actually completed the limerick, “There was a young man in a cardigan...”, so the prize goes unawarded.

That Go Cardless site might be of some interest, they claim to be cheaper than Paypal.

I'd rather you were too.

As a special bank holiday treat I'll offer my readers a little biographical story. It all happened thirty years ago so what the hell, real names and locations and exaggeration where it makes the narrative more interesting. It must be remembered too, that aspects of this story are highly condensed; for instance, went to the pub and met a man really means went to various pubs night after fucking night and eventually met someone who wasn't a rapacious sex monster, or just generally barking mad. No way did I strike paydirt at the first thrust of the spade.

It was the early eighties, I was fairly new in London, young and besotted with cardigans and gagging for man-action. There was a gay scene to explore, though I was never fully confident out there. It was just before the AIDS crisis really kicked in (though I do remember being scrupulously careful, so it must have kicked in to some extent).

I had plucked up enough courage to get myself into town wearing one of my small but perfectly formed collection of cards. It was to the Salisbury, near Trafalgar square that I took myself one Friday night. A glittering and piss elegant watering hole that was by then getting a bit mixed. I think now few will remember it as a gay pub at all. Having got mildly socially lubricated, I fell into conversation with an American. His name was Matt and he was a couple of years older than me. He worked for an American bank in the city (this was pre big bang, so a job like that registered as boring rather than glamorous and lucrative). Anyway, one thing led to another and at closing time we were on the bus back to my place.

He didn't look a bit like this.

Once there he did the best thing imaginable and helped himself to the card buttons by way of getting me nekkid. That certainly got me going and various sex-type activities ensued. Thus it was that I learned about circumcised men; his being American and of an age where it was pretty much inevitable that boy babies were cut. As I discovered later, on closer inspection, he was cut tight; when he got hard, he could barely open his eyes.

It was a learning experience for me, the pace and rhythm of reaching an orgasm for him were very different to what I was used to. Progress was relentless, much more vigorous than I'd been used to. There seemed to be no notion of sitting back and enjoying the view... and then, suddenly, orgasm, ready or not. It just happened, not without warning but definitely without the option of pausing once the warning signs were evident. Having started progress, the orgasm just ran its course. There seemed to be no controls to modulate or extend it. Interesting, different and even if seen as a detriment to good sex (and they certainly weren't) these characteristics were well complemented by the sheer size of his magnificent organ. In short a huge dick with a hair trigger.

No interest in the cardigan once it was off, sadly.

Come morning I tried to compensate for this by putting on a different card while I went to make tea. My hopes that he'd notice and inquire came to naught, alas.

Tea consumed, it was time for round two and thinking in for a penny, I told him I wanted to keep the card on because it turned me on. He acquiesced and I got a good seeing to wearing a cardigan, from a huge man who reached thundering and frantic orgasm and leaving me thinking I might never walk quite the way I once did. In short absolute bliss.

He got me one of these.

We saw one another quite a lot for what seemed like quite a while. We got close enough for me to tell him about my special interest. He was understanding and really quite coöperative, wearing one himself on occasion to excite me. The best thing he did, though was get his sister to find and send over a letter cardigan which really did the trick if either of us wore it. I always wore a card when we were out together.

As with all these things, we drifted apart. He's probably fabulously rich by now, but what do I care, he left me with a taste for huge circumcised dicks and letter cardigans. You really can't put a price on that.

I got a taste for these, among other things.

BHS goes down the pan

Sad news indeed that BHS appears to be going down the pan with the potential loss of many jobs.

 

I have a peculiar relationship with BHS going back a long way. Since 1976 I have never shopped there, they have had not a penny of my money. 

There is a reason for this. Back then when I was a callow youth, student actually, there was a current affairs programme on the television called World In Action. It was a good programme, won awards and was highly rated. It was made by Yorkshire Television, a reminder that ITV did used to do quality.

One week in early 1976 they did a programme about homosexuals, presented as we always were back then as some sort of problem. In it a man was seen to kiss his boyfriend, a big deal at the time. The newspapers talked about it, the establishment was shocked. The man in question worked for BHS, went into work the next day and was sacked. There was practically no employment protection legislation about in those days so he was out of a job, with no avenue of appeal.

My very first bit of gay activism was to join a picket and leafleting that was mounted the next Saturday to protest about this at the town centre branch of BHS in the city where I was a student. To protect identities, let's call it Birmingham.

 I don't think we did any good for the poor bloke who'd lost his job, but it did me a power of good. As a consequence of this I have never been able to bring myself to spend money in BHS. I have as a consequence missed out on cardigans from the years before fleabay when BHS and M&S were among the few retail outlets that had them.

That said, I do have a BHS card, bought on fleabay and very nice it is too.

While it is rather mean of me to keep up a boycott for forty years, I suspect the money that Philip Green has wrung out of the business has done more damage than the money I haven't put in.

It's been a while, but hasn't it always. The cardigan world moves with glacial slowness, but just occasionally something happens, be it ever so slight.

I've had some badges made up, designed them myself using some sort of design/edit/paint package. The main image is nicked and I'm buggered (...less often than I'd like...) if I can remember where I got it from. If it's yours and you don't want it all over my page, ask and it'll be gone. I'm not using the image commercially, so there's no point claiming a royalty.

It will still be on the badges, though and may appear on tea mugs if I can be bothered. It's going to appear here too, so if you want to be credited, do ask.

There it is. I actually have five but two are on cardigans, a bit like this...

It's a bit of a thrill wearing not only the card but also the badge when I go out. I am so easily amused these days.

That's all for now, have a happy Easter.

Mansion for Sale

I read today that Playboy Mansion is for sale, it's a big old house with a lot of history. It comes with a curse; Hugh Hefner will continue to live there, despite the $200 million asking price.

This made me think about Cardigan Towers, the mansion in which I rattle around and feel increasingly irrelevant. As old age encroaches (108, next birthday. Best send flowers, they'll be good either way) I am given to bouts of incontinent reminiscence. I never capitalised on my hobby the way Hefner did, nor did I have as much well publicised fun. I do however take comfort from the notion that my life was not completely wasted, just mostly wasted.

I have toyed with the idea of putting Cardigan Towers on the market and if there's a prospect of staying here as well, then the idea quite appeals. For those of you who might be in the market, I'm prepared to release a few advance details.



It's a big house with many dedicated cardigan features, no jacuzzis or swimming pools, they play havoc with lambswool.

As you can see, it has a number of cardigan rooms. Sorry, that'll be well appointed cardigan rooms. As with Hefner, the curse is I'll be staying here. I'll be doing that for two reasons. One is that I like the place, the other is that this bloke comes round every week to do the gardens.

And since this is the first post of 2016, happy new year.