George is out here trying to get laid with a poster at the pride parade at ninety years old
This is George Montague, he’s an author who is currently campaigning to have a historic conviction for “gross indecency” from 1974 (PDA with his then-boyfriend) struct from his criminal record. You can sign his petition here!
The epitome of “Distinguished Gay”
Update as of 7 November 2018, this guy is now 95 years old and is still looking for his apology.
George Montague, the legend that he was and the ‘oldest gay man in the village’, has passed away peacefully at almost 99 years of age, March 18th 2022, with his husband Somchai Phukkai right by his side.
Per Wikipedia, “His funeral was on 11 April 2022, where there was a procession through the city, which closely followed the Brighton Pride parade route, eventually ending at Downs Crematorium on Bear Road. His hearse had colourful flowers and his iconic sign in the back window. The hearse was followed by a special double-decker bus decked out in pride colours.” Source: X.
Obituary: The Guardian (do read it - his life story is incredible).
George did receive his formal apology in 2017 and you can read it on Pink News. It was so many years overdue but I’m glad he got it regardless.
George told BBC One that he was over the moon with the apology he received.
Oh, cool! I love the behind-the-scenes stuff. If you’ve never seen the original (this version is narrower so you miss a lot that was going on) it’s here:
“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
An actual World Heritage Post
how does this post not have a million notes but anyone online can quote it
The Least Intimidating bakery in the village has closed for good so now I’ve got to go to the Intimidating Bakery, it’s awful. If you don’t have a PhD in being French I don’t recommend going to that bakery, here’s the humiliating account of the 3 times I’ve visited it so far:
the first time I went in there I pointed at one of those extra-skinny baguettes and said “a flute, please” feeling pretty sure of myself, and the baker said “… that’s a ficelle” (you idiot) (was implied) “a flute is twice as large as a baguette.”
That’s insane, first of all, a flute is a skinny instrument. Call your fat baguette a bassoon, lady—I made some timid remark about how it would make more sense for a flute to be a skinny bread and the baker said, “In Paris it is. I thought you were from the South?”
oh, that hurt
I guess I’m from the part of the South that’s so close to Italy the bread’s waist size matters less than whether it’s got olives in it, but I left the bakery having an existential crisis over whether living in Paris had made me forget my roots
the Least Intimidating Bakery just had normal baguettes vs. seedy baguettes vs. horny baguettes (easy mode, some have seeds, some have horns), while the new bakery has breads that are only different on a molecular level—there’s a good old loaf and then another, identical loaf called a bastard? google told me a bastard is “halfway between a baguette and a bread” but denouncing them like “those are not regulation-sized bastards” would get me banned from the bakery for life
on my 2nd visit (while I stood in line discreetly googling baguette terminology) there was an English tourist who asked for a baguette while pointing at what was either a rustique or a sesame and I felt a bit worried for them, but the baker just clarified “this one?” to waive any responsibility if they found out later it wasn’t a classic baguette, then handed them the bread without educating them in a judgmental tone and I felt envious
I know it’s because she thinks the English are beyond saving but still it made me want to come back with a fake moustache and an English accent so I wouldn’t be expected to play bakery on expert mode just because I’m French. I asked for a pastry this time and the baker asked “no bread with that?” which felt cruel, like she wanted me to sprinkle myself with ashes and admit out loud that my level of bread proficiency isn’t as advanced as I once believed it was
The third time I went, I had lost all self-confidence and I hesitantly pointed at a bread and said “I’d like this, uh—what is it called?” and the baker looked at me in disbelief and said “That’s a baguette.”
God.
for the record, if that stupid bread had been flanked by a skinny bread (ficelle) and a fat one (flute) then yeah of course I would have known to call it a baguette, but in the absence of reference points I now felt lost and scared of being called a Parisian again
it’s hard to express the depth of my suffering so I’ll just let the facts speak for themselves: this morning a French person (me) stood in a French bakery in France surrounded by French people and pointed at a baguette and said “what is this called”
