Queer: Ballet Dancer and Wrestler Ricki Starr

Ricki Starr (1931 - 2014) was the professional name of a man who managed to combine dual careers as a ballet dancer and a wrestler.

He was a ballet dancer first, and when he started wrestling imported not only balletic moves but even wore slippers!

The wrestling websites all say that his wrestling had gay overtones. I was going to say that while I have tagged this post queer I wasn't making assumptions about his sexuality, but now I have seen his act I am not convinced the gayness was limited to overtones!

Not sure at all! On the other hand the only thing queerer than a gay ballet dancer taking on the butch world of wrestling, would be a straight one doing so and pretending to be gay.

Apart from anything else, I am such a sucker for a hairy chest!

Turds: Former Archbishop of Birmingham

His Eminence Vincent Cardinal Nichols has come under fire from the Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse for his handling of the matter when he was Archbishop of Birmingham. The Hound is overjoyed because he's been on the List forever.
The commentary by the BBC says:

Once again, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse has shone light upon dark areas of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales.

This report describes an institution where the safeguarding of children was relegated to second, even third place, with the Church much more concerned about reputation management.

It also appears that Church leaders preferred secrecy over transparency, assisting some abusive priests to leave the country and others to move from parish to parish.

The criticisms of Cardinal Vincent Nichols are particularly scathing. The clear implication of the report is that his focus on reputation management - rather than the welfare of children - meant that abusers were allowed to continue victimising children.

TheTelegraph said:

Since the mid 1930s, there have been more than 130 allegations of child sexual abuse made against 78 people associated with the Archdiocese of Birmingham. At least 13 of them have been convicted in criminal courts and three others have been cautioned.

In his former role as Archbishop of Birmingham between 2000 and 2009, Cardinal Vincent Nichols claimed that a documentary - about the confrontation of a "serial child abuser" priest after he fled to the US - was "insensitive".

However an official inquiry Thursday criticised Cardinal Nichols, 73, who now sits as the Archbishop of Westminster, for failing to prioritise the welfare of children over the reputation of the church during his tenure.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) report found that the Archbishop’s reaction to the 2003 BBC documentary "led many to think that the Church was still more concerned with protecting itself than the protection of children" and concluded that his response to the screening was "misplaced and missed the point".

Following publication of the report Professor Alexis Jay, chair of the inquiry, said: "I am truly shocked by the scale of child sexual abuse within the Archdiocese of Birmingham. The number of perpetrators and abused children is likely to be far higher than the figures suggest.

In a statement, His Eminence said (I quote from the Belfast Telegraph):

Following the report Cardinal Nichols said: “I thank IICSA for their review of the past and in my witness statements address all the points contained in the report.

“I look forward to the next phase which I trust will help us in our present and future tasks.”

Help them, lol. More like force them to do what is merely humanly responsible. And you know what? I really really hope His Eminence is elected pope after this one, just because of the associated media scrutiny 😄

Time Travel: the Former 100° Grill and Bar, Essex Street

On the corner of Essex Street and (M)Inge Street in the Chinese Quarter is this unassuming building which is in the middle of being renovated again:

In its more recent history it has been the Hundred Degree Flaming Bar and Grill, but there is no indication that in its more distant past it was the Key Bookshop, run by the Communist Party, and upstairs was the Star Social Club:

The social club doesn't show up a great deal in local history but was the location for a folk club and provided a women's/lesbians' space. The Communist bookshop seems to have moved frequently, but I don't know of one now.

Tarot: The Four Doors Spread

'Read as you can, not as you can't,' is one of my little principles which I keep on about. By and large it is true, but this week I am on annual leave and one of the things I want to do is practice this tarot spread which is perhaps best known for being used by his famous Miss Cleo. I don't understand, when I am perfectly capable of getting a narrative or picture from a line of cards, why I currently seem to be unable to do so with this spread, but I hope that is a situation which can be remedied.
You shuffle the deck and cut it into four piles, face down. You turn over the top cards and place them above so you have four face-up cards above the four face-down piles. You are supposed to turn them vertically so their orientation is reversed in this spread. I don't do reversals myself except when reading with an Etteilla deck, so I turn them horizontally, as is usual in cartomancy. You then turn over the top four cards of the piles so that you have eight cards face up. There are no exact positions but you read them sequentially, left to right and top to bottom. To carry on in time terms or get more information you move up the lower four cards and turn over four more, and you can do this until you get enough information. These instructions are based on the ones on aeclectic tarot forum and I have also read that it helps if you treat cards representing people as nouns and action cards as verbs. There is also a possible third class of cards, the archetypes, which can be seen as outer influences, or in my freeform reading in whatever way feels right at the time.
I notice that Miss Cleo herself used a mixture of psychic impressions, traditional meanings, and her own interpretation, so in reality didn't read that different to me.

(Mis)understanding the INFJ Door Slam

A few more thoughts on the famous INFJ door slammed. If you look on the internet you will see lots of websites which are trying to be helpful by telling INFJs that they do the door slam and giving helpful advice as to what to do instead to try to salvage relationships. These are usually along the perfectly reasonable lines of negotiating and communicating with people, but unfortunately the advice embodies two profound misunderstandings of how INFJs relate to other people.
The first misunderstanding is not allowing for the fact that we function through a set of rules in our head. These rules are perfectly reasonable to us but the key to understanding this is that we don't explain these rules to other people. This may seem unreasonable but that's the deal. Sorry, not sorry. We also feel free to throw these rules out of the window when it suits us. If we like you and want to incorporate you into our world we will ignore the rules for your benefit, but won't tell you that either. This means that by the time an INFJ gets to the door slam, we have actually already negotiated our own rules and by that time we are usually way beyond further negotiation. We may give you a warning, but our innate bullshit detector will know your stuff by then, and excuses etc will merely put a bolt on the already slammed door.
The second thing which the outside world doesn't get is that by the time of the door slam, we don't care. Genuinely. You can tell an INFJ trying to salvage a relationship by our emotion and repeated attempts to tell you what is bothering us. If you ignore them or prevaricate and we are forced to just tell you with no emotion you are being door slammed. Again that is only if we are bothered about you. By that stage you won't be admitted to our inner world and if we're not bothered about you, we'll just disappear. You may think that this is unreasonable but we don't care.
Could we do something different as the helpful advice suggests? Of course we could. But in reality we've already done it.