From the category archives:

Pink

Thousands Are Sailing

by Henry Farrell on July 28, 2007

“Bill Sjostrom”:http://www.atlanticblog.com tells me via email that the “2006 Irish Census figures”:http://www.cso.ie/census/census2006results/volume_5/vol_5_2006_complete.pdf are out, and that 14.7% of respondents weren’t born in Ireland. This is one of the reasons that I don’t blog very much about Ireland any more; the country has changed dramatically since I left. I departed in 1993 at the tail-end of the economic slump, when no self-respecting immigrant would want to come near the country (over half of my university class emigrated as best I remember; I imagine that most of them have since gone back). According to Bill, 0.6% of Ireland’s population were born in the US; a pretty significant reversal of the previous trend. This picture from the “Irish Times”:http://www.ireland.com suggests that changes are afoot in the North of Ireland too.

Northern Ireland

The caption reads:

The Free Derry Wall gets a coat of paint for the gay and lesbian Foyle Pride Festival. Members of the gay men’s health promotion agency the Rainbow Project painted the wall for the festival, which starts on August 13th.

Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries have used wall-slogans and murals (often quite detailed and extensive) as a means of marking off their territory and scaring off outsiders for decades. To have gay activists start doing ’em over in pink suggests that things are … a little different than they used to be.

Pretty Flamingo

by Jon Mandle on May 22, 2007

I thought this news item involved several of those colorful British idioms that I never quite get exactly. But no – these are real birds.

A pair of gay flamingos have adopted an abandoned chick, becoming parents after being together for six years, a British conservation organisation said Monday.

Tis the season to be girly

by Maria on December 16, 2003

These are v. serious days indeed on CT, but I wanted to share with you the most perfect girly evening I have had in a long time.

It started in Le Bon Marche, the frilliest department store in Paris, where I bought gift boxes, tissue paper and ribbons (predominantly pink of course). Le Bon Marche is the place you go to if you absolutely must spend 11.65 euro on glace cherries. Everyone there was much too posh to make me feel out of place in my shabby runners, though I did have to make the walk of shame to the farthest corner of the booze shop after I asked for cooking brandy.

Then home to combine hot cider and brown sugar with currants, candied orange peel, freshly ground almonds, cloves, 3 granny smiths, juice and rind of a lemon, a cinnamon stick and said cherries in a pot over a low heat for 40 minutes*, sipping the remaining fresh cider while stirring as the sauce reduced, and re-reading for the umpteenth time the final two chapters of Persuasion. Result; lovely christmas-y cooking smells and the best mincemeat I’ve ever made.

Tonight, I just have to bake the pies (pastry is ‘resting’ in the fridge as we speak), shake some icing sugar over them, wrap them in the lovely boxes, tie their little ribbons and work out how and when to deliver them, red riding hood style.

And if that’s not girly enough for yiz, you should try a personality quiz courtesy of spacefem, and via the cadetblue Invisible Adjunct. I am blueviolet. I don’t know what you have to answer to be pretty pink.

*Adapted from Nigella Lawson’s recipe in domestic goddess, though I’ve a lot less time for her after hearing via Ophelia of Nigella’s contribution to the MMR debate. Perhaps, as retaliation, those of us who know nothing about cooking should wax outraged about how the tv chef business is driven by uncaring, orthodox, control freaks who are in hock to Sainsburys and don’t care a damn if our children get, um, fat?