Last Wednesday I had a haircut. When I got out of the chair my 4-year-old daughter, who'd sat quietly with a book throughout suddenly burst into tears. But it turned out that was only because she equates going to the hairdressers with getting a lolly. Lucking the barber realised what was up even before I did and offered her one out of the jar. When we got home I shaved, put on a suit and tie, and went and looked at myself in the big mirror. I was a different me to how I'd been for quite a while. Holly was staring at me.

"It's still me. It's still Daddy Marcus."
"I know that daddy! You've got a dark face!"

She only sees shades, not colours. People are darker or lighter. When one of my parters, G, tried to tell Holly that she (my partner) was 'yellow' (being half Chinese), Holly was very confused. As far as Holly was concerned, both G and I are the same - darker than her. And that was that.

A few days later, this is confirmed again, "Look Daddy, that man's got the same face as you!" and it's a tanned Thai-looking chap in similar specs. He grins, and looks away, and I wonder if I've just had the world's weirdest gay flirting moment...

My daughter sees shades. It gives me hope. When she's bossing the kids around at nursery and telling which of them are being the mummy, which the daddy and which the child, her little directed scenes pay no attention to colour matching. Or for that matter gender. Boys can be mummies. A boy and a girl can be two daddies. If someone is close to her, she gets confused as to why they're not her sibling. The Chinese boy from down the road was her brother, as far as she was concerned, until they moved house.

Shade exists on a spectrum. Colour exists in paint pots. That is red, and that is blue. Sure, there's purple - but magenta and lilac and lavender all seem like clear and different colours to a child. Arguments can then be had, such as is turquoise green or blue? Lighter and darker are shades and the one is only referenced by the comparison.

She has never asked why she has two light skinned parents and one (slightly)darker skinned one. Nor has she made any comment about her own shade other than to note that it matched two of the parents. There's no conclusion to draw.

It's cool in the shade.

It's [International Blog Against Racism Week], did you know? And trust me on this, never attempt to explain to a four year old how actually turquoise is both green and blue and definitely doesn't have to be one or the other - you'll just circle that one for an hour or so...

I'm in the process of writing up a biography of myself (primarily to focus on activism and bi/sm stuff) to go on my sparkly new web site which will be appearing, I hope, before xmas For Sure.

Two questions people can help me with:

1) Does any have any dates for my time as chair of the LBG - I have no paper records and my memory of it is a burnt-out blur.

2) Um, so - what have I done that should be in a proper third-person-y biography of me? Somehow writing it as "Marcus was..." is making me self conscious and slightly forgetful! I've got my old website bio - but that lists everything I've done ever, including real-world jobs; it's rather unfocused and I'd like the new one to concentrate on the things people (like you guys) would want to know)...

"The IRA has formally ordered an end to its armed campaign and is to pursue exclusively peaceful political means."

Wow. Just 'wow'. [BBC Story]

I really never thought I'd see this happen. I mean, it didn't even occur to me it might happen for me to then wonder if it'd be within my lifetime.

A lot has happened in the last month.

Bombing scares in London, medical scares with my daughter. Vary degrees of severity to each, of course, but they've made me spend some time looking at the baggage I'm carrying. Some of it is heavy, others I'd forgotten were there.

I think it's time to lighten my load. It's going to be a busy enough year.

I'm going to unilaterally put down some bags, in fact as much of it as I can. This doesn't need negotiation, the people affected will just find that if we bump into each other at events I'll not be bothered. If we find ourselves in the same conversation, I won't mind. If we find ourselves talking I'll be hoping they're enjoying themselves and curious as to how they've been. No expectation of reciprocity on my part.

I won't be declaring to the world that we're chums any time soon, but as of now the luggage is on the floor.

As I walk away from it they're friends of friends. I have excellent friends, and I shall be trusting their taste. There's no need for anyone to email me about this.

I tend not to get involved in the assorted debates on LJ about religion or beliefs because my own are rather contradictory. But the recent selections have made me sit down and think long-hand about my own and so I'm going to present them. I hope no-one is offended by them, I suspect some will be surprised.

I feel long comments in ongoing debates often get lost once the threading starts and a short précis of my beliefs could confuse. Observe:

I am an atheist/apatheist who believes in heaven and hell.

( So I need to start defining some terms, eh? )

The 'One Thing' survey started by mhw:
( Cut for the surveyphobic )

As it has a couple of questions that made me think:
( The current circulating survey )

Stop me if you've heard it before...

Talking at the weekend at an excellent party (Thanks aegidian and the Melford Road gang!) the topic of my trip to casualty came up. When I demured to relate the story, other people offered to tell it for me and as I really didn't want to either listen to someone recount my life or leave the room in case they got it wrong, I promised to email the url on.

Then I remembered that the site that it was on is usually blocked due to adult content.

So, I guess I'll put it under this cut tag ( here )