Any Human Face launch

Any Human Face had its official UK launch yesterday evening in the Travel Bookshop, a place I wholeheartedly recommend for all your reading needs should you be in or near Notting Hill, and probably worth a specific trip for. (It is a travel bookshop, after all.) I was accompanied by Simon Barraclough, who pulled some fine Italian-focused work from his poetic hat, and introduced by my friend and agent, the poet Isobel Dixon, so I couldn't have been happier. I also had the chance not only to see some old friends - including one I haven't seen for 33 years (hello, Sara!) - some newer ones (hello, Katy!) and some very new ones ( hello Essie!), but also to cement some previously virtual ones (hello Rob! hello Anne!).

You can see more photos of the event here.

Fellatio kills

According to the Rev Peter Mullen (click here for more info and a picture), gay people should have government health warnings tattooed on them in the appropriate place. He wrote on his blog:

"Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS."

I'd have thought that by the time you'd exposed the lucky chap's backside and were in a position to read what it said, the effectiveness of the warning would be substantially reduced by the allure of the backside itself. And you'd really need to have eyes in your testicles to benefit from the other one, which is a shade too Pan's Labyrinth for my taste. 

Still, I can see all kinds of openings (sorry) for creative tattooists. Think of the range of fonts, and colours. Personally, I'd choose something classical, like Bodoni in black, which goes with everything (as if that weren't the problem). But there must be a market for FELLATIO KILLS in rainbow hued italics. Or why not Comic Sans? And why stop there? Why not adorn the inner thighs with INTERCRURAL INTERCOURSE CAN RUB THE SKIN OFF YOUR GLANS. You didn't want to know that, did you? But what are warnings for?

Mullen, who also thinks gay pride marches are 'obscene', is chaplain to the City of London (so he obviously has lots of free time), as well as being a dead ringer for Francis Bacon's lover. The way Francis Bacon painted him. 

Squabbling over kippers

Finally, a story that combines great literature, down-and-dirty sex with minors, gratuitous violence and, er, cultural heritage issues. The house in London in which Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud loved, wrote and fought over smoked fish has been saved from property developers thanks to the pioneering work of the charity Poets in the City. They plan to turn the house into a rendezvous for the poets' admirers and creative offspring.

"It is probably going to be more tea and cake than absinthe," said Graham Henderson chief executive of Poets in the City. "A lot of people have been working hard over a long period of time to get the house saved.

"It is all on the drawing board at the minute, but we envisage a place that is a celebration of Verlaine and Rimbaud, where poets and enthusiasts can meet, do research and hold events."

The house is in Royal College Street, so if you're feeling vaguely maudit, you know where to go.

PS. By pure chance I spent two weeks last year in one of the buildings Verlaine lived in during his years in Paris, in rue Nollet, just round the corner from Place du Clichy. I don't have a photograph to prove this (and I'm sure you believe me in any case). But I do have one I took during my stay which captures something of the rather dark and perverse nature of the two poets' relationship.

Here it is.

A cold June day in London