Almost all of it spent at PridePark, 3000 square metres of gravel in the middle of Tanto Park, ten minutes' walk from the centre of Södermalm, which is kind of more 'our' island than any of the other ones are.
Sun! Shorts weather! Warmth! Rain by early evening!
Five thousand people! Already on the first day. I kept bumping into friends, everybody happy and impressed by it all. Jeppe had cycled all the way from Finland. Spent many a happy hour just wandering round, drinking coffee, checking out the stalls, realising that my wallet is going to take a battering this week, and subsequently supporting the pink krona by buying a t-shirt and one of those neat Diesel tank tops with the EuroPride logo on, and a big rainbow flag.
Having a rainbow flag in your hands changes your whole attitude to life, you become loved by the populace, you go around with an inane grin on your face and spread joy. Try it yourself. Better than sex.
Ulrich Bermsjö, club entreprenör and part-time diva, compèred the opening ceremony with some style and a sweet line in unscripted personal observations. Stockholm's mayor did the official opening speech and welcome to the city - and was quite, quite brilliant. This must have been ghost-written by one of us, I thought, but so what if it was: Stockholm City has put its heart into welcoming us and valuing us for who we are - lesbian, gay, bi and trans. Here's hoping the population can do the same.
RFSL, the Swedish Federation for Gay and Lesbian Rights, awarded the annual Homophobia Prize to immigration minister Pierre Schori for his astonishing naiveté (it's either that or lying) on the situation for homosexual people in Iran, when the question came up in connection with a refugee who in the end didn't get sent back after all. The Gold Lambda went to the founder of Umeå University's new Gay and Lesbian studies course. The recipient of Rosa Rummet's Culture Prize was queer theory expert and populariser Don Kulick. A man who's changed the way me and plenty of others in Sweden think about sexuality and heterosexism. But he set the cat among the pigeons by using his acceptance speech for some damning criticism of women's organisations who are excluding transexual women from their EuroPride events. It was good to strike a blow for transgender rights, but did he really realise he was yet another (white, blond) man standing on a stage attacking women? The debate's going to continue, that's for sure.
I missed Ann entirely, Jonny turned up despite being ill, Lena from Spisa hos Helena looked tired but very happy after the first of 8 days serving food to the masses, Shona reckoned we should gather the rest of the EuroPride Scots for a photoopportunity next to the Scottish flag, and I finally got to talk to a very sweet guy I've had my eye on for, ooh, a year or so...
And nobody saw me tampering with the advertising poster outside PridePark, did they? Good.
:-)
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