Another two weeks and another three performances. This fortnight has seen comedic theatre, beautiful ballet and 2012's inaugural gig!

My 2012 theatre year may only be two weeks old, but it's already given me three mightily impressive productions: Midnight, The Ballad of Halo Jones (both part of LassFest at the Lass O'Gowrie) and The Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor (at Unity Theatre in Liverpool).

I remember as a kid, I had a record player. The only record I can remember from my "collection" at the time was a Mr Men album with a red cover (I think it was "The Mr Men Songs" from 1979, but don't hold me to it). But CD came along before my love of music was confirmed and so the vinyl went.

OK, I have a week off next week and intend, in between catching up on OU stuff, to re-invigorate this site. What this probably means is me deciding to use a new theme, fiddling around with it a lot and not being happy with anything and so reverting to this (at least no-one will get lost). But a site (non-)makeover isn't enough. I need to actually blog some too.

Tomorrow (11th October) is (Inter-)National Coming Out Day*.

I started coming out on 12th October 2000 at the start of my second year of Sixth Form when I was 17. I had been wanting to tell people for a long time and finding excuses not to (I've mentioned it before, but "it's raining" was definitely my favourite). Unfortunately in 2000 I only realised, too late, after school on the 11th that it was National Coming Out Day I vowed to come out the next day.

Last night rumours were circulating that the government was about to make a big announcement on same sex marriage. This morning I noticed a tweet from @EvanHD:

Observing from abroad, slightly surprised at how unexcited Twitter is at the impending announcement of gay marriage coming to the UK

The first thing that comes to mind is because, actually, this is not an announcement about a step forward in same sex marriage... this is an announcement about a consultation in six months time.

I am penwing.

I am also Alex Lambert.

Reluctantly, I am Mr A M Lambert.

Professionally, I am Alex Lambert, Advisor.

In shorthand, I am AML.

I am all of these people. I use all of these names. All of these people are me. Whether I like it or not.

The point is, there are lots of identities I use - the list above is not exhaustive or static. All of them interact with, inform and conflict with each other. The biggest conflicts being between penwing and Alex Lambert - the flirting curtailed by fear, the desire to change the world dampened by the fear of failure.

This is the main part of my letter to my MP about the riots and the political response. There have been some amazing blog posts written about these incident (see lower down) and I wish I had the style and intelligence they show but in the mean time, I can offer this:

Well, I'm writing back to my MP with just a brief paragraph as below.

A few weeks ago, those crazy folks over at the Equality and Human Rights Commission - the uber body created by the Equality Act to oversee all different branches of equality and Human Rights - issued a press release advising they wished to intervene in four cases (well, four cases, joined into two for deliberation) before the European Court of Human Rights.