Pause for thought

I don't usually make much of World AIDS Day here on my blog, but it is today, and it is twenty-five years this year since I lost Garry, so I thought a little interlude for remembrance wouldn't go amiss...

Colm Wilkinson - Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

There's a grief that can't be spoken
There's a pain goes on and on
Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone

Here they talked of revolution
Here it was they lit the flame
Here they sang about tomorrow
And tomorrow never came

From the table in the corner
They could see a world reborn
And they rose with voices ringing
And I can hear them now
The very words that they had sung
Became their last communion
On this lonely barricade at dawn

Oh my friends, my friends forgive me
That I live and you are gone
There's a grief that can't be spoken
There's a pain goes on and on

Phantom faces at the windows
Phantom shadows on the floor
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more

Oh my friends, my friends, don't ask me
What your sacrifice was for
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will sing no more

A moment of contemplation

Forgive me, dear reader, a rare moment of contemplation. Earlier, I read that it was on on this day in 1981 [33 years ago!] that the first medical reports on a new and worrying kind of pneumonia seen in five gay men in the USA were published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Two decades of terror and heartache were to follow.

This is also the 70th birthday of the original "Valjean" in Les Mis, Colm Wilkinson, and here he is singing (beautifully) a most appropriate song from that show - Empty Chairs at Empty Tables...

Colm Wilkinson - Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

Here they talked of revolution.
Here it was they lit the flame.
Here they sang about tomorrow
And tomorrow never came.

Tells a saucy tale, makes a little stir

As uber-hunk Hugh Jackman (and co-stars Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway and Amanda Seyfried) arrived in London's West End last night for the premiere of the movie adaptation of Les Miserables, so, for some strange reason I am drawn to play another interpretation of the musical's funniest number...

Here's the ever-fabulous Topping and Butch, with their inimitable version of Master of the House:

Topping & Butch - Master of the House

I'm probably more likely to pay to see them than the film.

More Topping and Butch songs

Topping and Butch website