Last year, @Zoë O'Connell and I went to the Southampton International Boat Show, only to find that it had been turned, by the organisers, into a “family day out to buy tat” show. Many exhibitors stayed away. Lots of stuff I wanted to see simply wasn’t there. Instead, you were made to walk through endless displays of crap patio furniture and other such tat, in slowly moving queues.

There used to be a boat show in London, and they killed it by turning it into a tat show too. Southampton was, until Covid, left alone to be a boat show, until last year. Even the RYA (Royal Yachting Association, the closest thing sailing has to a governing body in the UK) didn’t turn up.

Since then, the organisers have been bombarding us with email. After last year, I think a lot of people have decided to bot bother, and if we want to go to a boat show, go to Boot at Düsseldorf, the largest in Europe and an actual boat show.

The tone of the emails has been increasingly, “we get what we did wrong, we’re sorry! Look! We persuaded the RYA to come back.”

It was almost working … almost.

Then yesterday they sent me an email about the new highlight of the show: their live music stage.

You have no idea what you did wrong, do you?

RIP Southampton International Boat Show. Something sharing your name may continue for a while, but you are gone and missed.

Discussing the British Press, and I'm reminded of the time when I had a moderate amount of celebrity in the UK LGBT community, and the press tried to do a hit piece on me.

Now here's the thing. There's a cheat code, and I'm going to explain what it is:

They will contact you for comment.

If you say nothing, they will publish the piece and say you were offered the chance to comment.

If you tell them to fuck off, they will publish the price and say your response was foul and unprintable.

I did neither of these things. I told them that this piece wasn't journalism. It was ridiculous tittle tattle and represented everything that was wrong with a failing and dying industry more obsessed with clickbait than proper reporting. I asked them if they didn't have proper news to report, and said that they should be ashamed of themselves.

They're basically screwed at that point. "We contacted Ms Brown for comment and she said that this was ridiculous tittle tattle and that the reporter should be ashamed of herself."

They're not gonna say that.

I'm struck by something one of my history teachers once said about medieval castles. They weren't meant to be impregnable. They were meant to be annoying enough that an invading army would decide to investigate other priorities instead.

The piece never ran.

If you're a trans person in the crosshairs of the British press, make yourself an annoying target. They're on a deadline, and if you make them conclude that life is too short, they will leave you the fuck alone.