Things that were Gay in school - Trackie McLeod

'Soft Play' is an exhibition of work by Scottish artist Trackie McLeod (b.1993) at Charleston in Lewes (15 October 2025–12 April 2026). Drawing on his experience of growing up queer in the Glasgow area in the 2000s, it references popular culture of the time including sportswear, music and computers.

I was moved by 'Gay if you don't', a 'List of things that were 'Gay' in School' inscribed on aluminium. It's a long list, to quote just a few examples:

HAVING YOUR RIGHT EAR PIERCED 

HAVING YOUR LEFT EAR PIERCED 

HAVING NICE HAND WRITING 

HAVING SHORT HAIR 

HAVING LONG HAIR 

WEARING A GAP HOODIE 

WEARING PINK 

WEARING SKINNY JEANS 

WEARING TROUSERS THAT WERE TOO SHORT 

WEARING A VEST 

WEARING A BLAZER 

WEARING SHORT SHORTS 

WEARING WHITE SOCKS WITH BLACK TRAINERS 

WEARING BLACK SOCKS WITH WHITE TRAINERS 

BEING PASSIONATE ABOUT ANYTHING 

ACKNOWLEDGING YOUR MUM AT THE SCHOOL GATES 

ACCIDENTLY CALLING THE TEACHER MUM 

GIVING SOMEONE A CHRISTMAS CARD 

HAVING A RING FINGER LONGER THAN YOUR INDEX FINGER 

Recently Nigel Farage has been accused by some of his former school'mates' of terrible racist abuse of pupils at Dulwich College. Some of his apologists have claimed that it should all be forgotten as it was so long ago - or even questioned whether these witnesses could really recollect what was said in the late 1970s. But nobody on the receiving end of bullying and abuse at school ever forgets such words no matter how many years go by. McLeod's list reminded me of incidents at my school in Luton - like the boy being homophobically teased as 'ballet boy' because his sister had a dance magazine delivered with the paper round (he was outed by paper boy). Dancing, or seemingly even your sister dancing, was definitely 'a thing that was gay in school'.

Trackie McLeod, Infrared (speakers were playing Showtex 'FTS' while I was in there)

 

Portrait of the artist in trackie (source)

For my country - UK Decay, punk and the war poets

I went to see Luton punk band UK Decay at a rare hometown gig at the Luton Hat Factory arts centre last Saturday (8/11/2025).  As expected a peak of their set was their 1980 song 'For my country' with its chorus 'for the honour, I don't ask why, it's my pleasure, my honour to die, for my country.'

The song riffs on Wilfred Owen's First World War poem 'Dulce et Decorum Est' which contrasts the reality of soldiers 'guttering, choking, drowning' in a gas attack with 'The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori' ('It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country').

The poetry of Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and other First World War poets had a big impact on the first punk generation. Penny Rimbaud of Crass has credited Benjamin Britten's War Requiem (1962), which set Owen's poems to music, as a key influence on his pacifism. But I think most of us probably encountered these poems in school and/or through Brian Gardner's anthology 'Up The Line To Death: The War Poets 1914–1918', first published in 1964 and reissued in a 1976 paperback edition. A lot of punk anti-war sentiments were expressed through an imagery from this time, and UK Decay's song is a good example from its lyrics to its sleeve.

This was largely an anti-heroic poetry, grounded in the lived experience of the First World War trenches and sceptical of the glories expounded by armchair generals and propagandists. How different from today when once again militarism is simply equated with heroism and few in the public eye are brave enough to question the uncritical celebration of the armed forces (see for instance the hounding of any TV presenter who doesn't wear a poppy in November).  I have no doubt there have been soldiers who have performed heroic deeds - which I would define as going beyond the expected boundaries of your role and putting yourself at risk in order to save other people's lives. But nobody gets to be a hero just by virtue of their job title, and I certainly wouldn't classify shooting unarmed demonstrators in Derry in 1972 as heroic, or more recently executing unarmed captives in Afghanistan or sexually abusing women in Kenya. If it is an 'old lie' that dying for your country is an honour, it is even more of a lie that killing for your country is honorable too.

[the gig was great by the way, sometimes seeing a band many years after their heyday can be a bit sad, but in this case it felt like UK Decay managed to reconjure up a community with lots of people coming from different places to catch up with each other and perhaps with their younger, maybe more hopeful selves. I saw many people I haven't seen in the flesh for years including people from most of the Luton bands of that punk and post-punk/proto-goth period (let's say 1978-85) including Pneu Mania, Dominant Patri, Karma Sutra, Passchendale (another WW1 reference), Party Girls, Rattlesnakes etc. not to mention the legendary Switch Club]

More Luton stuff:

Marsh House Luton - from punk to henge

How it all began (for me): a School Kid against the Nazis in Luton 1979/80

Luton Nuclear Disarmament Campaign go to Greenham Common 1980

The Luton Riots of 1981 - 'Brixton comes to Bedfordshire'

The Hunger Strike, the Irish War and an English Town

Partisan Books: a Luton 1970s radical bookshop

Crass, Poison Girls, UK Decay in Luton, 1979

Karma Sutra, Luton anarcho-punk and hunt sabbing

Clubbing in Luton 1984-6

Dole Days in Luton: unemployed protests, 1985

Luton Punk Squat Party 1985 - with Karma Sutra

We are Luton - opposing the English Defence League in 2012

'Angry White People' book review (in Datacide magazine)