A bureaucracy always tends to become a pedantocracy.

Here is someone bringing their boat back to park it in the picturesque bay down in Bellerive Village. Bellerive is four bays south of Geilston Bay (OUR bay): Lindisfarne Bay; Rose Bay; Montague Bay; and then Bellerive. I think that this makes us related.

Or something.

I was on the bus the other day trying - and failing - to shut out the racket that is the local "yoof" conversing. Indeed, I could feel my I.Q. dropping by the minute as I valiantly tried to block out the inane, mundane and profane musings of the masses, and tried to concentrate on the Ukrainian existentialist black comedy I was trying to read.

One thing struck me, and it isn't an original thought, it's one I've pondered before: when did the word 'gay' cease to mean 'queer' (as in 'homosexual', rather than 'unusual')? It seems to me that at this place, in this point in time, to be 'gay' is no longer associated with 'limp wristed', 'a flair for the dramatic', 'well groomed' or 'sexually attracted to one of the same gender'.

No, the yoof, in their infinite wisdom, appear to have co-opted it as an all-encompassing term for anything 'lame' (that is, 'uncool', not 'injured'. By 'uncool', I mean 'not considered to add to the esteem in which one is held by one's peers' and not 'hot').

So, to be 'gay' it seems is to be 'sad', 'tragic', rubbish', or 'inferior'. For example, one fellow's hat was 'gay'. Now, I agree that the hat looked stupid, but I will it didn't admit that it didn't fit my definition of the word.

So while I'm concerned at the notion of a word once associated with those attracted to someone whose naughty bits resembles their own, is now an almost universal moniker for anything worthy of ridicule, I'm also wondering whether someone who is gay is 'gay' any more?