Pride 2017!

Date: Saturday 8th July 2017

Location: London

Oh my gosh, I am somewhat speechless. For years now I have wanted to go to Pride – from discovering at age 11 I was bi-curious to realising I was bisexual at 14, coming out to my friends drunk at 17 and being entirely open at my sexuality age 20 – this has been an absolute goal, something that was on my bucket list. And it was INCREDIBLE.

I decided to go to London Pride with my wonderful friends (Katie, Ceri-Ann, Scarlett, Rosie, Charley, Aaron & Tom) along with my boyfriend Erin to share the day and joy together. Katie, Erin and I got the train at around 8:45 all rainbowed up and feeling entirely excited for the day ahead. Although the atmosphere is usually at its utmost at Trafalgar Square or Regent Street we decided to stand in between to avoid the excessive crowds and ensure we could all meet each other but Regent Street St James couldn’t have been a better place to stand.

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Upon arrival at Piccadilly Circus, we saw the rainbowed underground signs followed by all the rainbows in shop windows and on shop signs (YES Tesco & Costa I’m looking at you) so we decided to get ourselves some breakfast. We were hugely lucky that right outside was a bus stop which we managed to take-over and dress up the barrier with our Bisexual Pride flag (why didn’t we see more though?). Slowly everyone arrived and the atmosphere started to build and everywhere you looked was becoming more colourful. And finally, at around 1 o’clock the parade reached us!

It was INSANE. There were so many different floats for so many different causes and it was just so beautiful. The smiles couldn’t be wiped off anyone’s faces and we had the honour of seeing a proposal down the road! It’s difficult to provide many details but I’ll drop some photographs below and hopefully will have my Youtube video up soon. Some of my favourites were the HIV awareness float – SO important, the bisexual float and basically any with music! I honestly wish I had more words to describe this but honestly, I’m not sure there is a way possible to describe the magic we experienced.

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The parade, however, did have a few issues. There was a massive lack of bisexual floats and although this was highlighted to Pride and was supposedly counteracted there was still only one float that was dedicated to bisexuality which in reality isn’t very representative of the LGBT community. There also wasn’t very much inclusivity for transgender, nonbinary and asexual individuals. I am hopeful that future parades will be a little more inclusive and tackle the issues.