I love Macclesfield. I really do. I love her saucy undulating hills and her disarmingly eccentric markets. I love her controversially defunct football club, even if you couldn’t get a vegan black coffee at matches. If I were a neighbouring town I’d well be eyeing her up. Especially in Winter, she’s radiant in Winter. I once even applied for a job on the Macc Tourism Board, confident I’d get it because after all, no one loves Macclesfield like I do. Unfortunately my inability to competently operate Excel overshadowed my love that day, but that’s another story. Visit Macclesfield! You won’t regret it! I’ll even show you around, I know some excellent pubs.

On the whole, I’m quite sure that Macclesfield loves me back, but lately there’s been a schism in our relationship. It’s of course political in nature, as these relationship fractures often are when those in love grow up alongside one another. The agent of unrest in this story is the charity organisation ostensibly for ‘LGBTQ+’ people, Macclesfield Pride. Now, as a gobby local lesbian with boundless enthusiasm for being a gobby local lesbian, you might naively presume we’d get on. We’d have coffee mornings perhaps, or ale soaked speed dating events. It could be marvelous! Lesbians know how to party. Unfortunately, that’s not quite what’s happened. Let me talk you through a tale of doublethink, exclusionary inclusion and an acronym in which the L is silent.
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