Lara Ryan: How one Facebook post reveals the tear-stained face of the equality campaign in Australia

'Having lost my partner in an accident last month I had to ask policemen if I was ‘allowed’ to write ‘Spouse’ on incident reports and I had to cross out boxes for ‘Husband’ on the death certificate'

The Australian Marriage Equality campaign demonstrating in Sydney in support of marriage equality, last year (Getty)

When we have the answers to everything at our fingertips, it’s refreshing to be surprised by the odd curious lack of knowledge. A case in point: who would have thought that same-sex marriage was yet to be legally recognised in Australia?

Last week, the Australian Marriage Equality campaign received a timely and heartbreaking boost from a widely shared Facebook post by a woman called Lara Ryan. After changing her profile picture to reflect her support for the campaign, she wrote: “This is why. Because having lost my partner in an accident last month I had to ask policemen if I was ‘allowed’ to write ‘Spouse’ on incident reports and I had to cross out boxes for ‘Husband’ on the death certificate.

“Because we were never political, we just tried to live by example to shift people’s hearts rather than pushing agendas. BUT the amount of paperwork I am having to do to secure mine and my children’s future welfare is just ridiculous when all it would take is one marriage certificate. Feel free to share widely.” Consider it done.

Half-board for Bacon

If you could buy a Francis Bacon painting for the price of the average wedding, you wouldn’t think twice, right? Well, you can – albeit a Bacon split in two and recently “discovered” on the back of two works by the Irish painter Tony O’Malley (to be auctioned on 17 March at Christie’s; estimated price: £20,000-£30,000).

But how, precisely, did this piece of hardboard come to be split in the first place? Over to the artist David Page, who was working in a studio which had been used by Bacon in St Ives in the early 1960s.

“Up near the door there was a piece of hardboard with an abandoned Bacon on the reverse. One day, Tony O’Malley came round for a chat. After a while he told us that he had nothing to paint on, so my friend said, ‘Have that bit of board over there.’ ‘It’s a bit big for me,’ said Tony. ‘I’ll cut it in half for you,’ said my friend.”

And had Page known then what we know now, does he regret giving away that particular piece of board? “I wasn’t bothered then, and I’m not now, because it was a reject,” he says. “The astronomical prices for some artists’ work are shameful, particularly when the majority make nothing. And, of course, none of us know for sure if it is by Bacon, so if it were declared not to be, it would become a valueless bit of scribble on the back of a couple of O’Malleys – that is to say, it has no intrinsic value at all, only gilt by association.”

The Francis Bacon work, split in two, and recently “discovered”

Leap trick

Backfiring promotion of the week? McGillin’s Olde Ale House (est 1860) is the longest continuously operating bar in Philadelphia and one of the oldest in the US.

Last week, as a special offer for “Leap Day”, McGillin’s promised a $100 gift card to the first five women to propose in the pub. The bar’s owner, Chris Mullins, had this to say about the non-event “event”.

“Hundreds of couples have met, gotten engaged and even married at McGillin’s but, typically, none of them did so on Leap Day. We are sad and disappointed.” Will they repeat the offer in 2020? “Yes,” says Mullins, “but we’ll up the ante.”

Double life of Brian

The man widely viewed as the “poet Laureate of Twitter”, Brian Bilston, last week posted the following:

DONALD TRUMPTON

Skew/Spew/Barmy Hairdo/ Cut-throat/Bigot/and Smug.

Within hours, his words had been superimposed, unattributed, on to a picture from the 1960s children’s television programme and were doing the rounds on social media. Does this sort of thing bother Bilston?

“Not at all,” he tells me. “The main compulsion for writing [the poem] was to ridicule this somewhat unsavoury person. So, a meme that carries that kind of sentiment can’t be too bad.”

And what did your friends make of it? “Brian Bilston is a fictional creation I hide behind because the idea of being a ‘poet’ still strikes me as being rather ludicrous, when we’re out of milk and there’s washing to be done,” he says. “Not many people who know me, know of this strange double-life I lead.”

A collection of Brian Bilston’s work will be published by Unbound in October

Om, oh sod it!

In the week it was announced that swearing was an arrestable offence in Salford Quays, one Canadian woman made her own unique stand for expletives. “I’ve created Rage Yoga for all of us who want to become Zen as fuck,” says Lindsay Istace. Whatever next? Moody meditation? Incensed incense?

The wrong trousers

With sales down, mocking Instagram feeds and an association with “hipsters and hooray Henrys”, these are not good times for red trousers. Last week, Country Life decided to fight back. But the timing of its “In defence of red trousers” could not have been worse: as anyone watching the BBC’s The Night Manager will know, the “worst man in the world” Richard Roper is rarely seen sporting anything else.

Twitter: @simmyrichman