(Could your home have an unhappy atmosphere because it is built on the site of a former battlefield, perhaps? Or is there a trapped presence seeking release?) He will divine the feng shui of your home using his rods to follow the passage of energy through the house. Dowsing is an ancient practice, usually associated with using twigs or rods to locate underground water sources – the rods twitch downwards over the water source But Christopher takes it much further than that. Using his copper dowsing rods and his carnelian and crystal pendulums, he traces not only water, but also pretty much everything.
He will dowse your house to detect physical disturbance (electromagnetic fields, landfill sites below the foundations, pollution), man-made disturbance (electromagnetic fields, badly placed phone lines) or psychic disturbance. He has an MA in natural sciences from Cambridge and used to work as a tropical agronomist specialising in pest management.

But rather than a laptop and a sheaf of memos, his briefcase holds metal rods, crystals and pendulums, because his business today is dowsing. Christopher Strong looks like an ordinary businessman He wears a shirt and tie, and carries a briefcase. What are the options?”James Collard is now contributing writer at `Out’ and writes for the `New York Times’.. As D’Erasmo puts it, “In America we are forced to do gay lib over and over and over again It gets boring – but it has to be done. When I made the mistake of voicing some of these opinions at New York’s New School, I got a bollocking from gay activists, who feel there isn’t the room for that kind of fancy footwork.

While Simpson puts this down to America being “a more conformist country than Switzerland”, the view across the Atlantic is a different one. Writers like Paul Burston and Mark Simpson began sophisticated and provocative “post-gay” and “anti- gay” critiques that chipped away at that great American shibboleth, the gay identity. The argument for acceptance isn’t just far from being won in the US – it may never be won You simply can’t debate with the Gospel truth. In the UK, while bad things happen, equality seems to be just behind a creaky old door – a few sharp kicks and we’re through. Every step forward – a prime-time kiss, a hard-won constitutional or legal ruling, a city council granting spousal benefits to gay couples, a move to include sexual orientation in a state’s “hate crime” legislation – triggers howls of protest, concerted lobbying and reactionary ballot initiatives aimed at overturning gay-friendly legislation, led by the religious right. In America, no matter how much gay people shove, the Christians on the other side shove harder.I began to feel that American gay culture, which for so long led the rest of the world, was stuck in some endless, rather tearful coming-out party Britain, meanwhile, has moved on. Lesbian New York writer Stacey D’Erasmo, recently in London on assignment, agrees.

“What was really astonishing was this quality of exuberance, unwoundedness and joy,” she says, “It inspired a poignant feeling in me, because in the States in the last 15 years, gay culture has had a very rough ride – and it shows We are angrier and more organised, but we’re also sadder. What fairy dust was sprinkled on Britain that America missed out on?”Perhaps the answer lies in what Britain lacks but America must contend with – the powerful and highly organised religious right. One of the main differences I found going from Attitude, a British gay magazine, to Out was that any attempt at playfulness represents fiddling while Rome burns for some gay Americans.Constant campaigning drains energy It requires a more serious approach to life. It’s hard work, all those cheesy benefits at 300 bucks a plate, rallying the troops with speeches, celebrating role models, signaling ordinary Americanness by standing for the Star Spangled Banner.

The campaigners do vital work, but after my tenth or so benefit in the huge banqueting hall of some hotel in New York, LA or DC, I began to feel as if I was participating in a genteel, moneyed, version of the Intifada.The most striking difference I found in New York was one of mood: there’s a kind of embattled quality to gay life in America we no longer have in Britain. The latest trailblazer, Will & Grace, a sitcom about a straight woman and her gay roomie, finds poor Will after 13 weeks yet to be allowed to kiss a man, let alone have sex with one. American TV execs don’t want to frighten the conservative viewing public, and advertisers. Even gay viewers are hard to please – with so few representations of homosexuality, they demand role models, not the cheerful hedonists we saw on Queer As Folk.Of course, Americans tend to be more serious than Brits anyway – when I moved there, I noticed that while they smile more than we do, they don’t laugh as much. In an ongoing murder trial, lawyers attempted to use “gay panic” as a defence, stating that the defendant was provoked to violence by homosexual advances. The judge rejected this defence last week, but the ensuing controversy has reverberated around America.On TV, Ally McBeal has managed to kiss with a female colleague without the sky falling in, but when Ellen Degeneres came out in her sitcom, viewing figures collapsed. Thirty years after Stonewall put America at the forefront of the gay rights movement, Britain has left them standing.