Chrissie's Place

Can't Think Of A Snappy, Attention-Grabbing Title.

2012-01-24T10:26:00.005Z

Well, things are not too good right now, on any of the Fighting Fronts.

I am staying focused on the short term things I need to do in order to move out, because thinking further afield does tend to bring waves of fear and panic rushing in.

The best laid plans, etc, etc... But thanks to the total screw-ups of Royal Mail and Angard Staffing (I am still fighting for my correct pay) my original plans to move to London for work were wrecked.

I am now selling much of what I own in order to raise the funds, which is good in a way as it means I can travel light. A dear friend is very kindly putting me up in her caravan short term, and hopefully my search for a London job will not take long. Positive noises have been made by some of the contract agencies down there, including one I used to work for. But if worse comes to worse, I shall move down anyway. At the end of the day, if I have to be unemployed and homeless, I'd rather be so in the place I grew up in, than here in an alien northern town.

Oh, I do need to take the lion's share of the blame for my present predicament. I made some decisions which, although taken for good reasons, turned out to be disastrous. With hindsight, I should have given my head a lot more leeway over my heart. Being near one's little girl is a wonderful thing, but if doing so means one can't find a decent job with normal hours that allow one to take advantage of that adjacency, then one might as well be on the other side of the planet.

I should have moved a year ago, to be honest.

On the transition front, matters are treading water. I did finally convince Leeds GIC to accept my RLE start date as July 2010, by providing them with lots of evidence that I was in role. They saw sense and that round went to me. A big Thank You to all who contributed evidence for me.... :-)

But after a phone call in early January from my clinical nurse there, I am now in Limbo once again. All the actions that were promised in November have been forgotten. There has been no referral for a second psych opinion. There has been no referral for a surgical consultation. Even the statement by the chief psychiatrist that I would not need to see him again has been forgotten, and now I have a further assessment at the start of February, with the same guy, probably to go through the same BS we did last time. They even sent me another Quality of Life questionnaire, the same one I filled in before my first appointment at Leeds last year. I threw it in the bin. My answers have not changed.

So in other words, I fully expect to find that I will not have moved an hour forward towards my goal. Pissed off? Oh yes.

This time I am going to ask them for an Action Plan, so that I leave the appointment with a document outlining what they are going to do and when. It's clear that they are not to be trusted just to get on with things, and if one leaves them to do so, they just forget everything and shrug their shoulders.

So not a very positive post, but my Micawber-ish attitude keeps me afloat.

Something will turn up. It invariably does.

Ring In The New!

2012-01-02T10:18:00.004Z

Time for another blog post.

It was not a great end to the year, with the only bright spot being my sweetie popping over from San Francisco to stay for a few weeks so that we could enjoy her birthday and Xmas together. We had a good time in between me working late shifts at the Sorting Office, which job had prevented me from going to Wales and spending Xmas with the Diva.

But the job itself was a disaster, a major one for me and a massive one for a lot of the other casuals who worked there. The agency that the Royal Mail contracted to recruit the casuals proved to be utterly useless. They failed to supply even half the number required, even though they hired people who were clearly illiterate and innumerate, which is a slight drawback when one is sorting mail. It did not seem to worry the agency staff that whole groups of people had to have interpreters with them when they signed up at the recruiting session I attended. Did they think those interpreters would be there with those casuals when they worked at the sorting tables?

After recruitment there was very little contact from the agency, which then quickly deteriorated into no contact at all, as they pulled their Staff Queries phone number, reinstated a premium rate one to call them on and, upon calling, simply directed one to an email mail address from which replies never came.

Wages either did not turn up, or were late and always incorrect. The rumour mill said that the Royal Mail had cancelled the agency's contract in disgust at all the cock-ups. That did not help the casuals, many of whom were left with only a tithe of the money they had earned, and some of whom were left totally unpaid. We now have no way to get in touch with the agency concerned, which seems to have broken off all contact with everyone, owing staff money and no way to get it.

In my own case I got less than half the pay due, and that money was supposed to help me move area in the new year. Now that is on hold, and it's touch and go if I can even afford to stay here in Feb.

How the hell could this happen, and what degree of responsibility do the Royal Mail bear for such a fuck-up?

Much Ado....

2011-12-02T13:13:00.004Z

I start my Xmas casual job at the Royal Mail tonight. I got the night shift, which means more pay per hour, and 40 hours and two days off a week. I am pretty used to night shifts but don't enjoy them. However, it pays the rent.

I also had a call from Leeds GIC the other day. It seems that after a team meeting at which my phone calls, emails and letters were discussed, it was decided to allow my July 2010 RLE start date if I could provide some evidence of living in role back then. Not a problem, so that's sorted. I go back in Jan to get told about consent for surgery stuff, updates on the second psychiatric opinion and to sort out the pre-surgery hair removal.

So another battle won. To be honest, I'd rather not have to fight the battles in the first place, but what can one do?

Dyeing Tonight!

2011-11-30T10:32:00.009Z

It's amazing what one can do with some rather staid and boring white undies, and a high quality all-purpose fabric dye.

I made the dumb mistake of not checking a "whites" wash a few weeks ago, and somehow a black sock had got entangled with them. The result was a lot of off-white undies.

The cotton ones responded to a whitener over the next few washes, but the man-made fibres like Nylon and Lycra did not.

Rather than throw them all away, I thought about the possibility of dyeing them, and eventually found some good stuff called RIT Dye which can handle the man-made fibres.

It only took an hour to do, and made little mess. One sachet dyes about four or five underwear items, less for larger stuff. My initial experiment with their Wine dye showed perfect colour take and coverage, so now I have ordered another two sachets, in Tangerine and Scarlet. I shall even dye a few that were not discoloured. White has its place, but can be a bit boring.

So the dye has added a bit of glamour to what would otherwise be quite tedious and rather utilitarian undergarments.

2nd Annual TForm Xmas Dinner.

2011-11-27T14:24:00.006Z

And a fun time was had by all... :-)

Information Needed

2011-11-18T10:55:00.009Z

OK, this is basically a request for other people's experiences with the NHS GIC treatment path.

More specifically, I am interested in hearing from those people who have been on the NHS path, ie, been referred to and assessed at an NHS GIC, and who have then dropped out and gone on to have private surgery.

During my last assessment, the oft-quoted (by the NHS GICs) figure of a 20% drop-out rate was trotted out by the psychiatrist as validation of the GICs inflexible processes and requirements. The psychiatrist who talked at me put forward the view that those drop-outs were people whom the NHS system had successfully weeded out as not being genuine cases.

Now I did a quick run through in my own mind of the dozen or so women I know who have had surgery. And I realised that ALL of them had been on the books of an NHS GIC - in most cases CX - and all but TWO had dropped out and continued their treatment, including GRS, privately. I'd certainly like to know if others have dropped out for such a reason.

Because is seems clear the the NHS does NOT research why people drop out of a GIC, and instead merely claims that everyone who does so has given up on transitioning, thus "proving" that their over-rigorous and over-controlling processes are working fine.

It really is time that this specious argument, which is so damaging to the treatment of trans people in the UK, was blown out of the water by some actual facts.

So let's see if we can get some together.

Did you stay the course?

Did you drop out and go private?

If so, did the GIC ever contact you to find out why you had dropped out?

I am not going to use this information to win personal battles, but to build up a case for trans pressure groups such as PFC, who can then use such facts to bolster their campaign for fairer treatment for transpeople in the NHS system.

Stroppy Bitch

2011-11-17T07:43:00.020Z

I often wonder why it is that the NHS brings out the worst in me.

I mean yes, the concept of it is fine in principle, and in most cases it works very, very well. Of course we should all be duly appreciative.

But there is something "separate" about the NHS's GID treatment; some odd institutional philosophy that makes it very different from the rest of that august body.

When it comes to treating GID, different rules seem to apply. It's almost as if the NHS has never really accepted the idea that GID is a medical condition, and that sceptical mindset has even taken root in the GIC's themselves.

Every time I deal with the NHS over this issue, I wonder why I feel like a supplicant and not a patient.

And I have come to realise that it is because that is how many of the health professionals in NHS GIC's see people like us. It's the only explanation for the decades of disrespect, bullying, and pointless hoop-jumping that they have inflicted on those members of the trans community who do not have the good fortune to be able to go private.

Think on it... Imagine a cancer patient, or someone with liver disease, or a mental health issue, being treated the way we are, having to bow our heads and accept lengthy delays, inflexible processes and rigidly-interpreted requirements, simply in order to access the treatment they need.

If the NHS treated any other patients they way they treat us, there would be a public outcry. It would be unacceptable.

Now I do know that some of the new wave of clinicians in the GIC's are trying to move away from that mindset, but the problem is that too many still adhere to it, and if one has the misfortune to be assigned to such a clinician, it can be really detrimental to your well-being.

I'd heard the odd horror story about Leeds GIC from a few years back, but also had a few positive reports from people I knew who were on the Leeds pathway. I had heard that they had a very fast appointment system, and that they were far more flexible over things like dress, hormones, and RLE than they had been "in the bad old days" of 2009.

My initial experience with Leeds was promising, certainly as far as the administrative side of things was concerned. They were very flexible and helpful when it came to putting me on their waiting list. And the first assessment with a psychiatric nurse was enjoyable. For the first time in my whole GID experience with the NHS, I felt that I was getting somewhere and being treated with respect.

Sadly that did not last.

The wheels fell off the cart at the second assessment, details of which I have briefly outlined in my post yesterday. Now I did try and keep a positive attitude, stay agreeable and put on a brave face during that assessment, but by the time I got back to my car I was incandescent with rage. I drove home on autopilot, not even aware of the journey until my sat-nav told me to take the next exit for Warrington. Yep. 60+ miles, and I was so angry and distracted that I had not even realised I had driven it. Not good.

But my mind was elsewhere, seething with resentment at the nonsense of the previous hour. I was totally wrong-footed by the direction the "assessment" took. I had expected it to be a formal psychiatric assessment with a psychiatrist and my assigned nurse, and at the start the nurse asked me if I would mind having a trainee psychologist sitting in. I said it was not a problem, but it very soon became one.

Because the psychiatric assessment was anything but. Instead it was a one-sided, point-by-point laying down of the GIC's rules. It was clear almost from the start that he had only a cursory knowledge of my situation, and had not read my file at all. He was also very patronising.

A few times I tried to politely challenge him on his decisions or his interpretation of things, but my views and explanations were simply ignored and talked over. I soon regretted allowing the trainee to sit in, as I felt the psychiatrist was playing to the gallery, and I felt outnumbered and out-gunned. I could feel my face going red, and I felt emotionally uncomfortable, and under attack.

The first major issue was his decision to disregard my recorded July 2010 RLE start date and impose his own, November 2010, using a rigid interpretation of SoC requirements. In doing so he totally ignored Leed's GIC's own stated policies, found here..

http://www.leedspft.nhs.uk/our_services/gender_identity/faqs

Soon after that, he asked me if I'd already had any surgery. I told him I'd had Breast Augmentation in December 2010. He was clearly not happy with that, and asked me abruptly if I had received permission for it and got a referral from a gender specialist. I told him that I had not asked for permission and had referred myself, as any other women would. I could see that did not go down well with him. For myself, I was quite appalled at the question. It was straight out of the John Randall handbook, and I had thought that had been thrown away when the old sod died in 1982.

By now I realised that I was in trouble, and had been unlucky enough to have drawn one of the dinosaurs. More statements from him followed. We went back to the RLE issue, and he asked me if I was aware that it was two years. I said I was. He then stated that the GIC was so rigid in its requirements because statistics showed that 20% of all the people who come onto the NHS GIC pathways drop off along the way.

At this point, having realised that no matter how agreeable I was trying to be, he was not going to allow me to question any of his decisions, I gave myself more leeway. I interrupted and said that most of the people in that statistic had not dropped out because they had decided not to transition. They had dropped out because they eventually decided to go private rather than put up with the NHS's long delays and inflexible rules. I said that statistic was not a validation of the NHS's processes, but an indictment of them.

Well, What can I say. I did not like the guy and it was clear from the get-go that he did not like me. As far as the administrative side of things was concerned I got most of what I wanted; referrals for second psychiatric opinion and consultation for surgery, both of which would be in the next three to four months and the waiting times of which would run concurrently.

But for me the real problem was losing four months off my RLE, and I have appealed against that unreasonable decision, stating quite clearly that it was in breach of Leed's GIC's own policies. So much for the claims that when it comes to RLE, Leeds GIC "looks at occupational activity in the most flexible way and will agree with each service user how they will meet this requirement depending on their individual circumstances.". In reality, there was no flexibility at all, and no consideration whatsoever was given to my individual circumstances.

I think much of this was down the usual "We don't like folk who go private, and now we control you, so you will do what WE say" philosophy that so endears the NHS GICs to the trans community. One doesn't have to google for long to see that Leeds GIC had a piss-poor reputation for this sort of thing back in 2009

http://tzone.freeforums.org/yorkshire-mp-s-denouce-leeds-gic-t5345.html

and

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-12290.html/

It's clear that an over-rigid interpretation of SoC, plus an unhealthy dose of good old control-freakery, made Leeds GIC a name to be dreaded two years ago. I only hope my experience does not mean that they are reverting back to the old ways. Sadly, I have also read of a similar case involving a trans-man earlier this year. It does make me wonder who was running the place back in 2009, and whether I had the misfortune of being "assessed" by one of the old guard who earned Leeds that poor reputation.

The NHS Pathway

2011-11-16T01:23:00.013Z

Yesterday I had my second assessment at Leeds GIC, this time with a psychiatrist and a nurse.

I have to say that I ended the session deeply frustrated and rather annoyed.

For a start it was obvious that the psychiatrist had no knowledge of my situation, and had not read my file. I was given little chance to explain things, and instead the appointment turned into a one-sided "discussion" about how far along the path he thought I could be slotted in, given my present situation. He insisted on running through what he claimed was the Leeds GIC pathway criteria, and showed little interest in allowing any debate on his decisions.

OK, so there was a degree of what appeared to be flexibility, but on closer examination it was no such thing. Running the waiting times for my second psych opinion and my first surgical consultation concurrently makes sense and is welcome, but should surely be applied to all patients.

Less welcome was the total inflexibility towards my RLE start date. He insisted on Nov 2010, even though every other clinician, surgeon and and psychiatrist I have seen up until now has accepted July 2010. I refused to agree with his decision, as his reasons breach Leeds GIC own pathway criteria as laid down in their documentation.

I was also asked, to my utter astonishment, who had referred me for my BA. I had to take a few deep breaths to avoid losing it at that stage. I said that I had referred myself, as most women do. My impression was that he did not approve of me doing that, and I had a flashback to the Julia Grant documentary...

So not a great session, and tomorrow AM I have to make a couple of phone calls and talk to my assigned nurse on her own, to point out the errors her senior colleague made and to get my RLE start date amended to the correct one.

OK, so it's only four months delay, but when the NHS has fucked one around with non-clincal delays for almost three years, another four months on top of that is the final straw.

Shameless?

2011-11-14T13:05:00.010Z

Well, I don't make a habit of posting such pictures and I had to do a lot of thinking before slamming this one up here.

Because, let's face it, I am not in the same hot super model class as a lot of transwomen out there, especially some of the younger ones. But then I thought, so what? I am not ashamed of my body. I've watched Gok Wan, and if those ladies can do it, then so can I.... :-)

I am still losing weight and toning my bod up, and have achieved a great deal, but I can see there is still a lot left to do, especially around my waist. To describe my current body shape as Rubenesque might be OTT, but a Cher I am not.

Anyone who knows me knows how picky I am over any photos of me. I usually hate them, and have in in the past threatened friends with dire and painful consequences if they post one that I feel is awful, which to their frustration is about 99% of them.

But in this case, I think I looked OK. It wasn't a portrait shot with perfect lighting and pose. I was just getting ready to go out, saw myself in the hall mirror as I was passing, and thought I looked alright. I took a few shots with terrible light, and this one came out looking half presentable.

How Odd....

2011-11-13T11:06:00.003Z

I've been looking back over the last few months' postings (not that there's been many of them) and realised that I have simply stopped talking about my transition.

I suppose that shows the extent to which I now take it for granted. I am just getting on with everyday life and dealing with the issues it throws up. My transition status has now become rather unimportant.

But on the medical front, things have continued happening. Last month I got my first assessment at Leeds GIC, and it all seemed very positive. It's a nice comfy modern place, not crowded. The psychiatric nurse I saw was friendly and helpful, and we went through a brief resume of where I am and how I got here.

I asked a few questions, but to be honest only one was really important to me, and that was.. Given how far I am along the path, when can I realistically expect to get on the surgery list?

Now Leeds GIC certainly seems to be much more flexible than CX on this, possibly because they have fewer patients to deal with. The nurse went through the list of things I had to have achieved ans I ticked them off one by one.

Counselling.. Check.

3 months pre-hormone RLE.... Not applicable

On monitored Hormones.... Check, for 25 months.

RLE with proof... Check, 17 months already.

Plus the referrals from private clinical and psychiatric assessments, which they seemed willingly to accept as ticking some of their NHS boxes too.

So I was told I would need a couple more psychiatric assessments and then if all was well, I could expect to go onto the surgery list at the end of this year. Unlike CX, Leeds GIC can see patients every month, so there's no long wait between sessions. They also seem happy enough for me to continue my present hormone monitoring, which is done at a local level.

On Tuesday I have my next appointment, this time with a psychiatrist and another psych nurse.

I no longer see this stuff as a challenge. It's all become so straightforward. I don't feel under pressure to "convince" others that I "really" am the gender I am. I'm just a middle-aged woman, doing what everyone else does; leading a quiet life, paying my bills, and feeding the cat. Aside from a single bit of cosmetic surgery, I am what I always knew myself to be.

There's no longer any drama in it. I hope it stays that way...

Diva News

2011-11-11T16:07:00.009Z

The Diva gets taller and more confident and cheeky every month.

I suppose that's the way with kids.

She finds delight in the most odd things, and doesn't seem to have any set ideas about what girls are supposed to enjoy. She climbs trees, plays football, fishes for minnows and collects insects, all activities which make her girl friends shriek and run.

The Diva is not one of life's shriekers. In fact she openly distains such behaviour, often condeming a film because "that woman just keeps standing there screaming, instead of fighting the monsters!".

But she also does what she calls "girl stuff". She enjoys dancing and singing, and her latest phase is make-up. Her normal make-up has got quite good over the last year, but recently she has been experimenting with theatrical and horror schemes, and coming up with some amusing faces.

The first was her Halloween ghost, and the second was a zombie that she did after watching a film, although she is coy about which one for some reason...

The Times They Are A'Changin'

2011-11-10T08:12:00.015Z

Well, another hectic few weeks have passed.

Perhaps I should reconsider the use of the word "Mundane" in my sub-title...?

So where was I?

Oh yes. I resigned with immediate effect from that dreadful job, and then had a hard fight to get the outstanding wages and expenses they owed me. Luckily I had them by the short and curlies, as they had WAY too many skeletons in their closet to mess me about. A few emails to the managers suggesting I would be quite happy to take them to ACAS over the money, and that the firm would certainly find that event rather embarrassing, soon saw the money transferred into my bank account.

I also set about finding another job, not the easiest thing to do in this neck of the woods. There are very few decent jobs around up here and the crap ones are really crap, only promising more of the same sort of nonsense I experienced in private care work. Being badly treated AND badly paid is not a combination I am prepared to accept, so I soon started to realise it was time to think about the direction my life was going in.

This has been pretty much ongoing since I returned form Thailand, and is tied to a growing confidence in myself, a sense of self-worth which events over the past couple of months have actually increased. At the end of September and start of October I was summoned for Inquest Jury Service at the local Coroner's Court. That was an incredible experience. It's far more interesting than normal jury service, as the jury is part of the investigation and actually questions witnesses. If you get the chance, do it!

On the first day, I was elected Jury Foreman by the others. We sat through four cases, all of which were incredibly interesting. Having to question witnesses in front of a room full of people, then guide the jury discussion, then deal with the coroner at the end for the verdict, proved a real boost to my confidence. It was also wonderful to get back into a "nine-to-five" job again. But the constant pressure from my company to do late-evening and night support shifts for them, after each sitting, was an increasing annoyance. I refused to do any, and it brought home to me the true cowboy nature of the firm I was working for.

Once the Inquest Jury was stood down I returned to work, but things were not the same. I had changed, got stronger. I went back to work but refused to be messed around. A clash had to come sooner or later. It came sooner. Oddly enough, even though the result of that clash has left me out of a job for a few weeks, I again feel much stronger for having stood up to them.

I have a casual job in the Royal Mail lined up starting in December (subject to security vetting). After that I need to look at where I am in life and where I see myself going. I came to this town for good reasons, but I think the time may have come to move on, as its limitations have become vividly apparent to me.

It cannot give me what I now want from my life.

Troubled Times

2011-10-22T10:57:00.014+01:00

It's been a dramatic and rather painful couple of weeks since I last posted.

Work went to hell in a hand-cart and I am now looking for a new job, having resigned with immediate effect from the old one. Working with adults with Learning Disabilities is taxing but mainly enjoyable. Trying to do so for a firm which has a totally cavalier attitude to service users' and support workers' welfare, is rather less enjoyable.

The firm I worked for always had a "Do Nothing" approach to problems raised by their staff, but the situation got much worse when the firm recently took on a lot of new Support contracts in another town, without bothering to recruit any staff in that area.

The result was that already over-worked staff from this town were being rushed around between towns, having to drive for hours and endure long unpaid waits between Supports, in order to man those new out-of-area shifts.

Once I was informed that I was intended to be part of the permanent Outreach team of three women assigned to that role, I did the maths. It became evident that it would mean 4 or 5 nights a week away from home, and at least 30+ unpaid hours a week "on duty". I was not prepared to do that, as the increase in unpaid hours and mileage meant in effect my pay would drop to less than £3.00 an hour. No one in their right mind would accept such a situation. I told them I was resigning.

The end result was that, after putting in my resignation the week before last, I was invited into the office for what, on the face of it, seemed to be a promotion and a better job. The offer was made on the Tuesday, and the new office-based admin and audit role was due to start on the following Monday.

But as that final week wore on, so the true mess that the company was in became evident.

Since my return from Thailand I have been used as a "fire-fighter", rushed from location to location in order to cover for absences or under-manning. The result had been very long hours, little sleep and hardly any time for a normal life, all for the same basic rate of pay.

This state of affairs continued that final week, and in fact the situation got even worse. By Friday I only had spent two nights in my own bed. I had done about 30 support hours but had been on unpaid "duty" (driving and waiting times between supports, and hours awake during what were ostensibly meant to be sleep-overs) for over 80. I was exhausted and I was being asked to do more nights that week, despite the rules saying a maximum of two a week was the limit if one was not employed as night staff.

On Thursday I was pressured by my manager to do what was supposed to be a Sleep Over in that other town, for a new female service user who had recently been released from assessment in a unit. As usual, the firm had done no research into what was required, nor where her house was, nor what facilities existed for overnight support in her home, nor indeed if the home was fit for her to return to. Nor did we have any up-to-date information on her condition or requirements. Par for the course for that company.

The end result was that what was intended to be a Sleep Over was in fact a Waking Night, and as I had an early Driving Support for another service user first thing next day, I called the On-Call line to tell them that I would be unable to do it, as I would have not slept for 26 hours by the time the Driving Support was due to start.

That did not go down well. It was made very clear to me that they did not accept my decision, and were instead willing to put the lives of the service user and myself at risk by requiring me to do the shift. As far as they were concerned, all they wanted was to put a body into that slot and get the money for those hours. I refused to do it.

Additionally, the new job they had offered turned out to be anything but a sinecure. As more details were given to me, it was clear that my role as "fire-fighter" would remain, and that on top of that I would also be expected to do the admin and audit work.

It was the final straw. After a dreadful Friday night filled with bad dreams, the next morning I reached over the room for my phone and I told them that they needed to find cover for my support on that day, as I was resigning with immediate effect.

The stuff that goes on in the supported houses and outreach supports is a scandal. I have not seen any violence, but negligence by management is commonplace, as is turning a blind eye to drug-taking, unregulated visitors, alcoholism, and sexual activity between service users living in shared houses.

I have enough material and evidence for a couple of decent newspaper articles. Maybe I will knock them out and see if the Guardian is interested.

People. This is the sort of thing you can expect if private firms are allowed to tender for NHS contracts, as the latest government plans entail.

All that matters to those firms is getting the money in. They will put patients' lives at risk. They will put doctors and nurses and carers lives at risk. The industry is already a massive fraud, talking taxpayers' money to provide a contracted level of support which it has no intention of meeting. And right now the local councils and government seem quite happy with that state of affairs. If there is an inspection regime for such "Outreach" supports, then I have never seen it in action.

Better Late Than Never?

2011-10-06T08:58:00.010+01:00

My apologies for not maintaining this blog lately. It's been tricky finding the time and energy, what with long and anti-social hours at work coupled with a general malaise of the spirit that afflicted me soon after my return from Thailand.

I seem to have climbed out of that particular pit, as I always do, but this time it took a little longer than it usually does. I kept hearing bad news, worst of which was the death of Melissa Price, a blogging and occasional e-mail friend in the USA, who sadly succumbed to cancer the other week.

Rest In Peace, honey... I shall miss your measured words of wisdom.

A couple of weeks ago, after waiting over 2.5 years, I finally got my first appointment at an NHS GIC. It's in 14 days time. I thought I'd be over the moon but in fact I felt nothing at all. I have, after all, already transitioned. I have lived in role for 16 months, I have a private specialist's referral for surgery and the two required psychiatric opinions, and the only thing stopping me from going private for GRS is the money. So the fact that after all this time the NHS will slot me in not really the major event it would have been, say, two years ago. I am quite willing to save myself money by having GRS on the NHS, but not if they draw things out and seek to control and divert my path. But I shall attend with an open mind, and ask them straight out what time-scale they can offer me. If it's too long, then I shall just continue to do my own thing.

On other fronts, I finally decided to get a credit card, and Lo...! I was turned down!! This seemed staggering to someone with the top Experian Credit Rating (I am a member so can check at any time) so I dug deeper. Sadly the blame lies with myself. My old Excellent credit rating has not been linked with my new name, so whenever the banks search, they search under my new name and find sod all credit history. When doing Experian searches, I get the same result unless I also enter my previous name. The linking is not being done automatically.

I was at a loss as to why this had happened, but eventually we worked it out. An old and forgotten store card in my previous name was still open and thus active, as was a phone contract. That meant the credit histories could not be linked. I've now hopefully sorted both, but the lesson is a clear one. When you change your name, make sure you change the names on ALL the financial contracts you have open, even the ones you no longer use. Leave just one in your old name and the Credit Rating systems think that old identity is still in existence, and the records won't link.

It's Not Porn. It's Art!!

2011-09-15T19:15:00.003+01:00

Nice "artistic" piccie of my Sweetie and I, in the hotel in Bangkok.....

Thailand

2011-09-06T11:08:00.011+01:00

Some pics from Thailand.

Gap Month?

2011-06-04T12:29:00.014+01:00

It's hard to believe I have missed a whole month of blogging. Much of that was down to problems with Blogger and my Google Chrome set-up, which refused to display the log-in part of the page properly and would not run the JavaScript needed to allow me to post. Even an un-install and re-install of Chrome failed to fix it.

Eventually it seems to have fixed itself, and now the Blogger page is displaying properly and the JavaScript plug-ins are running correctly.

Another reason I did not bother much with blogging was a period of anxiety and depression caused by work problems. The job was not panning out well; shifts were too intermittent and I found myself having to break into the last of my savings in order to pay the rent and fill the car with petrol and me with food. The work that was coming in was often at very short notice, usually with only an hour to get to the home, which often involved a drive of over 30 - 40 miles.

I eventually had to get dressed in my uniform and sit in the front room "at readiness", should a call come in. Of course, on the days when a call did not come in, which was most of them, I got no pay. On top of that, a lot of Residential Homes are in a state of crisis at present, chronically under-staffed but not able or willing to afford to employ the agency staff to bring them up to strength. The end result of that money-saving is that, on the days one does get called, in, the shift will be a nightmare!

On top of all that, the redundancy of one of the supervisors at my firm's office back in March meant that wages were a mess, and I was owed around 150 hours of pay and hundreds of miles of expenses.

Eventually I'd had enough, and rang my firm and threatened to resign if more work was not forthcoming. I had a good long chat with the manageress and made my position clear. She was actually very good about it. She said they did not want to lose me, and asked me if I would like to try a new arrangement, working in the Warrington area doing Support Work for people with Learning Disabilities. The pay was a bit higher and there was a LOT of work in that field.

I said I'd give it a go, and am so glad I did. It's great work, one-to-one, supporting people and helping them live as normal a life as possible in society. I've been doing it almost three weeks now, love every minute and have racked up a LOT of hours, averaging over 60 a week including sleep-overs. I have also approached my manageress asking if I can get a transfer onto it full-time, as I know the Warrington office needs staff. Not sure what she will say to that, but it's given me a new direction and a job that I really enjoy. Nursing Home work is OK, but it's getting really unpleasant in some places, certainly enough to put paid to any sense of job satisfaction.

Me, looking suitably frazzled after a hell-ish 12 hour Nursing Home shift....

Bothering God.

2011-04-25T09:21:00.014+01:00

Yesterday afternoon, whilst I was sitting on the sofa eating my lunch and watching yet another re-run of the dire old film On The Buses (it was on every day over Easter, on ITV3), there came a very forceful knock on the door; an authoritative rat-tat-tat that said to me "Police!

I got up and opened the door, to be confronted by two eager and forceful-looking young men in leather jackets and jeans. I could see pieces of paper in their hands, and I expected a warrant card to be thrust under my nose.

But no.

It was not the Vice Squad, but the God Squad, come to bother me on behalf of their particular god, who's 11th commandment seems to have been "Thou shalt not allow godless individuals to eat their fucking lunch in peace, especially not on a Sunday, and CERTAINLY not on an Easter Sunday."

Now I am getting fed up with such folk.

I told them I was not a big fan of their god, as he is way too judgemental, and his HR policies don't conform with the basic standards expected of a civilised and enlightened society.

I advised them that they may find a more welcoming soul a little further down the street, who might display a more receptive attitude to their ideas and so listen to them with an attentive ear. I also advised them that, were I them, I should not waste a moment in continuing my search for the aforementioned welcoming soul with an attentive ear.

They got the message.

Now for some bloody reason this area seems to get such annoying visits at least once, and often twice a week. And this is from "normal" christian churches.

What the feck is going on? It was not that long ago that the only religious people who came around annoying folk were the jehovah's witnesses and the odd mormon. Now it seems every damn church out there has jumped on the bandwagon.

Why is that? Is it because there is a sudden huge increase in the number of religious folk in the country?

No. The opposite is in fact true. As society has become more civilised and enlightened, so more and more people have discarded the old superstitions, including religion. And as the followers dwindle and are not replaced, so the rump who remain tend to be the die-hards; the most dedicated, the most fanatical adherents.

And because they have less and less relevance, the "survivors" feel more and more threatened as their religion's power is lost. They start to evangelise. They start to shout a lot. They start to scream a lot. But still their numbers and their influence decrease.

And then they start to think increasingly desperate thoughts. And then the danger is that violence may well soon follow. In the USA, it already has.

This is not unusual behaviour. It's often observed when a nation's armies are being defeated in a war. As realisation that the cause is no longer worth fighting for sinks in, desertion increases, until one is left with only the most fanatical followers. And it's a matter of historical record that, in many such cases, those remnants then commit greater and greater atrocities, as total defeat approaches and they grow more and more desperate.

In the UK the present uncomfortable situation has come about because the previous government was seen by some to be favouring islam, especially after 9/11. The indigenous christian religions noted this and objected to it. They resented the idea that a "Johnny Foreigner" religion like islam should get special attention, but they also realised that the evidence showed if one shouted and screamed about persecution, and was totally unreasonable, then government would give in.

Certainly the last government did, as we know from all the loopholes they left in their Equality laws at the behest of the religious lobbies.

And this is why we need a totally secular system. The moment a government gives one religious group special attention, for whatever reason, then the others will scream for the same. And if the government gives in to all of them then the rest of the population, who have less and less truck with religious edicts dictating what they can and cannot do, and resent the fact that there is one law for them and a different law for religious groups, get really pissed off.

The only way to stop that discord is to say, loudly and clearly, to ALL religions: You will follow the law of the land. There will be no special legal privileges and exemptions for you. If you are being asked to obey the same laws as everyone else, then you are NOT being discriminated against. Get used to it.

If they don't, I fear the unrest will grow.

Immoral Outrage

2011-04-24T09:12:00.016+01:00

There are times when I find myself questioning quite why I am a left-winger.

I seem to fail the Right On test on so many counts that it's scary.

I judge issues by the facts and try and use logic and objectivity, which is always a disadvantage when one is part of a political philosophy where dogma, subjectivity and propaganda seem to abound.

I don't do double-think either, which really makes it hard for me.

It's cost me dear in the past.

I have often been chastised for failing to take on board the important point that double standards are vital if one wants to be in the team.

I have been reminded again and again by fellow left-wingers that a thing which is hideously wrong and totally unacceptable if done by one group, can be completely acceptable and defensible if done by another, allied group.

And it's been drummed into me time and time again, sadly unsuccessfully, that prejudice and subjectivity are unacceptable when used by others, but totally acceptable when used by us.

Oh, and facts are optional; if they get in the way of things, they can safely be ignored.

A case in point was the dreadful story of an attack on a transgendered woman in a MacDonald's in the USA. Although the motives so far are unconfirmed, it seems that she was singled out and attacked by two other customers because she was trans and she had used the Women's toilets. Most of the other people in the restaurant at the time, both customers and staff, seem to have done little to help, and one member of the staff videoed the attack and posted it on Facebook.

Now I am not a big fan of MacDonald's. I have in the past been critical, and actively so, of some of their farming and business policies. It's not a firm I have much sympathy for. But even so I was somewhat astounded when, soon after the news of this incident came out, some of my fellow travellers on the left began suggesting boycotting MacDonald's.

Why? I asked.

Because obviously MacDonald's are to blame, I was told.

But how? It's true that a company has a degree of legal liability for the actions of its staff, but in this case it appears those staff, whilst displaying a degree of moral bankruptcy and cowardice that was sickening, actually did nothing illegal, and that includes the sick little git who filmed the incident. The company did not defend the staff, and made no attempt to cover anything up. The employee who taped the incident was sacked. The others have been disciplined. It's hard to see what more any firm could reasonably be expected to do.

It was suggested by some that the attack and the actions of those employees was somehow down to failings in MacDonald's policies, but that seems at odds with the facts, as to be fair MacDonald's policies in such areas seem to be very clear and tight. And of course an organisation can have all the right polices in place and police them rigorously, but at the end of the day those policies cannot possibly act as a physical restraint on an individual employee's actions. All they can do is provide grounds for punishing an employee for breaching them, and that is what the firm has done.

But the vicious attack was actually carried out by two customers. To what degree is ANY company or institution responsible for such a thing? The facts would seem to suggest that they would not be. This sort of thing is sadly very common today. It can happen anywhere, and often does. So if a WH Smiths customer smacks another WH Smiths' customer in the face, is it the store's fault? Aside from Licensed Premises, where laws in relation to the serving of alcohol might have been breached leading up to the incident, we do not usually hold the owners of a property liable for the criminal actions of others.

I asked aloud that if a similar incident had taken place in, for example, a public library, would we be suggesting a boycott of all public libraries?

Of course not, I was told. The very idea! But MacDonald's is a huge and nasty organisation and so we should boycott it.

Right.

So if a similar incident happened in a library, we would settle for the law and internal disciplinary procedures taking their course. But as it happened in a place run by an organisation we dislike, we can use it as ammunition in the greater battle, and our moral outrage can allow us to ignore that fact that we are applying double standards.

Now I understand that some people see such stories and, because they have good hearts, they get upset and want to have a pop. But nothing is gained by having a go at the wrong target for the wrong reasons. Which is why I am holding my fire.

There's already plenty of valid reasons for criticising MacDonald's and campaigning against it, but this incident does not add to them. A similar incident could happen to any organisation, and often does, and it undermines our claim to the moral high ground if we are seen to ignore that fact, and apply double standards.

Additional:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-mcdonalds-beating-20110423,0,3336656.story

It now appears that at least one employee DID try to intervene.

We should be directing our anger at the society that allows its youth to think this sort of thing is acceptable, and not misdirecting it at MacDonald's just to score cheap political points. This is about transgender rights, NOT about the unpopularity of a particular multi-national company.

Transgender Conference Cancelled But Questions Remain

2011-04-20T08:10:00.034+01:00

For details of the actual row, here's a couple of links. Please read them first or this will not make sense.

Well, my blog rarely does anyway, but you know what I mean...

http://transkitten.com/amazement/bindel-again-involved-in-deciding-trans-peoples-future/

http://www.complicity.co.uk/blog/2011/03/rcpsych-julie-bindel-witchcraft/

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2011/04/19/london-transgender-conference-cancelled-after-trans-complaints/

I spent several hours digging into the backgrounds of the people who run the Special Interest Group in Gay and Lesbian Mental Health at the Royal College.

Oddly enough, most of the executive of the group seem to deal very little with that specific area of Mental Health, so it would seem they perhaps run the group because they are LGB. There's no mention of any T in the group, but perhaps one of the executives is?

Although the group includes T in its remit, T is not in the group's title and there is no obvious representation of T on the executive team, which does make one suspect that once again we have an LGB group, with no T included, making judgements and affecting policy on T issues.

Even though the conference has now been cancelled, there remain many questions about it that are left unanswered.

Which members of the group decided to have this conference, when did they decide, and why?

Given the chosen title "Transgender: Time For Change", who in the group actually decided that a change in the methodology of dealing with transpeople was topical at this time, and why did they decide that? There's no question mark in the conference title, so the implication is that this was not going to be a debate as to whether changes were needed or not. The title of the conference showed that the organisers shared a clear acceptance that changes WERE needed.

Given the invites to Julie Bindel and Az Hakeem, both of whom regard GID as a fantasy and advocate "Talking Therapy", are there any sympathetic or personal links between the organisers of the conference and those two rather controversial personalities?

Given the title of the conference and the invite to those people, is it possible that this was intended as some form of coup, to enable those who advocate "Talking Therapy" to influence the Royal College?

Naturally there was a lot of concern from transpeople over the inclusion of Bindel and Hakeem, and a great deal of strong campaigning was done by trans activists to draw attention to the problems with Bindel's and Hakeem's views. But some of the professionals invited to talk alongside them also seemed to have smelled a rather large rat, and the conference was finally cancelled when the West London Mental Health Team bravely pulled out, formally citing their disquiet over the conference's revealed agenda.

So what was going on here?

Suspicions of some sort of coup are growing. It's noticeable that the dreadful blog, GenderTrender, who's raison d'etre is to spew out vicious hatred at transpeople, carried a story back in March about the proposed conference and, incredibly for them, was very supportive of it.

http://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/transgender-time-to-change/

Now why would that be?

Surely a conference on transgender issues would be a target for their wrath? But no.

My guess is that this poisonous Radical Feminist blog site, run either by fans of Julie Bindel or by Bindel herself (it is alleged she likes to hide her identity on-line and has several glove-puppets) already knew the real reason behind the conference and why Bindel and Hakeem had been invited, and so they wanted to see it go ahead.

I strongly suspect that they knew in advance (I hear Bindel loves to boast) that the only reason this conference was being held was to allow "Talking Therapy" advocates a strong platform to attack the current policy and advocate a change to theirs.

Paranoia? I don't think so.

One only needs to look at the way these people have worked in the past. Bindel is a cowardly weasel who will use any underhand tactics she can to hurt us, and Hakeem is a quack on the make. They make good bedfellows, and I am sure the views of both have some small degree of political and/or clinical sympathy inside official organisations

It would be very nice to know who sympathises with them inside the Royal College's Special Interest Group in Gay and Lesbian Mental Health...

Additional. The official statement from the West London Mental Health Team....

“The team at the WLMHT Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) at Charing Cross

Hospital notes the apparent shift of emphasis in the Royal College of

Psychiatrists Gay & Lesbian Special Interest Group conference, ‘Transgender:

Time To Change’ on May 20th and feels compelled to withdraw on this basis.

When we were originally asked to take part, GIC clinicians understood that

our role was to outline the work we do within our own service and explain

the very considerable evidence base which underpins it. We are very happy to

do this and our more than 55 years of experience as the country’s leading

NHS provider gives us a rich and robust data set from which to draw

observations.

It now appears that the conference comes at trans issues from a very
specific agenda, namely, to explore the validity or otherwise of gender

diagnoses as medical and psychiatric phenomena. (my emphasis added)

So long as this is the case, we feel we can’t support it.

Although we were somewhat wary of engaging in what is essentially a clinical

discussion with a predominantly non-trans panel, which, moreover, features a

non-clinician whose personal opinion is already well known, we agreed to do

so in order that discussion might focus on evidence rather than anecdote.

The Royal College should be aware that there is a great deal of disquiet

around this event within the trans community and interested parties should

note that the discussion as it now stands will be one-sided at best..”

Job Hunt

2011-04-16T09:26:00.005+01:00

Well, I am hunting for a job again.

I am still "employed", but recent developments have led me to question the nature of the contract I am working under.

I find the work rewarding, in the main. But it's the employment conditions that are starting to grate; in short the Zero Hour contract my employer uses.

The Zero Hour contract is a rather strange - and hopefully soon to be illegal under EU law - form of employment contract. An employee has all the limitations of being in full-time employment, whilst not enjoying any regular contracted hours of work or being compensated for those days when one is on call and does not get work.

In some EU countries the law forces employers to recompense the Zero Hour contracted employee if no work comes in whilst they're are on-call. In the UK, that is not the case. One can be on call 7 days a week and only get one day's paid work, whilst being unable to do anything else on the other six days.

I settled on this type of contract under the impression that it allowed flexibility; the employer had not undertaken to offer me any work at all and, as I understood it, I had not undertaken to be available for work at all times. But now it seems the latest contract I was asked to sign a few weeks ago does away with that flexibility, and now I find that I have to be available 7 days a week, unless I have given a month's notice of the days I am not going to be available on.

Now that change blows away the only reason I agreed to accept such a contract in the first place. At this stage in my transition I need flexibility if at all possible. Previously in this job one had only to give a few days notice of one's lack of availability for work. Last week I informed the office that I was going to be unavailable for shifts for the next two weeks, in order to run around like a blue-arsed fly and resolve the GIC referral issue and arrange the further blood tests and referrals required. It was impossible to reconcile that with being on-call, and so I said I was not available.

But yesterday I got asked to produce a sickness note for those two weeks, in accordance with my firm's new policy. Now I am confused and stressed out, as I am not sick and have no intention of claiming SSP for this down time. It was simply that I was unavailable for shifts until I got the situation sorted.

This seems to be a whole new ball-game. I wanted short-notice flexibility. I would never have accepted a Zero Hour contract otherwise, as their drawbacks are dreadful, especially the lack of regular pay and the problems when one comes to claim Tax Credits or Income Support. It only takes a few days without shifts each month to drop one below the average weekly hours for Tax Credits eligibility, and then for that month one has claim Income Support instead.

So it now seems that there is actually no advantage to me in working under a Zero Hour contract. Frankly, without that flexibility, I am better of in a job with regular, contracted hours, and so I am now looking for one.

Deep Breathing

2011-04-12T10:25:00.007+01:00

Yesterday morning saw a whirlwind of activity in my Warrington digs, as I set about trying to resolve the problem with Leeds GIC.

I will admit that my tummy was so full of butterflies that I was nearly sick again. I had actually been sick this weekend; the stress and anguish had been so bad that my tum went into spasm and I ended up kneeling in front of the toilet doing technicolour yawns. Getting that letter just took me back to 2009, and the long, drawn out and totally futile attempts to get the administrators at Health Commission Wales and Gwynedd Local health Board to do their bloody jobs properly and follow their own internal processes correctly.

So yesterday morning I was still full of nerves, and was trying hard to hold my temper in check as I picked up the phone and started to make my calls.

First there was a call to my GP to arrange the required blood tests and physical examination, and to discuss my options on tackling Leeds GIC's daft decision. But he was on holiday, so no appointment was possible until the week after next.

Not a good start...

Next I made a cup of strong tea, took several deep breaths, and then called Leeds GIC.

Again, both of the two people I needed to see were on holiday, and my heart sank. However, I did manage to speak to the nurse at the centre, and she was very helpful and understanding. She pulled my files and we went over my past history and current situation. She said that they seemed to have made the decision simply based on the application letter from my GP and the sole piece of accompanying documentation supplied, which was a copy of my mid-2009 psychiatric report.

She said that had the GIC known of my history and current status, then it is unlikely they would have asked for a more up-to-date local psychiatric team assessment. So she was going to speak to the Team Manger the next day and they would call me back. I explained that I had also sent them a letter outlining my situation; thankfully I had thought twice about sending the original Heavy Artillery one, and instead had posted something with a lot less sturm und drang in it.

Next I called my PCT, and this time I was lucky enough to get the head of the panel. She was charming and very helpful and supportive. She said that Leeds GIC should have called them back if they had any queries, and as the PCT panel had accepted the administrative criteria, so too should Leeds GIC.

She offered to send a supporting letter to Leeds, and asked me if she could have a copy of all my past treatment documentation to send as well. She also said that Leeds GIC should accept an up-to-date privately obtained psychiatric report, if I had one. I said I could obtain one as I'd had a psychiatric assessment only the previous month.

Next I rang the private psychiatrist whom I had originally seen for my pre-op assessment. She said she was willing to provide a report but would require another assessment, as I had actually missed my second one with her due to very bad driving conditions. That appointment has been set for the 22nd of April.

Hopefully I should hear from Leeds GIC some time today. If I have not heard by 13.00 hrs, I'll ring them myself and chase it up.

I am not breathing a sigh of relief yet. I've been burned too many times by the NHS to do that, and will only say that the response so far from the bodies concerned has been a million miles away from the ignorant, obstructive and incompetent attitude displayed by Health Commission Wales and Gwynedd Local Health Board.

I managed more in half a day with Warrington PCT and Leeds GIC, than I did in 18 months with the NHS in Wales.

ADDITIONAL: JUST HAD A CALL FROM THE CLINICAL TEAM LEADER AT LEEDS GIC, AND SHE HAS AGREED TO PUT ME ONTO THEIR WAITING LIST. THEY STILL REQUIRE AN ASSESSMENT FROM MY LOCAL MH TEAM, BUT THAT IS SOLELY TO TIE ME IN TO THAT TEAM FOR LOCAL SUPPORT, AND BOTH WAITING TIMES WILL RUN CONCURRENTLY SO I WILL NOT EXPERIENCE ANY ADDITIONAL DELAYS.

NHS Reform

2011-04-09T19:22:00.014+01:00

Frankly, my personal plan for reforming the NHS and saving the taxpayer billions is a simple one. Sack 90% of the administrators and managers.

Job done.

Yep...

Once more, mindless bureaucracy has lobbed a brick wall into my NHS treatment path.

Not that there has actually BEEN an NHS treatment path as such, as I have never actually got as far as being treated. It took the NHS two years to even get me referred to a GIC, and that delay was not for any clinical reasons, but because some NHS administrators and managers in Wales either choose to deliberately block applications for referral to GICs, or because the wrong box had been ticked, or not ticked, or a letter had been lost, or a call not made, or an internal procedure not followed, or...., well, whichever one of the million reasons a "professional administrator" can dream up to cover their own incompetence, dogmatism and lack of initiative.

But once I got to Warrington, things had certainly changed for the better. My GP was sympathetic to my past dealings with Health Commission Wales and the massive delays I experienced there, and agreed to try and get Warrington PCT to refer and fund me.

Warrington PCT had the usual NHS criteria for referral and funding, and were quite happy to accept my original NHS psychiatric reports as part of that criteria.

However, in a true demonstration of the "consistency" of the NHS, the GIC they referred me to was not.

Now a couple of years ago Leeds GIC had a well-deserved, piss-poor reputation for mindless and inflexible bureaucracy; lots of complaints and bad press, serious slaps from politicians, critical letters from MPs, etc... and they have made a great show of having put all that behind them.

But of course they haven't, as the letter I got this morning demonstrated. Leeds GIC have put me into their "pending file" (their words), as they will not accept my 2009 psychiatric referrals, and want me to go right back to the start and get one from the local mental health team here. That could delay things for several more months.

Now since those reports were made, I have transitioned. I am on hormones, have had some surgery, a lot of hair removal, and am living and working full time in my correct gender. But that's not the issue. The point is that the admin team at Leeds GIC didn't bother to find out more details about the referral, and weren't bothered by the fact that my own PCT was quite happy that those 2009 reports fulfilled their criteria. All that team knew was that they could not tick the right box, and rather than go the extra mile (hell, most of them won't even go the extra inch) and contact Warrington PCT to find out more, they just booted the thing into touch, and I am left sitting here tearing myself apart with anger and frustration.

It must also be frustrating for all those decent clinicians and psychiatrists at NHS GIC's, who actually WANT to do a good job and provide a decent level of humane service to their patients. They go to all that trouble to try and change the GIC's image and tell us that things are improving, but in the end it's all a facade, as behind it are the usual NHS administrators running the place. And it is they who, with their total lack of imagination, flexibility or initiative, and their worship of mindless rules and regulations, turn the GIC's into soulless, inhuman, and humiliating nightmares for many of the trans-people who have the misfortune to attend them. Appointments delayed, applications blocked for silly, non-clinical reasons, letters not sent or simply lost, calls not returned, stupid processes never questioned.... The list goes on.

I will get an appointment to see my GP next week, and discuss with him the way forward from here.

After over two years going nowhere, I will not accept further delays on this issue. So I have prepared a letter to my solicitors instructing them to request a High Court Judicial Review of Leeds GIC's administrative decision not to accept those 2009 reports.

That's going to cost me some money, but it's going to cost Leeds GIC a whole lot more. They are going to have to decide if it makes more sense to spend that money fighting the Review, or to simply stop being petty, tick that box in my favour and accept the 2009 reports, as Warrington PCT were prepared to do.

Why Are We Here?

2011-03-25T08:17:00.011Z

That's a question I have always asked myself when doing my job.

It seems so simple, of course.

If one is a baker, one is there to bake bread to feed folk. If one is a nurse, one is there to help the sick. If one is a IT worker, one is there to manage a system so that the users of that system can get their work done. Those are all prime reasons for doing each job. They are easily identified, or so one would think.

I started paid employment back around 1971, and full-time paid employment three years later. And sadly, I have found that some places I worked in didn't have much interest in the prime reason for their existence, which was usually to provide a service to others.

I worked for just over two years in the Civil Service in an Unemployment Benefit Office. There, the prime reason for the work was supposed to be ensuring that the correct benefits were being paid out to those people who qualified for them. But in reality there were other things far more important, the main one being that the rules and regulations had to be followed rigidly at all times. And the records were vitally important and always right, even if they were wrong and even if it meant people were denied benefit that they should have received. The overall philosophy of the organisation was that it existed for the sake of itself and its staff, and the claimants were simply there to provide an excuse for that existence. They were certainly NOT the prime reason for it.

Back when I worked as an IT manager in a very large multi-national civil engineering firm, a similar philosophy existed. Most of the time the prime reason for the department's existence was submerged beneath personal ambition, empire building, and proving an entertaining social life for its staff. Both the department's efficiency and the service provided to the projects were way down on the list of peoples' priorities. It was a place where, for example, one cliquey group of overpaid "wonderful young things" could all go off on a skiing holiday together, and leave the department and projects with no server support for two weeks!

And of course, there's been my thankfully short-lived experience at a council home the other day, where following the detailed and plentiful rules and regulations took precedence over everything else, and the residents were, once again, simply there to allow the continued existence of the organisation.

So next time you come across a media story of a council's social services failing in their primary task of protecting an abused child or a vulnerable elderly person, you can put good money on that department being mired in books of rules and regulations, inundated with paperwork and burdened with inhuman terminology, all of which stifles any staff initiative and flexibility, and relegates the organisation's true raison d'etre, the people it is there to help, to the bottom of the league table.

There certainly needs to be a connect and some degree of balance between the prime reason for the job, the processes that need to be followed. and the needs of the people doing it. But clearly the most important thing is the reason one is doing the work. If either of the other two aspects knock that prime reason into second or third place, then the organisation and its management will have failed.

Spoke Too Soon

2011-03-24T08:50:00.011Z

I suppose it was inevitable that I would come across a person who took exception to who I was, and that happened yesterday afternoon, at a council-run old people's home.

The traditional image of the typical council manager as a micro-managing "Little Hitler" is well entrenched in British comedy, and that is because it is so often true.

This home was certainly a perfect example of it. Although well equipped, the staff's morale was low, and I very soon found out why. Some anally-retentive twat of a Operations Manager had split the shift roster into 15 minute sections, each containing detailed work items that were next to impossible to fulfil even if the residents...oops, sorry, I mean "Service Users" were not there. The BS was incredible.

Even so, I could have worked around it but for the manageress. From the second she saw me, I knew that I was about as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool, and every time we spoke after that, she made that clear. To the other staff she was fine. To me she was rude and dismissive.

I was assigned to the Dementia secure ward, where despite the tight micro-managed schedule, I worked at least 30 mins past my contracted time through no fault of my own. But when I handed her my time sheet to sign, she not only signed all the wrong places, but queried my mileage and then altered my claimed hours back to the normal contracted ones.

I was furious. Not even a thank you for the fact that I had spent the best part of an hour with a violent "service user", who had been trying to attack one of the other female carers on that ward, and eventually talked him into a chair in the lounge so that she could get down the corridor to carry on doing her work.

And then, at close to 22.00 hours when I finally managed to get out of the damn place, I found this situation in the car park.

Yep. My car, in the otherwise empty staff car park, with the deputy manageress' car parked so close behind me that I had no chance of manoeuvring out without driving over the concrete bordering and onto the grass. She had just come on shift and had an empty car park to park in.

I went back into the home and asked if it could be moved, but was told by the manageress that her deputy was too busy doing paperwork right now. I had to wait another 10 mins for her to appear and move it.

I am about to ring my agency asking if they will allocate my next three shifts there to someone else. It's got to be in their interests to do that.

The Days Tumble Past. Or Is It Passed?

2011-03-23T10:33:00.006Z

Work has been a priority recently, with lots of stuff coming in for me, even on my day off.

The differences between homes is amazing. So far it seems that the charity and council run ones are of a high standard, and the small private business ones are of a lower standard. The difference between the two is often staggering, at least in my limited experience.

Also somewhat staggering is the fact that pretty much every staff member, in whichever home I have gone to, has accepted me, and in most cases expressed a great deal of interest both in GID and the processes involved in transitioning.

The thing is that it is all too easy for some of us to get into the depressing mindset that every female worker out there reads the Daily Mail and or the Sun, and swallows that bilge like mother's milk. The truth is far from that. The staff I have worked with have all expressed acceptance of LGBT folk and also expressed strong, often VERY strong, criticism of the sort of narrow-minded garbage that spews from the sorts of papers that one would actually expect them to buy and read.

Now I recall seeing a TV prog. a short while back that said that the Daily Mail media group (not just the paper) now only reaches around 16% of the population, a figure that had dropped some 14% in the last decade. I was dubious, but it was heartening to see this in the flesh, as it were. That media group's far-right views are becoming less and less acceptable to society as a whole, and one hopes it is losing ground financially because of that.

Oh, and yesterday I had a bit of good news. I had been expecting a reply from the local PCT as to whether they were prepared to accept my previous psychiatric referral, but because of work shifts and other bad timing, I was unable to ring my GP to find out how things were going.

But yesterday S came back home as she had an appointment with the same GP, who then noticed we lived at the same address. He asked her to tell me to call him later, so I did but he was still busy. Eventually he rang me back with the PCT reply.

It seems that the local PCT have agreed to "fully fund" my course of treatment, and even offered me the choice of which GIC I would like to attend; either Leeds or CX.

I was grinning like a Cheshire cat for a few hours after his call, but then eventually burst into tears.

Freedom of Speech, or Closed Minds?

2011-03-17T08:39:00.014Z

Melissa made some good points about freedom of speech in one of her comments, and I thought a reply would be better in the form of a blog post.

Here in the UK the "defending freedom of speech" angle does not seem to apply in this case, as the people who defend Islam do NOT defend other religions or groups who also seek to discriminate against us.

So it is clear that there are very definite double standards at work here.

The fact that they attack those who criticise Islam by labelling them as "racist" gives a clue as to why they have such double standards.

They believe that, as most followers of Islam are asian, any criticism of Islam is just a cover for racism.

I dare say there's also a bit of post-colonial guilt in there too, plus a hefty dose of the 'nineties radical ideology of multiculturalism, which held that minority ethnic communities needed to be patronised and cosseted and that any problem areas were down not to their failure to assimilate and accept western liberal values, but to the failure of the rest of society to adapt to and accept their little religious and cultural peccadilloes, such as the totally reasonable practices of Forced Marriage, Female Circumcision and Honour Killings, all of which I have heard defended by a few fellow Left-wingers here in the UK.

That mindset still persists. although hopefully the fact that the new coalition government has seen through the nonsense of multiculturalism means that the philosophy will die soon. The fact that its dwindling number of proponents are screaming louder and shriller would seem to indicate that it is.

Now it is true that some people out there attack Islam because they are racists, and use the "muslim" label as cover.

It is also true that some religious groups and individuals, notably people such as Stephen Green and the Christian Institute, also attack Islam. In their case it is not because they disagree with the nasty, vicious, narrow-minded, homophobic, misogynistic and totalitarian philosophy of that religion, but because they feel that, here in the UK, discriminating against those hideous females and gays should be done by a good traditional western religion like Christianity, and not by some Johhny Foreigner one like Islam.

But the fact that racists and Christian nutters attack Islam does NOT mean that it should automatically be defended. Such an idea is childish nonsense. If we base our decisions on what is right and wrong solely on taking an opposing stance to a racist, then moral chaos will follow.

Let's have a few examples.

I detest Little Britain. There is just so much wrong with it. I know a person who has racist views who also hates it. Does that mean I now have to defend it?

I know a person with racist views who hates the Catholic church. Does that mean I now have to defend Catholicism?

I know a person with racist views who hates the Tories. Does that mean I now have to defend that political party?

Defending an unpleasant entity solely on the grounds that some who dislike it are racist, is just a moral and intellectual cop-out.

And defending an unpleasant entity simply because most of its members belong to a minority ethnic group, is also a cop-out. To paraphrase Commander Sam Vimes, "Just because someone is a member of an ethnic or religious minority, it doesn't mean they CAN'T be a nasty, narrow-minded little jerk".

Minority Trumps

2011-03-16T12:06:00.018Z

It's been a bit sad watching some of the antics going on in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets lately.

The area has been gaining a bit of a reputation for homophobic abuse and violence. It's a borough with a large Muslim population, and there's clear evidence that some of the homophobia is coming from some members of that religious community.

And once again it has highlighted the rather surreal attitude that some of my fellow-travellers on the political Left have when it comes to dealing with such issues.

Now this is where it gets silly.

You see, I am an atheist, a secularist and a Socialist, and I have a strong and uncompromising belief in Equality under the law. Because of that belief, I openly and loudly criticise those religions who discriminate against others, especially against women and members of the LGBT community.

I rail against Judaism, Catholicism and the other Christian faiths for that reason.

I appreciate that not all followers share their religion's official stance on such issues (and wonder why the hell they choose to remain part of them, in that case), but I totally condemn those religious institutions and their followers who do hold and support such unpleasant views.

Now Islam is one of several, rather toxic, religions that make up the Abrahamic faiths, and it shares the same medieval homophobic and misogynistic views and practices as its bedfellows.

And so I rail against Islam.

That, of course, in the eyes of some on the Left, makes me a racist.

The argument seems to work like this.

In the UK, Islam is a minority religion, and most of its adherents are not white, ergo any criticism of that religion and its followers is racist and therefore cannot be allowed.

Lots of non-sequiturs there, of course. But if one points them out, one just gets screamed at even more.

So according to them, I can criticise Catholicism for treating women and gays like dirt but I can't criticise Islam for doing the same, because most of its followers are members of an ethnic and cultural minority.

Now that does not work for me, nor I suspect for anyone with an objective or ethical bone in their body. If a person holds, and acts on, the view that a woman or a gay person is inferior, then it should not matter a jot what religion they follow, or what colour their skin is, or what country they came from. They are wrong and should be criticised, and NOT defended.

Or to put it another way, no-one with an ounce of integrity could get up on a platform and proclaim that they stand for full equality for women and LGBT folk, and then in the next breath proclaim that they also stand for and defend the rights of a religion to openly and actively discriminate against those very groups.

But some on the Left do that.

They play the game of Minority Trumps.

Judging by their words and actions, they really do believe that the right of a religious, ethnic and cultural minority to discriminate against women and LGBT people, over-rides the right of those people not to be treated like shit.

How can anyone who acts in such a way honestly argue that they are of the Left?

Busy Weekend

2011-03-14T09:06:00.002Z

It's been busy this last few days.

On Friday I had another 12 hour shift at the home I've been at recently. It was horrendously busy for some reason. Sadly, two of the old ladies I was looking after the previous weekend had since died. I long ago learned not to brood too much on death, and so it doesn't really affect me too badly now. In both cases it was a release from a dreadful existence, and overall it does leave me wondering about the ethics of artificially prolonging life in such cases.

On Saturday I dashed down to Tywyn, as the Diva was performing in the school district Eistedfodd. She said she didn't really want to do it. I wondered out loud if she was nervous, but she just said no, it was just that she didn't like the song.

Anyway, her school came third.

Afterwards I asked her if she enjoyed it, and she said "No. I thought it was gonna be like the X-Factor, but it was just a lot of dumb-ass singing!" Where does she get her language?

But in truth it was not really her thing. She is very bored by all the traditional welsh singing and dancing and musical stuff, and makes that fact very obvious, to the dismay and annoyance of those teachers who take the whole welsh heritage thing a bit too seriously.

On Sunday I came back here, popping in along the way to see my lovely friend L and do some shooting on her smallholding. I took Suzy the jeep for the whole trip, and she didn't miss a beat. I guess she has a fair bit of life in her yet, as long as i keep any corrosion under control.

I got back last night to a couple of messages from my company, asking me if I could do some days next week. Four days work is nice, and the money is welcome. Luckily they are not all full 12 hour shifts, which are, in that place at least, absolutely shattering in spite of the good company there.

Take Two

2011-03-10T09:57:00.004Z

Those are excerpts from a documentary about one transwoman's journey.

I understand that it dates back to the late 'seventies, but I have yet to see the full documentary, so if anyone has a copy of it, please let me know...

The specialist who was dealing with this lady was a man called John Randall, who died around 1982. He came from the old school of psychiatry and, as can clearly be seen, he had no respect or sympathy for his patients whatsoever, which was not uncommon then.

It seems that very, very few transwomen ever got the nod for surgery from him; some reports say only 15% managed it. It seems he based his decisions almost solely on whether HE believed that the person involved fitted in with HIS ideas of how a woman should look, and what a woman should be like. If one was petite and very feminine, then it appears one was usually safe.

If not, then...

I'd have failed that test, I am sure.

Anyway, despite his death it took a great deal of time before things changed for the better, and now I understand that they are much improved. But the damage caused by Randall and a few others still remains to this day, with some trans-people still feeling distrust and fear when thinking of NHS GIC's, and specifically the Charing Cross GIC.

Last year Charing Cross embarked on an attempt to change people's perceptions of what they were likely to experience there, and to dispel some of those fears. To be hyper-critical, the "myth-busting" claim was a little disingenuous, in that many of the fears were not based on myths, but on historical facts.

However, from what I have heard from friends who attend, Charing Cross have largely succeeded in their first aim. I now certainly feel much less anxious about any future referral, knowing that the criteria has been modernised and that we are now treated with more respect. But aside from that, there will always remain the underlying uneasiness that one is dealing with people who hold one's very future in their hands... That's not a feeling I enjoy, because in my experience there are a fair few people out there who LIKE having that kind of power, and who choose to abuse it.

And it seems that the idea of adhering to "feminine stereotypes" has not yet totally gone from NHS GIC's. Only recently a friend of mine attended a northern UK GIC for the first time and found herself being told off because, in the specialist's opinion, her chosen name (Jaye) was not sufficiently feminine and that she was "copping out".

Now that's a line one can hear John Randall coming out with, and it's no longer acceptable.

Two Minds

2011-03-09T09:16:00.027Z

I'm often in two minds when I read or see a programme or a series of articles that seems to "take the lid off" what it means to be transsexual.

There's a part of me that welcomes it, and feels pleased that the wider world out there might thus gain a better understanding of who we are and what we do and think.

The other side of the coin is that there always exists the possibility that the person or persons being examined, or bearing their souls, are not presenting a picture that I can, or want to, identify with. There's also the danger that others just starting along this difficult path might well see such programmes or writings as the definitive road map, which of course they are not.

Well, not for everyone.

For a while now, the Guardian has been running a series of articles written by a transwoman called Juliet Jacques. It's welcoming to see that paper do this, not least because of its sad record in allowing Julie Bindel to spew her offensive garbage in the past. The articles themselves are well written, but I have to admit to sometimes finding myself confused by her often conflicting views.

This one in particular had me wincing.

"What sort of a Woman do I want to be?"

Now this was an issue I had tried to deal with a while back, by examing the various stereotypical views on femininity and wondering whether they still existed in transitioning now and, if so, to what degree they were still valid. Most readers understood my points and the questions I was raising, but a couple of folk really got into me and slated me for holding such views. One even compared me to Julie Bindel.

Except that, of course, that I don't hold such views. I had simply outlined those views and wondered if they were still valid. Attacking me for doing so was a bit like accusing a historian who outlines Nazi or Communist ideology in an article or book, of being a Nazi or a Communist for doing so.

When I started my transition back in May, and a short while later wrote of feeling under a fair degree of overt and covert pressure to "conform" to a certain stereotype (NOT a hyper-feminine one, I must add), it was because I DID actually feel that pressure. The fact that others, in their experience, may not have felt it in no way negates the fact that for me, and I suspect some others, it existed.

This article by Juliet brought a lot of that back.

Now I can't imagine there are many people on this planet more insecure than a fledging transwoman. In my own case, I had a very hard time of it. Perhaps it was my age or my past ultra-masculine life experience but, whatever the cause, I would often take myself to task for not "measuring up". Some transwoman seemed to do it all so naturally. Others didn't have a clue. Some just naturally slotted into - yes, I'll use the word - stereotypically "female" lifestyles, and others didn't... And if one didn't, then there was a price to pay, certainly in my experience.

During my transition I had been told several times that, in line with the philosophy behind the title of Juliet's article, I had to decide what kind of woman I wanted to be. Note that phrase. "Wanted to be". I was also told on more than one occasion that one needed to adopt an obviously feminine lifestyle in order to get round the fact that one was not born female.

But neither of those two ideas gelled with me at all. Sure, I can think of the kind of a woman I'd want to be, but the truth is that after 53 years on this planet, I am realistic enough to know that I am NOT that kind of woman, and no way am I going to start another painful act in order to convince others that I am.

But I DID often feel that not adopting a more feminine lifestyle actually put a question mark on my status, despite that fact that many cis-gendered women out there feel no need to adopt all the trappings that being a female offers. Getting away from that painful mindset took time.

So unlike Juliet's philosophy, for me the process was not about deciding what sort of a woman I wanted to be but, through growing confidence and experience, finding out what sort of a woman I WAS....

I feel I have done that now. The pressure has gone.

I know I am not everyone's idea of a woman, but I am mine...

Back To A Routine

2011-03-08T12:45:00.004Z

Or sort of one, anyway.

After completing my training last month, with a day of work experience at a residential clinic in Chester, I got put onto the agency's books. Each Friday I give them my availability for the coming week, and they then put shifts my way. Notice can be short but is usually at least a day in advance.

Even so, I do have to make sure I am ready, and that my uniform is clean and pressed and my paperwork is at hand, just in case.

Last week I did two 12 hour shifts at an old people's residential home near Mold. The place was understaffed and, as most of the residents require total care, it was physically and emotionally demanding.

Each night, as soon as I got in, I went into the kitchen, stripped off my uniform and shoved it into the washing machine, then went upstairs for a shower.

Once back down, and the wash finished, I would toss the clothes into the tumble drier, and then iron them again and hang them up. Mostly it is to get the smell out of my nostrils, and to ensure that there are no traces of anything on my clothes. Despite being issued with gloves and aprons for the mucky stuff, it's still possible for things to get contaminated.

I thought the training day was an eye-opener, but in this home it was far more intensive. I have now seen the worst that is on offer. On Saturday I learned to breath through my mouth when dealing with really offensive smells. When someone's bowels are rotting with infection, it's hard to imagine how bad it can be. I have smelt decomposing human bodies in the past, but this was worse. But by the Sunday I had got used to it.

I worked hard and made a couple of minor mistakes through inexperience. Mostly that was down to the fact that each home will do things slightly differently. Routine is vital, getting the stuff ready in advance is VERY important. It's a lot like soldiering; if you know the various drills, and your kit is sorted, then it makes it all a lot easier.

I must have done OK though, because I got on with the other women there, and yesterday I found the home had put in a very good report with my agency, and asked for me back on Friday.

Suzy Suzuki.

2011-03-02T12:57:00.013Z

Last week I was bidding on a 1998 Suzuki Vitara 1600 jeep, on eBay, and I managed to win it for £910.

I was rather pleased.

I've been promising myself a 4x4 for my shooting for several years now, but couldn't really afford it until recently.

I didn't want a new-ish one, all plush carpets and central locking and air con and a million other things to go wrong or get broken. I wanted a simple, basic utility vehicle, along the lines of the old LandRover, that I could fill with my gear, pile dozens of dead rabbits in the back after a night's work, and not have to worry about the fixtures and fittings being spoiled.

I'd decided to go for either a SJ 410 or SJ 413, often called the Jimny and the Vitara. The 410 has a 1300 engine, and the 413 is a bit larger and has the 1600. In the end I settled on the larger engine, as a few more cc's can be a help now and again.

Anyway, I won the little Suzuki. So on Monday I got a lift to Yorkshire to check over the car, pay if I was happy with it, and then drive it home.

It's not perfect. Mechanically it works fine, steers and brakes well, starts and runs perfectly. The clutch is a little noisy when the pedal is depressed, but it doesn't slip or drag. There's some rust damage (now treated) under one of the rear arches, but it's on a small easily replaceable panel just behind the bumper step, and not on the main body. It has a recorded 75,000 miles on it, and that looks about right. It's not been a fashion accessories, but has earned its keep, so it has the odd scratch and scrape.

As a vehicle It lacks the creature comforts of most saloon cars. It has cloth seat-fronts and power steering, but that's about it. No air con, no central locking, minimum sound-proofing; no frills at all. The interior trim is wipe-down vinyl, and there's a bit of carpet in the rear, which will soon be ripped out.

It is not the most refined vehicle to drive. It is indeed very reminiscent of old LandRovers, with a fair bit of rattle and noise, although it's surprisingly quiet at 65 on the motorway. They have a good reputation for being as tough as old boots (ask James May after the Top Gear Bolivian expedition)

I think it should do nicely.

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you...

Suzy Suzuki...!!

The little Suzuki is only a couple of inches bigger than the Biddy Mobile.

Doh!

2011-02-26T09:37:00.001Z

Sorry about the loss of the blog for the last few days.

I was checking out some of the Permission settings, and inadvertently forgot to put them back to Default.

Thanks

2011-02-24T22:35:00.003Z

Thanks for the supportive comments on my earlier post.

In the end I decided to delete it.

I had felt that the stuff needed to be said but then, as the hours rolled on, I realised the truth was that I really no longer cared one way or the other.

It's nice to be finally free of all that, and I do wish my siblings could find the same freedom that I have.

All it takes is to just say "Enough!"

Half Term Was Way Too Fast

2011-02-24T18:54:00.004Z

I just checked my schedule and find that I have to take the Diva back to her mother tomorrow afternoon.

Damn.

I thought the holidays only went fast for the kids... :-(

But we shall go to Toys 'R Us before we set off to Chester, and I'll get her something nice. I think she might ask for a Wii game, and this time I guess I can stretch to one.

However, she is just as likely to ask for a new Polly Pocket doll that only costs a couple of quid, and she'll be just as happy with that as with something ten times the price.

For her the joy of ownership is measured by the fun a thing gives her, not by how much it costs. I hope she retains that all through her life.

I suspect she will...

I suppose somewhere along the way, her mother and I must be have been doing something right... :-)

Half Term

2011-02-22T22:37:00.011Z

Yesterday I had a couple of thousand blasts of laser over at Frodsham, and then drove to Chester to pick up the Diva, who is staying with me for most of her half-term holidays.

On the way back we stopped for the customary MacDonald's Happy Meal, and this time I checked to see if she not eaten a large dinner beforehand. I didn't want a repeat of her last visit, when she over-ate and threw up all over the bed, duvet, pillows and floor.

Once back, I helped her unpack and then settled her down with an old PS2 game, Doom, to keep her occupied whilst I tidied stuff away.

Well, she got engrossed, and took to the game like a duck to water. In no time at all, the house was ringing to the joyous sounds of maniacal laughter, rapid fire machine guns, exploding toxic waste barrels, and the scream of dying demons and zombies. And lord knows where she got her dialogue from... I was in the kitchen and tears of laughter were running down my cheeks.

"You wanna piece of me? You wanna piece of me? Here it is, then!" Blam!! Blam!!

and

"Oh My God. I'm hit! I'm bleeding... Stay frosty!! " Blam!!

....as well as dozens of others. About the only one she did not come out with was "Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!"

Kids.

Today she discovered the Chain Saw...

A Sad Day.

2011-02-21T12:20:00.017Z

Well, I suppose I knew the day would come when I had to face it.

A couple of my air rifles are up for sale.

It hurts to wave goodbye to one in particular; my trusty Air Arms Pro Sport.

The gun, a .177 version, is a true design classic; one of the best looking, most accurate rifles I have ever shot. I can sit there all day and shoot ragged one-hole, sub 10mm, five shot groups with it at 25 yards. It's taken its share of rabbits and the odd rat. I love it to bits.

But it has to go. I have to face up to the fact that, at 12+ lbs scoped, it is now too heavy for me, and the cocking effort required by its hidden under-lever is too much for my arm and chest muscles, after one and a half years of hormones and a Breast Augmentation operation.

Also going is another rifle, a .22 BSA Hornet pneumatic, which I never really gelled with. It was heavy for a pneumatic, and the stock did not fit me well, my right hand position being particularly uncomfortable as the grip was too fat. It saw little use as I always seemed to find a good reason to leave it aside and pick another rifle whenever a job needed doing.

Both rifles have been in storage for a while now, and it's time for them to find owners who will use and appreciate them more.

The BSA I won't miss, not because it is a bad gun, but because the fit never really suited me.

The Pro Sport I shall miss terribly, which is something I rarely did when I was using it...

A typical five shot group into a 20mm circle, with the Pro Sport. 25 yards.

Birthday Girl

2011-02-16T15:32:00.010Z

The Diva had her 8th birthday on Monday.

It took three parties to celebrate. I guess that's inflation for you.

But of course being in such an isolated area, it is usually necessary to travel around to see the various relatives on such occasions. So one group wwas visited on the Saturday, and she was then "at home" on the Sunday and Monday, for small groups of her friends.

I popped down on the Sunday to help out and join in. I ended hiding in one of the bedrooms as the noise level, although not excessive, was enough to tax my tired nerves.. :-)

So some pics of the Birthday Girl. Sadly I forgot to take my decent camera, so these were snapped with my Blackberry, which can be a sod to hold steady. The best pose of all (the first one) was blurred and, despite fiddling with Paintshop Pro, there was not much I could do with it.

On The Job Training

2011-02-10T08:46:00.004Z

Yesterday I did my first day of on-the-job training, down at a nursing home in Chester. The home was a residential one located near a hospital, and catered for residents who all needed almost total care for pretty much every bodily function.

In short, I was tossed in at the deep end.

And I enjoyed it.

The six hours I spent there went past in one. I was rushed off my feet, did not sit down for the whole time, and came out feeling a glow of achievement.

Emotionally the best moment was standing by the bed of an elderly chap and feeding him his dinner. He was almost totally paralysed by MS, but was lucid and friendly. He said "Thank you, nurse" (I am not a nurse, but a nursing assistant) after every swallowed mouthful, even after I said he didn't need to. He was happy to talk to someone, wanted to. He had been on MTB's in the Channel during the last war, was still married to his wife that he'd met when they were both 15, and married at 18. They had gone through the war together, and now she drove 40 miles every day to visit him. She popped in to see him just after we had changed his pad, during which task he again apologised for putting us to the trouble. Both of them were like characters out of a black and white WW2 movie.

The worst part, purely because it was so emotionally traumatic on so many different levels, was showering an old woman who was severely brain damaged. She could not speak. She was also diabetic and partly paralysed, and her purée diet and her diabetes meant her muscles were wasting away. I recall as a child seeing the photos from my grandfather's days in the Belsen and Buchenwald death camps, and she could have dropped straight into one of those pictures. She seemed a little scared of me at first, perhaps because I was a new face there. But later she kept reaching towards my hand and holding it for a short while. I washed her, helped dry and dress her, and two of us walked her slowly back to her room, supporting her all the way. I was almost in tears for most of that.

The day before, I was wondering if I could really do this sort of job. But yesterday told me I could. It is hard work, it has it's icky aspects, but at the end of the day one has the feeling that one is doing some good in this world.

Walking Away From Religion

2011-02-08T10:54:00.009Z

I dare say that most of my readers will now know that I am not a religious person, by any measure.

I am an atheist and a staunch secularist.

And maybe that's odd, because I was brought up a roman catholic, as my Irish mother was RC, although my father was Russian/French and didn't give a damn about any religion as far as I could see. I think he just wanted a quiet life so he let her get on with it. So my mother's influence ran strong, and four of her five kids went to catholic schools, all the way through to school-leaving.

I had the misfortune of a catholic education. It's OK. I'm not going to spout the old "I had god beaten out of me" story, even though the brutality of the priests and christian brothers I was taught by still haunts me to this day.

The truth is that I was perhaps a typical christian child. I went to church every Sunday (although as I got older I often bunked it if I could). I believed all the stuff about god and satan that my mother told me, and all the stories the priests and teachers drummed into me. I believed it right up until the moment when I was old enough to think for myself, which pretty much coincided with the point in life when I left those direct influences behind.

In a way, religious indoctrination is very akin to brainwashing. As long as one is in the environment where those values and views are held, then they are usually an unquestioned part of one's life. Once removed from that environment the conditioning can, and often does, break down and one is finally free (and hopefully able) to think for oneself.

By 1972 I was already pretty bored with the idea of religion and faith, and when I left school in 1974, the whole thing just popped like a balloon.

I guess it was because I never felt the need to worry too much about life after death, or the need for some existential support to succour me through life's misfortunes, and so I didn't require the help of an invisible, all-powerful friend to watch over me.

The absurdities of such a faith were so obvious to a logical mind, that I did not need to agonise over a decision to abandon it. Even when I was young, I had noticed the odd fact that in most cases this all-powerful being actually seemed to do sod-all. To my mind, that meant that either he was not all-powerful, or that he was all-powerful but was an evil, sadistic sod who liked raising peoples' hopes and then dashing them and watching them suffer, or that he did not really exist at all.

And all things considered, I figured that the last scenario was the most likely to be true; god was just a fairy tale.

Now such thinking, I was told, meant that my faith was not strong enough. Because faith made all of that not matter. With faith one did not need proof of any kind. With faith, one could ignore all the glaringly obvious inconsistencies and contradictions that made up one's religion. Faith required one to turn a blind eye to the scientific explanations of evolution, and to ignore logic and reason. It did not require the answers to awkward questions. Faith did not even want the questions raised in the first place.

Inquiring minds were right out!

It soon became obvious to me that being asked to have such faith was simply a demand that one switch off one's intelligence.

Now don't get me wrong. I have no objections to people believing what they want. I respect their right to do so. But that is not the same thing as respecting the substance of what they believe.

So when I hear someone tell me that we have to respect other people's strongly-held beliefs, I ask the obvious question.

Why do we have to?

If someone has a strongly-held belief in something that is so fantastic that it cannot be seen, heard, smelt, touched or scientifically proven in any way, and that frequently flies in the face of things that are scientifically proven, WHY should one respect that belief any more than, for example, one should respect someone's strongly-held belief that the earth is flat or two plus two is five?

Unholy Row

2011-02-06T10:02:00.014Z

It was always on the cards that PM Cameron's speech, proclaiming as it did the end of official toleration of extremism, and outlining the core values of our liberal society, was going to cause a ruck with many on the "liberal" left and the "religious" right.

It was going to do so because, rather illogically, many on the left dislike being reminded of the fact that those liberal values, which we claim to hold so dear, might actually need both defining and defending.

And of course the reason it was going to hack off the religious pundits is so obvious that it does not need to be detailed here.

My personal opinion is that many of the nay-sayers of the left are simply displaying a lack of moral courage. They don't like the idea of tackling the obvious dichotomies that will always arise over that most fundamental of liberal values, Equality. And so they turn a blind eye to them, arguing speciously that it is somehow possible, if one believes in liberal values hard enough, to pretend that two totally conflicting views of society are both equally acceptable.

The fact is that it is impossible to argue rationally that the views and claimed rights of all groups must be respected, when one or more of those groups follows a religion, or is part of a culture, that believes other groups have to be discriminated against.

Or to put it another way, one cannot seriously hold the view that the LGBT community has a legal and moral right not to be discriminated against, and also hold the view that religious groups have a legal and moral right to discriminate against them.

There has to be a bottom line, and that simple fact requires courage to face and proclaim because yes, it will cause trouble. There are people out there who would rather kill than give up what they claim is their "right" to treat others like dirt.

I am not singling out islam here and nor, I hope, is Cameron.

"Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Democracy. The rule of law. Equal rights, regardless of race, sex or sexuality. It says to its citizens: This is what defines us as a society. To belong here is to believe these things."

and

"Non-violent extremists" who disparage democracy, oppose universal human rights and promote separatism were also "part of the problem"."

Indeed.

And many of these areas are ones in which, for example, the catholic church's views make it an extremist organisation. The Vatican openly disparages and tries to undermine democracy, for example instructing its followers around the world, on pain of excommunication, not to vote for any politician who supports abortion. And like the anglican church, it openly opposes and lobbies against universal human rights, advocating and practising discrimination against women and the LGBT community.

I rarely agree with Cameron on most issues, but on this one I am in total agreement. I only hope that he is serious and that he intends this new policy to cover ALL groups and organisations that fail to meet that criteria, including christian institutions.

Sea Change II

2011-02-02T13:49:00.014Z

Or...

An Unsuitable Job For A Woman.

I used to be a professional pest controller in a previous life. I ended up specialising in rabbit control, on sites that were hard to tackle with the normal means of removal. I worked mainly on static caravan sites, and some areas of farmland that had been designated as Sites of Special Scientific Interest.

I used to use legal-limit silenced air rifles, with power levels low enough not to damage the fixtures and fittings on the rare occasions when I missed my target.

I was probably one of the few professional rabbit controllers in the country who still used spring-piston air rifles as the main tool of the job. I liked their near total reliability, the fact that they were "independent", and needed only a bit of muscle power to cock, and enjoyed the fact that they needed a degree of skill to shoot well. Most others preferred pneumatic air guns, with light weight and no recoil, but I found the spring-piston guns to be cheaper, and just as accurate if one could shoot them properly. I used them for years, although for a short while I tried a 10-shot repeater pneumatic; A BSA T10. But I never really trusted it and wasn't able to see any real advantage in it over my trusty Air Arms TX200HC.

Until now, that is.

I've been popping along to my good friend L's little farm near Denbigh, for a spot of target practice over the summer. She and I enjoyed shooting my two spring-piston rifles at paper and knock-down targets, and it was nice to get my eye in again. But a couple of months ago I started getting calls from land-owners and site-managers back on my old stomping ground, asking me if I would be so kind as to help them out with their rabbit problems once again

I said yes. The money would come in handy and I liked working alone at night on those empty, sometimes spooky, sites.

But I was concerned. One thing I had noticed was that over the last few months my strength and stamina levels have been dropping. I was finding it harder to cock the spring guns, and the weight of them was also starting to become a problem for me. In December I finally forked out for a new 10-shot repeating pneumatic, a Prestige Kub .22, and decided to see if it made my life any easier.

And it did. It suffered from none of the problems of the first BSA pneumatic I tried, which had a shot-count, between refills, of around 65 shots and meant that on the really busy sites I would often run out of pressure. The KUB has 120 shots, which is more than enough for target-rich, all-night sessions. It has a pressure gauge too, so one never gets paranoid about running out of air. And it was light and handy. Loading and cocking was a simple matter of pulling back a side lever to cock the gun, and pushing it forward again to chamber a new pellet.

I used it to good effect over the last month, but on a couple of occasions I tucked it back into its slip and took out my spring guns. I still love shooting them, but in the car the Weihrauch HW95K .22 was far too long for easy use, and the .177 Air Arms Pro Sport was heavy and awkward. After an hour with each I was exhausted, and reverted back to the Kub.

So I am finally a convert to pneumatic air rifles. Oh, I prefer shooting the spring guns, but as far as doing a job is concerned, the pneumatics are now my main tool.

Hormones do take their toll.... but I adapt, and move on.

My old office, another lifetime ago

A Sea Change?

2011-01-24T10:17:00.014Z

It's funny how one gets carried away with things, and forgets the original intention one had.

A couple of weeks ago I booked my GRS date in Bangkok. I'd done lots of research, talked to a lot of people, checked what sort of money I could afford, and made a decision.

In doing so, I deliberately quashed a number of serious doubts that I had about some aspects of the procedure and location.

But the doubts would not stay quashed, as despite my attempts to convince myself they were minor and would eventually fade, they did not. Instead they grew.

Last Monday I jumped onto a train to London and went to see Dr Curtis for a routine six-monthly follow-up.We had a good chat and he was impressed with how much I had achieved over such a short time. But he expressed a great deal of concern about my GRS decision. His concerns mirrored all of those that I had shoved under the carpet myself.

I left his clinic feeling very worried. I needed to be open and honest with myself and to do that, I needed some time alone.

On the following Thursday I made up my mind to go away for a few days, and set off to Wales and spent a couple of cold, lonely nights on a holiday park sorting out their rabbit problem. It gave me the time and the peace to look back over the last two years and reassess things.

Back in Feb 2009 I had popped along to my GP (in Wales) and told him that I wanted to Gender Reassign.

Back then Health Commission Wales, the funding body for specialist treatments, was running an illegal policy that banned funding for GRS surgery. Later that year they got roundly ticked off by the EU and the Welsh assembly, and told to stop breaking the law.

They did so, with much fanfare and celebration.

But whilst the EU, WA and the various Trans lobby groups were patting themselves on the back (deservedly), they did not notice that HCW had simply changed their tactics. They were still intent on refusing to treat GID cases if they possibly could (after all, that money would be FAR better off in their expense accounts or gold-plated pensions) and so what they did was deliberately delay the START of the process, rather than the more visible END of it.

And so referrals were delayed and blocked by administrative procedures that were clearly not part of HCW's published Commission Policy for Gender Reassignment.

Despite referral from a consultant psychiatrist, HCW played administrative football with my referral to a GIC for well over a year, sending letters to my GP demanding information, which was then supplied, and which then would trigger a request for further information, and so on. Phone calls and emails from my GP and myself, demanding to know what was going on, were stonewalled or not replied to.

I was left with two choices; legal action (which I would win but which would cost a lot), or go private to start the ball rolling and at least get a diagnosis, some counselling and perhaps eventually hormones. I chose that route. It's just as well I did, because by the time I finally moved from Wales, some 18 months after asking for a referral, and 14 months after HCW were told by Gwynedd's consultant shrink that it was needed, I had still heard nothing.

My intention had always been to kick-start things on a private basis and then return to the NHS once I was out of the desperate emotional hole that HCW's delays had put me in. But suddenly I had a fair bit of money, and there were other things I wanted to sort now that I was on my own and back in England. And so somehow that original idea was forgotten. I spent money (a lot!!) on hair removal, and on various surgical procedures that the NHS would not supply, and then suddenly it seemed reasonable to just spend more on having GRS.

I was in a headlong rush, and I had not really paused long enough to realise that my original plan was now gone.

But now I have put on the brakes and finally reassessed matters.

I have decided to go back to my original plan for a number of reasons; some personal, some financial. Later this week I have an appointment to see my GP here, and will ask him to chase up my referral and see if it can be transferred to Cheshire.

Because I have suddenly realised that I have already transitioned. I have a new name, a new job, a new life. I am a woman. Suddenly the panic, and the desire to have GRS as soon as possible, has evaporated. It now seems just a minor, albeit painful, step along my path. I shall have it, but the mad rush has gone.

And as it has gone, there is little or no reason not to wait and take the NHS route for it.

Gap

2011-01-19T09:30:00.013Z

Wow.. It's gone half way through January and I have not posted... Time to remedy that.

I was too busy, to be frank...

I had intended to find a new place nearer my work and move out, but other stuff just kept popping and needed doing first.

My healing has taken a bit longer than I thought, but is almost there. My new employers were good enough to let me have unpaid time off to recover before completing my training. I did ask them if they could spare me and was told that the Enhanced CRB would be unlikely to arrive until Mid-January anyway, so I took the 4th December surgery date on offer. However the CRB check came through in a record 12 days! Sod's Law, I suppose.

But the healing has been slow, or at least feels like it to me. My breasts have got softer and shifted position, and the wounds are healing well, helped by a daily rub of Bio-oil on them. There is the odd painful stabbing sensation in my sides, as the implants shift and muscles pull and my body gets used to wearing a bra all the time. When I had A-cups I rarely bothered with one. But the discomfort is reducing daily, and my new breasts are starting to feel like part of my body, rather than two huge half-melons super-glued to the front of my chest.

Last week I had what was perhaps the worst week of my life, certainly in memory. It started off fine but on Tuesday evening things went downhill, as sheer bad luck took hold and things went to rat-shit.

It started with the removal of the small piece of tacky surgical tape holding on the cotton wool swap from the blood test I'd had earlier that day. There was a sharp pain as I took it off and I yelped, looked down and saw bubbles of blood oozing from a long wound under one side of the puncture mark. It looked like a cut, and bled quite badly. I cleaned it and it hurt like hell, and then the next day it got a tad infected. It was very odd; some kind of allergic reaction to the tape used.

Next day I was off to drive to London to have my hair system fitted and styled. I gave myself plenty of time, an hour to spare, as I knew from my summer trip down there with Dana that the M1 had a few 50mph limits in places. But those places had doubled in number, and scores of miles were done at a speed limit lower than that of a single track country lane, for no good reason that could be seen; not a single workman of vehicle was in sight.

Then on their cessation, just as I passed a junction, the Accident signs began to flash on a gantry and at once the traffic came to a halt.

And stayed that way for the next hour and a half, until the police finally decided to close the M1 (South) and escorted us back the wrong way up the motorway, to a small A-road exit that was already packed with the last 90 minutes of diverted M1 traffic.

I got to my appointment three hours late. They could not see me. I picked up my hair system and drove back home, this time using the M40. The weather got very bad, with downpours, high winds and heavy spray reducing safe motorway speeds to around 40 or 50. As I got nearer the M6 there was another crash up ahead, and once again the traffic just stopped. After a hour I managed to turn off and headed towards Shrewsbury, then towards Wrexham and finally Chester, to bypass the motorways.

It was very dark and the rain was heavy. Somewhere along the route I hit a pothole or a large stone or something, as there was a thump at the back and then the car started to rock sideways quite violently. I had wrecked a tyre. It was too dark to see which one of the back ones it was, and it was pouring with rain and the thought of messing around for the next hour or so swapping tyres over to find the one that was damaged was too much for me. I crawled home the rest of the way. I had been on the road for 13 hours.

Next day I checked them again but no visible damage could be seen,although one was very deflated. I took the car to Kwik-Fit and they checked them over. Sure enough, the deflated one was the wrecked one, its internal banding broken by a combination of age and the impact with whatever it was. Just to be sure, I changed both rear tyres, as they were equally old, although both had plenty of grip left.

I went home, and then managed to break my glasses.

Friday morning I went to get my blood test results to take to Dr Curtis on the following Monday. All the results bar one were useless, as the report form simply said "Insufficient sample for analysis" for most of the tests requested. They took the usual number of phials, so my guess is they lost or dropped some. Still, at least they got a result for my liver, which was fine....

I went to Wales on Friday afternoon, to look after the Diva that night whilst my ex went to her birthday party. Before we got to Chester there was another traffic accident in front of me, and another hour's delay before they could divert us back onto the A55 the other side of Chester.

On Saturday I was going to go and sort some rabbits on a caravan site, but the wind and rain came back with a vengeance. No shooting possible, so I decided to go back to Warrington. I went out to the car to load my stuff back in, only to find that I had left the driver's window open overnight. The car was flooded with a couple of inches of water, and the driver's seat was saturated.

The trip back was eventful too. The roads were flooded badly and almost impassable in several places, especially around the Tal-y-lyn lake, and the road to Bala. It was clear that if I left leaving a bit later, I would have been stranded.

When I got home I made a mug of coffee and scalded my hand reaching across the steaming spout to get the jar of coffee. Dumb move, but I was tired and worn down...

The next day I did not go out the house. It was the last day of the week and I figured the bad luck would make one more attempt to get me if I did go out.

On the Monday my luck had changed.

Xmas Past & Xmas Present

2010-12-30T19:57:00.017Z

I had a great Xmas with the Diva and her mother.

On the 23rd I had a tiring drive down narrow, twisty Welsh roads, across a snow-blanketed landscape.... Perhaps not the most sensible of things to attempt a mere 19 day after surgery, but there was no other way to reach the place.

The next day I was stiff and sore around my chest, but my little Diva was in fine form and made it all worthwhile, and my ex was friendly and reasonable.

We do seem to get on a lot better now that we are divorced, and the issues that made life together awkward are no longer there. Funny old world.

Soon after my arrival, the Diva returned from her first "grown up" Xmas disco, where she had won a dance competition. Not that she bothered to tell us; we found it out later from one of her friends who was there.

She looked fab, and went into "Pose Mode" the second I switched on my Blackberry's camera.

On Xmas Eve I got my present from E; a Colour Me Beautiful session for clothes and make-up. I had a marvellous two hours with a helpful Texan lady, and learned a lot more about which colours suited me and which did not. I also had a make-up session and bought some coordinated make-up, which is something I should have done in the past but never seemed to get around to.

Xmas day was fine. The Diva spent the morning excitedly unwrapping her presents.

After dinner we popped out for a walk to help the food go down... and then on our return I fell asleep. No change there, then..

So a very relaxing time, spoilt only by my problems sleeping, which were beyond anyone's control.

By D+21 my digestion system had finally started to function properly, which was handy given the amount I ate. But of course my diet has gone right out of the window, and will now have to be re-started...

Never Ending Story

2010-12-22T10:05:00.011Z

Well, it's just over two weeks since my BA surgery.

Things are settling down, the swelling is reducing, along with the pain, and my digestive system came back on-line a few days ago. Generally healing is going well, but has not been helped by my need to ignore the realities of surgery and carry on with the things that have to be done when one lives on one's own.

Earlier this week the nurse ticked me off for straining things, and decided to leave the stitches in place for another 10 days, as there was still some swelling and tenderness. Much of that was down to me scrapping half a foot of snow off the car and then having to dig out the back wheels, the day before.

Things have been made more uncomfortable by my failure to find more decent proper-fitting sports bras. Although my size is a measured 38DD, three out of the four M&S bras I have bought have proved at least a couple of sizes too small, which is really shoddy QA. I have sent back two and am about to take another back to the store this PM. Even having bought a couple of 40DD last time I was in M&S, just to be one the safe side, one of them proved to be far smaller than the other. Same make, same design, same label size, but while one is a perfect fit, the other will not even go over my shoulders. A formal letter of complaint will accompany this one. I know sports bras are supposed to be tight, but these are simply mis-sized.

But overall I am very pleased with the difference the boobs make to my shape. I just need to curb my impatience at how long things take to heal...

One other thing I managed to do last week was to transfer the deposit for my GRS surgery to Dr Chettawut's bank account. I suspect there may be a slight problem, as trying to decipher the instructions for transfer was not easy. I think we were supposed to transfer it in £, but my bank seems to have changed it to THB first, and then done the transfer. Well, if it is screwed up it's down to my bank, as they were the ones who interpreted the instructions... :-)

The main thing is that it's now booked, and the provisional date of the 18th of July 2011 looks to be fine.

In amongst all this, I managed to fit in some serious laser sessions on my face last week, and got semi-permanent eyebrows needled in yesterday.

I am looking forward to Xmas with my little girl, and I think it will be a great few days.

On my return I have a couple of houses to visit in the Mold/Chester/Wales border area, as it is time to wave goodbye to Warrington. Moving closer to the border is going to be far more convenient and pleasurable, for work, family and and social reasons.

Pleasure and Pensiveness

2010-12-14T08:40:00.009Z

A wonderful day, yesterday; albeit one which ended on a pensive note.

I drove over to the clinic in Manchester to have my dressings removed and the wounds inspected.

It was wonderful to have that restrictive and itchy pattern of bandages ripped off...!

The nurse checked things over and said that healing is proceeding well, with the scars knitting and no sign of any inflammation or infection. I then had a good look in the mirror and felt elated. What a HUGE difference to body shape they make, and not just in the area they are located. The curves seem to give shape and definition to the other areas too, making one's waist look narrower (it isn't) and one's hips wider (they are).

So I am wonderfully pleased with them. Best £4000 I have ever spent. Driving back without the tight support of the dressings was not really a problem, as the new bra seems to be applying the same level of support, with the added bonus that it is removable. For the last two days I had not botherd with painkillers, although I found I did need to take a couple last night to aid my sleep.

The digestive process is coming back on-line slowly, and it seems my initial fears of a blockage were unfounded.

On the way back I did a bit of shopping, hoping to pick up some nice support bras in M&S that I had seen on their website, but the local Warrington store did not have them. I eventually returned home and ordered them on-line. I do need to have a massive clear-out of my old bras, most of which are in excellent condition but none of which will fit me at all now.

Later in the day some news of a friend's misfortune set me thinking on the subject of relationships, and it brought forth introspection and much cerebration on the nature of relationships and how they work.

M was an old school friend. We went to the same grammar school and were in the same group of friends. He was a nice lad, son of Spanish immigrants, middle-class, a little affectatious if truth be told... But a good friend.

In his late teens he fell in love. He was the first of our little group of friends to do so. The love of his life was the French au-pair his folks had brought in. We shall call her R.

The glamour of a foreign girlfriend was what seemed to do it. He fell in love; madly in love. What R wanted, M would give. What R thought, M would think. What R liked, M would like. Soon his past way of life, his friends, his ambitions, all became things of the past. He was being "moulded" to suit, and willingly so. Most of us thought it was sad, but oddly enough the marriage lasted up until a few years ago, when R found another man and left M heartbroken.

R was a strange girl; haughty, opinionated and abrupt. I never really understood how her mind worked, and to be honest I never wanted to. I always wondered what she saw in M, as it was evident that, as he really was, M was NOT the person she wanted. But she turned him into the sort of man she DID want, and that was it.

And it worked for them for over 30 years.

After she walked out, M was left alone for a year or so, and then eventually fell deeply in love with another woman. We had got back in touch by then. He told me that he felt he could be more himself with his new partner. I wished him well. The sad news I heard earlier today was that she had just died of cancer.

The news got me thinking, as things often do. I wondered about the nature of love and relationships, about why I have never felt that deep love that others seem to feel; the love that allows them willingly to submerge their whole life, and even their whole personality, into another's. I am not at all sure that real love actually requires such a submission, but wonder if my failure to feel such depth of emotion is what makes me such a contrary cow when it comes to relationships.

With E, we both got on fine with just a bit of give and take and compromise. I didn't worship the ground she walked on, and vice-versa. We both retained our individuality, right up until my self-esteem began to plummet a few years ago, when the family was turned on its head after the move to Wales and I kissed my well paid, full-time job goodbye.

It was only then that E began to "take charge", and try as I might, I could never accept her assumed superiority, and her attempts to control me, ungrudgingly. I resented the hell out of it, and all the more because I myself had never displayed such characteristics when I had been in a position to do so.

I guess I am not a "controlling" type of person. Some people, like R, are controlling from the word GO and others, like E, are controlling when they feel in a position of superiority; a fact that I already knew from having watched her train others when we worked together.

I suppose the point I am making is that I wonder if my relationships fail because I am not easily controlled....?

And that raises the question of why I resent others controlling me, to the extent that I do. But that's another tale, and one that will have to wait until I have dealt with it.

Puppies For Xmas.

2010-12-09T13:15:00.012Z

OK, sorry.

Perhaps I should make this a serious post, but for some reason the pain, discomfort and emotional trauma of the first few days recovery after my Breast Augementaion operation were either gonna make me scream or make me laugh.

I chose to laugh.

Lots of things went wrong. Personally they did not appear to be major problems for me, certainly at first glance. But I soon found that they were major and had quite an impact, both on myself and on friends.

The operation itself was a tad more complex than most BA ops for women my age. The fact that my boobs are still growing meant that under-the-muscle implants were necessary. That caused more complications, as did the fact that several decades of strenuous activity had turned my chest muscles into very tough meat indeed.

But overall I think I fared quie well. My White Coat Syndrome failed to display itself, blood pressure being healthy enough at the first test and then droping to perfection on the operating table, and remaining so for the many checks made over the next 36 hours in the clinic.

I was the hospital's first operation that day, so was spared any long wait that might allow apprehension to build. I was aware that I had the option to change my mind, jump off the table and un screaming out of the hospital, but instead I just lay there and waited for the GA to hit me. Another good thing about having the first operation slot was that I had the whole of Saturday under care in the hospital, which was certainly useful.

The rest of the day was spent in a morphine haze, during which my appetite was ravenous. Lots of food was offered, and eaten.

I got indigestion.

On Sunday morning I was discharged, perhaps a little early given the nature of the operation.

Now I often get told off for not asking for help, but I do have an almost pathological desire not to be a burden on my friends, and it often clouds my judgement and irritates them. A few unscheduled changes to the original timetable, none of which were my fault, soon taxed both my fitness and my friends' patience, as I arrived home by taxi some 3 hours before intended. Once there I sat back on the sofa, fell asleep, and slid down. On waking, I found I was in a lot of pain and could not raise myself from the position I had slid into. Panic at my helplessness soon set in, mostly because of the pain. I was not thinking straight, and made some overly-frantic calls and texts.

But S and N rushed to my aid, and soon appeared with some rations, and flowers and a card from my sweetie Dana. I was too out of it to really take things in, but thanks everyone!!

Next day I felt a lot better. My good friend L had offered to stay with me for a day, and on Monday she was able to get off her ice and snow-covered mountain and down to Warrington. I certainly welcomed her presence. By now I was getting fed up. I had been released with drains in, and had to keep them in place for three days after the operation. Now they were a bloody pain, and the tubes and bottles made movement painful and awkward, and I kept catching my feet and tripping over them, several times pulling the tubes out of the valves, and once tearing the stitches on my left drain.

But things got worse on Tuesday. I was due at the clinic to have the drains out, but had some serioous "bathroom " troubles that morning, which may have been caused by the various combinations of painkillers I had inside my body. The details are not pretty. and it was not my Finest Hour, as I finally reached the end of my thether and was in total Drama Queen mode. But L kept her head and got me to the clinic, where I had the drains ripped out and felt about 100% better as a result.

The last two days have seen my recovery progressing well. The wounds are already itiching. The implants are making little bubbling noises now and again as they settle into their "pockets", and sometimes it even feels as if the surgeon has left a small mobile phone inside eahc, as they seem to "buzz" occassionally. Bathroom issues are still not totally resolved, and although able to pass a little, I am still very bloated. This might be down to the cocktail of tablets I am shoving down my neck, but it might also be something trickier, like a twisted intestine or a blockage. I shall ask the nurse on Monday when I have the dressings removed.

But aside from the pain and the nuisance, I am feeling happy with my choice. It will take several more weeks until I get a real idea of the final shape and size of my "new" breasts, but I already feel more confident, as they do give me a better, more feminine shape overall, without having to rely on push-ups bras. There is also the added benefit of having a far greater range of bras to choose from. There is not much out there in 38A.

Time Goes Fast

2010-11-26T22:00:00.002Z

Or it seems to.

I have my Breast Enhancement operation a week tomorrow.

I am nervous, excited and not a little scared. I try not to dwell on the surgical aspects of all this, and just concentrate on how I will feel when I wake up and see the changes.

That's the exciting part. Like Xmas Morn...

I had my pre-op medical earlier this week. Or was it last week? Can't recall without looking it up. The days are once again a blur. I pop into the office for paperwork and/or training, drive along to laser and electrolysis sessions, and visit some nearby friends, and some days I wake up and REALLY can't recall what I did the day before.

Anyway, that's a tangent. The medical was the usual routine, as was the fact that my blood pressure was sky high, despite doing a solid 5 mile race-walk that morning.

It is White Coat Syndrome. The nurse took my BP when I sat down. It was high. She took it again. It was even higher. She then said it was too high for surgery and that I would need to go to my GP and get at least three low readings over the next two weeks, and have them recorded on headed paper.

I was cursing. This is quite normal for me, as my GP has already discovered. But we carried on with the other checks, and I forced myself to relax and just before the end I asked her to take it again. Bingo. Low and healthy. Surgery could go ahead without me having to run around like a headless chicken and try and get three normal readings at the med centre. Hell, I doubt if I could even get three nurse's appointments in that time!

My BP gets high because the mere thought of anything stopping me, stresses me out no end. So the initial reading is high, and I see that and I worry more, so the next reading is even higher. It takes a conscious effort on my part to relax. I can actually FEEL the blood pressure dropping when I do that; feel the tension going. The final reading had dropped 11 points from the second one, which itself was 2 points above the first one. If she had taken a fourth, it would have been 17 points lower.

It's also noteworthy that, taken immediately at the end of my 5 mile race-walk, my heart rate was 71. On the first BP test it was 86, and on the second, 89. On the last it was 65.

Nothing to do with fitness or health. Everything to do with stress.

I asked if I needed to stop HRT. The nurse thought I might need to stop two weeks before and stay off for two weeks after. But she asked the surgeon and he said there was no need as the surgery was not major enough for HRT to present a risk. Nevertheless, I did stop and am now wishing I had not. My emotions are all over the bloody place, and I have twinges and little pains that I would rather do without. Not sure if they are linked to it, but they are there, and they were not there before.

I am tempted to re-start....

Move On Down The Road

2010-11-17T08:43:00.008Z

Things are progressing.

Last weekend was a bit of a nightmare, with an excruciating and stubborn headache, and a lot of decisions to make. Not a good combination.

Perhaps the two were linked, because almost as soon as I woke up Monday morning and made the decision to go for the BA op in Dec, and take the Thailand option for my GRS, the headache wavered and then vanished.

Guess that was nature's way of telling me I had made the right choice.

It was stressful, but then I find that I really have to think through and examine my motives every time I am faced a major junction in my transition. So it was with the initial GP appointment, and with putting on that very first hormone patch, and with my facial surgery, and now with the final issues.

Every time I am faced with a major choice, I end up examining my motives for doing what I am doing, and working back through things in order to confirm, or perhaps reject, my self-diagnosis.

And each time I do that, I realise that it is because fear bubbles to the surface. Not fear of no longer being a "male", of having useless and unwanted bodily bits suddenly absent.... but fear of the surgery and the medical effects, and of how society will treat me....

All of those are, in my opinion, natural and reasonable fears, that anyone on this journey will strive to overcome.

Now I am not brave...

Really.. I know that much from my army service.

Very, very few people ARE naturally brave. I have met three such people in my whole life. Two of them were simply too dull and unimaginative to feel fear. The last was an intelligent, perceptive, imaginative person who's love (for whatever reason) of danger made him the bravest person I have ever met..

But most people are not brave. They feel fear, and usually the more they have in the way of intelligence and imagination, the more fear they feel.

That is not a bad thing.... because feeling fear does not make one a coward.

Most people can overcome fear, and do so. Fear is overcome by courage. Knowing the dangers, and yet forcing oneself to face them, is courage. Knowing the dangers, and being unable to face them, is a lack of courage.

And everyone has a limit. A person can have courage one day, and lack it the next, even though the danger faced is exactly the same on both days.

And courage demands a price. Again, the more intelligent and imaginative the person is, the higher the cost charged. Constantly displaying courage will bring great stress, and if it is unremitting, it will eventually bring breakdown. In combat that is called Battle Fatigue, or Sheel Shock.

In the world of transition, there may well be some who are naturally brave. I am not one of them. I do my best to keep out of trouble. On some days my courage fails me, and I have learned to avoid certain areas because the reception I have had there in the past makes each trip stressful, even if nothing happens this time.

If I can go to a place where I will not be ridiculed or abused, rather than a place where I run an increased risk of it, then I shall take the former every fecking time. No apologies. Cowardice? Perhaps... But I'd call it common-sense. So for example, avoiding certain fast-food restaurants or shopping centres, in certain towns and cities, is a valid exercise in survival.

I learned long ago that, if offered a choice between a covered and safe route to a firing position, and another route that was overlooked by enemy snipers, then the sensible decision was to take the covered route. So getting abused, spat at or having one's head kicked in, just to prove something to others, seems illogical to me. I only have to prove things to myself, and I have already done that.

Anyway, BA operation is 4th December. GRS is in Thailand, and provisional date offered is 18th July. Yay!!

Campaigns Of Rope

2010-11-14T08:49:00.004Z

"They (the French) planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid set of harnesses. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot and went on"
The Duke of Wellington.

I have found that I share The Iron Duke's view of planning one's way through things.

It's not through intent, but through temperament. I am not a great one for planning everything down to the last detail and following that plan religiously. I am not the type of person who will record every minute happening along the way, and check to see if it ties in with my meticulously planned path of action. I am a seat of the pants driver.

Or, if you prefer a musical analogy, I play it by ear.

This is not to criticise those who do decide that they need to control and record everything when they set off along a path. I can understand that and it works for them, so it's fine. But it is an alien thing to me.

Perhaps that is the difference between people with an artistic temperament, and those with a scientific one? Divergent and Convergent thinking...?

I am a Divergent thinker. This, of course drops me in it now and then. I think out loud and toss ideas or possibilities around, and many of them are outside the box. In the past this ability has helped in both my military and civilian careers. The downside is that, in both areas, it often brought conflict with convergent thinkers who liked to stick to formulaic paths, and often saw it as a personal insult if one suggested otherwise.

I always found it hard to understand the notion that if someone does not agree with you or does not like what you like, then they are somehow insulting you. Nevertheless, it is a common stance, and is the main reason I do not go on any forums.

But I am digressing... The real issue is that I still have not made up my mind about how to proceed. There are some tangled issues and factors to consider, and if I had made a set-in-stone plan, then it would have gone out the window by now and I'd be even more stressed out than I currently am.

The bottom line is, of course, money. I am sure folk out there will say forget the cost, but that's unrealistic. The fact is that, no matter how I tinker with the plan, having both BA and GRS in the UK is going to leave me with very little in reserve, should there be a problem. No matter how much I try and instill a Micawber-ish attitude in myself, the old nightmare of being broke overrides it...

So I have to be realistic, admit the harness is broken, tie a knot and carry on.

That means looking at all my options again.

It means that Thailand is back on the cards.

I have recently got a reply from an excellent clinic there, outlining the procedure used, the medical and clinical requirements , and the price.

This option brings the total cost back to a figure which leaves much more in the way of a reserve for me, without compromising on clinical excellence. Now I need to work out BA. The issue is whether to have it now, put it off for a few months, or to combine it with GRS. Again, various factors make it hard to think my way through this and reach a decision. Watch This Space....

In other news, I've attended several training days at my company's office this last week, and enjoyed the experience. When this whole thing started back in Winter 2009, I found that the old fear of being permanently unemployed because of what I was, had stayed with me since the late 'eighties.

But being able to pass an interview, get offered a job, and find warmth and acceptance there, has been an uplifting experience. It's true that not everyone knows what to make of me, with the couple of males I have met being a little stand-off-ish and/or awkward. It's also true that sometimes I feel a bit like a pantomime dame, as I am still very much a work in progress.... But overall it has boosted my confidence a great deal.

Decisions, Decisions.

2010-11-09T09:12:00.005Z

Yesterday I had a consultation for Breast Augmentation.

I have been um-ing and ah-ing about this for a while know. My initial thoughts were along the lines of "just leave them natural and see how they do". But although they came along reasonably well and are now an A cup, the distance between my nipples is such that there is minimal cleavage even with a push-up gel bra. I doubt they will grow to more than a B if left to their own devices.

On someone with a less broad chest than myself, that would not be a problem. But, as was explained to me yesterday by the surgeon, the heavy load carrying in my youth has given me a wide chest for my size, and my chest muscles are (under the flab!) VERY strong.

The first means that my boobs will NEVER have a close, shoved together cleavage, even with a flashy "squeeze 'em in" bra, and will not have much of a shape anyway unless there is more mass there.

The second means that any BA I have will leave a temporary ridge line on the bottom part of the boob, where the muscle tissue was originally connected (if I understood the theory correctly).

But even with those issues the op itself would be routine, and the surgeon showed me a few series of pictures of trans-women he had operated on, including one which had a similar distinction to my own. The results looked very acceptable.

But this brings more choices to face...

Given that I had accepted the need for BA, the next was when and where to have it. I had originally veered towards getting it done sooner rather than later, but had recently reconsidered that and was now pretty set on combining the op with my GRS next summer. The main reason was cost and the logistics of recovery and after-care, both of which I assumed would be easier for me if my ops were done both at once. Along with that was the desire to reduce the amount of time off work.

But continuing research and yesterday's consultation (I have two more to come) have showed me that differences between the costs of the op and the logistics of after-care are less clear-cut than I had thought. Having BA down in Brighton will involve several more trips and hotel stays down there, both before and after the op, as it is next to impossible to combine the consultation and after-care appointments due to surgeon availability.

And the cost of the actual op is pretty much the same if I combine or not.

So if I choose a combined op, I face similar op costs, and much higher travel and logistics costs, plus of course the added inconvenience of having to make such a long trip several times.

All of a sudden it is starting to look not so attractive.

Having the BA done here looks a lot better. Cost is similar and the logistics of after-care are WAY easier to deal with, as the hospital is literally only 30 minutes away. The only tricky areas are finding someone who could pick me up afterwards and stay with me for a day or two, and the fact that if my firm gets back my CRB sooner rather than later and I am able to start work, then any heavy-lifting would be beyond me for a while. I shall discuss that with them tomorrow.

Watch this space...

Normality, Or Normalcy If You Are One Of Our American Cousins.

2010-11-06T13:49:00.009Z

Today is Saturday, and I can finally relax for a couple of days.

Last week was a maelstrom of hair removal, with me attending the clinic on four out of five days, for a combination of electrolysis and laser.

The end result of this week, added to the past few weeks' visits, is that it looks as if the battle with my facial hair is finally being won.

I am well into double figures in regard to hours of electrolysis, and coupled with that, the highly efficient laser has done incredible work on my top lip. On Thursday night, which was two weeks after the zap on my upper lip, I was able to run my finger nail down from my nose to my mouth, and scratch off a fingernail full of carbonised black roots. The whole area was similarly affected, and a quick scrub with exfoliating cleansing gel removed the black dead hairs, and revealed a top lip which had lost much of the blue tinge caused by the dense dark hair roots in the follicle layer of my skin. Never had that before, even after five IPL sessions.

Today my face feels tingling. I have shaved the hair that was left, and will lose more of the dark ones in the next two weeks as the laser zap from Thursday takes effect. I shall avoid make-up until Monday. Next electro session will be Tuesday, the week after next, I think.

The financial cost has been high this last couple of months, and I anticipate doubling that, before the facial hair is thinned down to a level where I can forget the thick layer of concealer I have had to use..

Other news... I have finally accepted that merely starving myself every day is not actually losing me any weight, and I have bought a running machine.

The only problem is that my failure to visualise the concept of mms, cms and kgs means that the bloody thing is way larger and heavier than I thought it was. On the plus side, it does fold up for storage, and I hope that by plying S with flowers and the use of the machine to keep herself fit and her weight under control, I shall be forgiven. :-)

The Story So Far

2010-11-03T13:26:00.002Z

Today I got an appointment date for my GRS consultation with Mr Thomas, down at the Nuffield in Brighton.

It's for the 11th of Jan, 2011.

Now my tummy is full of butterflies.

Slow Day

2010-10-26T10:30:00.006+01:00

This week I have the Diva with me for her half-term holiday.

Sadly my mood is such that I am not really enjoying her company all I should. Not her fault. She is her usual self, whilst I feel a bit run down and pensive. It's partly because things are "on hold" for the week she is here, and I am selfishly aching to get more stuff done.

Yesterday we went to Blackpool for a few hours, but the bitter cold made it short day, and we ended in a huge Toyz R Us on the way home, and she added to her Polly Pocket collection, this time with a doll and speedboat.

Today it is cold and very wet out, and the Diva wants to stay in and play with her dolls, which is fine by me.

She goes back Friday. Wonder what she will make of the fact that her mother has bought a new motorbike, a 650cc Gladius. Very nice machine, but if I was the primary carer of a kid I would not be riding a bike, which was why I stopped a few years back.

It now means I have to talk to E to clarify Rhiannon's situation, should E be seriously injured or killed. If something should happen to E in the immediate future, it would place both Rhiannon and myself in an impossible financial position, with E's brother being in charge of all my daughter's finances and the house, and me unable to carry on at my new job unless I can relocate the remnants of our family, which will be problematic to say the least. Frankly it was not a situation I thought I would have to deal with, but E's decision to start riding bikes again has brought it to the fore. Worrying.

Next week I am "back in the saddle". I intend to have two hours of electrolysis each day, if possible. The week after that it's a trip to a cosmetic surgery clinic in Manchester, to have a chat about boob jobs, and then two days of training at my new employer's offices in Chester. I have a fairly long wait until my CRB comes through, so will take that opportunity to get lots of electrolysis done on every spare day I have. I've taken £1000 out of my savings to fund that.

The other decision is whether to have a boob job before GRS. I am waiting to hear from the Nuffield and Mr Thomas now that my referral has gone through. I should then be able to get some idea of cost when combining the boob job with my GRS surgery. If it is substantially cheaper than doing them separately, it will be worth waiting. The downside, of course, is that it is two major surgeries at once, which is going to be somewhat taxing...

And to end, an example of the Diva's developing sense of humour: I bought her a "Happy Meal" at Macdonald's yesterday. There was a toy inside the box. She tucked in to the chicken nuggets, and then wondered if MacDonalds also had a "Sad Meal", where you brought a toy and they took it away from you when you got the meal.

Busy Bee, Busy Bee.

2010-10-21T08:05:00.013+01:00

It's been one of those "busy" times, when a lot happens in a short span of days, and one can't find the time to get one's head around it all, let alone blog.

But today I thought I would give it a shot...

What have I missed out?

OK... I started am NVQ Level, 4 Diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy. Not finding it that easy to get back into the discipline of study, though. My mind tends to find too many distractions right now, I suppose because I have a lot on my plate. Anyway, I am working through it and it is interesting stuff. I would actually have preferred Law, but the course costs to convert my degree would have taken a large chunk of my savings, and those are earmarked for my future surgical requirements.

There has been one area that has been causing me a major problem, and that is hormones. My last levels in August showed a good E but a rather high T of 4. My specialist was not too worried about the hight T, but I was. Maybe I was right to be.

Over the following two months, things began to go a bit wonky. My emotions were haywire, I started to get lots of panic and anxiety attacks, often lasting days. Sleep went out the window. Anger and aggression began to return, most notably in my driving and reactions to others. I was very irritable. There was certainly enough there to tell me that something was way out of kilter, as frankly I have not had those sorts of feelings, at that level, since BEFORE I went onto hormones.

The killer was the hair regrowth. I've had four (now five) sessions of full body laser, and by early August my body hair, what was left of it, was growing so slowly and was so fine, that I only need to run a razor over the odd area once a fortnight or so.

By the start of this month, I was having to break out the razor every single day, in order to counter the 2mm of hair growth on my body. Granted, a lot of the hair follicles are now dead so it is less dense, and the ones that are there are now finer. But they are still dark and they were growing at the rate they did before I went onto hormones.

Now I am on the basic, starter dose of E patches, 100 microgms/24 hours, and I have not been put on anti-androgens as my T was very well suppressed even by that minimal dose of E. But somehow, after about a year on the patches, it seems that my T is now fighting back, and winning. I have no idea what caused it.

The net result of the hair regrowth was a LOT of itching, resulting in a lot of bloody scratches and very sensitve skin, so much so that on my last body laser I was actually crying with the pain, on areas like my tummy where before I felt nothing at all. The only plus side, if it could be called that, was that my breasts stopped hurting.

I have since run a two-week test to check on my hunch that my T was elevated, perhaps into double figures, and as I was on such a low does of Estrogen I felt there would be little problem in racking it up from 100 to 150 a day. Within a few days my moods stabilised, my frustration, anger and irritability dropped off, my sleep returned and my anxiety attacks vanished. My hair regrowth has now started to slow again. My boobs hurt once more.

So next week I shall arrange for a blood test to check my levels, and make an appointment to see my specialist in London. I was loth to just pop down there (at a cost of £200 per time, including fares) without having proved my own theory.

On other fronts, I have got a job! Yay!..

The interview went well, although I was actually unsure that the manageress, whom I saw afterwards, was that convinced. But last week I got a call as I was sitting in the waiting room at Warrington Hospital (routine breast scan), and I was told that it was on, pending satisfactory references. This Tuesday I was told the references were fine and I now have to arrange a date with them to start the NVQ Level 2 training. Nice.

Anything else? Oh yes. The aforementioned breast scan. All part of age-related stuff with he NHS, of course. But it was good fun. Warrington Hospital is a big place, and very, very busy. On the ground floor it even has a small shopping centre! I walked through the crowds without a single double-take or laugh, which boosted my confidence no end. And the scan itself, although painful, was also felt by me as an affirmation of my gender.

Last weekend the Diva and her mother came over for a night. We had arranged to go shopping for winter fashions in Chester, and it went well. We both got on OK, and bought some lovely clothes and boots. Spent too much money, but then I had no winter clothes to speak of and that was always on the cards. The Diva got a little bored, as she wanted to go toy shopping and not be dragged aounr the clothes shops by us... She did have fun, though, first making a big issue about eating a "piranha" sandwich at Debenham's, and later dancing with an African drum and dance troupe in the town centre, in front of a couple of hundred or so Saturday shoppers.

On Sunday we went to Warrington Tesco, and the Diva was in hog's heaven in the Toy area. Three additional Polly Pockets were added to her entourage, one of which (a large boxed set) is going to be for Xmas.

I think there's more...? Yes, there is.

The usual depression I get, when I feel I have started to coast, is always a useful tool in spurring me on. I like to feel I am moving forward, that I either have things booked or am looking to get things booked. I have arranged for a couple of consultations for breast enhancements next month. It's not a certainty yet, but I shall at least have a better idea of things afterwards.

Hair removal has been ongoing, with a long two hour session of electro under my belt now, maling it five in total so far. I have another two hour electro session this afternnon. Oh, and the earlier mentioned full body laser session in Bolton, which was another two hours, and earlier this week, a laser zap on my upper lip and hands, at Frodsham.

I have been researching GRS, as I aim to have it next summer. At my last visit to London, the specialist gave me a list of surgeons, and suggested I check them out. Some (the north American ones) were ruled out on the grounds that they were simply unaffordable. Others were lined through because I do not want the added risk and complications of a graft, and some others because, perhaps unfairly, their reputation has not been excellent.

I was left with two, Dr Chettawut in Thailand, and Mr Thomas here. Earlier this week I got a call-back from an initial contact with Mr Thomas' team at the Nuffield. His head nurse rang me and we had a long chat. The end result was that I was able to make a decision, and have now arranged for a referral to Mr Thomas. I have not totally ruled out Dr Chettawut, but for ease of logistics, Mr Thomas is my first choice.

A Woman's Place...

2010-10-13T08:04:00.015+01:00

One of the most interesting aspects of the Diva's recent exposure to broadcast television has been a dramatic broadening of her horizons.

I am not too sure why this has been the case. Perhaps it is down to the fact that she was not exposed to the vast majority of programs until she was at an age where she would take them in, and be inquisitive AND critical about them.

Just a theory.

Whatever it is down to, the fact remains that she has become much more aware of the diversity of what now constitutes the role women can play in the world. Whereas before her horizons were set on being a pop star, actress, dancer or model (all of which are very much in line with her nature), she is now also aware that women do other interesting things!

Not that she has gained that new perspective from watching British-made TV shows, sadly...

Nope. She has become enraptured with US crime shows like CSI, NCIS and others, that routinely show women in senior or leadership roles such as Forensic scientists, police officers, politicians, executives, etc. She fancies the idea of being a Forensic scientist now!

The Diva recreates a murder scene in the front room....

In the UK media it is rarer to see women cast outside the traditional roles. British female cops? Juliet Bravo. Helen Mirren in the prime Suspect series...., er. Ashes to Ashes...., er

Oh yes, Heartbeat had a female senior officer, but it was hardly a central role. There's been a few featured in some rather poor "here today and gone tomorrow" shows, none of which have been memorable, or come close to the longevity and impact of the positive portrayals in US series.

Overall, I'd argue that the UK media's portrayal of women in important life roles is lagging far behind that of the US, and the same goes for their depiction of minorities.

No Pressure

2010-10-12T10:07:00.017+01:00

Now, when I first saw the video below, I knew nothing of its background.
No Pressure

I saw it in isolation, and assumed that it was a somewhat OTT satirical attack at the sort of silly eco-jihadists that one sometimes finds out there; the loony minority that want to kill all the cows, reduce the population and get us back to "Year Zero".

The film is not in the best of taste, certainly where it involves the children, but aside from that the humour does "work", if such fanatical people are the target.

But as I dug deeper, I found I was wrong. The film was NOT intended as an attack on the lunatic fringe element of the environmental movement, but was actually made for the pressure group 10:10 as a humorous attempt to support reducing carbon emissions.

10:10 enjoy (or rather enjoyed) the backing of a lot of the "in touch" politicians, opinion formers and movers and shakers, including Ed Milliband and the Guardian. In industry, it even had the support of big name companies like Sony.

Most of the leadership of 10:10 seems to be associated with the film and TV industry in a big way. And, as is so often the case, all of them seem to enjoy lifestyles that generate carbon footprints a few hundred times larger than most of the ordinary folk they lecture to about cutting carbon. One of the founders reportedly racked up 42 flights in a few months, to promote her latest film on the subject of global warming.

So the usual hypocrites were behind the group. Of course, it also attracted a lot of decent and well-intentioned people who supported its aims and campaigns.

But then 10:10 produced this, and the shit hit the fan.

The film was written by Richard Curtis. Yes, that Richard Curtis, of Blackadder, Four Weddings etc, fame. It was directed by Franny Armstrong, the jet-setting founder of the group and a minor film-maker in her own right.

The film itself was released to a lot of fanfare by the group....

And it blew up in their faces.

The problem was, of course, hubris; the arrogance that leads to misjudgement.

Allied with that was the world view and group-think that made them feel elite and above the plebeian herd, that made them just know that they were right, and allowed them to feel self-righteous about forcing other people to adopt their views... Or else.

And the film showed that dangerous mindset perfectly.

The release was met with howls of protest from the group's backers and members. They could not believe what they were seeing.

Aside from the obvious point that the film played right into the hands of their opponents, there was another, darker side to things, and it was that which brought home the stark truth to a lot of 10:10's supporters.

The film, with its "humorous" depiction of figures in authority executing men, women and children who do not follow the views of the pressure group, was evidence of the chilling mindset of Armstrong, Curtis and the leadership of 10:10.

Armstrong's later words, in support of the film, reinforced that point. She tried to justify it, and simply made matters far, far worse.

"Doing nothing about climate change is still a fairly common affliction, even in this day and age. What to do with those people, who are together threatening everybody's existence on this planet? Clearly we don't really think they should be blown up, that's just a joke for the mini-movie, but maybe a little amputating would be a good place to start?"

The outpouring of critical comments on the group's websites and Facebook pages, (all quickly deleted once the luvvies got back from their weekend fun) showed that 10:10's supporters had realised the dreadful truth; that they were following a group who's leaders were arrogant, immature, hypocritical, elitist, fanatical sociopaths.

In the shit-storm that followed, the film was quickly withdrawn. Group membership dropped like a stone. Backers, including Sony, released press statements condemning the film and withdrawing all support from the group.

Sony Statement

Others, like the Guardian, went to ground and suddenly did not want to draw any attention to their part in the film and its launch.

The film was meant to be shown on TV, in the cinemas and at schools. All of that was cancelled. The row got hardly any TV media coverage; they do like to protect their own, and 10:10 are in that category.

Although the group pulled its official video, it stated that it would not attempt to remove those copies of the film already out there. However Spanner Films, Franny Armstrong's production company that was behind the disaster, is chasing up YouTube and individual sites, and citing copyright laws to try and stop people seeing it.

The motto, I suppose, is a simple one. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Just make sure you don't follow people who think it's funny to kill others in order to reach their goal.

Hubris II

2010-10-12T08:51:00.004+01:00

No Pressure

Please let me know if the links stop working. The group that produced, and then pulled, the original film is trying to stop all copies of it from circulating.

Hubris

2010-10-04T08:45:00.012+01:00

It's sad when a group claiming to campaign for a noble cause commits suicide because it loses touch with the real world.

It's not that uncommon of course, and it often occurs when the group becomes simply a vehicle for the views of the small group that "leads" it.

The dangers of arrogance and group-think rear their heads, and when they take over, the chances of the group surviving are slim.

Hubris.

Over the last month there have been two classic examples of this.

The first was the Stonewall and Gay Marriage incident.

The head of Stonewall, Ben Summerskill, who had been "stonewalling" on expressing support for Gay Marriage over the last couple of years, broke cover at the Lib-Dem party conference. He showed his true colours and clearly argued AGAINST Gay Marriage, quoting specious cost figures that had been dreamed up by Stonewall, and citing radical feminist doctrine to explain why it should not happen. Not a word, not a single word, did he utter that showed he believed it was a good thing.

This was supposed to be "neutrality", which at the moment is Stonewall's official stance on the issue.

As the row increased and other influential figures from Stonewall's past stepped in to criticise the group's actions, Summerskill lost all sense of reality. He came out on record as stating that Stonewall did not claim to represent the LGB community, and was not a democratic organisation. so had no need to consult or take on board the views of the community as whole.

Which of course left one wondering who's views they are actually going to consider. Their supporters, he says. But who are they? Coyly, Stonewall won't say. I have spoken to a dozen people who are either members or who have contributed funds, and not a single one of them has been consulted by Stonewall on ANY issue, certainly not this one.

The storm of protest from the LGBT community was incredible. Stonewall have been damaged, and Summerskill's credibility, certainly amongst LGBT folk, has been wrecked.

But sadly it's doubtful that it will really hurt him. Despite being ostensibly a charity, Stonewall is Big Business and Summerskill, its CEO, gets very well-paid. The business junkets and award ceremonies will go on. The canapés will be eaten and the champagne will flow. The whole point of Stonewall's existence now is to give Summerskill and his court a good lifestyle.

Unless the present government decides to cut Stonewall out of the equation it will remain, its original noble purpose forgotten, existing only as a vehicle to provide Summerskill with influence, fake prestige and a good living.

Funny Old World.

2010-10-01T08:11:00.009+01:00

Third electrolysis session yesterday evening.

This time a couple of them hurt a bit, but that was because I had asked J to concentrate her attentions on a couple of small areas either side of my chin. Those areas had VERY thick black hairs that had proved totally resistant to five blasts of IPL.

She cleared them nicely, and showed me the thickness of the hair and the size of bulb. They were as thick as a needle and the bulb was huge. Some had two hairs from each. Most bled slightly when extracted. No wonder the IPL had not even touched them.

Gone now, and as most were at the right stage, hopefully any re-growth will be much weaker. Then she went back into the white ones. It is starting to thin out nicely, but I think I need to put aside a couple of thousand to cover the likely cost of clearing it all.

In other news, I have been job hunting. It's the usual routine; find a suitable job, send off a CV or, more likely now, fill in a huge on-line application form, and then wait for a non-existent reply until you forget you applied, as no-one responds nowadays unless you actually get an interview. I can understand that firms like to save the cost of replying to every job applicant, but it can be sole-destroying on the other end of that decision.

I was getting despondent, as my employment history is certainly gender specific, and it's not worth faking it enough to cover that.

Another thing that counted against me was that my employment, as opposed to self-employment, qualifications and experience were well out of date. There was no way I wanted to go back into IT work, and hadn't even looked for any, but I was looking in the administration/clerical field. After a few weeks and about three dozen applications, with not a single reply, I decided that perhaps I needed to start a new career, and retrain.

I've been toying with that idea for a while now, but this was the kick-start I really needed to look at it seriously. So with that resolution, I enrolled on an NVQ Level 4 course in Counselling and Psychotherapy, and started looking for jobs in the Care sector.

Within a few days I had my first bite. A posted CV and on-line application form resulted in a call-back and initial phone interview for one large company. That was on Wednesday. The women interviewing me was pleasant and helpful, but did want to sort out some of the "anomalies" in my employment history. I came clean about my status. She seemed fine about it, and said it would not be a problem and if they were interested they would get back to me.

Frankly after hearing the "We'll get back to you" line, I had kissed that one goodbye in my mind.

Yesterday, just as I was about to go out the door for my third electro sessions, the phone rang. I was in two minds to leave it, but finally just cursed and went back in the hall and picked it up. It was the HR department of that company, and they wanted me to come in for an interview and discuss the various job specifications with them.

It's in Chester, next Friday....

Which is nice.

Electrolysis

2010-09-28T21:10:00.005+01:00

I had my second electrolysis session today.

The first was last Thursday. The next is this coming Thursday.

I was petrified of having electrolysis. Laser was a fearsome pain and IPL, while not as bad, was only just bearable. I have dense and strong, very dark facial hair, and the heat generated per zap meant serious levels of pain.

I was dreading electrolysis, as everyone out there was telling me it was way worse than laser.

The IPL was making slow inroads into my dark hairs. However it was not touching my white ones, and those were as dense and strong as the dark ones, albeit fewer in number. They were certainly enough to break up my foundation after a couple of hours, and they needed to be tackled sooner or later.

But I was scared stiff to start on them, after all the horror stories I had heard.

Last week I bit the bullet, booked a consultation with North-West Laser at Frodsham, and popped along for a chat. My first appointment was then booked for that Thursday.

I took two serious painkillers, and smeared my face with 5% EMLA.

I was tense and frightened when I laid down the couch and gripped the electrode in my hand. And J went to work.

And it was fine.

The pain level was minor. The prick of a needle, a little warmth in some cases, and then the yank of a hair. Only the latter sometimes came under the heading of what I would call pain. Mostly it was just minor discomfort, and I even came close to nodding off in the last half hour, as Prick, Ping and Pluck sort of melted into one fuzzy sensation.

A doddle.

And today was my second hour-long session . It was the same.

Got my third booked for Thursday.

The only problem is that one has to grow the hairs long and, with my dark facial hair, it means I try not to look in the mirror, as I hate what I see. But I am concentrating on this for at least the next month, in order to break the back of the white hairs, so I shall just have to put up with how I look..

City Girl?

2010-09-27T08:36:00.018+01:00

I love Tom & Jerry...

Not the later ones, when they became run-of-the-mill rubbish, but the ones from the earlier Fred Quimby and Hanna/Barbera era of 1940 to the late 50's. The un-PC ones, the pre-censored ones.

There's a lot of real life in those cartoons...

One of my favourites is Mouse in Manhatten, when Jerry decides he has had enough of the boring country life with Tom, and runs off to move to the Big City.

And for a short while Jerry has fun....

But soon things go awry and the added dangers, routine unpleasantness, and the loneliness, start to add up and the mouse runs back down the tracks to a place where hs feels safer.

I guess that is close to how I feel right now.

Earlier this year I moved into a large town in the North-West of England, house-sitting for a lovely friend who was spending most of her time in another town. It was handy for getting the nitty-gritty logistics of my transition done. It was handy for Manchester nightlife, and shops. And I wanted to vanish into a crowd of people, and this town had them... Lots of people. many of them nice, some not so...

Now most of the logisitcs of my transition are done, and there are some realities of living here that I need to face.

Over time the exciting bits have paled, as I find my age and temperament no longer demand lots of night-life. And the lure of the shops has also faded, as I have what I need. Whilst I like pretty clothes and shoes, shopping for them is not really a major part of my life. I find it hard to build a social life around those activities now. I guess I am no longer cut out to be a girl-about-town. Put it down to my age and a decade of living in a rural area.

I am, when all is said and done, a quiet woman who now wants a quiet life, with good friends who are close, with minimum threats from local chavs (This town has a surplus of those, especially in the town centre and mall), and close enough to civilisation and nightlife should I want to go dancing or out for a meal.

Finding a job here is proving problematic. I am unlucky in that my previous employment record is rather gender-specific. A ten year old looking at my CV would notice the glaring inconsistency between my current name and gender, and some of my past job details. And whilst there are laws that protect a transperson already in employment, there are none that really help when one is applying for a job. One just hopes that the HR person reading through one's CV or on-line job application is sufficiently open-minded not to just toss the thing into the waste bin as soon as they put two and two together.

In regard to the local jobs I have applied for the question is, do I have faith that my applications will be treated fairly? The answer is sadly, "No. I do not". In Manchester or London, I would feel confident that most HR folk would not have a problem. In this place? Sorry. I am sure there are some nice people here, but I don't see a lot of respect for Diversity Issues.

Now there's one thing I have noticed over the few months that I have been around and about sorting my transition, and that's when I am in London and Manchester I am ignored. Even in the busy and cosmopolitan West End I can walk the streets, shop, go into cafes, whatever, and heads don't turn. Now I know I do not pass well yet, but there no-one seems to mind.

Here that is NOT the case.

Here I routinely find myself pointed at and laughed at. Now although it is tedious and I would rather it did not happen, perhaps one could put up with being laughed at by the locals whenever one goes out, if it did not really threaten one's existence.

But that open laughter is perhaps evidence of an attitude that DOES threaten my existence, an attitude that would deny me, someone they feel able to openly deride as a "freak", the chance of a job.

Name Change & GRS Research

2010-09-26T10:38:00.006+01:00

The joys of Name-Changing continue...

Yesterday I was far too down in the dumps to bother going out of the house, and so didn't check for mail at the front door. This morning I had a quick look, and there was a nice brown envelope from the DVLA, with my new Driving Licence in it....

Shame about the picture. I look like a character from Pirsoner Cell Block H, but it's way better than my previoous manifestation. I suppose I could have smiled a little, but as the same photo was to be used for my Passport, I did not want to risk it.

As far as the official side of things is concerned, only my passport application now remains. After that there's the tedious matter of getting in touch with Surrey University and a dozen other institutions, in order to amend certificates and professional qualifications.

On the personal side, this last few days have been pretty brutal. Thinking Positive works up to a point, and that point is until one's hormones go mad and give "positive " a hefty kick in the slats, and one starts to wobble and flap and worry about mundane stuff like the bloody future.

This time it knocked me down for a couple of days, which is really worrying as normally it's only for a few hours. I still have not fully pushed through it.

But the fight goes on...

In August I saw Dr C, and that marked a year on hormones. My name-change stuff had started on th 30th of June, so he passed me some names and suggested I now research surgeons and methods, etc...

Much of the knowledge base seems to exist only by word of mouth. Some say one surgeon is great, others say the same one is crap, etc etc... Checking on the net brings upo a few bits nad pieces, but many of the "customer reviews" are pretty old; I think the newest I found was from 2006.

I am still up in the air as regards method and surgeon, and even location. Weighing it all up seems a huge task, but the longer I take the less savings I will have left to finance it.

I hasten to add that the following musings are only pertinent to myself. Others will think their own circumstances through and come up with different answers.

So pros and cons of location.

Thailand, or to be more precise, Phuket... Well, the cons are that it's long journey, medical back-up can be a problem if things go wrong later, and I will be alone there, as I can't afford to bring someone with me and don't know anyone who would come anyway. I am not enjoying being alone right now, and it will get even harder when recovering in an alien place.

The financial side is not really worth comparison, as although the surgery might cost less, flights and hotel for 30 days, etc, will bring the total costs close to that of UK ops. Add to that all the hassle of intercontinental travel, etc etc and it looks less inviting, for me at least.

The pros are that many claim the standard of surgery, certainly as regards cosmetic appearance, is far better than in the West.

The UK. Well, the cost is pretty much the same as Thailand. On the Plus side, the whole thing is a lot less complicated. If there are any problems, then follow-up is readily available. The logistics are not a problem. Friends may well be able to visit.

But on the surgery side, some claim the surgeons here don't achieve as pretty a result as Dr S.

All-in-all, the easy logistics of the UK-based option look tempting.

Let's Start Again...

2010-09-26T10:08:00.002+01:00

I am starting this blog again...

Emotional reasons, really... and privacy ones.

I'll send out some invites to followers ASAP.

Normal Service will be resumed etc etc... :-)