One query I have about her and one or two other wealthy 'celebrity' gender swappers is have they had SRS as well as all the other surgeries? In which case the real life test/ Harry Benjamin rules don't seem to apply if you're wealthy enough.
A fascinating programme on BBC3 which is now only available via the internet. In Brazil, there are more transgender sex workers than anywhere else on earth. Stacey Dooley interviews some of them and some of the women sex workers, both groups feeling that they have little option if they want to earn a living. For the transgender girls, it appears there is very little else for them to do.
I feel so lucky I was born and brought up in the UK.
We don't often hear the other side of the coin, here is one person's take on it. Joshua's dad decided to become a woman and his story, in retrospect, of how he felt about it. A very interesting piece.
A bit sort of nebulous, but then so is the question and the concept of identity. One might ask, is the silly answer to a silly question, not sure but as someone who has reinvented their identity at least once, it made some sense. See for yourselves.
When I got access to the site I pasted Bike on to the screen then went to save and lost it all. Somehow I also lost my draft version trying to put the little bicycle logo on the bottom of it. So two hours of work lost in a few seconds.
New note: I've managed to rescue last night's episode and it's up.
Thanks for everyone who commented, I read all your words of wisdom.
I've been thinking about this for some long time and today I enrolled for the first module of my Environmental Science degree, although it doesn't actually start until October. I am now officially an undergraduate (again) and will be for the next six years after which I hope to be able to call myself an ecologist, albeit somewhat poorer financially, I expect to have achieved a long term goal and therefore will have a smug grin on my face for weeks.
Courtesy of The Telegraph, cartoonist Matt, one of the best I've ever seen, shows what those of us who live as women have to cope with in terms of making a living
We dashed out after watching Wales beat Scotland in Cardiff, brilliant try by George North. To where, I hear you ask. Here's where.
I've been on my annual pilgrimage to Poole to listen to the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra do their concert of film music on the theme of Heroes and Aliens. Wonderful stuff which I enjoyed despite suffering a recurrence of a UTI. I'm seeing the doctor on Monday, so if necessary, he can always shoot me. Consequently, I don't have time to write Bike tonight.
Sorry folks, not feeling very well so taking an early night. I have managed to do some work on the new story which stands at 4000 words so far. I hope normal service will be resumed tomorrow.
and which depending upon its length could mean the odd forfeit of Bike, depends upon time available and research required. It looks as if it could be a longish short story or novelette in length. Hopefully it will be a bit of an adventure cum whodunit with I hope my characteristic humour. I can reveal the title, Spring Heeled Jack. but that's all.
The Guardian have been running a series of great actors performing vignettes of Shakespeare speeches. My favourite so far Joanna Vanderham doing a speech from Romeo and Juliet or Ayesha Dharker as Titania, probably because I'd loved to have played these parts and I'm more the size of the sugar plum hippo from Fantasia than a faerie queen or a lovesick adolescent. The boys are good too. If the link works, do have a look or a listen, they are brilliant.
According to Oscar Wilde, 'The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.' It appears my name has been bandied about on the message boards at the other place, suggesting that I'd effectively created a Bike virus and infected half the authors on BC which makes them write interminable serials like Bike.
I'm tempted to suggest this is what happens if you eat more than you exercise, but it's self evident. Also my hair is so fine and grey it doesn't always show very well in photos, then none of me is photogenic but I've lived with that for a long time.
A couple of weeks ago my daughter got knocked off her bike by a car. Fortunately she was more shocked than physically hurt but her bike was damaged and as it's her main form of transport, I bought her a new one from a bike shop which she collected last weekend. Unfortunately, it wasn't properly set up and I had to drive up to her place and sort it out for her. I'm not the greatest bike mechanic but at least it was rideable when I'd finished and I'd more or less sorted out the gears.
This young woman is trying to make it as a competitive cyclist in Afghanistan not the easiest place to be female let alone one who wants to race bicycles. She's only sixteen but listening to her talking to someone from the BBC, I wish her really well in her life and hobby. She wants to study medicine in Germany.
He wrote a disparaging piece in the Sunday Times (Murdoch's flagship) about transgender people which Stonewall are making a meal of. Personally, I think I'd rather listen to my cat squawk than that big galoot, who has offended me at least twice in decrying cyclists and now people with gender dysphoria. That's been sorted but now I have Clarksonalgia - I think he's a total pain.
A minute or so's clip about Evie who is transgendered but is body positive. She does highlight some of the more crass questions we get asked in this short film.
One of the best British actors has lost his fight with cancer aged 69. He got a BAFTA for his Sheriff of Nottingham against Kevin Costner's Robin Hood, where acted the American off the screen. Most of you will know him as Professor Snape from the Harry Potter films, where he played a brooding dark character to perfection. My own favourite was Truly, madly Deeply, with Juliet Stevenson, which was where I first saw him and fancied him like mad.
From the Daily Mirror a story from Italy about a transgender woman who has spent over fifty thousand pounds on plastic surgery and looks rather sad to my thinking, especially the lip implants which look ridiculous and she plans on more! I'll stick to buying books. Amazingly, her wife has stayed with her.
This film by all accounts is very good, with Eddie Redmayne doing us all proud as he plays Lili Elbe in the film of the best selling book. Hopefully, it will help the general public to understand those of us who were wrongly gendered at birth. However, no matter how good it is, I won't be going to see it.
It's too close to home, too painful for me to even glance at. The trailers make me want to wince, not because it's so awful but because it reflects too clearly part of me, or how I used to be. I just cannot watch it.
I wrote Trish's rap quite spontaneously then had to try and organise some rhythm to it. It's not a medium I enjoy as few of the exponents of it don't possess clear diction and it tends to sound like a series of rhythmic groans. However, I can accept like all presentation forms, it isn't easy to get it to balance in meter and rhyme. I doubt I shall try it again, which might please some of my regular readers, but felt the inclusion of it given the abilities of the character involved was a distinct possibility. However, she is much cleverer than the poor old dear who reports on them.
I got a bit distracted playing with my new BlackBerry playbook (second hand variety) my fingers didn't always do what I wanted them to do, or so it thought. Even so it has a bigger brain than I do, and certainly a bigger memory
It reminds me of the woman who wrote to a paper complaining that switching to daylight saving was shortening her life or another who refused to wear her glasses in case it wore the lenses out.
Holly Woodlawn has died aged 69. She was the subject of Lou Reed's Walk on the Wildside. I recall seeing her years ago in one of his films and can't say I remember much about it, but then avant-garde, is not a term I'd use to describe myself.
Checks can be made out & sent to:
Joyce Melton
1001 Third St.
Space 80
Calimesa, CA 92320
USA
Note: $6000 is the operating, maintenance and upgrade budget. Amounts received in excess of the $6000 will be applied to long term debt accrued over the last 19 years.
