A day of shopping in heels

 I’m spending ten days in England to see friends I didn’t see back in the spring. And to go out with them as Sue.

My first proper stop was Brighton, which I’ve been to several times before as Sue (see below). I stayed with Stella who lives on the nearby Downs in a house with a beautiful garden that her wife has nurtured to perfection over the last decade. 

The rain was torrential as I went there, and also each night, but in the afternoons it was warm and sunny. We relaxed in the garden on Friday but on Saturday we decided to go out shopping. 

I wore my oldest and most comfortable pair of ankle boots - I’ve had them for 20 years. As this was my first time out in high heels for six years, I wanted to make sure my feet could cope after all the time away, so a pair I knew to be reliable was essential. I proved that you never really lose the knack as I stomped several miles along the busy streets without difficulty. I also wore an old paisley skirt with autumnal tones and a pink sparkly sweater. The weather was uncertain so I took my scarf and coat too and semi-opaque tights. And a big patent leather handbag with room for a pair of black patent ballet flats in case my heels proved too much. I did put those on for the last ten-minute walk back to the car. 

Brighton is probably the most alternative city in Britain and it’s estimated that 15% of the population fall under he LGBTQI+ umbrella. Frankly if you aren’t lesbian, or an artist, or a vegetarian, or smoking dope, or all the above, then you don’t really belong there! It attracts a disparate crowd, from music and motor sports enthusiasts, international tourists, stag and hen parties, to people who like the old-fashioned seaside atmosphere. Something for everyone, I guess. But only an hour from London. The point is, no-one took any notice of two T-girls.

Here’s me with my purchases: toiletries from Boots and posh (but heavily discounted) makeup from Mac. I like discounts.

 

The main shopping streets don’t just contain the standard shops of every high street in the world now but have a lot of independent businesses. The old Lanes are best, with an eclectic mix of cafés, pubs, jewellers, sweet shops, antique and junk shops, quirky odd products, and all sorts. Here’s one place that sells nothing but rubber ducks!

We had a cheap, light lunch in a café, stopped for a glass of bubbly mid-afternoon and later enjoyed a really outstanding ice cream. Brighton’s like that.

Here’s me with my glass of something like prosecco in the quiet back yard of a bar tucked away in a already half-hidden corner of the Lanes. Stella is a professional photographer and this apparently is an artistic pose. I’m not so sure that an upwards projection is ever flattering! Discuss.

We drove home along the coast road. This is the new i360 viewing pod that replaced the ferris wheel. The pod of people rises slowly up the pole … and then comes down again. 

So it was a good day that started wet but got warmer and sunnier. I got plenty of exercise in my heels, saw pretty shops and enjoyed the company of an longstanding friend. It was my third trip out as Sue this year after several years’ drought. I feel comfortable visiting old haunts with friends at the moment, till I find new girlfriends in my new home in Italy.

Manchester is my next stop.


A dip in the archives

Previous trips to Brighton include:

Pride in 2010

Pre-Sparkle 2011

A weekend with Stella in 2013

A spring break in 2014

I’ve just realised that the skirt I wore last weekend was the same I wore in summer 2011! It’s now officially designated my Brighton skirt.

Mini golf in Brighton 2011

Sue x

Suitcase pack, and epilation record

 I'm going away for a couple of weeks and I have two cases, one with my usual andro clothes and one with fully fem clothes. Yes, I have planned several girly outings. I feel a new lease of girl life this year after all those years of sickness, emigration, pandemic and so forth. I'm in little doubt that whatever I get up to will be recorded here in due course.

Where am I off to? ...You'll see.

I'm not going to write again about how to pack your girly suitcase. I see I've done that more than once! So, having followed all my tips, I think I'm set.

I was amazed and pleased at doing my first all-over epilation after summer in just 45 minutes. This is the big one, where I remove the gorilla suit. Being in the pool all summer is the one time I don't wear anything femme, so I let my body hair grow to match. I love the summer, I hate the hair, but that's how it is. So autumn has its merits. But I'm impressed at my new-found speed. Maybe it's just a burning desire to be smooth and feminine again as fast as possible. It's not quite perfect but we can deal with straggling hairs over the next few days. I book into hotels that I know have good showers for this reason. 

British readers of a certain age (ahem) may recall the late Roy Castle who hosted a very long-running children's programme called The Record Breakers in which he and the founding editors of the Guinness Book of Records, Norris and Ross McWhirter, presented various things and people of unique speed, height, size, etc. It always ended with the dreadful closing theme song, Dedication, sung and played (on the trumpet) by Castle and it used to drive my mother nuts. It used to drive me nuts, too, but more because the implication of the song was that in order to be recorded in the Guinness publication you had to be dedicated to breaking whatever record it was, which didn't sit well with the interview they'd just done with the guy with the biggest nose or the visit they'd just made to the world's explodiest volcano or how they'd just petted world's lollopiest bunny rabbit or whatever it was. As if you had to devote time and energy simply to existing as the most extreme in your class. Anyway, I wanted to ask if, whilst you are doing mindless tasks like epilating, a stream of consciousness ramble fills your head and you wonder if, say, there might be a irritating set of lyrics for a song Epilation to be sung in the shower whilst you get on with creating the smoothest set of legs in the world. I wish my brain wouldn't work like this but I'm sure it's not just me. Is it, nurse?

The one thing missing from my case, though, is my pink camera. I can't find it anywhere. I really don't want to use the blue one. Pink is for girls and blue is for boys, as everyone knows; those are the rules and I didn't make them. 

Missing - reward

 

Sue x

Hacked

 My Facebook account got hacked and then killed off by Facebook because the hacker must have posted something horrible. 

Facebook was just a quick and easy way to keep in touch with my friends but since I never accepted friends there that I hadn't met elsewhere and hadn't some other means of contacting, this is merely an irritation rather than a tragedy. And since I have never posted anything of value to fraudsters, not even locations or interests or any personal information, I doubt whoever it was will derive much joy from it. 

What galls me is that, whatever got it shut down was, it seems, a post to do with human trafficking. Given that I was a refugee as a baby, this is uniquely offensive. Couldn't they just post something obscenely pornographic like normal?

Facebook doesn't do customer service; it's judge and jury of everything and I'm told by various sources that the account is gone and it's utterly unlikely to be reinstated. You'd have thought that 14 years of impeccable use without controversy might count for something but clearly whoever created the system didn't have the wit to treat uncharacteristic behaviour as some kind of hint that maybe the real user has been usurped. 

I tried to create a new account using a different computer, credentials, email and so on and, after thinking about it for 36 hours, Facebook blocked that account, too. 

 

Yes, I could try using a VPN to try to circumvent their border police but I ask myself, since these social media platforms are little more than licensed spying, maybe it's time to get back to more natural ways of interacting and avoid the intrusions into privacy. I have to say, though, that Facebook was a godsend during the pandemic when we were all confined indoors, like Zoom and the like. My newsfeed there was a bit like a personalised version of Mad magazine. But, hey, that's what happens when your friends are a bit weird. ;-) What, me worry?

(c) Mad. June 2011 cover.

Only kidding, I mean my friends are fun, not weird. Not weird at all. 

Anyway, no matter how careful you are, this stuff can happen. I'd noticed quite a lot of attempts in the last couple of years to get details off me and all sorts of bogus accounts in my name, those of my friends or friend requests that look highly suspect. (For some reason, whoever is making these bogus profiles thinks American generals are the sort of friends I'd like to have!)

I have doubts that any fraud or criminality will derive from this. It's just an annoyance.

 

Bombers and canapés

Talking of sabotage - and this is a bit icky, I'm afraid - as I've mentioned, I have access to a lovely outdoor swimming pool over the summer months. But last week the lifeguard opened the facility to find a murdered rat in the water. It wasn't just a dead rat, but a bleeding one. I'd guess it was dropped by accident by a bird of prey, posssibly even one of the huge herring gulls who nest on the cliffs. So our lifeguard rightly roped off the pool itself and we couldn't swim till the pool was disinfected and checked by the bio experts. 

All clear now, and yesterday all the residents decided to have an end-of-season party by the pool, everyone bringing food and drink. It was a great success and a good way to get to know people better. Sadly, the season ends this Sunday and the pool closes. I'm nice and brown and have had lots of exercise this summer. I think swimming is about the best exercise you can get. 

Sue x

Less is more

 It's time to get back to my slimming drive which got suspended at the end of April because of travelling over the spring and because the summer has been too lazy. I did well, losing 32 pounds between November and April. I don't have much more than a stone to lose till I'll be back in my healthy weight range. 

Here's my good-luck whale on my lap to help keep me motivated!

Lose this belly, he says!

Notice how my feet are trying to emulate his tail. We are one, he and I: siblings in blubber. So let's see if I can get well into the healthy weight range by Christmas.

I mentioned various books in my last post and one that I have just finished reading is relevant to weight loss, or rather weight gain, and that is the bestselling tome Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken. 

It's a pretty disturbing look into why the world has developed an obesity crisis in the last forty years, especially in poor countries or among poorer classes. The easy-to-eat processed food that abounds would seem to be the culprit. The stigma attached to being fat makes fat people depressed but, the author argues, their size may not actually be their fault. I recall how thin people used to be in the 1970s - look at any old TV show of the era - before ultra-processed food really got a grip. Modern ultra-processed food is designed to be appetising so you eat more than you should because it tastes good, and it's soft so it goes down faster. And the food industry makes more money as a result of your overeating what is cheap to produce.

Reading this alongside other scientist authors working in the same field, such as Tim Spector of King's College, London, I get a fairly awful picture of how processed food is bad for us; how trying to maintain longer shelf life and improve palatability is harming our bodies. The correlation is not certain, but then neither is that between tobacco and cancer. But just as smokers on average die sooner of nasty diseases more often than non-smokers do, ultra-processed food consumers are fatter and unhealthier than the few who can still find 'real' food. 

I'm fortunate in living in Italy where people are still keen on local, natural foods. OK, so cheese and wine are processed, of course, but not to the extent that, say, US-style burgers and ice-creams are. Food origin, hygiene and overall food policing here are very strict. For example, pork sausages here are around 93% pork from specified farms, the rest being salt, herbs and casing. This compares to the UK where half the sausage may be rusk, to say nothing of preservatives, colourings and other agents. Pasta in this region is made of durum wheat flour and water; nothing else, not even egg. There are local denominations for certain specific products that are jealously guarded, and this guarantees quality. There is also a Slow Food Movement specifically to contrast the idea of fast food. In fact, fast food restaurants, such as McDonald's and Burger King, have somewhat different products from elsewhere in the world as there are requirements for them to use local ingredients here. To be honest, a quarter pounder with cheese wouldn't sell here - never mind the metric system - because US-style meat, cheese and pickles just wouldn't appeal to the local palate.

So I'm in a better position to get healthier simply because the food is better quality and not so full of processed stuff. I am spending more on proper bread, but I eat less of it as it takes more effort and is more filling than a processed loaf. I'm also weaning myself off sweeteners as they are not good at all.

I recommend the book if you're into reality horror and maybe feel it's better to eat well.

Anyway, wish me luck for the rest of my slimming journey.

Sue x