It's been a strange year this, dominated by the hospitalisation of a relative of mine. He should be returning home today after six months on the wards so I have swapped the dramatic evergreen landscape of the coast for the autumn golds of the big city in order to give him a hand as he readjusts to normality.
Sadly, it's not going to be full-on fem time thanks to the vigilant bigotry and phobias of my family. Nevertheless, my 'masculine lesbian' or androgynous look of women's shirts and trousers that is my everyday attire these days passes scrutiny, and I have some warm tights to mitigate the cooler climate. You may wonder why I would help a bigot and the answer is that he was instrumental in helping me settle in Italy and even made the wise suggestion as to where I should move to, which has worked out very well. So I owe him one.
I'm not sure that I make a great nurse so we have the local visiting one from the hospital engaged to come and change his dressings and supervise his medication but I am here to shop and cook and generally deal with everyday stuff for a bit.
What's struck me so far, as I hinted above, is autumn. The view from my bedroom window here is nothing but a mass of leaves turning gold.
I remember this tree from when I was little and it was just a spindly sapling in the road that people would casually run their cars into when parking. You wouldn't do that now as it towers over the whole house! It's a real contrast with the evergreen pines and turquoise sea of the coast I've left and you'll appreciate the acclimatisation shock.
If you want to see beautiful autumn colours from the Alpine region you could do worse than look at Violetta's fabulous blog: Violetta''s autumn
Milan where I now am is a fashion capital so I plan to use my time out to bring you any attractive or weird outfits and accessories from the designer outlets.
A disturbance in the Force
The arcane powers that run Blogger seem to have hit a patch of instability, eddies in the space-time continuum or something, so once more I am having trouble replying to comments through my usual channel or through the substitute that I found for previous instabilities. Do not adjust your set. I will acknowledge your comment as soon as have found a way or the Supreme Blogging Council have found a fix themselves.
In the last couple of weeks I've been talking about updating my jewellery collection.
Evidently someone was reading as I had a call from a gentleman in Paris who had a special offer on matching earrings, necklaces and tiaras, for rapid dispatch to discerning customers outside France.
Well, that was a stroke of good timing as these sparklies are going to replace my tired old stuff rather nicely.
I always think a tiara is a perfect addition to any shopper's look as they rummage in the frozen food cabinets at the supermarket, don't you? A crown would have been nicer but apparently his employees have been a little clumsy and mislaid it.
Apparently, I should not take calls from one Inspector Clouseau who is also after these items. Presumably he wanted them for his girlfriend? You've got to be quick, Inspector.
Peter Sellers in top form there examining the evidence after a jewel heist from a museum in the The Return of the Pink Panther, probably the best of the Clouseau films.
Seriously, I hope they catch the rather attractively accessorised thief. But thank you, whoever you are, for getting Trump and Putin and Sarkozy and Prince Andrew out of the top news spots for a bit.
As I wait for a relative to emerge from hospital I've just been enjoying the continuing summer as the weather has been wonderful for months. People are still on the beach and I've been using my spare time to explore.
Last time I wrote I was looking over my jewellery to see what is worth keeping and what needs replacing, and this week I'm looking at mending some clothes that are worth it. We live in a throwaway society but actually I'm getting a bit disgusted with that attitude we've developed of ridding ourselves of imperfect items and just buying new ones. The quality of material gets worse each year, so that's another incentive to keep things.
Socks, tights and stockings are probably not worth darning these days, it's true, but a favourite pair of jeans is worth patching even if they're cheap as, frankly, it's actually less hassle, time and, of course, money than going out to find another pair like them.
Definitely ruined. Tsk! That's the second pair this week!
Outdoor events
My potted plants continue to grow in the fine weather. This little lithops has just put out a flower.
This weekend was the Sanremo rally with fast cars zipping all over the place. Next week is the Tenco music prize contest for the best original singer-songwriter. And harvest festivities continue; there are a lot of roast chestnuts to be had around the place.
The best climate anywhere?
I've been exploring the nearby bay and hills of Ospedaletti and Coldirodi this past week. Not a well-known part of the riviera but Ospedaletti on the coast is said to have the best climate in Italy, being uniquely mild in winter and never too hot in summer. The riviera here has a perfect combination of hot air blowing north from Africa, hitting the Alps where they plunge into the sea and creating a subtropical microclimate for a few miles inland that remains springlike throughout the year. Ospedaletti bay is just that bit smaller than neighbouring bays and so it gets the best of this phenomenon.
I especially liked walking past fruit crops typical of this area - vines, olives, lemons and pomegranates all laden with fruit - but also encountering banana groves and other exotic plants.
Bananas at Ospedaletti
Pomegranates at Coldirodi
You'll have to pardon me if this doesn't impress you but we never had things like this in damp grey Britain where I used to live. Lovely oak trees, yes, but no bananas!
Ospedaletti was founded by crusaders who were shipwrecked here, as this mural and statues show.
The church they built is a curious blend of religious building and maritime museum.
It doesn't rain much here so water for agriculture is collected in round concrete cisterns all over the mountainsides. They're useful but not pretty, but occasionally someone makes theirs pleasant by putting goldfish in or plants around or even painting them.
Not a very fem time all in all this autumn but there's a lull between having had friends to stay and before I go off to help a
relative who will be coming out of hospital. As if to emphasize the low fem vibe, I have broken every nail on both hands in one way or another these last few weeks. I take care of my nails as I love having them long and neat, and they're even better when painted, but for some reason I've battered and broken them all. Not at the same time but they've not all been even for a while now. This is distressing. I know the problem will fix itself but that takes time.
Still, as if in compensation, the autumn continues to be glorious with endless sunshine and temperatures in the mid-20s C (that's mid-70s F). I'm still in my summer clothes and nicely tanned. Also, I didn't put on too much weight when my friends were here and we were eating out a lot. Maybe we did enough walking to burn a lot of the calories.
Girly wishlist
Recently, I've been looking out for real Italian leather
handbags and belts. Nothing purchased so far but I'm homing in on
something colourful rather than the usual black, cream or tan.
I also
need to update, replace and expand my jewellery collection and I've seen some nice items
this week. I never buy anything too expensive, just something to
decorate and catch the eye. This is my favourite ring which I bought about fifteen years ago in Kingston-upon-Thames and I've been wanting something similar since but have never yet found anything that appealed quite so much.
It's
also the season of perfume samplers in the run-up to Christmas so I'm on
the look out for a new scent.
More news if I bring something home. (Oh, and obviously presents along these lines are
welcome, Santa!)
Domestic goddess
I've been doing a lot of gardening as everything is growing like crazy and I've planted new cactuses and succulents, which are really cheap at the market. I've found that a pine tree and a palm have started growing in my herb pots. Presumably the seeds were dropped by birds. So I've repotted them and, since forested blocks of flats are all the rage, I shall join that trend and they can join Arnold the Olive, who continues to thrive.
It's harvest season and I'm into mushrooms. I got some nice fresh porcini which I straight away made into a tasty stew and pasta sauces, with my own home-grown parsley and chilli thrown in.
I haven't taken any photos of myself in domestic goddess mode so far because I don't do my hair and makeup properly every day and I do like to look right for a photo. But I do love my home life in a dress or slacks. It just feels completely right and normal.
Local events
This weekend is a local holiday here - yes, they have local and regional public holidays here in Italy as well as national ones - so, given the wonderful weather, I'm planning a barbecue on holiday Monday.
Yesterday, a whole line of Morgan open-top cars rolled into town. I have no idea why, although classic cars and rally cars are a feature of the area with several rallies and gatherings every year. I have little interest in cars - insufficient masculine enthusiasm for sport and engineering, I'd say - but my fem mind observed that there seems to be one rule for owning a Morgan: the driver must be male and wear a cloth cap and the passenger must be female and wear a headscarf. Complete that requirement and presumably any model and colour is yours to purchase.
Another quick post as I have had friends to stay for two weeks and they went home yesterday evening. So now it's time to catch up with the blogosphere. If I haven't answered your comment or email yet or seen your posts recently, I will do very soon.
In my last post I described some of our travels and eating experiences on the riviera. Let's do the same again.
Last week we went to Monaco old town so this time we went to Monte Carlo to look at the highlights of the Formula 1 circuit, drink a very expensive coffee at the famous Café de Paris outside the casino, and enjoyed the new Mareterra complex with its peaceful terraced woodland, blue grotto and extraordinary meditation space covered in coloured glass crystals and globes (video below).
The pretty Larvotto beach area was also pleasant but didn't do my gender dysphoria much good as all the locals seem to be young women with perfect tans and skirts so extremely short yet without revealing anything that you wonder if their buttocks actually start under their shoulderblades. Evidently a well-disguised mystery of the well-heeled.
We had a perfect day in Nice, where I was earlier this year. The old town with its winding streets contrasts with the elegant boulevards of the newer city and the high hill of the original ancient Greek settlement. I love the mosaics they've made up on the hill and find more every time I visit.
The views from the top of the Bay of Angels and the famous Promenade des Anglais are amazing. Here they are in moody light.
We also went to Bordighera with its date palms, ancient pilgrim path and old walled hilltop village centre with its views along the coast.
Sanremo and its crazy tangle of walled, gated, steep, stepped streets, large harbour, baroque churches and elegant shopping district was a must, too.
We varied out food choices a bit, too. Very good Thai in Nice, Mexican tacos and an amazing margarita in Monaco, Neapolitan style pizza in Sanremo. But freshly made ravioli and huge tiramisù pudding in Bordighera may have topped the list of perfect meals. It's hard to beat fresh local food anywhere. At home we enjoyed local Taggiasca olives, local lavender honey, mountain cheeses, hazelnut spread and lovely, fruity rossese, pigato and vermentino wines. And, of course, pesto, the sauce for pasta that this region is famous for made with basil, cheese, pinenuts and olive oil.
Many thanks to Jan and Alex for their lovely company. And for getting me to take them round all these attractive places in lovely warm weather, all of which was a reminder to me of why I moved here in the first place.
Port Lympia, Nice
Monte Carlo casino from the Boulingrin gardens. (Boulingrin is a corruption of English "bowling green".)
The world's northernmost date palms at Bordighera overlooking the coast
The cascade at Nice
The tangled vines of a Moreton Bay Fig. These grow all over this area. This one's in Sanremo.
High-rise Monaco (left) and Roquebrune, France (right) from the stunningly beautiful railway that runs along the coast.
Greek-style mosaic in Nice of an ancient Greek ship. Hard to get it all into one photo but the French reads: "Happy is the person who, like Ulysses, has had a good trip."
And a link to a video of the Mareterra meditation space with its pinkish light and thousands of glassy crystal and sphere shapes.
This is a quick post - a bit of a postcard, in fact - as I have two lovely friends from Britain staying with me this week and next and I've been showing them the beauties of the riviera, which are many. And we have, of course, been sampling the local delicacies. Apart from a shower the other day, the weather is perfect.
Yesterday, for instance, we went to the huge Friday street market in Ventimiglia and looked at the fascinating old town perched on its clifftop.
The view from a café table in Ventimiglia: palms, clear sky and blue, blue sea.
Ventimiglia old town from across the Roja river
Real leather handbags at the market catch my trans eye. The guy on his phone with a doggie in a wheeled basket is a typical sight, too.
We've also been to Monaco old town with its pint-sized palace and government buildings, pretty little parks and yacht-filled harbours. You may remember I went there earlier this year. Two national symbols here, the carob tree and a racing car made of flowers.
We've also explored some of Sanremo, the "flower capital", and its botanic gardens.
Bananas in the sun at Villa Ormonde, Sanremo
As for the local foods, well, there's beautiful fish - my baked bream at Maison di Nat in Sanremo was second to none -; the wooden oven at Barbecue in Ventimiglia made a super crispy, smoky pizza with aubergines; the stuffed courgette flowers at U Cavagnetu in Monaco are special; and the freshly made tagliolini pasta strips with porcini mushrooms at Quattro Stagioni in Sanremo are seriously the best thing ever. At home we've been enjoying almond cookies, lovely mountain cheeses, squidgy chocolate biscuits (known locally as baci, "kisses") and today I hope to get a local shortbread made with olive oil and lemon, not the usual butter. Yes, I know I'm supposed to be losing weight and somehow I'm not (!), but it would be rude not to offer my guests some local goodies, wouldn't it? ;-)
Next week we'll likely go bigger cities like Nice and Genoa.
I have friends coming to stay next week. I've known them a long time, they are wonderful trans allies, and I'm looking forward to it.
As they'll be staying two weeks, I've emptied the wardrobe in the guest room completely of my things and put all my clothes in the other bedroom. Amazingly, everything fits there, something I never expected or even tried before. This means that when my friends leave I will have a completely empty wardrobe in what was their bedroom. And that means .... more frocks will be needed to fill the aching void.
Yes, this is how the minds of trans women work. (Did I say trans women? ;-) )
I've been replacing furniture this summer bit by bit and I got a new shoe rack - an expandable one (always think ahead!) and I'm rather liking the collection of cute shoes I see there.
Robert Redford
My tribute to a great actor and director, of course, but also to a significant supporter of the LGBTQIA+ community. In addition, the New Queer Cinema movement emerged partly through his Sundance Film Festival that promoted lesser known film makers.
Autumn festivals
Well, the outdoor swimming pool has now closed for the season, which is a real loss as I love the location and miss the benefit - it's helped me lose five kilos (11 pounds) this summer. I love the sunlight dancing on the water as I move through it, and the greenery surrounding it. Personally, I've never liked the chlorinated rectangular starkness of a normal swimming pool and much prefer to swim in rivers, lakes or the sea. This pool, with its guitar-like outline, is a great compromise between a managed, hygienic venue and a natural body of water. Till next summer, then. Now my quest to get back into those cute dresses must rely on my diet.
We're into local food and drink festivals now. Villages dedicating weekends to beer, wine, sausages, codfish, edible snails... I like it on the riviera; there is always something going on. My slimming voice suggests cod and snails are better than sausages and beer ... just possibly not quite so fun!
Additionally, the protected nests of loggerhead turtles on the beaches here have each been disgorging dozens of baby turtles to the delight of beachgoers and nature lovers. There is something endearing about a tiny hatchling flippering its way through the sand to the waves as fast as it can. Well, I guess its instinct is to do that or get eaten, so maybe the reason is not so endearing, but here they ensure they make it to the water.
Sanremo Bay in autumn
Growing like fungus
Ever since I posted about Kew Gardens and mushrooms last month, I have had a huge increase in interest in this blog from the most diverse and unexpected places; thousands of views a day, in fact. Fungus is the trigger, folks. So to that lovely bloggerette who was wondering how to boost her viewing statistics, this might be the answer!
Did you see the lunar eclipse a few nights ago? It's always an amazing sight. Here the sky was hazy at first and I couldn't see anything until a brick-red ball emerged eerily from the murk. Later, when the eclipse was over, the sky was totally clear and the full moon was very bright, illuminating everything in its characteristic milky light.
For thousands of years the moon was associated with femininity in most cultures. Then Galileo had the idea of pointing a new-fangled device called a telescope at the moon 400+ years ago and realised that the features were mountains and craters, not some arcane pattern of patches with divine significance, and so we entered the age of science, which was great for reducing superstition. Yet I couldn't help recalling the association between the moon and femininity, and as it was a warm night and I was dressed just in a T-shirt and light skirt, I imagined how a MtF trans person in an age before Galileo might have appreciated the moonlight shining on them. Maybe as a divine endorsement or spiritual uplift or blessing for their femininity. Ah well, science has many benefits, but maybe we have lost a little mystique in the process.
Not to mention some amazing dress sense!
This lady, painted in in the same decade Galileo first looked at the sky, may be trying to emulate the full moon! And that's one statement frock she's got. Do you think we've also lost something in the intervening eras now that we're into sweatshop-made tee-shirts, cheap leggings and imitation leather accessories? Possibly.
Rocky horror
A news feature this week reminded me that the Rocky Horror Picture Show was first released fifty years ago, in the UK in August and in the US in September 1975.
It flopped.
But like a lot of initial flops, it gradually became a cult. Midnight screenings, attracting a more alternative audience, became a phenomenon, with audiences turning up dressed as the characters, bearing props and with their own well-rehearsed heckles.
Yes, the musical was a tribute to horror and sci-fi B-movies and the glam rock of the early '70s, and the crossdressing/trans element was not initially supposed to be that prominent, but the message of tolerance and freedom to be who you are was always clear. A weird way to celebrate personal authenticity and autonomy, but hey, there's hardly been a more popular stage show or film. The film is the longest continuously running film in history, and arguably the biggest cult movie.
I have the DVD and it's one of my favourites. I've never seen the film at the cinema, but I did go to the stage show with a girlfriend. I wanted to dress as Magenta the maid but this was frowned upon as my girlfriend at the time had her own intentions that way ... and very sexy she looked, too. But no, I had to go as a male - but I thought it was a suitable twist that my role in a crossdressing audience, when I dress as a woman every day, should be to dress male (a sort of vampiric one - she chose my outfit).
Anyway, thanks to fifty years of musical whackiness for helping to get the message across to so many.
Another old crossdressing comedy
In the unique repository of crossdressing history and culture that is Stana's inimitable blog, Femulate, she posted a still the other day from the 1909 short film, How Percy Won the Beauty Competition, a seven-minute music-hall style romp typical of the era, directed by and starring Alf Collins as Percy, which you can watch here:
There are innumerable films, plays and stage entertainments from the first half of the twentieth century that include crossdressing and female impersonation, and I have often wondered if the phenomenon was as much connected with trans people finding an outlet for their needs through stagecraft as audiences merely wanting entertainment.
Anyway, this short movie caught my eye more than most because the second and third scenes show Percy outside the Charles Fox wig and makeup theatrical store in central London, where many of us TGirls have got our supplies such as foundation, beard reducer, makeup brushes, etc. I knew them when they were in Tavistock Street but since first being established in 1878 they have had many other addresses in London's theatre district. I think in this film that this is the shop as it was in nearby Wellington Street. And what a bold frontage and display it had at the time!
There's a characteristic Renault taxi of the era in this still, too.
Percy doesn't seem to be the only CD in the beauty contest, which has none of the swimsuit and talent rounds that bedevil such competitions nowadays! Percy therefore wins through elegance, femininity and charming the judges, a lesson for every aspiring CD! But then ... The Benny Hill style chase scenes - which the actors and actresses are obviously enjoying a bit too much for realism - are shot in Dulwich, rather a new suburb at the time.
If you like period costumes and huge bonnets, this is the movie for you. Bring back big hats, I say! For a history of Charles Fox, there's this item online, with photos: Layers of London.
(Ah well, I guess you can take the girl out of London, but you can't take London out of the girl! The theatre district of London was very much my old stamping ground.)
Riviera life
Back to nowadays and the riviera where I now live, where we've had a near perfect summer. It's been a wet and horrible summer elsewhere in the Alps but Sanremo Bay is very sheltered and the cool air from the rain-sodden mountains has tempered the heat of summer blowing up from Africa to make the last couple of months a real treat. The official "summer seaside season" traditionally ends on September 15th when the last holidaymakers have returned to work and school, so I'm making the most of the last few days of the outdoor swimming pool.
I'm glad I rid myself of body hair to be more feminine this year. Despite the maintenance, I've felt a lot happier for it. Tomorrow evening there should be a little party at the pool, although the weather gods feel like spoiling it by scheduling a thunderstorm at the same time. I shall have to get some more bubbly wine and some nibbles for it. I don't keep wine in the house these days because it makes me fat! And after that, when baring my feet in public is no longer a thing, I shall repaint my toenails. I love having painted nails.
The other week's Creature Feature mentioned a gecko who'd moved to my ceiling for some days. I met him, or an identical friend, scuttling under the front door on my return from Milan, and several more outside the back door since. It's either the same one getting about a lot, or there's a whole bunch of them. They're welcome, though. Bugs don't stand a chance!
Today I decided to start a new career as a surgeon so I put on lots of makeup, selected a suitable wig - an untidy red one - got my loud pink polka dot dress with the wide collar on, my extra big, long shoes and, most importantly, I put my big red nose on.
I turned up for work at the hospital and immediately they put me on the wards.
"Mr Stump needs his left leg amputating, Mr Aicheson-Paines has water on the brain that needs to be sorted, and Mrs Boggis needs a colonoscopy," the Head of Surgery told me.
So I got to work and at the end of the day I reported back to him.
"I took Mr Stump's arm off, Mr Aicheson-Paines got a direct hit from my squirty flower right on his head and Mrs Boggis got the custard pie you ordered. I also had time to pull an endless line of handkerchiefs out of Mr Sniffer's nose, tripped up several nurses and put Mrs Tumble in the collapsing bed."
"Ha ha ha, the collapsing bed is always a good one!" he chortled, big red lips agape and nose flashing. Well, done Dr Richmond, you've qualified. At this rate you'll be head of surgery when I retire at the end of the year. Put it there."
I shook his hand ... and watched him convulse. Ah, the good old palm buzzer! It gets them every time.
"Aargh, my pacemaker," he gurgled as he expired from the literal shock.
Hey, at this rate I'll be head of surgery by tomorrow.
I write this because I have had a very stressful week dealing not so much with medical matters but with financial ones for a relative of mine who went to have supposedly straightforward hernia surgery in May ... and is still in hospital. I did his tax return with the help of a tax accountant but you can imagine that it's not easy compiling details from someone else's unfamiliar paperwork that I had to hunt for, using forms that I don't use myself and that I've never seen before because my tax affairs are very different, for a tax system that I have only be party to in very recent years. That and dealing with his bank have left me pretty strung out. I'll be glad to get home tomorrow ... after the rail strike is over.
I'm pleased to say that he himself has made a lot of progress in the last couple of weeks and is now able to get out of bed and even walk a bit - he was told he might never walk again. In fact, we went together down the hospital corridor for tea from the hot drinks machine which, rather like the Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser in the Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, gave me a cup of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
I will be up-front and straightforward with my own experience of other people's surgery (I've never stayed in a hospital in my life and I intend to keep things that way), but the large majority of people that I have known to go and have surgery have not come out that much better off for it. Your mileage will vary and you and yours may be delighted with your surgeons' efforts. As I say, though, just about everyone else I know has had botched jobs, from my father and the ten operations on one eye to repair a common problem, to my mother and sister whose surgery wounds opened, soaking their beds in blood and requiring transfusions, to this relative of mine whose botched hernia job has resulted in his living for four months with an open belly and several more interventions to go, and this from the same comedians whose routine endoscopy perforated the gullet of the patient in the bed next to him and who then spent 15 days in intensive care as a result. I knew only one person who had worthwhile cancer surgery; the others all died anyway. And in all cases we're talking about hospitals that are
deemed high quality or specialist, not some medical tent in a refugee camp in a war zone.
I have professional indemnity insurance in my line of work in case I mess up.
But I would lose my professional status altogether if I messed up this often. Why do
surgeons get away with it? It's complicated work, sure, but then so's my work and that can have serious consequences for people, too.
For the girls who have vaginoplasties, I have always been sceptical. In my experience, about three quarters of the ops do not go properly to plan. Someone who has had GRS, and who had complications herself, says she thinks 95% of GRS is imperfect. That is a horrifying figure.
You do what is right for you. This is just my view and my choice. I have no spouse or family, no-one I feel I should be around for and therefore I am not prepared to go through the aggravation of serious surgery. I joined the Dignitas organisation some years ago, have a 'living will' (as well as a legal one) and relevant documentation for doctors and lawyers so that if or when they diagnose me with cancer or tell me I have a life-threatening problem or I get squashed by a tram, I am very unlikely to go through with surgery as it's not worth it. Your situation is different and you make the choices that are right for you in your circumstances. If being undead is important to you and your only way out of the alternative is surgery, then go for surgery; but you may have to live with a greatly reduced quality of life. Similarly, I'll not go in for gender surgery as I don't trust it to work. If your dysphoria is so severe that GRS is the option you feel you need most to help you, then I will fully support you in that choice. You choose for you, and I will choose for me. I'm not trying to sway you, just telling you why I won't do it for my part. Virtually all the trans people who have GRS say they are glad to have had the surgery, and that's the important bit; it's a pity, though, that few of them get the promised part in full. Of course I'd love to be fully female in every possible way, but life is so often about weighing the odds, about pain management, about avoiding trouble and my scales therefore tip differently from others.
Thanks for reading. Stay well and look after yourself.
Here on Sue's News and Views I try to be upbeat about this crazy yet beautiful life as trans people. But today I am suffering from SABS, which normally stands for Sunday Afternoon Blues (when you've got to go back to work on Monday morning), only for me it's Sunny August Busy September, and I'm not looking forward to the change. It wouldn't be the first time I'd grumbled on here about the move from balmy, lazy summer to serious autumn stuff. Thankfully, I have some good friends coming to stay at the end of next month and that will be fun.
It takes guts
I mentioned back in the spring that a relative of mine went to hospital to have a hernia operation. It went badly wrong and he suffered a variety of horrible problems and is still there four months later. This coming week I am going away to help him out with his financial stuff, like dealing with his bank, paying his bills and, joy of joys, completing his tax return for him. I'm trying to drum up the enthusiasm needed for the week ahead.
Hi there
Well, I'm not sure any post of mine has had quite so many views in so few days as the last one where I talked about my visits to Kew Gardens in London en femme, and wrote about foraging for mushrooms. Hello to readers from Queens University Canada, Osaka University Japan, Science Magazine, Southwest Airlines, BBC and many more. I suspect you sciency types have bots to throw tendrils through the interwebs for juicy titbits on fungi, like mycological hyphae burrowing through the leaf mould of the blogosphere! I don't know if my thoughts on mushrooms have advanced your fields of research much, but I appreciate the interest. If you're doing (genuine) research on trans people, do get in touch.
The next trip down Memory Card Lane will be about the Great Drag Race, as I've found the photos for that. Nothing to do with RuPaul, this was a charity event. Stay tuned.
Foodie news
Topic that generates the most interest in the comments here, even more than pretty frocks, is food.
Impressed with my 4 kg weight loss in July, I set myself a 3.5 kg target for August. What with parties and dinners out I am sorry to say that I managed about half a kilo overall. Oh, well, it's in the right direction!
I decided to treat myself to a meal out, to cheer myself up about losing little weight. OK, I know my logic is as faulty as my waistline. My favourite restaurant specialises in local food, which here in Liguria is mainly fish and vegetable based, and the menu has some standard local items like brandacujun, which is cod and potato smashed up together (like fishcake filling but without the breadcrumbs), or baked bream, but they also have items that vary every month or two, and daily specials.
Yesterday's special was cappon magro, which means "lean capon". Capons are a traditional Christmas dish here (I bought one last year for Christmas and it turned out just as tasteless and boring as turkey!) but the "lean capon" is a recipe that was traditionally supposed to use up all the leftovers. It's an odd savoury layer-cake of vegetables and fishes served cold that's made nowhere else that I know of. Mine had layers of carrots, cod, green beans, breadcrumbs, potatoes, beetroot and more. These days they serve it surrounded with clams and mussels with a prawn on top and, here, lots of green sauce made mainly with parsley.
Curious, but imaginative and delicious.
Creature feature
I've missed the many little creatures that used to visit my terrace in past years, like Laura the Lizard. But these last three nights a gecko has taken up residence on my living room ceiling. I don't know where it goes by day - I leave the door open in the hope it'll get the message and leave. I daren't try to catch it as it'll shed it's tail as happened some years ago.
I know little animals like this will make some of my readers want to stand on a chair and scream so apologies to those ladies but I find them sweet. I just wish I had such cute toes. And maybe hanging upside down from the ceiling would be good!
I've had a productive weekend digging around in ancient computer files, memory cards, assorted electronic devices, emails and more and found endless photos of my early days out and about with friends before I started blogging. Some amazing finds that made me so happy to rediscover; I got quite giddy with the memories!
All the electronic stuff that characterises our century has redundancy built in and you never get everything in one place before that device, format or accessory gets out of date. It's an endless fight to get one comprehensive photo album together.
I shall write occasional posts about my life before this blog, when actually most of my photos as a TGirl were taken! I've done some of that before but now I can add extras. It was when life was at its best. You know, when you accept that you can live as the woman you always felt you were. Like this picture which I have just rediscovered and which is one of the nicest photos of me ever taken and shows how relaxed and confident I felt living my life as a woman.
This was at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in London. Today, in the light of my last post where I linked to other posts about visiting Kew Gardens, I will attach more photos from that beautiful place that was a big part of my outdoor life as a TGirl. And, in the light of past comments, talk about going mushrooming, with the help of the scientists at Kew who specialise in mycology, the study of the vast realm of life that is the fungus kingdom. Obviously, my main interest is someone who eats a lot! But there's more to mushrooms than you might think.
As I've mentioned before, although I'd been out away from home before, in June 2010 I walked out of my own front door presenting as female for the first time ever. And after a long walk I ended up at Kew Gardens. I had a season ticket, but obviously in my official male name and gender, so the first interaction I ever had with another person in the real world as Sue was to persuade the woman on the gate that I was the person on the ticket. She eventually shrugged and let me in. It was easier to get into Kew Gardens in the days when you paid just a penny to the guardian on the gate. (Yes, until the 1980s the entry fee was one penny and had been for 200 years or so. It's now £25 entry on the gate - inflation over the last 45 years of 250000%. Thanks, Mrs Thatcher.)
I took some selfies but I had no tripod or timer so they are all too close-up and horrible and you have no idea I'm at Kew so I will never post them. The next year I went to Kew for a picnic with Joanne and Petra and two of my favourite pictures emerged. One of me standing by the fountain in the back garden at Kew Palace, and one of me with Petra in "Queen's Garden", which we thought was very apt! You've seen these before buy, hey, they're favourites.
My visit with Dee was just a couple of weeks after this. She's described our picnic in detail in her blog here. This is me standing outside the iconic Palm House ...
... and with some fancy chickens ...
... and by the Gingko biloba or maidenhair tree that is such an ancient species that it still has separate male and female plants. But not at Kew because when it was first planted in the eighteenth century they weren't aware of that feature and grafted male and female plants together, thus creating a hybrid tree which you could consider, in some ways, an intersex or even trans tree.
Dee and me in the Japanese Garden...
And me in the garden house at the palace again ...
I still have that skirt. It's the same one you see in the background photo to my blog, which was taken a few weeks after this, at Painshill Park at the other end of the county of Surrey from Kew. And the shoes, which I no longer have. Maybe the T-shirt is the same one! So few ideas ... just like a real woman lol! Very sadly, I no longer have the handbag which was a real favourite but, being made of faux leather, it eventually disintegrated. I think I still have the black cardigan somewhere.
Many thanks to my lovely friend Dee for her excellent photography, and for inspiring this post.
I went to Kew Gardens a few times after this en femme but I have no further photos from those trips.
I also went to Kew a couple of times for the "fungus forays" with the head of mycology, Dr Brian Spooner. I mention this as I talked about hunting for mushrooms for food in my last post and this elicited quite a few comments. With its exotic collections and the symbiosis between the fungal kingdom and the plant kingdom that results in fungi being inadvertently imported with plants, Kew has some amazing fungi as well as plants, if you know where to look.
As foodies, we're after edible toadstools, which are the characteristic bulbous fruiting bodies of the fungus that scatter its spores. The fungus itself, if you find it in woodland, which is where most edible species come from, is not the toadstool you see but is chiefly a mycelium or network of strands called hyphae that run underground, through the matter it consumes: leaf litter, soil, dead wood, etc. Other fungi consume other stuff: that old slice of bread or cheese or pot of jam, that dead animal or even that living one (ouch!). Some fungi are lovable, like brewer's yeast, some damaging, like dry rot, or candida (ew!). So we eat the reproductive parts of some fungi, rather like we eat the fruits of some plants.
It's hard to see the actual mycelium and its hyphae as they're buried within the fungus's food, but we caught sight of a black bootstrap once just on the surface that was the hypha of a tough woodland fungus. And not all fruiting bodies look like fairy toadstools. Some are like birds' nests that let the raindrops scatter the "eggs", some are like antlers or alien tentacles, some like rubbery earlobes and some ... well, the genus name is Phallus so have a guess. Here are some of the weirder types for you, all of them spotted at Kew ...
Crucibulum laeve, a bird's nest fungus
Calocera viscosa, or yellow stagshorn
Auricularia auricula-judae, or jelly ear. The Latin means Jew's ear because the fungus grows on elder wood, which is the tree that some traditions say that Judas Iscariot hanged himself from after betraying Jesus.
Clathrus archeri, or octopus stinkhorn, erupting from its "eggs" like Ridley Scott's alien.
Mutinus caninus, or dog stinkhorn, one of the many Phallales. Mutinus was a Roman fertility god. There are lots of common names for the phalloid fungi and I won't repeat them here!
As a child I used to hunt for mushrooms with my grandfather, or with youngsters my age. The best are found in early autumn in deciduous woodland after rain followed by a few days of sun. Some hunts were disappointing - maybe you'd get just a few young honey fungi (Armillaria mellea) after hours of tramping in steep woods; other trips brought rich, easy pickings that earned congratulations from the grown-ups and provided lunch for a dozen people, such as a big bagful of tall, broad parasol mushrooms (Macrolepiota procera) that have an intoxicating smell of hazelnuts and the caps of which are delicious battered and fried.
If you want to pick your own in public woodland, first check that you are allowed to by local laws. Field mushrooms may need the permission of farmers or other landowners. You MUST learn the few species that are deadly (or unsuitable for eating because they do weird things to your head ... unless you're seeking that effect, of course). In Europe, pickers can usually get their hauls checked by experts that local police stations or hospitals employ, depending on which country you're in. If you've picked a poisonous one by mistake, throw your whole haul away. If in doubt, leave the thing where it is.
Amanita phalloides, the Death Cap. Just one can kill you in slow and unpleasant ways. Just ask the Roman emperor Claudius I who had one slipped into his dinner so that his charming stepson Nero could come to power. If you survive, your liver and kidneys won't ever work properly again. You must be able to recognise this one if you go out mushrooming.
Really, the lethal ones are almost all from the genuses Amanita and Lepiota - they're not called things like Death Cap and Destroying Angel for nothing. Buy a guidebook with a key to identification and learn the bad ones, and carry your book into the woods with you with your collecting boxes or baskets.
Enjoy the good ones. Remember to give them a shake as you pick them so some spores fall out and, with luck, start a new crop. Here are some nice "penny buns" or "porcini" (Boletus edulis) I bought last year and turned into a stew. I've recently had them in a sauce with tagliolini, thin strips of freshly-made pasta, in my favourite local restaurant and they were delicious beyond belief.
I've been unimpressed with the rather yellowing, bug-chewed porcini in my supermarket this week and haven't bought any. Best wait for market day and get some fresher ones from a stall even if they cost more.
