A trip down Memory Card Lane ... with extra mushrooms

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century has redundancy built in and you never get everything in one place before that device, format or accessory gets out of date.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. 

Sue x

Summer groove

 Firstly, I'd like to thank my readers for the wonderfully positive response I received to my last post, about having blogged here for 14 years. I write; you respond; I adapt to the response. People seem to prefer posts with a variety of themes, and posts with pictures of trans ladies doing their thing. We aim to please.

Thumbs up

  

Partayyy!

It's the height of the holiday season here on the riviera and everyone's in bikinis (well, the men aren't - more fool them!) and we've had fun this last week. The condominium "pool party" in the garden (not to be confused with the "garden party" in the pool!) went really well. We all brought home-made food. I brought Ascolane, which - if you're British - might be described as "Scotch olives" after Scotch eggs, i.e. olives encased in mortadella (baloney) sausage, further covered in breadcrumbs. (To non-British readers, a "Scotch egg" is a boiled egg surrounded by pork sausagemeat in breadcrumbs.) Also and vitally(!) some fizzy wine. I think the resident wives try to outdo one another in what they make and, as a transwoman, I'm totally into food rivalry with those other women in the block, ha ha. Just kidding (not kidding).

Anyway, our evening garden party went well. I've also enjoyed a couple of meals with neighbours. More food news below.

The town summer fireworks were beautiful and somehow the bangs seem to have been toned down to more pet-friendly swooshes. Special mention for the golden feathery bursts and the many red love-hearts cascading over the harbour.  How they get bursting rockets to form red heart outlines, I don't know. Maybe the natural fall of the stars just happens to form that uneven shape with a pointy bottom and a bow-like top. But I was content as I watched from my eyrie up the mountain where I see the bursts and blooms at eye level.

It's crowded in town with concerts and summer sales in the shops. Nothing on the sales racks has caught my eye so far. Call me cynical, but these days if it's in the sales, it's because it wasn't selling in the first place because it wasn't worth buying! 

 

Foodie news

It's the mushroom season and I've been enjoying some nice dishes, pasta with porcini sauce especially. (I'd like to go mushroom hunting myself in public woodland as I used to do as a kid but you need a license these days because of overpicking by the more selfish.)

I'd never tried caprino ravioli until now: hand-made pasta shaped like moneybags rather than traditional pillows, filled with goat's cheese, honey and walnuts, and with a blue cheese sauce. Pretty amazing.

There's also the local "trombetta" (little trumpet) squash grown locally that makes a tasty savoury "green pie" that's a favoured local recipe and is nice hot or cold. The ones in this basket don't look so much like trumpets but some really do!

 

RIP Terence Stamp

"Kneel before Zod!"

No, not that. I especially remember this actor from his outstanding turn as Bernadette in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a film that perhaps did more to improve tolerance of trans, gay and drag people than almost any other single thing. 

 

A dip in the archives: Kew Gardens

I don't dip into my archives as much as I used to but recently my lovely friend Dee posted her recollections of a picnic she and I had at the Royal Botanic Gardens in London, better known as Kew Gardens.

Kew Gardens are important in my trans life. The first time I left my own home dressed in 2010 I ended up there. I also went with friends Joanne and Petra in 2011. But here's a link to Dee's record of our trip. 

I've linked to Dee's blog before. Recommended reading. 

Thanks for the happy memories, Dee. 

Sue x 

14 years of blogging

 I started this blog 14 years ago today. Times were very different then: I was a living in England, I was as close to living full-time female as I've ever been and I was thinking about transition. 2011 was certainly the best year of my life as a result. Living authentically is joyous.

Now I've left England and live in Italy in a coastal resort where I have benefited greatly from the brighter, warmer, more stable climate. It's made a real difference to my health. But my outdoor life as a trans woman here hasn't really taken off yet so I'm looking for new trans friends for support and socialising. 

That said, the real issue that made the biggest difference to me as a trans woman these last 14 years arose in 2014 when I got eczema on my face that was so severe I couldn't wear makeup or even remove facial hair. Although that's better now, for the last 11 years Sue's News & Views has been more about giving views of trans life than news of outings as it used to.

Quite by coincidence, this is my 750th post.  

 

My trans life this past year 

Since the last blogversary, I've had a few days out as Sue when holidaying in England. For instance, a day of shopping in heels where I went out in Brighton with Stella. Later I went out for a curry in Bolton with Sandy (travelling the unknown) and for lunch in Manchester with Suki (ladies who lunch).

Lunch at The Ivy in Manchester

This year I've tried experimenting with various looks, smart or casual.

 

 

  

And there's been time for a bit of dressing up fun, like my mad piper outfit or my silver witch costume for Hallowe'en.

 

I've also been trying to improve my makeup technique to suit a face that's not getting younger. More work is needed but sometimes I think I get it about right.

 

Although I dress as a woman every day, and that's been the case for nearly 30 years, I'm not transitioning and I'm not officially presenting female outdoors even if I'm dressed in women's clothes. This is the sort of thing I usually wear, just casual leggings, a sweater or lighter top, and comfy shoes. 

The one thing I have been excited by over the last year is that my breasts have grown some more. I've never taken hormones and they aren't so sore as they were last time they grew about 15 years ago. I now have "yoga breasts", somewhere between an A and a B cup. This is me last week just in a normal underwired bra, no fillets, forms or enhancement. I like it!

 

What's hot on Sue's News & Views 

As far as this blog itself goes, I've almost finished labelling older posts so the labels list will take you to almost everything on that topic. 

I used to be able to see easily what topics and posts were most popular with readers and where the traffic came from but there are too many bots running through the posts now to have any clear idea. But posts that each cover a range of different topics seem to be preferred. Here is the countdown of the ten most popular posts by page views since this time last year:-

10) Crazy days, all about life during the annual Sanremo Music Festival when everything is geared to pop music.

9) My makeovers and photoshoots, where I summarised my trips to the Boudoir Dressing Service in London to find a look to suit me before I ever started going out. (I'll be posting Part II shortly, including makeovers and hairdos at Mac, Trendco and other outlets, and photoshoots with professional photographers like Ange, Stella and at the Great Drag Race.)

8) Broken heels, where I puzzled over why my high heels keep disintegrating on my floors at home. 

7=) The 2024 that was, in which I summarised the last calendar year which was pretty good, with several trips out dressed and various other dressy times. There's obviously a bit of overlap between that post and this one.

 

7=) Don't worry, get trans life endorsement here, written on the eve of the US election, in which this blog got a beautiful endorsement, and I won a doll. I have always tried to emphasise the positives and the beauties and the joys of being trans in this blog no matter what else is happening. I also mentioned the other blogs I follow, which is another topic I will be writing about again shortly.

5) A girls' night out, travelling the unknown, which I linked to earlier and which described a lovely evening out and the difficult journey I had using an unfamiliar transport network. But nothing defeats the intrepid trans woman in heels!

4) You jump out of bed like a cute little Pop-Tart, a random and light-hearted take on trans positivity culture, cosplay, curious modern English expressions, and flapping about in a thunderstorm in a pink nightie, with digressions on Buckfast Tonic Wine and the cleanliness of witches. 

3) What sets you off, all about triggers and featuring the overblown lacy polka-dotted ra-ra skirted beat combo, Strawberry Switchblade. Also, local food festivals.

© Lookin magazine 1985

2) Pride season, purity culture and the Wotsit of Rage, which, like 4, is a bit of a random collection of topics including the 2025 Pride Season opening locally, how political debate has changed to rage not discussion, a drag queen's replies to online creeps, holiday plans in the world's oldest country and a much needed local transport action group. As I said, random stuff seems popular.

1) Suitcase pack, and epilation record. What it says on the tin. I don't know why it's the most popular post by far in the last 12 months, but it is. 

 

Kissy kissy 

Thank you for reading my blog. I appreciate your interest, support and comments. It's because people read that I keep writing so it's you who make this blog.

I've always and for ever signed off every blog post, every online comment, every forum post, etc as Sue x but given the friendliness of so many of my commenters, and the fact that many of them are friends anyway, I might up the kissometer to two kisses per comment. Mwah! Mwah! My kisses are very special so you're lucky people! ;-)  

I might also reintroduce a short summary of each post in Italian as I did during the pandemic, only no-one from Italy tuned in so I stopped bothering. But that should change as I get my trans social life up and running. Let's see.

  

 Love from Sue x 

 

Pool party plus (a summer summary)

 The next three weeks mark the height of the holiday season and nothing will work normally, so all one can do is relax, go with the holiday flow and wear pretty summer clothes. I'm not complaining! I love summer best and am trying to make the most of it before things go back to the usual stuff in September. You know the feeling, no doubt!

 

This evening we had a residents' party in the pretty condo garden. They've called it a pool party ... despite its not being held in a pool. Maybe the idea was that after a few glasses of prosecco we'd imagine a pool. Or the organiser had already had a few when they named it. Never mind, we all brought something home-made to eat and some booze and that's what it's all about. Forget the diet for one evening! 

Down the garden path

 

Later in the week we have the town fireworks over the harbour, which are always an exciting sight. The town itself is full of holidaymakers, beach clubs are in full swing, the bars open late, there lots of open-air concerts and assorted entertainments, including many free ones, and it's nice and lively as a result. 

Of course, there's the open-air pool and that's a daily treat. It's not just for lounging; I do actually do quite a lot of swimming which always does me good. I was somewhat disabled after an injury at work 25 years ago and swimming really helps get the right muscles exercised.

I'm also loving all the colourful flowers there are at the moment, especially in the hedgerows. 

There's time for some stargazing as well in the clear, warm nights. The Perseid meteor shower promises to be very good this year, reaching its height on the 12th. I was sorry to hear of the passing of astronaut Jim Lovell last week. The Space Race was very much a part of my growing up. So if I see a shooting star I shall make a wish that he's at peace.

The weather this last month has been perfect here. The whole Alpine region has been very rainy over the same period, but not here where the mountains hit the sea. That rain elsewhere resulted in cooler air blowing here, making the temperatures just perfect. Thanks guys: your suffering is our relief! It's a bit hotter this week and my tan is darkening daily. Not that you need to go out in direct sunlight to tan because the diffused sunlight all around is enough to give you the benefit. 

I feel a lot better for having epilated this summer, a lot less dysphoric, and it's been good to take a few photos for the record. It'd be nice to go out in a bikini like everyone else (well, the women at least!) but I'm not at that stage of confidence at the moment. I need to find a trans friend to go out with, which is proving less straightforward than I thought. There are plenty of TGirl meetups in Italy but not, it seems, near to home. Research continues.

 

I've lost another kilo (2 pounds) this week and that's all to the good, too.

I'm trying not to think about the dark cloud looming in September when I must help this relative of mine who went into hospital in mid-May for a routine operation and is still there after disaster struck. This help includes doing their tax return! At least after that I'll be having two friends from Britain coming to stay for a couple of weeks.

Thanks for reading. Have a good summer.

Sue x 

Moby-Dink, or the Whale That's Pink

 Thar she blows! She blow-w-ws!

Latest photos below. 

There's a whale sanctuary offshore here (the Pelagos Sanctuary) and there are regular whale-watching tours over the summer. Whales like this part of the Mediterranean, the Ligurian Sea, possibly because it's a bit cooler than other parts. In fact, there used to be a town nearby in Roman times called Costa Balenae, i.e. Whale Coast.

The whale rangers (if that's the right name for them) insist that there is a white whale out there, too. Although, they say it's actually somewhat pinkish rather than the pure white of the legendary whale of Herman Melville's outstanding story. 

Since only the rangers seem to have spotted it, and we all know the tradition that sailors tell tall tales, I keep an open mind. 

(By the way, if you haven't read Melville's Moby-Dick I invite you to do so. Or reread it. In my opinion, it's the finest novel in the English language.)

I mention this as (a) it's in the news and (b) I want to talk about slimming as I keep being asked about my regime and (c) I'm tired of being a pink whale myself. 

I've mentioned this before but when I really need to get weight off I use the Slimming World healthy eating plan. 

In brief, you can eat loads and, ideally, you'll eat a wide, healthy range of foods, enough to keep you full (which is where most diets fail) but obviously you'll cut down on (but you don't need to eliminate) the fermented and processed sugars (like cheese, bread, alcohol, chocolate ...) and fats (bacon rind, butter, you know the stuff). There are plenty of substitutes for sugars and fats. This tends to get me a pound or two off each week on average (0.5 - 1 kg) and so after a few weeks or months that makes quite a difference. 

My problem is that I got very overweight after my leg was damaged in 2018 and then, just as I was walking properly again, the pandemic came and locked us all indoors. By the end of 2020 I was huge and so losing the 30 kilos (5 stone) I needed to takes time. Every time I go away I lose some control of what I eat. For instance, I went away for four weeks in May/June and, two months later, I am still trying to get back to where I was before I went. Ideally, I want to get to my perfect weight and then it doesn't matter so much if I gain a bit after going out for a pizza with friends or going on holiday as it'll not then take months to get back to target. 

I've got about 30lb (13 kg) to lose at the moment.

So here are my honest Pink Whale photos. Tonight, in a newish dusty pink tee-shirt, accompanied by my blue whale (whom I am going to call Baloney), I look like this with no shaping undergarments. Yes, that's my bust in a normal underwired bra, no enhancement, and that's my tummy now. 

 

 

My chubby face in 2020. 

And me in 2022. Not as big but not slim either.

 

 

Anyway, that's me being a pink whale. 

If you see any other pink whale, just be glad it's not those pink elephants again. 

 

(These animated psychedelic pachyderms are, of course, from Disney's 1941 classic, Dumbo; another masterpiece.) 

Sue x