a caganer for Bristol

 Here's Bristol mayor George Ferguson as a caganer, a figure used in Nativity scenes in Spain but not so much over here... at least, not yet.

I've been occupied with rebuilding the engine on the Traveller, after that blown head gasket last week. House Teenager was unimpressed, of course.

"Why don't we just get a modern car?"
"Because I couldn't fix it if it went wrong"
"They don't go wrong."
"Oh yes they do, and if the head gasket blew on a modern car it would cost hundreds of pounds to fix. And this cost me fifteen pounds to fix. And the Traveller nearly always gets us where we want to go....."

...and so on.

Oh, and the winter lurgie. Yuk, snotty and norrible, and a voice as growly as a bear whose pint you've just spilled.

Still, it's passing. And the car is now running sweetly. Touch wood.

Inking Bitterns on BBC Radio Bristol with Steve Yabsley

Deborah Harvey, John Terry and I were on Steve Yabsley's afternoon show on BBC Radio Bristol, talking about our book Inking Bitterns - poems and pictures for wild places. We talked for half an hour, and each read two of our poems. We also managed to discuss Morris Minors, skip-diving, seafaring, gender transitioning, and poetry in general. It was quite a wide-ranging discussion!

Radio has been described as a very visual medium, but even so, you would not have been able to see the pictures that went with the poems, just by listening to the interview - which you can hear as a podcast HERE (We are on about 30 minutes into the programme, just after the Beatles track!)

So here are the pictures and the poems that we read, together as they are in the book. Click on the images to see them larger. By the way, as I said on the programme, we are not selling through Amazon; but you can get it at Gert Macky, and all (well, some. Not many yet TBH) good book shops.

 

blowing a head gasket

I was out fossicking in skips on Sunday, because I'd spotted some good pieces of plywood that a friend would find useful for their tree house. Plywood duly delivered, I set off home, which involved driving up one of those VERY STEEP streets with which Bristol is littered. (We do have the steepest street open to traffic in Europe, or the world, or something, you know).

Shortly after getting to the top, in low gear, at high revs, the engine started making a  TOCK TOCK TOCK noise when it was under load. Take foot off accelerator, noise disappeared.

Worry worry. Oh no it's the big end. Paranoia.

Get home, calm down, post a message on the Morris Minor Owners Club messageboard describing the symptoms as best I can. It is suggested that it may be the head gasket blowing.

Well, you've got to start somewhere. Yesterday it rained, so I did nothing. I hate strippping engines down in the rain, in winter.

After a late (for me) night out at Bradford on Avon, living the wild life of a poet, I was brain dead, snotty and sore-throated today. But the engine had to be done. So I got stuck in.

Phew, it is indeed the head gasket. Can you see, it's blown between the front two cylinders.

So while it is a bloody nuisance having to do it, it could have been a lot worse. I tell myself.

Now ordering up replacement gasket, and getting ready to grind the valves and all that stuff.

activity monitor

I've been wearing an activity monitor for the last week. It's part of a study by Biobank into the state of health of the nation. So while wearing it I kept feeling guilty if I wasn't around cycling and being active. Though  in practice I haven't been any more active or inactive than usual.

Speaking of which, I did an epic cycle ride round Bristol yesterday, buying, posting and dropping things off, including a copy of inking bitterns that someone had ordered from Foyles Books. I knew that because she mentioned it on Twitter. "Oh dear, that's going to be problematic" I thought; and indeed, the order presently arrived in an email from Bertram Books, who supply to Foyles. It seemed silly to post the book to East Anglia, or wherever it is, so that they in turn could send it back to Bristol. And by the time everyone had taken their cuts, and the postage had been taken into account, it would have ended up with me paying people to buy the book, as it were... fortunately, Foyles in Bristol are happy to deal with local publishers. So that was sorted.

Oh, and Kathryn Atkins of the Durdham Down Bookshop was on BCfm (Bristol Community radio station) yesterday, talking about books for Christmas. And she said lots of nice things about inking bitterns. You can hear the show here, on the Roma Widger show. Click on the lower of the two 'play' icons, and it's about ten minutes in.

So I'll be dropping more books round there this morning!

Durdham Down Bookshop is a fine independent bookshop, and strongly recommended if you're in the Bristol area. And not just because they stock my books.

And if you're too far away to go there but still want a copy, there's my shiny new website where you can buy it. Just click on the Gert Macky button up there, or right HERE!

guerrilla marketing

guerrilla marketing idea, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

The cosily leafy suburb of Bristol's Westbury Park is mostly untainted by manifestations of unsightly consumerism and the throwaway society. The huge new 4x4s parked on the pavements block the view, for one thing.

Cycling past Westmorland House yesterday, though, I saw this mattress (one careful owner, no obvious piss stains) and was struck by its potential. 

So, ever one for exploiting a business opportunity, I'm happy to offer a bespoke service to go-ahead Bristol businesses. Get your message to the heart of the comfortably affluent, with a catchy slogan! (custom graphics available, enquire for prices, terms and conditions may apply).

inking bitterns - poems and pictures for wild places

 ...is now published.

It's a collection of poems from Colin Brown, Liz Brownlee, Stewart Carswell, Alana Farrell, Deborah Harvey, Alan Summers, John Terry and Cathy Wilson;  and it's illustrated throughout by me.

It costs £5, and you can easily buy it online from the Gert Macky website. Or, if you have the good fortune to live in Bristol (and if not, then why not?) - you can get it in the Durdham Down Bookshop, or Stanfords in Corn Street.

After our quick jaunt round Wiltshire yesterday, it can also be found at Devizes Books and the Corsham Bookshop,  both fine shops worth a visit even without the prospect of this particular book.

We'll be reading from the book at Halo, Gloucester Rd, on Monday 2nd December, and at Foyles on Friday 6th December.

And I'll be at the Local History Book Fair at the Bristol Record Office on Saturday 7th December, which is very handy for the Create Centre, who have their Festive Fair at the same time.

you know when you've been mansplained

This picture was retweeted into my feed yesterday. So I contributed my tweaked version of it.

...and instantly got told off my a couple of men, who pointed out that they were not like that. One of them said "bit harsh. I've built a bike from old parts & I just swoon if I see a girl with a bike" ....which strikes me as being a less than entirely helpful response... Another chap said that he had a history of challenging sexism in cycling and elsewhere, and that gross generalisations do not help.

To which Phoebe (*waves*) replied that there is a difference between a generalisation and a common experience. Which sums it up so neatly that I don't feel the need to add to it.

I'm writing this up because the last time something similar happened, I felt effectively stifled. On that occasion, I'd mentioned 'mansplaining', and an old friend complained that he felt offended by the term, and that the sort of people who do mansplain do it to him too. And I didn't want to argue with him and hurt his feelings so I shut up.

The thing is, that there are indeed men who get talked down to, and men who talk down to men. And that is bad.

And  there are men who don't treat women like idiots, and men who challenge men who treat women like idiots. And that is good.

But there is still a huge difference in experiences going on, based on gender. Which is why the term 'mansplaining' is so instantly recognisable to the women who've been on the receiving end of it.

 I gained something of an insight into this process when I transitioned, of course. Not that I was oblivious to sexism beforehand, obviously; but the great mass of sexist assumptions that underlies our lives, like that great bulk of the iceberg that you can't see because it's underwater? -maybe we're not as alert to that as we might be, simply because it is all-pervasive and has informed our lives from the very beginning.

Certainly, before I changed gender roles from male to female, I had a good work record and reputation (I worked as a mechanic in the Merchant Navy, if you didn't know). And I thought that it would stand me in good stead post-transition; that I had earned the right to be respected in my professional life. Hmmm. Up to a point, Dru, up to a point.

The reality was rather more complicated than that. There were some good people in my workplace (a large ferry going between Portsmouth and Bilbao), and I was promoted out of the engine room to the repair team, which was both more interesting and a great relief, as it got me away from the more troglodyte elements of the crew, who looked on the engine room as a sort of floating Jurassic Park for sexist dinosaurs.

But at the same time there was a lot of doublethink going on; so I was doing a good job, but thought of as doing a bad one - at the employment tribunal that I ended up taking the company to, it was claimed that the quality of my work had gone right down (though they would say that, of course, wouldn't they!) -and I often felt invisible, as men talked right past me to get advice on things from other men rather less experienced than me.... nothing unusual in that, of course, but the contrast between that, and the way I used to be treated simply because I presented as male, was a visceral lesson in how different are men's and women's experiences.

So if you're one of the good guys, please be assured that you are valued, and all the more so because there are so many bad guys. And please don't feel got at when we talk of mansplaining. It's not about you.