joining in

Commenting on my post yesterday, Lucy suggested that it was a bit retrogressive going along on the Bristol Pride march. I kind of get what she means, but then perhaps there are all sorts of Prides, and each one is what you make of it. Or it is the sum of what the people who have organised it and participated in it, make of it.

The Bristol Evening Post mentioned the event on their website, and attracted some interesting comments, some of which sadly got deleted (also sadly, my own comment didn't actually make it onto the website, but hey)


I like the opinion expressed by Patrick, that

not only my LGBT friends but every other minority in this country ....have their particular views and preferences thrust in front of my face all of the time!

I think it was worth joining in Pride just for that...

It's a tricky business, balancing between acknowledging and dealing with my trans history, and just getting on with life. And I suppose there are no right answers, and possibly no particularly wrong ones either. But, reading the EP comments section, it's evident that there's still no shortage of ignorance. The sort of ignorance that can lead to bad things happening to people.

As I was looking through my old stuff yesterday, I noticed that this is what was happening in my life, on board the Pride of Bilbao seven years ago. It's good to look at it and think how far I've come since then. Seven years. Crikey!

So a notice goes up in the Engine Control Room about the Shipboard Management Meeting, where crew grievances will be addressed; we are invited to write our whinges on the adjacent paper. The usual gripes come up; Why is the food so crap? (because it is...); When are we going to get financial parity with the Deck Department? (when hell freezes over...). I add my own; When are we going to change filthy pornographic calendar in Control Room for pictures of fluffy bunnies and daffodils? ...the next day, I find that it has been laboriously scribbled over to make it entirely illegible, and FUCK OFF scrawled under it.

"Right, this is war," I think.

But, to get things in context first, I check the big book of Company Regulations. There's stuff about drugs and drink, standards of appearance and something called 'horseplay'. But there is no company policy on pornography. I take a photocopy of this month's FLUFF 'N' STUFF calendar girl hanging in the Control Room, and show it to some of the girls who work up in the passenger department. They blanch, and express their shock that it is allowed. Fortified in my resolve, I pen my amended question; What level of explicitness should be deemed appropriate for the pornography displayed in work areas? -for example:

* tits?
* tits and bums?
* tits and clits?
* blimey, you can see what she had for breakfast?

.this is what I understand is called a When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife
question, which cannot be answered without the answerer damning themself...

But I think I'd better have a word with the Chief to sound out the water. He points out that making an issue of the calendar might alienate me. He really can't see anything wrong with porny calendars. He puts it down to my hormonal changes; "In all those years at sea, you must have read pornography, surely, Dru?"

"No, Chief; I've always felt just the same about it as I do now..."

The Chief wants to keep the matter 'in house'. And so the matter rests, with a vague understanding that next year's calendar will be a little less, er, risque...

And next morning, to make up for it, Chief enters the Control Room with a brisk "Morning, ladies and gentlemen."

"I don't see any ladies," says Dave S, the electrician, a grumpy old sod from Hartlepool, a town whose inhabitants gained notoriety for hanging a monkey, thinking it was a french spy.

"Drusilla," says the Chief, gesturing royally in my direction.

"He's got balls, hasn't he? If he's got balls, he must be a gentleman."

With insight like this, one might reasonably fear for the safety of any
monkeys unfortunate enough to find themselves in Hartlepool.

I come up with the great answers to that one, later, of course. Too late. O
well.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

(and this one from August 29 2003)

You may recall, and if you don't, then read the aforegoing, that the porny calendar incident was left hanging; along, indeed, with the porny calendar.

A fortnight ago finds me back in the engine room after a few weeks' absence. I find that the calendar in question has been graffitied; someone has written "DRU" in a very immature hand, and an arrow pointing to the vagina. I am outraged. I discuss it with the engineer of the watch. He gives his opinion that I should let it lie; "You've got to be broad minded at sea," he says.

I mull it over, and by the next morning think maybe he's right. Don't want to be confrontational... but then I go into the Control Room and see everyone sitting drinking their tea, and this THING hanging on the wall as though it was perfectly normal. I take it down, call for everyone's attention, point out the graffiti, and say that it is entirely unacceptable. I then rip up the calendar and bin it.

Instantly I get two men shouting at me; one tells me I'm "....going to get done in; not if, but when...." I leave the engine room, and award myself the morning off....

(a friend helpfully suggested I have a word with the Union rep. "It was the Union rep who threatened me," I replied.)

The Engine Room Trolls have a mutter, and decide to send me to Coventry. At last count, there are seven of them not speaking to me; they sort of glower sulkily as I pass, like little boys who've been caught out doing something they shouldn't.

Portland interlude

A quick look at life in Portland in May 1997. I was working on MV Havelet, a ferry that had been retired from the Channel Island run and which was now tied up in the former navy base, waiting to be bought by somebody. There was a small crew of Poles- a bosun, a deckhand, a greaser and a steward- there was Jim Nelson the Chief Engineer, and there was me. It was a fairly relaxed time, tinkering with stuff that wasn't working, and eating the awful food that Roman the steward produced- chickens deep-fried whole, indeterminate soup of a gray colour with gobbets of Stuff in...

With the Royal Navy pulling out, Portland had become very quiet indeed. Wildlife had begun re-colonising the dockyard; seagulls were everywhere, and the bridge wings were littered with the bits of seaweed that I think are what seagulls use as love tokens, rather than boxes of Milk Tray. The security guards in their little hut by the gate had made friends with the local foxes, who used to sit in the hut and share their sandwiches.

At the other end of the dockyard, Cable and Wireless had set up shop, and there was some activity around a floating dry dock that had sunk. Apparently, the pump that kept the water out had either been switched off or tripped, and the night watchman had just watched it settle lower and lower in the water and go under. Attempts to refloat it had failed, and it was being cut up and removed bit by bit. You can see the big floating crane that did the salvage work, Norma, down there in this picture .

Also down there is HM Prison Weare, a floating prison which had been used as accommodation in the Falklands.

Sometimes things would be livened up by the appearance of the SBS, who would come down and practice assaulting ships. They didn't wear uniforms, because they liked to be inconspicuous. But a trained eye could pick them out, as they arrived in the biggest 4x4 you ever saw in your life, with a matt black paint job, smoked glass windows and heavy mesh over the windscreen.



This is a speed boat they were playing with. It was dropped into the harbour from a Chinook helicopter, and spent the afternoon haring around with helicopter in pursuit, presumably trying to pick it up again.


And this is British Telecom's CS Sovereign, a cable-laying ship that sat alongside us waiting for a job to come along. We were grubby and rusty; Sovereign was pristine, and periodically large groups of men in spotless overalls would appear on the deck and sit in a big circle drinking tea in the sunshine, before going back in to re-polish something.

ten years

I'm trying to cobble together some thoughts of a recherche du temps perdu description. Or harking on about the bloody past again, depending on how you look at it. So while I'm sucking the end of my pen and getting distracted by the blackbirds in the garden, here's a couple of pictures I found the other day and thought, "Blimey! Ten years?"

This is the sort of thing I used to get up to on MV Havelet in Weymouth, when it was just sat there for ages and I was sort of looking after it. In between riding my bicycle along the Promenade and fishing for mackerel to barbeque on the top deck.