sic transit

Ten years on, my transition from male to female is pretty much something-I-once-did, and the main transitions on my mind these days are the ones from young to old (or (eek!) from middle-aged to old), and from occasional seafarer to illustrator. And whatever other transitions life throws at us all, of course.

There are people I know, and count as friends, who are at earlier stages of their own journeys, and with destinations uncertain. Which can be hard going, sometimes. I was just reading a blog by the wife of a MtF transitioner, which made uncomfortable reading because I recognised, in the description of the transitioning partner, some resonances with my own transition; my self-centredness, my selfishness, I suppose. I also recognised that sense of simmering resentment from the wife. I recall a friend whose partner worked hard to develop a musical career, while she supported them as best she could, paying the bills, cooking for the musos who were always around the place, trying to be positive and not feel marginalised. And after a few years, the partner said, "I've changed; I've been mixing with artistic and creative people..."

Some of us have growth spurts in our self-development. If we're lucky, anyway. If we're even luckier, our partners, if we have partners, will be developing in their own way and with a sufficient overlap of sympathies, affection, or possibly love, for the relationship to survive, or (better still) to flourish.

Some people stay together through insecurity or inertia, and put up with a large pile of personal unhappiness. Sometimes you don't recognise how unhappy you have been until it's all over, and one day you wake up and spend a while wondering what this strange feeling is that you've got, and then you recognise that you're happy. Been there.

And some people break up, and you look at them and think what a shame it was, because they seemed to be so good for each other.

No hard and fast rules. We're all on different paths, and write our own happy endings. Being trans is quite a big thing, but there are lots of other big things out there too. It's not uniquely wrong or evil to transition; it doesn't disqualify you from rights or responsibilities, any more than coming out as a musician. Say.

Good luck, everyone who's journeying or who's with someone who's journeying (which is a journey, too, of course, though possibly with someone else at the helm). I wish you well.

silent sky

shhh, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

We'd been in the kitchen eating microwaved pasties for lunch, and I wandered back into the workshop with my mug of tea, ready to start up the lathe. The TV set up on the high shelf showed a New York skyline, high buildings haloed by morning sun. There were excited voices.

"Something going on," I remarked.

An airliner appeared out of nowhere, and in the few moments before it plunged into a skyscraper I recognised a Boeing 737. The television voices became even more excited.

"It looked like a small private jet", said a commentator.

"Oh no it wasn't," I thought.

I didn't know what it was, but I knew that something Very Big had suddenly happened, and that the world had changed.

Part of my reaction was a very selfish one; my life was so full of drama and angst that it seemed unfair that world affairs should intrude upon it and demand my attention too. My home life was falling apart; my partner was busily building herself a new life without me in it, but just for the while we were still occupying the same home, or at least two homes in parallel. I was worried about my relationship with my daughter; I wanted to spend more time with her, but felt trapped in the role of chief earner, and the bills and rent had to be paid. I was commuting to Dursley, a long haul up the motorway every day, to where I was working for a former colleague, a marine engineer, building specialist tricycles for people with special needs. He was not particularly sympathetic to the problems in my private life, making remarks such as "If she said 'shit' you'd jump on the shovel" and "You don't need surgery for something that's wrong in your head".

Because I was waiting for something to happen. I'd been to see my doctor that summer, describing my feelings about my gender identity. He'd been very understanding and helpful, and had set wheels in motion. But then the local PCT had responded, saying that they had no funding available for gender identity services, and recommending I go to see Prof Richard Green at Charing Cross, as a private patient. I was waiting for this appointment, which was another month in the future.

In the afternoon, we sat in the garden outside the workshop, taking a tea break. The sky was silent; Green One, the transatlantic air superhighway, passed directly overhead, and nothing was flying.

I thought about the future. The seemingly enormous gulf between where I was, and where I wanted to be. The forces of darkness, mobilising.

pictures or it didn't happen

The more interesting life gets, the less you're likely to hear about it. It's a 'revolution will not be televised' kind of thing. Thus, for instance, these pictures of Catherine and me, canoeing along the Avon the other day, up towards Bradford on Avon. It was a good trip, along a stretch of river we'd not been along before. Kingfishers flitted about the place, the purple loosestrife flourished on the banks, the sun was just the right shade of warm, and the breezes were always following ones.

What the pics don't show are the bloody great plastic barrel with the dry gear in it, which I'd secured to the afterdeck of my kayak; I spent the first mile wobbling like a drunken tightrope walker, until we found somewhere to land, and from then on I towed it behind me, like a faithful mine.

But you can't see that in the pictures.

Another thing you can't see is the weir at Limpley Stoke.

The trouble with weirs is that, unless you're the sort of masochist who thinks that 'only dead fish go with the flow' and therefore only ever paddles upriver, then your first inkling of a weir ahead is the roaring noise. Then you will see a slight ripple, which is where the water is going over the weir. Approach with caution, and try to determine whether it's the sort of weir that you can shoot, or if there's anywhere to get out and inspect the thing.

We came alongside the central section of the weir, which was dry. I laboriously uncorked myself from the kayak, and found that Catherine's had taken advantage of the kerfuffle as she got out, and was drifting towards an ominously-roaring sluice.

It got caught in a tree. I got back into my kayak, and bore down upon it, Catherine holding the rope that was tied to the stern. I grabbed the runaway kayak, and she pulled me back to safety.

And then we scrambled down the wall of the weir, and carried on our way.

But there aren't any pictures of that either.

That weir is like poetry, as Wordsworth described it; 'emotion recollected in tranquillity'. Except back to front. I was quite calm at the time. Now, I think back to it and imagine getting caught in the sluice and drowning. Funny how things are just 'what-you-do' at the time, and give you the horrors afterwards.

It wasn't that bad really, though. Quite fun, in fact. It's like breaking down in the car. As i said to Katie the other day (just after the clutch linkage on the Moggy had broken, and I bodged it back together with a safety pin) "It's really good when you break down, if you manage to fix it and get home, because the happiness you feel at sorting out the problem outweighs the misery of the problem happening in the first place".

She didn't agree. Tchah.

hey, you, get offa my tree

damsons, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

It's always a heck of a party when I lay the blanket on the ground, let me tell you. A quick shake of the damson tree and before you know it, the earwigs are dancing a sprightly Roger de Coverley around the damsons; the harvestmen tiptoe gingerly away; and a bush cricket manages to look ever-so-slightly peeved as it takes stock of its new tartan surroundings, thinks about it for a moment, then hops off to somewhere that doesn't clash so violently with its bright green overalls.

I was getting the last of the fruit from the local tree, yesterday morning; then for good measure, I picked a pile of apples too.

Home again, the damsons were washed and put in a pot in the oven to soften them up for making 'cheese', which is the local version of membrillo, I suppose you could say.

And then, as it was still bright and early on a sunny day, Deborah, who is no slouch when it comes to wild harvests, came over, and we went off to the Mulberry Tree Of Plenty, in the heart of Clifton. It's just about my favourite tree, because mulberries are so very nice and because it is very climber-friendly.

You have to be careful with mulberries, as they're so very juicy; and even if you are careful, you end up with hands that look like you've just slaughtered a pig. Last time I picked some, I was knocked off my bike on the way home, and when I saw the splodged mulberries on the road my first thought was that my brains had been splattered out. Not a good thought....

A couple of years back, I met Kayle Brandon up the tree; she's done a wild food guide to Bristol, that I feel a bit ambivalent about; the thing about nice trees is that it's good to know where to find them, and a bit of a bore if you get there and find that someone else has stripped the tree, especially if they're doing it commercially. Oh, and she organised the 'Feral Food' event at the Cube, that I helped out with....

This year, we met a tree troll. He was small and wizened, and advanced towards us, shrieking "What are you doing in my tree?"

Fortunately, I know how you deal with tree trolls. You start by fixing them with a steely gaze.

"We're picking mulberries," I replied, slowly and clearly.

"They're not ready yet," he said.

I showed him my basket of ripe mulberries.

He explained that he picks them and sells them to a local greengrocer. I told him about Kayle's wild food map. "Middle class people," he snarled, "making money out of it".

I reminded him that his interest was mercantile, but he seemed to think that his was the Right Sort Of Mercantile.

Eventually, he wandered off to catch his bus.

"What's your name?" I called as he departed.

He paused and thought about it. "That's a state secret," he said.

Tree trolls, eh?

Two young women came by, with buckets. They were collecting money for a charity. They stopped and asked for some. Deborah and I held out our empty but bloodied hands to show our lack of money.

"Have mulberry instead," I said, and selected a particularly nice one.

The charity collector looked askance at it. "What is it?"she asked, "a berry? Is it poisonous?"

"Best berry there is," I said, and put one in my mouth to show how to do it.

She held it up and touched it tentatively with a lip. Then backed away and continued along the path.

"She's not going to eat it, is she?" said Deborah.

"Bet she's thrown it away already."

Bless the British suspicion of Food Off Trees. As long as it persists, there's always going to be nice things to eat for nothing.

cat herding

cat herding, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

...a joy for life.

This picture's intended for a forthcoming piece about the trans community. I knew what I wanted to draw pretty much straight away, and determinedly didn't Google 'cat herding' before drawing the picture. And was quite happy to find, on Googling it afterwards, that it isn't ground already hugely covered. You never can tell with these things...

On a technical note, I thought that, as it was a quick cartoon, I'd economise by using a sheet of cartridge paper; there's a great pile of it under the bed, that I inherited from Marta when she was tidying up her studio. Normally I'd have used Daler-Rowney's Langton Extra Smooth Watercolour Paper, which works out at about 80p a sheet. Stupid me. The cartridge paper didn't take the watercolour very well, and it took for ever to clean up the scan on Paintshop Pro, as it looked all muddy and grey, before flooding in the sky and the grass. Moral: always use the best materials you can get. *bangs head on wall a few times in hopes that lesson will sink in....*

fire in the sky

hale bopp, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

I was up on the roof at twenty to ten last night, ready to watch the International Space Station go by. It was a clear, still evening; a polar satellite quietly passed northward, far overhead, skimming the handle of the Plough as it went.

Two minutes short of the appointed time for the ISS to appear, a great fireball streaked across the sky above me, leaving a long trail and flickering and sparking as it went. I thought momentarily that it was a firework; but it was too white, and too silent. Utterly silent.

Then the ISS appeared, and ascended to a zenith right overhead, and so declined to the eastern horizon, dimming as it dived into the earth's shadow. Ordinarily, it would have been pretty impressive; tonight, though, it had been seriously outstaged. As I watched, my mobile rang. It was Brendagh, over in Long Ashton; "Did you see that?"

Later, I looked on Twitter. Other people around Bristol had also seen it; and someone in Reading, for whom it had been in the West.

Here's a picture of Hale-Bopp, which was really quite unlike a fireball in some ways, but was also a silent presence in the sky.

going round

Here's a friend of Geraldine's. He's called Drew (no relation), and he's been living in Leigh Woods on the other side of the Gorge from Bristol, for the summer. This picture accompanies Geraldine's description of Drew's experiences, and is for the next issue of the Bristol Review of Books.


And here's another round picture; it's for Andrew Sartain, chef, keeper of Gloucester Old Spots and inveterate forager- constantly off hauling fish out of the sea, hunting down fungus and doing unspeakable things to game animals. You will probably find him at a Farmers Market near you, if you happen to live in the Bristol and Bath area. Try the sausages. They're good.