starlings

The latest picture. Starlings in November. Seems quite apposite, after the flurry of internetting and agitpropping yesterday.

an open letter to David Walliams

David Walliams' fansite have linked to my previous post, describing it as 'horrible'. This is a quick reply.


Dear David,

I see that your fansite have linked to my parody of your Nationwide poster, where you and Matt are dressed as Emily and Florence, your transvestite characters. The wording of the poster has been changed to "We're doing the Black and White Minstrels next. How divine". Your fansite describes this as 'horrible'. I'm sorry that they should think so. I was trying to make a point.
I'd hoped that the connection was reasonably easy to make, but I realise that sometimes what I think is blindingly obvious, isn't so.

To me, the Black and White Minstrel Show was about members of the dominant culture appropriating and caricaturing the identity of members of another culture. And as I see it, that is what you are doing with your transvestite characters. The difference between the two instances is that the first one is no longer acceptable. And I believe it's only a matter of time before what you do is also more widely seen as past its sell-by date.

You might argue that no-one could relate your characters, Emily and Florence, to real people, as they are such extreme caricatures. Unfortunately, some folk apparently do just that.

I lead a quiet and pretty normal sort of life. But a few years ago, I was in the papers as a result of some nastiness that happened to me. The press coverage was pretty much as you would expect, when a transsexual woman is in the papers. And one of those papers (the Daily Star) used 'Little Britain' references to describe me. It wasn't the end of the world, but it was an annoyance. Your characters provided a model and a vocabulary for people (people who had never even met me) to treat me as a caricature. And where people treat other people as caricatures, they don't treat them as real people. And they may (and sometimes actually do) end up abusing them.

It is claimed that you've "spoken out for the trans community for years". I'm afraid I don't know what it is that you've said; and I admit that I haven't read your book. But I do know that the trans community has within it some articulate voices, more and more of which are beginning to find platforms. When I speak, it is only for myself; I do not pretend to speak for a community. But I am sincere when I say that I do wish you would give up on Emily and Florence. I think the world (my world anyway) would be a little better for it.

13 Jan 2011 - postscript: my comment on the new Walliams and Lucas vehicle, Come Fly With Me, here.


(this post has been edited, as I initially thought that the David Walliams fansite was the voice of David Walliams himself.)

how divine

Nationwide Building Society's new billboard campaign is under way, with David Walliams and Matt Lucas of Little Britain, portraying 'Emily' and 'Florence', their transvestite characters. Maxine Taylor, Nationwide's Divisional Director of Corporate Affairs, responded to my letter to Nationwide by saying

The characters in 'Little Britain' are some of the best loved on British television and we do not believe they are intended to be discriminatory.



postscript: David Walliams' fansite describes this post as 'horrible'. I have responded here. This is the text of the comment I made on Mr Walliams' fansite, which was deleted.

Oh, and this is the original poster...

reading the past

the answer, my friend, is Blu-Tack on the wall

I was getting Katie's packed lunch together the other morning (potato cake with cheese in it. She hated it) while she nibbled the middle bits out of her toast.

"'Woman' has got 'man' in it", she observed, between nibbles of chocolate spread and peanut butter.

I agreed, and mentioned the introduction of the alternative spelling 'womyn', to get around this unpalatable fact. I threw in the notion of 'herstory' as a way to point out that history is selected, interpreted and written by the dominant culture, and to look at other histories. She wondered if it made linguistic sense. I said that there are other reasons for tinkering with language than linguistic sense, if it helps to question the way we look at things.

Which reminded me of this Larry Gonick picture, from his Cartoon History of the Universe.

Coincidentally, that same evening I went to hear Ronald Hutton lecture on The History Of Prehistory. He made a similar point about the way that we interpret the earthworks and stones left by the people who lived here a long time ago, about whom we really know very little; 'the distant past is a blank screen upon which we project our own values', as I clumsily paraphrase . It was a very good lecture, but you'll have to take my word for it if you weren't there. Or read his book, of course.

keep the pavement dry

a drinking fountain in Clevedon

Off I went to Clevedon, to see if my favourite bookshop (Seeley's, on Hill Road) wanted any more books. But no, they didn't. "You can see how quiet it is", said the woman at the desk, waving her hands at the silent shop. I agreed, and had a mooch around the art materials just in case there was a block of the right shade of green I wanted. She told me about her husband, who is retired and now works as a guide on the sightseeing buses that drive around Bristol. I told her that I'd passed one on Observatory Hill in Clifton on my way out of town. It was being freed from the clutches of a tree by chaps with chainsaws. She cheered up immensely.

Here's a Post Office bicycle. Apparently the Post Office are going to withdraw them, because they've decided that cycling is too dangerous for posties.

le weekend

With the weather being so lovely and hot this past weekend, what better way to spend it than enjoying the English countryside, as we were doing here at Warleigh Weir?

Apparently, hanging about in Bristol.

Me: I want to go adventuring. Shall we go backpacking, cycling or canoeing?
Katie (sighing deeply): I want to hang out with my friends...

So that was that.

I noticed that my photo of Warleigh Weir, taken a few years ago and uploaded to my Flickr page, was looked at 8 times on Saturday and 18 times on Sunday, by people who had found it by Googling Warleigh Weir. So I could console myself with the thought that it would be horrid busy there, so it was just as well that we hadn't gone there at least.

Two pictures for a Geraldine story, The Goldfinch's Apprentice. I didn't think the first one was lively enough, so I did the second one.
Warleigh Weir, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

haycorns

Sometimes you do a picture.... hang on. Sometimes, *I* do a picture and there seems to be something Not Quite Right about it. I'm looking at this one and wondering what to do with it. But at least it gives a space from the previous angsty posts.

Up on the roof at quarter to five, drinking tea and watching the airliners heading east, high overhead, suddenly burst into the dawn which would not reach me for another half an hour.

A blackbird landing on the eaves next to me and bursting into song, while keeping a wary eye on me. I keep very still. It plunges off again, down into the garden, to bicker with another blackbird.

Swifts begin swooping around the rooftops.