Out on a dike

When opportunity knocks it's time to be out, open and occupied

2011-06-25T15:06:00.007+01:00

I've been away. I don't know where I've been so it's probably best not to ask me. There aren't any photos to restore the memories. I've been in rather than out. Closed rather than open. Vacant instead of occupied.

But that's all about to change. Last Saturday I was in Bewdley for a slice of 'Poetry, Performance and Pizazz' with two rather wonderful performance poets - Emma Purshouse and Heather Wastie of Brewers' Troupe - and other talented workshop participants. And I realised the poet, performer, and perhaps more importantly, the person in me could be reawakened.

So tomorrow I'll be in Bewdley again, having been given the opportunity to read a couple of poems to folks in the streets alongside Emma. This is through the relationship Brewers' Troupe has formed with Bewdley Open Studios. More details on this weekend's readings can be found here.

So I'm back. And next time I'm away I may actually know where I am. Perhaps even where I'm going. First destination: Bewdley.

What happens when I'm not here?

2008-01-08T21:05:00.000Z

My website is down. So yes, even though I just provided a link to it, it's probably best if you check back another day. If you do/did happen to check the link while the site is/was still down, there's a strange ego-enhancing message awaiting you. Ok, it may not enhance your ego! But for me - to see the words - "This site is unavailable because it is too busy" - well - that gives me a sense of pride, and yes, also a goodly amount of basic annoyance.

There are times when several days would pass without me realising that my site was down. It's not like I update it every day, so why would I look at it every day? I might never have known there was a problem. But today - yes today - I'm aware of it. And it's damned annoying! Just the fact that you can't see my profile photo while the site is down is annoying. This probably means I should upload a new photo. Let Blogger host it. One day I'll get round to that. Perhaps surprise you with a new photo.

There's not much to worry about. It's an ISP problem. It will be fixed soon, I'm sure. The engineers are "looking in to it". The site really isn't "too busy" (partly because no-one can get to it currently); although it does get its fair share of visitors, wondering what I have to say about my shaved head and lesbians on TV. I do monitor. I know what's popular.

So - in lieu of my site returning, here's a little download from my brain.

Where does a website go when it's temporarily unavailable?

Am I less me without my homepage?

2008: New Possibilities

2008-01-01T17:01:00.000Z

Isn't that the great thing about January 1st? If we're inclined to think positively it can make us think even more positively. A new year, a new beginning. I'm pretty sure I need a new beginning with my blog because I seem to have neglected it for ages. I've never been that far away, although sometimes minds can travel extensively. Still, with all the talk of health consciousness which always follows possible excesses of the holiday season, I think it's important to remember that the mind also deserves a workout.

Here's a workout for the eye that I enjoyed over at AfterEllen.com: women who wear glasses are apparently getting hotter by the day. I'm happy to learn that lesbians have always known this. I updated my glasses in 2007. You can judge if they make me cool, hot, intelligent, sexy, accessible, geeky, or all of the above. None of these adjectives are mutually exclusive after all.

Find me at Womb Poetry

2007-09-24T23:07:00.000+01:00

The summer/fall 2007 "Equinox" issue of Womb went live yesterday, and my multimedia visual, voice, and textual poem sequence Postcard Stream is published there.

Check out all the contributors and view my work by clicking on my name at Womb Poetry.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, impressions, comments. It's an interactive piece, so turn up your computer speakers and be prepared to move that mouse.

I say more about Postcard Stream here.

Stirring up the airwaves

2007-09-24T22:26:00.000+01:00

An American adventure can quite change things. How do you like this outlook?

Gazing out to sea in Provincetown, Massachusetts:

Or this one?

That's right! You can now hear me in conversation with Merry Gangemi each week on Woman-Stirred Radio, offering commentaries on all things queer-shaped - mostly lesbian-shaped, I have to say - and mostly with a British spin. I'll also often be considering how our British and American cultures spin in and out of influencing each other.

Listen in each Thursday. Stream the whole show live 9pm-11pm in the UK (4pm-6pm Eastern US Time) from WGDR. There are always fantastic guests and great musical choices.

Actually, listen in next on 4th October. We're taking a break this week, but we'll be back!

My not-so-hidden adventures

2007-09-24T22:18:00.000+01:00

Did I forget to tell you more about my American adventures? I think I did. Well, there are plenty of photos over at the Woman-Stirred August 2007 archives.

You can also find videos of Julie R. Enszer and Merry Gangemi reading at Tea & Poetry in the September 2007 archives. I have to say that because here we are in the final week of September already, and soon September will slip away because the nights are drawing in, and ... ok, ok, enough of that!

Poetry Pleasures

2007-09-02T16:05:00.000+01:00

Here is some of what I got up to on my recent visit to the US: reading at the Tea & Poetry event in East Hardwick, Vermont. That's Merry Gangemi giving me a warm welcome. We were to read in the garden at Perennial Pleasures, but it was cold outside that particular afternoon.

The whole trip was fantastic.

I'm treating this piece of video as a test. I hope more will follow, as well as more detail of my adventures.

Travels of a Queer Poet

2007-08-08T20:58:00.000+01:00

Yes - that's me! I'm here, I'm queer, and I'm travelling to the States to read poetry and meet two of my Woman-Stirred friends in person for the very first time. I'm sure you've heard me talk about them before! So that really means I'm not here at all. In fact I'm over there - being queer, and friendly, and a poet. Or at least I will be very soon. If you see what I mean.

Here's what's going on. If you're in the Vermont vicinity, please come along and support us. I'm the one with the English accent.

BLACK SHEEP BOOKS presents:

Three Queer Poets:
Readings by Julie R. Enszer, Merry Gangemi, and Nicki Hastie

Tuesday, August 14 at 7:00 p.m.
at 4 Langdon Street, Montpelier, VT

Julie R. Enszer, a Maryland-based writer and lesbian activist, is published in "Iris: A Journal about Women," "Room of One's Own," "Long Shot," the "Jewish Women's Literary Annual," and the "Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly." Her book, "Homesteading: Essays on Life, Death, Sex, and Liberation," is forthcoming in winter 2008. For more on Julie, see http://www.JulieREnszer.com.

Merry Gangemi lives in Woodbury, VT, and is the host of Woman-Stirred Radio, a weekly queer cultural journal on WGDR 91.1 fm. Her work is published in the "Paterson Literary Review," "Journal of NJ Poets," "Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly," the "Harrington Lesbian Literary Review," "Vermont Woman," and the "Hardwick Gazette." She produces the annual Tea & Poetry series, a Vermont literary festival now in its sixth year. For more on Merry, see http://www.merrygangemi.org.

Nicki Hastie lives in Nottingham, England. She is a founding member of the Woman-Stirred blog. Her work is published in "Chroma," "Diva," "Trouble & Strife," and also in critical anthologies relating to women's health, coming out stories, lesbian fiction, and representations of lesbians in popular culture. For more on Nicki, see http://www.nickihastie.demon.co.uk.

* * *

Black Sheep Books, a community space and bookstore in Montpelier, Vermont, offers affordable radical and scholarly books, and hosts educational events on cultural and political topics. As an all-volunteer project, we are operated by a five-member collective hand in hand with a group of dedicated volunteers. Our principle focus is to provide access to anti-authoritarian Left ideas in a way that promotes intellectual debate and challenges today’s hegemonic culture. Together with horizontalist social movements and political projects, bookstores, infoshops, and publishers, Black Sheep Books works toward an egalitarian, ecological, and nonhierarchical society.

Black Sheep Books
4 Langdon Street, Montpelier, Vermont
www.blacksheepbooks.org / 802-225-8906
Hours: Tues-Sat 11-6, Sun 11-5, Mon closed

And then, on Saturday 18 August, what better than Tea and Poetry?

You really won't want to miss us in the gardens of Perennial Pleasures for this Vermont literary festival, now in its sixth year thanks to the organisational skills and poetic-mindedness of Merry Gangemi. Voluntary donations benefit the AFSC VT office youth outreach and education program.

Readings are at 1pm and 3pm on both Saturday and Sunday. Julie, Merry, and I will be reading on Saturday at 3pm. Don't forget to bring a lawn chair!

Ellen is not alone

2007-08-08T20:28:00.000+01:00

I'd already come out a decade before, and none of us ever thought Ellen was alone in discovering her sexuality, but sometimes you've got to run with the times and make things so much more obvious. So I bought the t-shirt in 1997, the year when Ellen came out, declaring just that: "Ellen is not alone", and I wore it to work as a statement. Not that I was coming out too, because like I said, I was already out. But not everyone chooses to recognise these things, even when it's obvious. And yes - we deserve recognition!

So, it's kind of cool that I should now resemble Ellen in this quiz.

What famous lesbian do you most closely resemble? My Result: Ellen Degeneres You're quick-witted, smart, savvy and you have a killer sense of humor. You are an active member of the Lesbian community and the only closet you're in is the one with all your clothes.
Melissa Ethridge
Katherine Moennig
Rosie O'Donnell
Tammy Lynn Michaels
K D Lang
Portia Di Rossi
Jackie Warner
What famous lesbian do you most closely resemble? Make a Quiz

Coming out. Closet. Clothes. Did you notice how I managed to reference them all in my opening paragraph? Not just a clothes horse, me. Oh no! As for that killer sense of humour ... well ... I rest my case.

Books are for life

2007-07-07T23:53:00.000+01:00

I started cataloguing my book collection once. My lesbian-themed book collection, that is. At the time I started doing this (1993) it was probably seen as a particularly nerdy thing to do, especially using bibliographical software. That did take a certain amount of commitment, and I abandoned the project a few years later. But nothing will dispel my belief that lesbians and libraries really go together very well!

Now, with the help of the latest online tools, it's so much easier for everyone to be a would-be librarian. So I'm trying out LibraryThing, and you can see my most recently acquired books by scrolling down the page and checking out the righthand margin of this blog.

Congratulations to Julie R. Enszer who has two poems published in Queer Collection: Prose & Poetry 2007, and very kindly sent me a copy. This anthology is well worth a read, and the editor is already on the lookout for submissions for the 2008 collection.

Window seat in standard class

2007-06-15T23:32:00.000+01:00

I was in London today. Getting there by train, I had these thoughts.

Not Blue

The pen is black.
If blue I might
have needed to stop
in order to decide
whether to continue.
I could have been
wrongly poised,
paper averse.
For now,
the day is saved.

London-bound

Windows are for looking out and through,
but harsh train lights present my twin,
hovering over opposite tracks.
It's impossible not to see -
half-turned in acknowledgement -
dark circles under eyes,
pores like newsprint dots.
I would not choose this early start.
Beyond me sheep have woken to rain,
resisting dampness beneath railroad arches.
Creatures waiting to emerge from shadows.

Turn-Ups

Yesterday I caught a leaf
in my trouser turn-up.
Was it there all afternoon?
Or did it drop later with the rain?
Carried home in a thoughtful haze,
showing me how to attend to the world.
I scooped it out, a yellow veined disc,
embarrassed what else might have
been not-quite-concealed as we talked.
Crumbs from my lunchtime sandwich?
A crisp from the lunchtime before?
Once I found a paperclip.
I think I can be forgiven one small leaf.
Leaves will fall where they please.

Know Your Tomboy

2007-05-19T16:20:00.000+01:00

This is Out on a dike. I had no choice but to find out my fashion era.

I took the "Retro Runway" quiz on gURL.com
		My fashion is inspired by... the '20s Are you more tomboy than full out fashionista? Do you have a favorite pair of jeans that factor into every outfit? If so, the 1920s is the era for you. Known for shortened hemlines, wild times and a rebellious freedom, this decade shook up many general assumptions about gender. Read more... Which fashion era do you belong in?

That's reassuring. Anything else and I would have needed to appeal!

I'm a Poet

2007-05-09T22:56:00.000+01:00

I took the "If You Were a Poet..." quiz on gURL.com
		I am... Sapphire Do you tell it like it is, even if "it" ain't pretty? Then Sapphire, (aka Ramona Lofton) may be your poetic predecessor. Sapphire is a jewel of a poet, but you won't find any precious language in her books. Read more... Which poet are you?

Gay's The Word Needs Your Support!

2007-03-23T21:50:00.000Z

The last surviving lesbian and gay bookshop in the UK is under threat.

I love Gay's The Word Bookshop. Every time I go to London I try to make the effort to get there - and to buy books. We need bookshops. You can browse online, but you can't hold the books in your hand. It's difficult to come across the surprising find, the older titles, online: the history of our struggles and our celebrations.

Please do what you can to support Gay's The Word. You can sponsor a shelf and help safeguard the bookshop's future.

Read about the authors supporting the bookshop in Times Online and Guardian Online.

Bookshops are a vital part of community-building. Our words are our future!

Let's Talk Toenails

2007-03-23T20:24:00.000Z

Am I missing something? What's wrong with clipping your toenails in the living room? What room would you rather we did it in?

Ok, it was a straight woman writing about The L Word who made the comment about straight men clipping their toenails in the living room being a cliché and a cheap shot at men. But then, the lesbians got in on the act, and someone claimed: "i have never witnessed a woman (regardless of orientation) or a gay man do it" (clip their toenails in the living room, that is).

What world are we living in that women or men (regardless of orientation) are denied living room space to clip their toenails in?

I shave my head on the landing. I clip my toenails, and my fingernails, in the living room. My hair clippers are kept in the cupboard on the landing. My nail clippers are stored in a box in the living room. It makes perfect sense for me and my partner to clip nails in the living room. We collect our nail clippings in a rubbish bin and dispose of them. We don't distribute them all over the carpet and leave them there. We are two adult lesbians living in our own home. We can do what the f**k we like in our own living room!

Since when did toenail clippings become an indicator of gender and/or sexuality?

I guess it's a little sad that I got riled enough to blog about this, given that I seem to have been away from the blog for a month. Plus, I haven't even seen beyond Season 2 of The L Word. Maybe my problem is I feel I'm missing out!

We used to look at a woman's fingernails and make pointed comments. Do we have to check her toenail habits now, too?

A Night of Lesbian Entertainment

2007-02-25T16:01:00.000Z

What might that look like? I can think of a few things. But if I have to start somewhere, then An L of a Night at Nottingham Playhouse paints a satisying image. That's where I spent an enjoyable evening last night, along with my partner and 708 other lesbians! Can you imagine that many lesbians in one room?

Quite what we were all doing there is worth analysis. As host of the evening, Belinda O'Hooley, quipped: "Why would any lesbian want to go out now that The L Word is available on DVD?"

Oh, but it seems that if we are offered our own particular brand of L-entertainment then we will turn out in our hundreds! The event was sold out weeks in advance. L-entertainment. Lentertainment. I like that. I'm sure others have used that word before, but I'll pretend it's a new L Word made up by me just now. I'm not religious, so the peculiarities of Lent tend to go over my head, but I'm pretty sure none of us would choose to give up our lesbians. Not me.

Greymatter opened the evening. They really are very special as a live act, and I enjoy The Indigo Girls influences. Plenty of other influences, too. Em and George as lead vocalists know how to connect with an audience. They have an easy charisma, and it's clear there's a great rapport between them. I'm hoping Greymatter will take up an invitation to be interviewed on Woman-Stirred Radio. Greymatter also played their pre-show publicity well, encouraging their fans to wear the newly-available Greymatter t-shirts. Here's a band that's going places.

Next up was Clare Summerskill with her original songs and comedy dissecting the quirkiness and tribulations of lesbian relationships in a way this audience could definitely relate to. Get us together in a large enough group and we're good at laughing at ourselves. I enjoyed the jokes about wondering what to wear and Clare's comment about it being so much easier if only there was a lesbian clothes shop on every high street. The punchline: "Oh, there is one! We've got Millets."

The interval came, and it's not easy being among that many women when you need to join the toilet queue. Actually, it was entirely civilised and fairly fast-moving - does the average dyke spend less time in a toilet cubicle than other women? It depends what we're doing in there, I suppose. But you do have to wonder if someone can't invent a new system for toileting that takes us more quickly through the relevant stages while still allowing for the highest standards of hygiene and privacy.

Back on stage with Al Start, whom I have to admit I hadn't heard sing before and had mostly overlooked when she was featured in Diva Magazine. She has an engaging image and laid-back stage presence, and my partner Andrea commented to me that she has a look of Matthew Perry from his early Friends days. She does as well. I'd call this cute. Al Start writes tender, rocky songs about her 1970s childhood and personal experiences, and she calls her guitar Mabel. I'm a sucker for women who develop friendships with instruments and objects.

Sue Perkins had top billing. I bet she had her suit, including waistcoat, tailored especially for her. I'm busy looking for a new waistcoat at the moment. Sue Perkins was presented with a comedy gift in the person of Mary, the British Sign Language signer. Sue was never in any danger of being upstaged - she's a consummate professional and performer, making best use of the moment, including audience participation (and lack of it) - but Mary was a total star. Signing some very choice language created hilarious moments, including "verruca" (an audience contribution), "bollocks", "ladynuts" and "special needs mule", which caused confusion when Mary heard this as "special needs meal"! Sue Perkins in live stand-up must be seen.

It was a real shame when one audience member almost spoilt the tone of the whole night, right at the end of Sue's slot, by questioning how often comedians update their material and why it would be worth paying to see a comedian in stand-up regularly. Trust an audience of lesbians to make it a controversial night. As Sue had commented earlier after a joke about the Pope (she's allowed to, she was brought up Catholic), the only murmurs of protest she's ever received doing this routine were from this lesbian audience. Can you believe it? Unfortunately, I can. But you can also rely on an auditorium of lesbians to back up a star performer against a voice of dissent when they believe that voice is wrong. Sue Perkins showed her balls alright, and she got a standing ovation. I hope she doesn't go away cursing the Nottingham audience.

Go and see Sue Perkins in stand-up. There was some wonderful material on Ruth Kelly. Listen to her radio shows. Belinda O'Hooley, very funnily, couldn't remember what those shows are when doing her introduction, but you can see them at Sue's wikipedia entry.

A Night of Lesbian Entertainment should involve supporting our out lesbian performers, if and when we can afford to. I know ticket prices for live performance will always be an issue that excludes some women. We need music, humour, voices and affirmation to enrich our lives. We deserve that.

Why is it we have so few recognised names to invite onto the bill for future L of a Night events? Today, I found this reference to the fact that Sue Perkins' "earnings plummeted 65 per cent in the year after she came out as a lesbian". Makes you think, doesn't it?

Empowering

2007-02-21T19:30:00.000Z

Thank you to everyone who visited my blog for possibly the first time today, or yesterday, following the link from the BBC News website. Shaved heads are big news still - when it's a woman's head. Britney Spears shaving her head appears to be even bigger news. So it's important somebody puts all of this into context, and I appreciate the way the BBC contacted me and invited me to talk about my experience.

Read the BBC News article Mark of a woman. The comments added by readers are very interesting. There are those who object to women shaving their heads. There are others who wonder what all the fuss is about and think we should be talking about something more significant.

Yes indeed, what is all the fuss? I welcome the day there is no fuss. But in the meantime we need to understand that debates focusing on gender and sexual identities underpin the way society is constructed and also govern the way we are expected to lead our lives (informally, and more formally, even into legislative structures). I don't mean to suggest there are any laws (at least none I know of in the UK) about how one may or may not wear one's hair. But fascination, horror and any kind of judgement inbetween indicates just how far we have to go in claiming equal rights - and it's why I'm proud to be a feminist.

Oh right, I hear you say. So she shaves her head because she's a feminist. Typical lesbian-feminist stereotype!

No, actually, or I might have got fed up with the look a long time ago. Remember, I've been shaving my head for nearly 20 years. What being a feminist does is help me to believe in myself and to carry on respecting myself regardless of the people who want to dictate how a woman should be, how she should behave, and how she should look.

On the BBC website, there are also a sizeable number of comments emphasising the liberating and strengthening effects of head shaving, supporting my comment that Britney may be taking control and giving herself a fresh start, on her terms.

I feel empowered by having been invited into the debate outside of this blog. Do I give myself a fresh start, then, every two weeks when I shave my head? I don't always need a fresh start. But I have this amazing opportunity to recognise myself fully, every two weeks - and the best thing is, I still like what I see.

Shaved: when the media has it in for you

2007-02-18T20:14:00.000Z

The stereotypes about women with shaved heads are alive and well, then.

I don't know if Britney Spears is experiencing a breakdown. Perhaps she is. It's none of my business, and not for me to judge. But why should the media assume that choosing to shave her head is the ultimate sign that she's close to the edge and no longer in control of her own actions? Why can't this be an act of self-care? It could be a sign of emotional turmoil, a cry for help, or it could be a sign of someone who has decided to begin a therapeutic relationship with herself. She could very well be signalling the need for change in her life. She could, however, be beginning to take that control for herself.

Admittedly, Britney Spears didn't shave her head in the privacy of her own apartment; she chose to go to a LA hair salon, attended by ravenous paparazzi and fans, a following which is never likely to help a situation appear cool, calm and collected. But this is a woman who has lived most of her life amidst a media circus. It doesn't necessarily mean this was a rash, frenzied or freakish decision.

She had gone from gorgeous pop idol to grim GI Jane.

This is one of the most depressing things I've read today on the subject of Britney's shaved head, and do you know where that's from? Not your average tabloid, but from an article in The Observer. This reaction is not about one female pop idol. This goes to the heart of society's views on female beauty and what is considered acceptable behaviour for women. Shouldn't our Pop Princesses be able to change?

I know all about the exposing effects of shaving your head when you're a woman. I know about the positive effects. I love myself shaved. Shaving my head is an act of self-love. I feel alive, honest, centred, attractive. Isn't this how most women feel when they decide to pamper themselves? Not all of us pamper in the same way. I often feel I think more clearly when freshly-shaved. I feel confident, more totally me. Definitely gorgeous; not at all grim.

I hope the media take their attention elsewhere, allowing Britney Spears to do whatever she needs to do next, whether this is relaunching her career or entering rehab. Did you know the hair salon is now selling Britney's hair on eBay? Lay off the shaved head, you vultures.

Brain dump

2007-02-12T21:07:00.000Z

I've just done another gender-based quiz (thanks for telling me about it, Eloise), and it seems I pretty much have an average female brain. These were my results:

My brain has male and female traits when it comes to spatial ability.

I definitely have a female-type brain when it comes to spot the difference, which makes me good at recalling landmarks to get from one place to another. Could come in handy for some of those women's or Sunday Celebs magazine competitions, too, if I could be bothered (yawn!)

My left thumb is always on top when I clasp my fingers together, which suggests the right half of my brain is dominant. This means I may excel in visual, spatial and intuitive processes. I'm a right-hander but I do a lot with my left hand, and I think my left hand wants me to do more with it so that's why it's dominant ;-)
Apparently, right-brained people may be better fighters and artists.

I'm a slightly better empathiser (11) than systemiser (9) which suggests a female brain. It means I'll always say sorry when I drop the flat pack furniture on your toe ;-)

I'm sensitive to other people's emotions when it comes to looking at people's eyes. Women generally fall into this category.

The length of my fingers, when comparing the ring to index fingers has a ratio closer to that of men than women. So maybe I was exposed to all that testosterone in my mother's womb! You know, I'm rather glad I have a masculine finger ratio.

I prefer more masculine faces. This is no surprise. It's important to know that I was shown women's faces to choose masculine traits in. I guess I do prefer a long, broad and lower jaw and more pronounced cheekbones. Do masculine faces have more pronounced cheekbones? The BBC seem to think they do.

I thought I was good at rotating images. I was good at this in 3rd-year Woodwork. Maybe I'm out of practice. They let me do Woodwork as a girl, but not Technical Drawing (that was out of bounds), so it's the schooling at fault. If I had have done Technical Drawing, I'd be ace at this! Those with a female brain or an arts background fall in the range I did. Oh well - I've got one of those arts backgrounds! That's schooling for you, too.

I definitely outscored anyone - male or female - on the words test. A total of 26 words compared with 11.4 average for men and 12.4 average for women. I associated 18 words with grey and named 8 other words that mean happy. Maybe I've simply got verbal diarrhoea.

If I was doing the test with someone and asked to split the money - well - it stands to reason I'd split the money with them. Which means "split", down the middle. Come on, guys! That's the meaning of split. So I went fifty-fifty. And that is supposed to make my testosterone levels measly! Well, I know better. It's all in the fingers - ha ha!!

Productively me

2007-02-11T19:43:00.000Z

You know, I'm enjoying a really positive weekend. This is how weekends should be. Engaging and productive. I'm reminded how powerful I can be. Other people help that along. I mean, where's the point in being powerful all on my own? It only develops significance when it leads to stronger connections and communications.

I won't go into all the details. But there are a number of personal revelations that have come to the fore this week, and I'm determined to do my best with them. That's number one. On top of that, the holiday plans to meet up with my Woman-Stirred friends are moving along very nicely. This is really going to happen! America, here I come!! And today I was contacted by Mel over at everette_1's journal, who told me she found meaning and motivation in my website words. How about that?

Thanks for getting in touch, Mel. And for inspiring me to do this quiz.

You Are 60% Boyish and 40% Girlish

You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch.
Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes.
You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them.
You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be.

How Boyish or Girlish Are You?

That's not too much of a surprise, is it? It's interesting, though, that I take great pride in coming out slightly more boyish than girlish. I really don't want to do girls down. I love girls. I guess it's just that I love boyish girls and those girls who reject traditional gender roles most of all. Haven't I always known that! Stereotypes, away with you!!

Hair to Stay

2007-01-12T20:32:00.000Z

Good for Shazia Mirza, the British Muslim comedian, whose New Year's resolution was to stop shaving her body hair.

"The hairs are growing quite nicely, and I am now in a position to have my armpits styled and waxed, and my sideburns permed. I am learning to love my hair," she says.

Read the full article here

Is hair really one of the last taboos when it comes to the female body, as this article suggests? Is it true that hairiness will not be tolerated? The comments following this BBC article suggest there might be more diverse opinion lurking in our midst. This could be hopeful. But I realise that the people tempted to comment on women's hairiness are likely to be those who feel most strongly about the issue - for and against.

Why does this issue always capture the media spotlight in January? I last wrote on the subject in my Deeply Depilatory entry on 22 January 2006. Is it because most women can't be bothered to deal with their body hair during the winter months? Is hairiness tolerated only as long as it's covered up? Ah, I see it's not just that. It's also because Shazia is making a TV programme for the BBC, where hairy women will take part in a fashion show, modeling lingerie.

Why does it have to be lingerie? Who needs to be convinced that hairy armpits and hairy legs (and while we're at it, hairy groins) are sexy? I've known this all my adult life.

Who else agrees? Come on - arms up!

Coming Back For More

2007-01-03T18:32:00.000Z

I like Gavin's style. He tagged me back for a further review of things you may not know about me. Can there be more? There must be more, and still enough left over to leave me with at least a small air of mystery.

So here goes. Be warned, there are some lengthy stories here:

I'll get this one out of the way immediately. I didn't make any New Year's Resolutions for 2007. Ha ha! A revelation that reveals nothing. Or does it?

Injustice and inconsistency are the things I find hardest to deal with. The two things are linked in my mind because inconsistency in a person's behaviour often leads to unjust actions. I've seen that most in my working life. I had my first lesson in different kinds of injustice when I was ten years old. There may have been earlier lessons on the topic, but this is the first one I remember where it all turned out rather well. It was a small-scale event from where I sit now, but it filled the world of a ten year old.

A new end to school break times was being trialed. Instead of the whistle being blown and the kids all running or dawdling into classes in a rowdy fashion, we had to stand still for two minutes, in total silence. Only after we'd achieved this were we allowed back inside, continuing our silence. Anyone who made a sound was sent to stand outside the head's office to wait for the wrath of the teacher on duty.

This one break time someone in my group laughed after the whistle. I won't say who it was. It wasn't me. I must have had the guiltiest face, or perhaps I was the one smiling, because Miss Jones pointed me out with the evil finger, and I had to make the walk of shame, alone, past all the other silent pupils into the school. Miss Jones followed me in to let me know how disappointed she was, in me of all people! Later, my class teacher was mad at me too.

That's when something snapped in my head. I didn't mean to be a snitch, but I couldn't stand how they were making me out to be badder than bad, just because they assumed me always to be good - and this time I hadn't even done anything! So I told my class teacher, Mrs Gundy, that it wasn't me. She believed me, but that wasn't the end of it. Just like in all the best police dramas, she wouldn't let me off until I gave her a name. I'm not sure I felt any better for doing that.

I don't remember the other girl getting into trouble, nor giving me the cold shoulder, so perhaps nothing was said to her. I do remember how Miss Jones came to me the next day and said, "You've been dealt an injustice." Injustice was a serious and loaded word in my head, involving governments, laws, courts and prison, so I didn't understand what she meant at first. Then she apologised for what happened after the whistle. "There are all kinds of ways injustice can be experienced," she said. Miss Jones restored me in that moment. I admired her for that. Miss Jones taught me Maths, but this was her best lesson. It made me realise that the smallest things I might say (or not say) in my daily communication with others can have a dramatic effect.

A lot of things happened when I was ten. I read once that ten is meant to be the happiest year in a child's development. I'm not sure how that can be true for all children, or how they tested that statistically. Maybe it's about having one's sense of self more solidly recognised by other people. Reaching double figures is quite something.

Perhaps something that happened when I was ten helped me understand I was a lesbian. Perhaps it opened up the possibility. It happened during a residential school trip to London with all of my class, plus a small group of children from another Herefordshire school. It was late June and a typical British summer. So why would any of us need our coats or waterproofs? That's the decision the lead teacher of our party made. "It's beautiful sunshine. We've got a lot of walking to do. Coats will just weigh you down. Leave your coats on the bus."

It started pissing down with rain on the way to Big Ben. Quite a way from Big Ben, and there was no time to shelter because we were due to hear the great clock chime the hour. There would be other hours, of course, but we were booked in at this particular hour. You can't just walk up Big Ben any time you please.

I was soaked, and the higher we got up the tower the colder I felt. We stood around for what seemed like forever and I shivered and shivered. I was part of a smaller group, led by Mrs Jones*, the only teacher from the other school. It wasn't Mrs Jones who made the decision about the coats. No mother would do that! I somehow know she was a mother; maybe because I watched her help two children out of the back seat of her car when, in a brief moment of astonished excitement, I saw her a couple of years later outside our local shops. But I didn't see her as a mother at the top of Big Ben. Nor even a teacher. She was already interesting because she had no existing relationship to me, none of the traditional authority figure presence that was within my ten year old's understanding. She was almost magical. It was as if she had appeared from nowhere to accompany us on a week's holiday.

It seems unlikely that I would be the only one shivering. But I'm the one that Mrs Jones instinctively, naturally, yes, maternally, took in her arms and hugged and hugged. It was such a fantastic moment of human warmth, I loved her for it.

I enjoy watching The World's Strongest Man. It's an annual event which is so much a part of the Christmas/New Year holiday for me, and I look forward to it every year.

Do I watch it as a form of human freakery? I'm not sure that I do, although there is something fascinating about the human body's potential to recreate itself out of the realms of the ordinary. I do make assessments of these men's bodies. There is certainly more appeal to the well-toned solid muscle men than those whose sheer bulk is padded out with flab. And yet these men all compete against each other, all heights, weights and body shapes. And there can be surprising winners!

The World's Strongest Man is on TV every night this week. The final's on Friday. It doesn't encourage me to take up body-building, or consider the muscle tone of men outside of such a contest, but I certainly enjoy being a spectator at this high-end of the sport.

In the summer of 1989 I worked in a psychiatric hospital as a cleaner. This is how I learned that I have an allergy to rubber gloves. I learned quite a few other things there. But say no more - for now!

*And yes, both teachers depicted in 2. and 3. really were called Jones.

The Twelve Books of Christmas

2006-12-30T14:19:00.000Z

There is something enjoyable about making lists at the year end, and particularly if the items on those lists have already happened. So I'm going to show you part of my last diary entry from 1986. It makes me feel I already knew myself pretty well back then.

December 30th 1986

So, how was my Christmas?

Not too bad, thankyou, although I did feel decidedly ill Christmas Day. I felt as if I was going to develop a bad case of flu - I was shaking and had thumping headaches all day - but in the end it came out in just a simple cold, so I haven't suffered too much since, apart from feeling slightly as if I'm to be sick every now and then - which is not, I must make clear, due to eating too much or anything like that, for I haven't indulged half so much as I usually do. Saying that, I have just eaten my way through a large bag of Marks & Spencer's spring onion flavour crisps - but that's hardly my fault - I didn't realise what I was doing sitting here, and, anyway, I've got rather a passion for them - even if everyone else complains they smell terrible. I hadn't noticed!

Altogether I had twelve books of different descriptions. I had asked specifically for books this Christmas.

Let's see - what did I have?
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Literature
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Roget's Thesaurus
The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
Selected Poems Elizabeth Jennings
Persephone Jenny Joseph
Later Poems R.S. Thomas
Cagney and Lacey Serita Deborah Stevens
Wifey Judy Blume
Other Women Lisa Alther
The Swimming Pool Season Rose Tremain
and one Mum bought for herself,
The Christmas Tree Jennifer Johnston,
but gave to me because she was afraid to tell Dad she had been spending his money on herself instead of on Christmas presents!!

Hmm - that sums it up nicely, including the rather pointed comment about Mum spending Dad's money. Growing up, I did always have the sense that Dad felt he went out and earned the money, that it was his money, and the rest of us simply spent it. I'm glad to say he's far more relaxed about the way finances are shared now, and how they're spent.

As for the books I had for Christmas in 2006? Don't you want to know about those?

The Best of Smash Hits: The '80s
Robert Smith: The Cure & Wishful Thinking, an unofficial and unauthorised biography by Richard Carman
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic Alison Bechdel

Does that indicate I'm becoming less literary and more musical? Not really. I guess it just proves how nostalgic I am for the 1980s. Mind you, I do have a new musical companion. I call him Spike. He's an i-Cat. We'll be grooving together to our favourite music during 2007.

Five Things You May Not Know About Me

2006-12-28T19:43:00.000Z

I'm honoured that Julie R. Enszer has tagged me for another meme. This one could be a bit difficult because I have a tendency to give a lot away; things simply spill out sometimes. And perhaps I enjoy talking about myself a little too much. Don't we all?

One thing I'd like to ask readers of this blog (although perhaps not now, and perhaps there aren't even very many of those readers) is: what are the main five things you already think you know about me? Some of those would be obvious, I'm sure, but I hope there might be a few surprises in there. Anyway, putting that aside, here are five things you maybe didn't know about me.

It's impossible not to be influenced a little by the person who tags you, so I've also come up with an election theme for my first "thing". When I was fourteen, a mock election was held at my school and my English class was chosen to address the whole school as prospective candidates. Not being one to follow the crowd, I decided to stand for The Stronger Knicker Elastic Party - unknown until I invented them. I wish I still had my speech, because it was very uplifting (ho ho ho!), and I remember having props on stage (unless I fantasised that part later!) I was miles behind when all votes were counted. That didn't matter. What I remember most about this early political opportunity is the backing I got from the teachers and some of the Fifth Formers (the oldest students). The teachers weren't eligible to vote but a number of them walked through "my door" out of the assembly hall in order to indicate support. The younger students just thought I was being silly, but the teachers recognised I wasn't disrespecting or making fun of the task itself. They made me feel I was making a strong satirical and intellectual challenge to traditional party politics. And I believe I was. Even if I didn't know it when I started out. I've believed in the power of well-placed irony ever since.

When I was eight or nine (maybe even a little older) I made up scenes in my head where I starred as Jim Bob from the Waltons. What more do you want me to say? Jim Bob was the only dude to be. The others were too old, and Elizabeth wasn't butch enough.

I love playing those crane machines in the amusement arcades when I'm on holiday. I'm pretty good at it too. I've won quite a pile of unnecessarily ugly soft toys over the years. I will happily feed 20 pences, and sometimes pound coins into those machines until the jaw-like/claw-like mechanism rewards me with a win. I wander round them all carefully first, checking out the different prizes. I won't play for just any old tat or crap. Monkeys and gorillas are particular favourite winnings. One of my favourite wins of all time, though, has to be Andrew the Penguin. Do you remember him, from Creature Comforts? (I can't believe Andrew doesn't get a mention on that page!)
I taught myself to juggle one Christmas (I think it must have been 1991) with a set of juggling bunnies. This was pretty fortunate because it meant I could take part in an HIV/AIDS awareness-raising event organised by LASS (Leicestershire AIDS Support Services), where a group of us took to the streets of Leicestershire (deepest rural Leicestershire in some cases) in full fancy dress. We made our own juggling balls out of balloons and lentils (do try this at home!), and they turned out very well. What didn't go down so well in some places - Coalville, a former coal-mining town being one of them - was our attempt to hand out bright pink carrier bags with the words "Promoting Sexual Health" emblazoned on them. Oh well! A few years later (1995) I started working for LASS with the Women's Health in Prostitution (WHIP!) project and one day I made an emergency delivery of condoms, by bicycle, to a woman who worked from her home basement.
When I was a child my favourite colour was yellow. This was helpful because I have an older sister and brother whose favourite colours, respectively, were blue and red. So I always got to play with my favourite colour marker when we played games with red, blue, green and yellow icons (or versions thereof). Now, I'd say my favourite colour is orange. Closely followed by green, leaning to the khaki end of green when it comes to clothes.

I tag:

Kellie of The Book of Kellies, because I hope she will be glad to know I'm still alive and well in the blogosphere

Eloise of The Tyranny of Toast and Tea, because she was so good at responding to the last meme

Gavin Stewart of Betwixt & Between, because he's just been awarded his PhD (congratulations Gavin!) and he must surely need something else to think about!

So - go on - write down five things about yourself that others probably don't know, and pass it on.

At Cross Purposes

2006-11-10T23:38:00.000Z

I was cross about a lot of things twenty years ago. I still get cross occasionally, and probably about very similar things. I don't do anger well or I would use that word instead. I do get angry but it's an emotion which becomes easily confused with frustration at other people's inability to comprehend (or unwillingness to allow) my point of view, and that's when I tend to cry. I don't often cry these days, but anger will usually tip me. Being cross, however, holds connotations of English reserve and the "stiff upper lip" and perhaps that keeps me (even if in a self-conscious parodic way) on the safe side of trembly lip syndrome.

Anyway, what does this have to do with anything? Not much. It's just a way to introduce another story from my teenage diary years.

I can tell this story, and reproduce the newspaper article, because R (you remember R, the young woman I was in love with 20 years ago) wasn't at College that day, so she missed the photo-call. That's a piece of good fortune, don't you think? I can see it like that all these years later. This plays right into my hands for the nostalgic version of teenage romance, where R needs to remain as anonymous as I can keep her. Back then, of course, it was devastating to know the love of your life was lying on her sick bed several miles away, completely out of reach.

I remember the day the photographer arrived from the Hereford Times. We were in costume. I was in my full servant-girl regalia, complete with lace doilly on my head. He asked our names and wrote them down in his notebook. I can still recall the look he gave me. It was one of puzzlement. Explained later, perhaps, when the piece appeared in the paper and I was credited as "Nicholas Hastie".

Could he not tell if I was a girl or a boy, even when dressed as a maid? He should have gone for Nick and it would have worked for all. I wasn't even cross-dressing. If it looked like I was it was purely unintentional. Unlike R, who did do the full female-to-male dressing-up bit in a fatherly role, complete with greying whiskers - and I have a personal photo to prove it. It hadn't crossed my mind until now that maybe she didn't turn up because she didn't want to appear in the local paper dressed that way.

Suffice to say, being called Nicholas made me cross. Very cross. I annotated the newspaper cutting with "How dare they!!" But in a funny kind of way, it was far, far better than being called Nicola, a name I disown except in legally-binding situations.

November 8th 1986

We are putting on a play called Hindle Wakes set in Lancashire, in February - I play the part of Ada, the maid, who doesn't do a lot except carry trays backwards and forwards and repeat 'Yes Sir', 'No Sir' ('Three bags bloody full Sir'). I can't say that I look much like a typical maid with my short hair and defiant look.

I get increasingly more depressed about being a lesbian with no other lesbians to talk to. Yesterday I bought a book called Three Ply Yarn by Caiea March which tells the story of three women who develop as lesbians. The author herself is a lesbian. I have already finished reading it and found it wonderful - if I cannot meet other lesbians I have to make do with lesbian literature. It's not easy buying books with the word 'lesbian' on the book cover, even if no-one else sees it - you feel they do and that they are judging you. I was quite afraid of bringing it home and the family seeing what it is about, but they only connect the subject matter with my interest in feminism and women's issues. I often find it difficult to understand how they cannot recognise my own feelings, but it seems that they don't.

Oh, I find it so hard, and I hurt so much - knowing how difficult my life could be, living with prejudice - not being understood. One of my greatest reasons for getting away to University (as well as desperately wanting to do an English degree) is to meet other lesbians there, to join the lesbian society, and be with a community of people I can relate to and who will understand how I am feeling.

Yesterday, something that R said hurt me deeply. She said something to L suggesting that she was concerned about something or other, and L said 'Don't worry sweetheart. It'll be alright,' and touched her arm. R sprang back, saying 'Hey, get off, you' and they both laughed. R isn't a lesbian - I'm not going to get anywhere. I only get hurt because I love her so much. I feel, though, that I want to tell her I am a lesbian without mentioning I love her, because she is my best friend and I want to be absolutely open with her. I really feel I need to say something to her. I don't think she would hate me. I think she would support me as a friend - tonight there is a party at 'Mr T's' - I want to say something to R tonight, if it would be at all possible - but the thought is so frightening. I need to talk to her, though. I've made it obvious to her that I am having a trauma - she probably thinks it is because of the hassle of University applications - I would like to tell her the truth. I'm so fed up with not being able to speak my mind. I do feel so isolated within my own emotions.

Five Things Feminism Has Done For Me

2006-10-17T20:12:00.000+01:00

Julie, of Julie R. Enszer fame, has tagged me for this meme. I've never been handed a meme before. Thanks Julie! If it's your first meme it seems obligatory to reveal this. This is my first. That's a piece of history, don't you think? Ok - Julie didn't actually tag me on this very day; it's taken me a couple of days to get round to this post. But seeing as it's One Day in History day, and I'm about to take part in the biggest blog in history a little later on, I may as well attempt to give 17 October 2006 as much historical significance as I can.

So - Five Things Feminism Has Done For Me:

Given me a "home", in that it gave me a place to access and read about lesbians and to realise I could be who I knew I was, even though lesbian reading material didn't seem readily accessible when and where I was growing up. Feminism gave me the "Sexual Politics" shelf in the local public library, full of feminist tomes from the 1960s and 1970s, and some if not all of them had the L-word inside. Feminists had done enough by the mid-1980s that even John Menzies in Hereford sold Spare Rib magazine.

Enabled me to connect with wonderful women and wonderful minds across the globe. In thought and word and deed, my life is richer and stronger.

Encouraged me to be a lover and critiquer of life. Thanks to feminism I am able to question the world and the words I hear, and to recognise when I am being fed bullshit. Feminism has also helped me to recognise when bullshit is being spoken in the name of feminism.

Taught me that my life experiences and my energy can make a difference, that the personal is always political and my voice is worth hearing. I write now, as a feminist, because I had feminist teachers and friends who helped me to believe in myself.

Given me the strength to present myself in the way that feels comfortable for me - for example, the way I dress, the way I wear my hair - irrespective of convention and gendered expectations. Not so as to be deliberately challenging, but if anyone wants to challenge me, at least I know I can face the challenge and come out the other side with my integrity intact.

Without feminism, I wouldn't be Out on a dike.

I would like to invite my Woman-Stirred friend, Merry Gangemi of Quiddities, Lou McGill over at Being and Nothingness, who has always had far more being in her than nothingness, and Eloise who sees into and beyond The Tyranny of Toast and Tea, to continue this meme.

Up Close and Personal

2006-10-16T23:04:00.000+01:00

That's better, isn't it! I couldn't take too much more of myself with long hair, so it's about time I wrote something new and knocked the wig off the top spot.

In fact, I need to present my scalp to you, just to prove it's still there.

Well, if you're interested in my musings and how my mind ticks occasionally, here's something else you might want to read. I tell you, celebrating the eleventh anniversary of your relationship (as Andrea and I did on 8th October) really gets you thinking.

Thank goodness we're not the marrying kind, or we might have felt inclined to exchange gifts on a steel theme. Maybe we could do with a new kitchen sink, but it wouldn't have been top of my list. I am a bit disappointed now, however, to discover that I missed out on a pair of roller skates. Damn! If I was more aware of these anniversary metals/alloys, I could have dropped appropriate hints.

Part-time Model

2006-10-05T22:20:00.000+01:00

How do you like me with long hair?

I only seem to dress up for charity. We had a Macmillan Coffee Morning at work last Friday and the opportunity to have your photo taken in a range of wigs/hats was part of the deal if prepared to part with some cash.

Don't forget to look out your denims as tomorrow is Jeans for Genes day.

Stories of Origins

2006-10-01T21:05:00.000+01:00

I just wanted to say that the memory project is continuing, but I've been going a little further back than usual recently as part of a discussion with my Woman-Stirred colleagues. So I'm going to reproduce here what I had to say over there on the origins of a writer.

***

I don't know what light my early poems and drawings might shed on the woman and poet I am now, but I know I'm very glad that I've kept them. The Woman-Stirred women have been discussing our earlier lives this week, and wondering why we choose to share certain stories and images with each other. Are we simply looking to build connection, and sharing whatever aims to do that best? Or are we deliberately constructing a particular image, a preferred image for all the others to see?

I wanted to be a writer as young as age seven, probably a lot earlier. In fact, my publishing ambitions may have their origins in a lecture Miss Lambert gave my first year infant class when I was still a small four-year old. A lecture? To four year olds? It had that effect on me, certainly. It was a stern and solemn lecture. In other words, a telling off. She told the class that we should all be ashamed of ourselves, for not one of us would be appearing in the school magazine that year.

This was an important lesson. It may have been my first real and personal understanding of injustice. I knew I had worked very hard in my first term, and this news hit me hard. I remember feeling hot and bothered and almost incapable of keeping still as I sat on the floor with legs crossed, struggling to remain silent. Perhaps it was not our efforts but our age that was against us?

In that moment, as Miss Lambert made me feel shame, I was determined never to find myself in this position again, not if I could help it. I never again wanted to have that feeling of underachievement. And that placed a whole new burden on me for the rest of my schooldays. I would work harder and harder, until my work was acknowledged. Except working harder and harder soon became the norm everyone expected from me.

This is a long preamble to a couple of poems I wrote as a seven or eight year old. I don't know what these poems have to tell the world now. Cartoons are good, perhaps. They fire the imagination; just don't watch too many. Be sure to maintain a balance and keep an eye on the natural world also. I don't know. Perhaps these poems say: never underestimate a child.

Tom and Jerry

Tom and Jerry
Were having a tug of war with a berry.
Jerry went ouch,
And Tom went eugh.
It splattered on the floor,
And Tom's bottom became sore.
Tom ran after Jerry,
Jerry hid in a bottle of sherry.
Tom drank the sherry,
And there was Jerry.
Jerry ran across the lawn,
And landed in a prawn.
Tom ate the prawn,
His tail felt like it had been sawn.
He spat Jerry out,
And Jerry looked about.
Tom turned red
And went to bed.

Birds

Birds are singing,
Birds are swinging.
They build a nest
Away in the West.
The babys are squeaking and cheaping,
I can hear a bird weeping.
We have got twenty three budgirigars,
In budgirigars there is two r's.

© Nicki Hastie the Younger, 1976/1977

Perhaps I should be grateful to Miss Lambert. Did her words actually fire my desire and passion to write? Just look at those red teacher ticks I was getting for my drawings by age seven!

Lost and Found

2006-09-08T23:25:00.000+01:00

Given the subject of my earlier post on the politics and significance of Coming Out, I think some entries from my twenty-year-old diary should be allowed to stand alone. I'll begin with an early poem which is stepping out of the closet (the closed pages of a diary) for the very first time today.

September 6th 1986

I Did Not Want to Lose You

"I did not want to lose you."
Said a thousand times in a lifetime
to a thousand different lives.
All of them lost.
No longer mine, nor were they ever;
free to walk out and slam the door in my face.
But memories don't fade.
Occasionally the door moves ajar,
the movement of a silent puff of wind –
or is it my sigh?
And I see them standing there
in a crowd of faces of which I know none.
Moved on to a new playground
as mine has rusted over with tears.
Lost from touch, but touchingly stored,
because I did not want to lose you.

September 8th 1986

Oh, I'm so glad to be back at College. I am so happy in having seen R and in spending nearly all of the day in her company. I am incredibly happy, lively and interested when in her company. I love her; how I love her. We are good friends and nothing more, but I love just being with her, talking to her, laughing with her. She means a great deal to me. When at College there isn't so much time in which to worry and get depressed - and this is good for me. I don't have to sit and worry about what a problem being a lesbian can be, although some of my fears are lived out at College.

Sitting in the Common Room at dinner-time, all the other girls can do is sit and eye up the new first-year boys and talk really suggestively to each other about the males they sight. That's all they did today - any new male that appeared they rushed to stare at him in order to rate his dress sense and looks and to discuss how good he would be in bed. Of course I don't play a part in this conversation - I just laugh at their behaviour and refuse to mind that I play no part - but, it is quite upsetting, I must admit. It does make you realise that you're different - it's not other people who make you an outsider, it's your own thoughts. I get no enjoyment from oggling the boys. There's no point in forcing myself - I refuse to live out a pretence.

It's true what one woman said on the lesbian programme I watched - nearly all the conversation of friends is to do with some aspect of sexuality - but homosexuality is different - rather a taboo subject. It is okay to talk for hours and hours about boy/girl relationships but I am forced to keep silent about my sexuality.

R doesn't come into the Common Room. I rather wish that she did because I would sit with her, and I wouldn't mind what she did or said. It wouldn't bother me because I love her and I know I have her friendship. Love does make a great deal of difference - it is extremely important - and so very, very strong.

I was standing close to R at one point today and as she moved her breasts rubbed against my arm. I was very aware of this fact, and my thought at the time was: does she know she's doing this? I nearly allowed myself to believe that she had rubbed against me purposely because she stayed close for quite a number of seconds and made no movement to change position. I suppose, though, that she didn't notice or thought nothing of this happening because she has no thought of me sexually - whereas I am obviously going to be extremely aware of her and her body. It's sad, really, to think of the frustrations between people and the secrets that they keep.

I had thought that I might be afraid to touch R because of how I feel about her, but I am so glad that this is not the case. I have no anxiety, no nerves in touching her impulsively in order to capture her attention. This fact is a great relief to me because it shows that I act naturally with her - something which I must do. And, oh how naturally do I act! - I am so comfortable with R, so much at ease - so much in need of her being with me.

Keeping On Coming Out

2006-09-08T22:53:00.000+01:00

My response to Julie R. Enszer's Washington Blade column.
Please read Julie's article and join the debate:

Julie R. Enszer won’t be celebrating National Coming Out Day this year. She says the focus on individual action, encouraging each person to come out and tell their story, has resulted in a whole generation of narcissistic queer people and doesn’t further the human rights cause. Julie believes that equality can only be achieved through an awareness of social responsibility and collective action.

I agree with this last part, and that an individual’s contribution to furthering LGBT rights needs to go beyond telling a friend, a family member or a total stranger. But I don’t believe you can ever promote communal responsibility by denying the impact that coming out has for individuals and for our LGBT communities.

Julie recognises how coming out continues to be significant for people newly coming out, but she thinks that “we have exhausted the potential and promise of coming out” beyond this. I can’t support this view. It is the act of coming out which gives the individual their initial access to community and access to the vital resources which are necessary to begin taking political steps forward.

Do we ever really exhaust coming out possibilities, as Julie suggests? Coming out is a process and something we have to do throughout our entire lives with each new person we meet. I’m aware that homophobia and heterosexism lead me to acts of self-censorship (however small) on a regular basis. Most of us don’t have the luxury of being always out. However out I feel in general, I don’t necessarily feel able to talk openly in conversation with everyone I meet. There will be brief encounters when it just doesn’t seem appropriate. There are other times I value self-protection.

Having to make the decision about whether to come out in each new situation reminds me that equality is far from being won. It has often been my individual vulnerability which has spurred me to communal action. Being reminded that coming out can still be a daily hurdle is why I give money to Stonewall, the UK organisation campaigning for equality and justice for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals; it’s why I have volunteered with LGBT organisations; it’s why I participate in high profile Pride marches (I can’t yet bring myself to call them parades); it’s why I write about my lesbian life at every opportunity.

I have highlighted the issue of coming out, and my own personal story, in much of my writing. Does this make me narcissistic, inward-looking? By making my story public I like to feel I’m engaged in building community and encouraging dialogue. When I was a teenager, scared and isolated, I searched for stories that spoke to me as a young lesbian and, unfortunately, I found too few of them. I may have begun my coming out twenty years ago, and my teenage experiences could now be considered historical by some, but I know that people continue to relate to and find value in this story.

There may be aspects of narcissism in queer culture, but I don’t think we should be blaming the cultural emphasis on coming out for this. Coming out isn’t enough to change the world, as those of us already doing it know; but it is a starting place for many who do wish to contribute to a larger vision. When our personal stories are gathered together they build queer culture. They are small parts of the rich queer culture that Julie herself has celebrated in another recent essay, Queer Culture: Our History and Our Legacy, where she states: “We need all forms of collecting, documenting and cataloguing our culture”.

Context is everything, and coming out continues to be powerful and significant in my life. However, I will choose the days I come out, and when it feels appropriate. I don’t need a National Coming Out Day to assist me. But I understand that other people do. So I’m not ready to get over coming out. And isn’t the point of this day that it is a day of collective action; a day we can confront our communal truth that homophobia and heterosexism are societal problems? A day that may encourage others to take their first step into community and begin a commitment to communal well-being?

I may not agree with Julie's whole stance, but I certainly agree we need opportunities to reconsider our actions and define our positions. For this reason I thank Julie for her commitment to encouraging debate, just as I admire her preparedness to be controversial.

And other acronyms beginning with C

2006-08-27T20:24:00.000+01:00

Thank goodness I'm not the only one who remembers CLASS - the Cagney and Lacey Appreciation of the Series Society, a UK fan club that I joined in 1986. It continued until the very early 1990s, when it almost seamlessly morphed into an appreciation group for Sharon Gless alone, who was then starring in The Trials of Rosie O'Neill. I have a yellow rose (Rosie) pin badge to prove my interest continued.

I've just come across an article in Attitude, a UK gay male fashion magazine, from before it had a web presence. Fortunately, the author, David Spedding, has created his own archive, and this is from May 2001. This paragraph stood out:

It's now two decades since the show first appeared on American screens. It was cancelled three times in its existence, re-instated twice as a result of public outcry. Plainly, there's still the hugest affection for Cagney & Lacey. An internet fansite still exists, the cannily-named Cagney And Lacey Infortainment Terminal. Or, acronymically-speaking, CLIT. "I love that," laughs Gless today. "How great is that? And there's the Cagney and Lacey Appreciation of Series Society in the UK, or CLASS. Clit and class," she chuckles. "No shame in either of those!"

I love that too, Sharon. Even more, I love that you love it. Nothing can beat a bit of CLIT and CLASS!

David Spedding indicates that Christine Cagney wasn't just a lesbian icon:

Blonde, gorgeous, twinkly-eyed and blessed with the kind of deep-throated cackle that one associates with a '50-Woodbines-before-brekky' habit. She looked angelic, but could speak like a dimestore hooker when the occasion demanded it. That perfect blend of 'Hard-ass toughness' with 'heart-of-goldenness' that would subsequently establish itself as a pre-requisite for any potential shag. In short, she was my perfect boyfriend.

Ah, David, bless! But us dykes spotted her first!!

If any other members, or particularly the founders, of CLASS ever drop by this blog, please say Hi. Better still, if anyone is still keeping CLASS running in some form, it would be great if you could let me know. Ann Rutherford was the woman who wrote back to me in May 1986 after I made an early enquiry. I don't know what was in my original note, but she told me:

"Flattery always pays - and you have made sergeant in that!"

This is a lesson I've never forgotten, and better still, I didn't even need to sit the sergeant's exam.

Memory Jig

2006-08-26T16:47:00.000+01:00

I promised I would look out some material from an unfinished project which I began back in 2001, which attempts to adapt my teenage diaries into a more interactive multimedia affair. This project takes raw material from the 1980s and attempts to set this against the backdrop of the internet.

If I could have written the same words I wrote in my diary, and actually emailed them to a 'Secret Friend' who may have responded, what difference might that have made? What if the internet had existed when I was first coming out? These are some of the questions I hoped to consider.

This project is another aspect of my Coming Out Hypertext. In fact, I originally imagined these pages as part of that story, but hadn't yet found a way to weave them in. So it's worth starting the reading there, or with my commentary.

These next few links are previously unseen. I wanted to draw out the serious nature and poignancy of the subject matter, and also lighten it by drawing attention to my adolescent urgency and intensity, allowing myself to be self-mocking. That's where the Cagney and Lacey theme fits in.

I really was a paid-up and very proud member of the Cagney and Lacey Appreciation of the Series Society (CLASS) in the mid to late 1980s. I have no evidence to back this up, but even at the age of 16 I understood there were probably a number of lesbians behind the CLASS administration. Call it a Sharon Gless fan's intuition!

Start off with Nicki's Inbox or start at Nicki's Sent Items and click between the two using the link in the top right-hand corner.

If you don't follow the link from within one of the emails, you might also want to observe Nicki's first Chatroom experience at the imaginary Girl2Girl Zone. This page is very bare of images, I'm aware of that, and I'm still contemplating what images would be appropriate to convey a 1980s online literacy. Perhaps the absence of images is what's important.

There's a lot more to be done to really round-off (do I mean complete?) this project, so if you want to encourage me to take this and the Coming Out Hypertext further, I'll be really grateful for your comments - on the blog or by email.

For another persepctive and more background on this concept of re-working memory and diaries, you could also visit VirtualDayz, the blog of Elayne Zalis, whose work focuses on digital experiments with personal and cultural memory.

An aside on The L Word

2006-08-26T15:48:00.000+01:00

I watched the first two episodes from The L Word: second season last night. The opening titles are a little strange, and I don't remember anything quite like them in the first season, but the more I watch, the more I think this show has a lot going for it. It's not my life, that's for sure. However, it has a fine mixture of emotion, titillation and recognition of how dyke relationships and friendships can be, and enough of a balance between different women's storylines, to keep me intrigued and attentive. I actually think the more years of lesbian life you have behind you, the more you're likely to get out of this show.

L Words and P Words

2006-08-21T19:26:00.000+01:00

For those who care about my TV watching and are rather concerned it has become a desert recently, I am now in possession of the the DVD box set - The L Word: the complete second season. It's exciting to see that it has been given an 18 certificate. The first season was only rated a 15. I'm promised that this is "A television series full of genuine emotion and authentic stories".

Of course, you know me by now (or do you?), and how I love authenticity.

The only difficulty now is finding time to watch all these episodes. Until I sat down on the settee on Saturday night for the beginning of a new series of The X Factor (come on, it's classic telly not to be missed!) I'd almost forgotten what the TV was for. I'd begun to think it was Andrea's entertainment centre only; like the computer is mine.

I'm sure I'll find a way to cope with all this sensory stimulation.

For anyone else wondering if I'm going to open the diary tonight - oh, go on then, I will - just for you. I introduce you to Nicki, the young philosopher ...

August 20th 1986

I think I am quite looking forward to going back to Sixth Form in two-and-a-half weeks time. It will be fun to see all the new first years and to be able to look back on our time in the first year. It seems so far away, those first few weeks at Sixth Form. I feel so different now. I'm not sure whether it would be true to say I have got more self-confidence, but I feel I have a greater ability to cope with things now. I also want to get back into the swing of things. I miss the college routine and people in a way - though that'll probably be forgotten after a couple of weeks back - then I'll be wanting to be home again.

It's a funny fact about the human being that we all want that one thing which is just out of our reach. Perhaps it isn't that surprising - we all have our dreams - or maybe, even, there is no need for certain things to be out of reach. We simply have to possess that driving ambition to score points of meaning and fulfillment in our lives.

August 24th 1986

It is really exciting writing poetry because you just have this idea - a few lines or words - and you start out on a poem, not knowing yourself how the finished product is going to turn out, just knowing what your basic message is. I find it really amazing. I am excited and exhilarated about writing. It doesn't bother me that much if I never become the recognised writer that I dream of (well it does) - but at least I can bring pleasure and energy into my own life. That's what it is - Poetry is an Energy. You don't have to write poetry to realise the power. Poetry speaks and by reading you can have a share in that energy.

Could Nicki, the young writer have a point?

A nod, A kiss, A remembering

2006-08-17T20:42:00.000+01:00

A-level results came out today, and for the first time in 19 years I cared about those results again - this time, for another. When I got my results I pretty much stopped writing a diary that I had been keeping over a period of four years. There were a few more entries, but nothing significant once I had my gateway to a new life. I didn't have time to keep a diary once I was at university. I didn't have time to be so self-obsessed. Or maybe I just got self-obsessed in new ways. This is very possible. Being self-obsessed is certainly not the domain of the young.

A good example of self-absorption is this passage, from the summer of my first outing, those 20 years ago. True love never did run a smooth course. The most intriguing aspect of this story, perhaps, is that I was dressed as in the photo during the party events described below. The moustache was painted on and didn't last the night - but I write about that elsewhere. These are the details from the diary, where it's interesting to note that a description of the costume doesn't even feature. You'd have thought I could have looked into the future and given a nod to my Out on a dike self, wouldn't you?

August 17th 1986

When I think I've got everything sorted in my mind something happens to send me reeling once more. Last night N had a party at Greyfriars - her going-away party before she goes to work in France. I spent the second half of the party in the company of A. I didn't want to, though - what I wanted above all was to have R [the young woman I was in love with] there so that I could talk to her and have fun with her - but, of course, she wasn't there and so I was afraid of not enjoying myself by having no-one to talk to. So, I sat down and talked to A and some others and it was obvious that A wanted to be with me. We were just talking and he took my hands.

What I'm trying to say is that it wasn't important to me that I was with him, that it was A and he was male - I wanted company of some sort, just to be held so I wouldn't feel lonely. I didn't have any strong feelings for A (not like the last time I got off with him) - it wasn't like that at all. He's just a friend and I suppose perhaps we used each other - both wanted someone to show us attention. Therefore it was extremely relaxed - neither of us are looking for a relationship - A isn't one for long-term relationships and I certainly don't want a boy/girl relationship. I don't feel anything for him - nothing more than a friend. What we did most was talk - about L and K [the same friends I was on holiday with] and their problems over G and S [their boyfriends].

K hasn't been going out with S for a couple of months now, but she hadn't been able to forget him, still went on and on about how much she loved him. Finally, last night, she realised that he is not what she needs, and as B has asked her out she is now going to turn her attention to him, although B doesn't know yet that K will accept him because he asked her out a week ago when she was still wrapped up with S. L and G are constantly falling out. They split up for a while last week and in this period apart G and H got off with each other, so now L and K hate H. L and G are back together (but I don't know how long for) - they were definitely not too happy with each other last night.

So, you see, things are very difficult at the moment. At least K shouldn't be so depressed from now on - I hope B is really the person she likes. She kept telling me last night how lovely she thinks he is - and he is a very caring, considerate person. They should be good for each other just as long as K has totally given up on S, as she says she has.

Back to A: it's awful to say this but when we kissed I wasn't really thinking of him. It wasn't important to me who I was with - although it was insomuch as I'm glad it was A, someone I know and like - not some unknown greasy bod whom I might have thought detestful. But, what I'm trying to say is, it didn't matter what sex he was. I was thinking of R a lot more than I was thinking of A. I enjoyed being with him and having the company and comfort of his arm around me, and I'm so glad I was with him and not alone. I suppose I feel awful because I didn't want contact with a male, but it had to be because A expected it of me. I think I just shut my mind off to what I was really doing. I kept wanting to explain to L and K that what I'd said about me being gay was important and not something I'd said just at that particular time. [Dear Reader, let's be clear - all I did was snog him!]

K asked me if I'd enjoyed myself last night, if I was happy - and she understood when I said I was confused. She has offered herself if I need someone to talk to about my 'problem' and I told her that I would probably be requiring her counselling services pretty soon. I'm confused because I think I am gay, and it's R I love and want to be with - yet it was A I ended up with. Sometimes it seems to me that it's conformity and relationships with boys or loneliness. I don't want loneliness, but women mean more to me. This is my difficulty, my struggle.

Maybe something good has come out of last night - there was no real physical attraction or attachment on my part to A. It was nice just to be able to give him a peck, and walk away saying 'See you' without having to be thinking of him and worrying when I will see him next. This fact helps me to realise that thinking and feeling like a homosexual is not just my fantasy but a real part of me. Perhaps I have tested my feelings and come out on the side I desired. But, such a lack of attachment can be frightening if I am not going to be able to develop my homosexuality - for it means I might find it hard to be happy.

Ah well, it seems none of us are without problems.

Ah well, indeed!

Where has all the summer gone?

2006-08-14T21:39:00.000+01:00

I've put my arms and legs away for a bit, folding them carefully inside artificial coverings. But hopefully not for long. What is going on? I even put the heating on temporarily last night. This is not the summer that sweltering July led us to expect. It could all be for the best if the next heatwave is saved until the very end of August, and preferably the beginning of September. For those two weeks will serve as my real summer holiday this year.

We're off to Brighton again in September. Four nights instead of last year's three! And a more expensive B&B. Not that there was anything wrong with last year's choice. It was perfectly pleasant. The good news is we'll be there in time to take in the latest sand sculpture festival on a Roman theme.

I think you could call us late-season holiday-makers. It has its advantages. The sun will shine as soon as the kids are back to school, you just wait.

Welcome to the World, Baby Dyke

2006-08-04T13:40:00.000+01:00

It's 20 years to the week since I came out for the very first time by uttering the words "I think I'm gay" within earshot of another human being. It was very, very scary, and also exhilarating and liberating. From there, I just wanted to tell more and more people, although I chose those people very carefully, so there was no tremendous domino effect in the first year. I waited until I got to university for that.

That summer of 1986 opened up possibilities. I started to crave independence, exploration and experience. I started to understand the value of friendship, and to recognise when I wanted so much more than friendship. I dreamed of intimacy and the secrets of sex. I knew the promise contained in a woman's breasts when brushing against my arm just long enough could make my entire skin tingle and stand to attention. I got depressed and lonely because I wanted the world to change immediately for me.

I feel lucky that I still have my teenage diaries. Loads of people want to forget their adolescence, the angst and agony. I don't. I like remembering the path I've travelled, how my teenage uncertainty blossomed into ... well ... a whole string of new uncertainties! There are still plenty of reasons why I think the world should change. But at least I'm certain about who I am, and I know how to express that in a whole variety of ways, how to remain true to myself, mostly without fear these days.

In the summer of 1986 I had my first holiday with friends rather than family. We stayed on a caravan park for a week near Paignton, Devon, and it rained nearly every day. But it was a taste of freedom, a slice of the discovery I wanted life to be:

July 27th 1986

J had some cannabis and we had our first experience of drugs. We didn't smoke it in a joint, but burnt some and inhaled the smoke from under a glass. It made us feel incredibly horny - it was quite amazing how much it aroused you. We had a really good time. I was so happy - I have always wanted to do what we did last night. This is the perfect opportunity for new experiences - away from everything - no family to answer to. I think I need to get away from home more often - the taste of freedom does wonders for me.

Somehow or other, we got onto the subject of gay sex. M said she thinks everyone is bisexual to a certain extent and I said that I thought I was gay. But, I don't think in our state that I was taken all that seriously. K and L were moaning that they want their men, and L asked me if I wanted a man. My answer 'No' led her to ask: 'Do you want a woman?' My frustrations made me say 'Yes' and she said 'Oh, I won't sleep near you, then.' This statement hurt me because it is the kind of response I was expecting but didn't want.

Never mind! I don't think I was taken really seriously. K thinks women should 'just go for it' if they really want to (her words of last night). We are all getting on really well and I don't think this lot could frown upon me, but I still don't think they quite understand my feelings.

August 4th 1986

We had a fantastic holiday. I came home and developed post-holiday depression - I wanted to continue living with M, J, L and K. As well as providing great amusement and entertainment, the holiday gave me a chance to reveal my true feelings and have them accepted by two of my friends.

One night I had a detailed talk with K (L didn't hear as much - she fell asleep) until 3.00am about my gay feelings. This is such a relief to me because I have needed to share my thoughts with someone. Now that I have had the courage to admit to myself being gay I might make an easier time for myself.

Being easy on oneself - about anything - takes a whole lifetime of learning. Twenty years is a pretty solid background, though. I'm far from wishing my life away, but I aim to discover even more in the next 20.

Bounce Appeal

2006-08-03T18:48:00.000+01:00

What's a week off work for, if not a spot of bouncing? I've been partaking of that sport today. It's typical, really, that the latest UK heatwave should end just in time for me to take some leave away from the (paid) work desk. In some ways, this is not a bad thing, because it gives me the excuse not to leave the house too much, and I can chain myself to my own computer desk at home instead. Just think how guilty I'd feel if it was wonderfully sunny outside. I wouldn't mind a bit of that, though.

So - bouncing! What's that all about? Well, I'm supposed to be part of a Space Race, which involves walking to the moon in teams. I've been part of a work-based team doing this very thing since the end of January, wearing my pedometer at all times (except when sleeping), and I have been stepping (or yomping) away like a real trooper since then.

But it now seems that the bottom might have fallen out of this whole plan. Just when my bottom was looking particularly toned as well. It's motivation. There just doesn't seem to be enough motivation amongst the masses. I always knew it would probably take three years to reach the moon, and still I was prepared to surge forward into the great wild yonder.

Does that still not explain the bouncing? Well, one of these (as long as you put a bit of effort into it) is an extremely good way to clock up the steps. It's fantastic for dancing on. Easier on the knee and ankle joints, too. You have to start to think about these things at the age of 37.

It's not often I get out clubbing these days, so a living-room disco is a must, and the trampoline has to be an essential accessory. Perhaps even more vital than a mirrorball. I've been grooving away to 12"/80s/Dance and Floorfillers - Club Classics. What would I do without CD box sets? Turn up the bass, put on your bouncing boots and boogie ...

That's when I can actually get on the trampoline. It doubles as a cat bed, or so Frank the Cat thinks! It's the perfect size for him to sprawl out on or curl up to the curvy edges. Frank likes the trampoline so much he begrudges me using it, and I'm sure he'll start hiring it out to me by the minute soon, if only to safeguard his own position. Oh yes - that is (ahem) Flat Eric in the background. Remember him? Flat Eric is Sammy's (the other cat's) playmate. Don't ask! There are no pictures to accompany that story.

Beyond the Settee

2006-08-01T22:17:00.000+01:00

I can't believe I was last talking about the May issue of Diva. I've just received September's magazine, which helpfully tells me my wait for The L Word: Season 2 DVD is almost over. It's out on 14 August.

I've fallen down badly on the MediaWatch. I can't seem to sustain interest in TV at the moment. I gave up on Big Brother 7 weeks ago, not that there's been anything to match the lesbian interest of Anna Nolan since the very first season in 2000. Meanwhile, the second series of Sugar Rush is upon us and I'll be waiting for the DVD again because I have a far more exciting date on Thursday nights. You can join me if you like. The more the merrier, one might say.

Each Thursday, 9pm-11pm UK time, I'm to be found at my computer listening in to Merry Gangemi and Woman-Stirred Radio, streaming live from Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont, at www.wgdr.org. Woman-Stirred Radio has the best guests from the global LGBTQ literary, arts and music communities.

Ok, this is also shameless self-promotion for the Woman-Stirred group blog. We've just celebrated our first anniversary, and my Woman-Stirred 'family' have a lot to do with why I hardly spend any time on the settee these days. Or any time here for that matter! But I intend to try harder on the personal blogging front.

If you want to see the latest creative output from me, take a wander over to Woman-Stirred and check out why and how I Want To Show Off.

Lesbians on TV: fewer ponytails please!

2006-04-15T16:32:00.000+01:00

The May edition of Diva dropped through my letterbox last week, its front cover advertising a subject close to my heart: Lesbians on TV. Even the obligatory picture is there of (Brookside characters) Beth Jordache and Margaret Clemence kissing. Diva's round-up of key lesbian TV moments over the last 40 years tells us that "Theses have been written on the significance of that kiss between Beth and Margaret." Indeed they have. I believe I contributed a thesis of my own.

Are we really still so obsessed with that kiss from 1994? It seems so. My take on that kiss continues to be a popular draw to my website, and yes, I reproduce the picture there too. I'm sure most ignore the words and come in search of immediate visual pleasures. But sometimes it is also important to stand back and to analyse the TV storylines and representations.

Last month, the BBC was criticised by Stonewall for its mainly negative or virtually non-existent representation of lesbians and gay men. Read the report, Tuned Out: the BBC's portrayal of lesbian and gay people. While there have been a few sneers at Stonewall for its fairly simplistic methodology - monitoring 168 hours of peak time TV on BBC One and BBC Two - the issues being challenged here are significant in highlighting wider attitudes and assumptions about lesbian and gay identities, both on- and off-screen. During the 168 hours monitored, lesbians were referred to in positive and non-stereotyped ways for just one minute and 10 seconds.

Of course, Diva reminds us that BBC One and Two are not the only channels - and being lesbians we're very good at understanding that. My favourite portrayals in recent months were accessed on DVD, but had their original airing on TV: Sugar Rush (Channel 4) and The L Word (Living TV). The dykey viewing options must be improving for I didn't even watch Sugar Rush first time round and it hadn't crossed my mind that I might wish to invest in a satellite TV package in order to keep up with the latest season of The L Word - well, not until I watched all 4 DVDs of the first season in a weekend's sitting. I'm now desperately looking forward to the DVD of Season 2, but managing to keep myself in check by having purchased a copy of Reading the L Word: Outing Contemporary Television. It's cheaper than a subscription to Sky!

Above all, the measure of how much my relationship with lesbians on TV has changed since 1994 is this: nothing could encourage me to watch Eastenders, not even the chance of viewing another lesbian soap snog.

Like Stonewall, who found little evidence of a broad portrayal of lesbian and gay lives, my disillusionment with lesbians on TV has much to do with my bugbear that lesbian portrayals on TV almost inevitably involve ponytails. That there are lesbians with long hair in this world has not passed me by. But quite frankly, a lot of it on TV is unnecessary and gets in the way of my viewing pleasure. Once in a while it would be good to receive the affirmation that short-haired lesbians do exist - and that short-haired lesbians can be considered attractive.

So I will be conducting my own media watch: monitoring the construction of compulsory femininity in lesbian portrayals on TV. The BBC may be pleased to learn this isn't restricted to them. Please join in.

Smash Hits surrenders

2006-02-02T22:21:00.000Z

It's true - for those of us who reached puberty in the early 1980s, Smash Hits was a must, and we're allowed a moment of sentimentality to mark its final passing. Publishing company Emap reported today that Smash Hits magazine is to close.

It was the place to turn for colour posters (in my case, of Nick Heyward, Boy George and Jon Moss, possibly even George Michael - would you believe?) and to read the full lyrics from the latest single releases. I reckon I was able to recognise homoeroticism from a young age, even if I couldn't name it, and it was definitely all male in the early 1980s.

I still have a couple of Smash Hits Yearbooks for 1983 and 1984, so 1982-1984 were probably the highlight years for me. They're in very good condition, not that I'm looking to part with them just yet, but it did cross my mind that today's news could increase their value very soon.

There was such nostalgia earlier this evening when I looked through the Yearbooks to find Wham!, Tears for Fears and Carmel listed on the "lesser known names of '82 should be the headliners of tomorrow" pages, amongst many a band name I can't recall ever having released a single. Then, in the "Fifteen for Eighty-Four" line-up, who else but Madonna, amidst the hype: "there's no reason why Madonna, a genuine all-singing, all-dancing slum survivor, can't be gigantic." No reason; no reason at all. There's also Prince, Billy Bragg and Everything But the Girl. Did this all really begin in 1984?

I can't help wondering what happened to Physique, destined for fame and fortune in 1984. Did it happen? Nick Casparis of trio Physique is quoted: "We're more intelligent than we are good looking ... but then we're tremendously good looking as well." Hmm ... The money was always on Madonna.

Ahh ... those were the days ... just after the Jackie years and shortly before I discovered The Cure and 'real' music in time to be a sixth former.

Word of the day

2006-01-26T20:55:00.000Z

I discovered a possible new word today, inadvertently created within someone's out-of-office auto-reply email. In fact I had an amusing half hour reading out-of-office replies following a bulk e-mailing at work. It's fascinating how much detail some people are willing to give to explain why they can't read or reply to a message immediately.

The new word is Mondnesday - as in, "I am away until Mondnesday 30 January". You what? It's possible to get into all kinds of scrapes when re-hashing a previous auto-reply message in Outlook's Out of Office Assistant. The Assistant provides no assistance at all sometimes. You type; we'll all laugh.

I immediately came up with a definition:

Mondnesday n. [early 21C] Any day you're not actually sure what day it is. Any day will do. A mindless day; my mind's gone numb type of day.

The challenge now is to get this into the Oxford English Dictionary. Do you think it will catch on? Given the challenges laid down by Balderdash and Piffle currently, there's got to be a chance - and perhaps this entry in Out on a dike will prove to be the first written evidence in years to come.

I've thought of a few more.

Tuthuday n. [early 21C] A painful day, when stress is often experienced in the jaw area. A deadline is approaching and there are 'too few' days remaining.

Friturday n. [early 21C] A waste. Sometimes experienced as boredom. You wait all week for the weekend and when it arrives you just don't know what to do or how to spend those 'non-school' nights.

Sunfriday n. [early 21C] A holiday. Everyone deserves at least one week topping up their tan in the sun (sensibly, of course).

While you're thinking about words, surely someone can help Balderdash and Piffle prove that gay was used in the queer/homosexual sense before 1935 [current OED entry]. In the first programme of the series Victoria Coren tried hard to get the OED panel to listen to the earlier evidence in a Gertrude Stein short story and a Noel Coward song. Unfortunately they turned her down on both counts.

What do you reckon?

They were regular in being gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay, they learned many little things that are things in being gay, they were gay every day, they were regular, they were gay, they were gay the same length of time every day, they were gay, they were quite regularly gay.
"Miss Furr and Miss Skeene", Geography and Plays (1922)

This story about two lesbians, written in 1911, and published in Vanity Fair magazine in July 1923, is considered to be the ultimate origin of the use of the term "gay" for "homosexual" (though it was not used in this sense in the story).

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein

The future's pink

2006-01-23T22:54:00.000Z

Does everyone who writes for The Guardian or Observer need to be called Polly? Today, in The Guardian, Polly Curtis turned her attention to the pink pound.

Lesbians earn £6,000 more than the national average for women, take two more holidays a year and spend £400 a month on credit cards, according to the survey of 1,118 readers of Diva and Gay Times by the marketing consultancy Out Now.

So - just how representative are the self-selecting people who agree to complete marketing surveys of this type? Let's think now. Two more holidays a year than the national average for women? Where does that leave me and my one holiday a year? Ok, so last year I had three nights in Blackpool and three nights in Brighton. That could be considered two holidays, but it still leaves the average woman with no holidays whatsoever. £400 on credit cards? I don't think so! I'm a Maestro girl who spends within her means. And what I earn is between me and my employer.

Yesterday I may have sounded obsessed with the millions spent on hair removal - but you can't blame me for that. Polly (Vernon) got there first; I was simply responding. Now we're to marvel at the multi-millions spent by gay men and lesbians on frivolous kinds of entertainment. Outrageous!

Gay men spent more on holidays, DVDs and clothing last year than lesbians, but lesbians outspent gay men on mobile telephone bills and buying pet food.

What does that tell us? Lesbians are practical and gay men are pleasure-seeking? Lesbians try harder at long-distance relationships and make up for it by pampering their cats and dogs, who (quite frankly) don't care if their lesbians wear clothes or not. Is this helping the stereotypes any?

And then we get to the crutch of the matter.

It's not really the money that Polly (Curtis) wants to draw attention to. It's femininity! The big issue here is the femininity of lesbians. But of course - silly me - that must cost them millions!

Diva magazine doesn't help, running it's own 'Fashion survey'. Jane Czyzselska, Diva's editor, is quoted as saying:

The stereotypical idea of lesbians - particularly from people with prejudices - is that we are not feminine and that's almost considered a crime. It's therefore interesting to note how many women describe themselves as feminine.

Apparently 33% who answered the survey describe themselves this way. And that's my point, really. 33% who answered the survey. It's a fashion survey, right. With questions about knickers and bras, accessories and cosmetics. Who is more likely to fill in this survey? Those who wear bras (95%) and high heels (25% own at least one pair) and make-up (75%). That's 75% of those who answered the survey, Diva. Not, as the magazine states, "three out of four readers". Did I answer the survey? No. Did three out of four readers answer the survey. I doubt it. I doubt very much if Diva are prepared to say how many responses they got. At least the marketing survey by Out Now gives us numbers.

So why is a lesbian magazine so keen to shout about the femininity of lesbians?

The point of these new surveys seems to be to demonstrate to companies that lesbians have signifcant disposable income and are prepared to dispose of it in large lumps if only advertisers would wake up and recognise the potential of lesbians as consumers.

My point is this. Why are lesbians being sold as attractive to advertisers only if they can be shown off as feminine? Even if only one-third feminine. Whose stereotypes are being bolstered here? By all means show lesbians buying make-up, wearing skirts and high heels (which is as TV drama prefers it), but even the most feminine of lesbians takes her high heels and make-up off from time to time. I want to see the adverts that play to the strengths of the other 66%.

Is it something of a backlash; is it at all significant that Diva's fashion survey appeared in the December 2005 issue with the hairy-armpitted model and main cover headline of 'Beauty and the Butch'?

Money makes the world go round. Or is that femininity?

Deeply Depilatory

2006-01-22T17:46:00.000Z

I came across a hair-related article the other day just crying out for my response. After all, I am the woman who shaves her head and lets the remainder of her body hair fend for itself - apart from one or two stray eyebrows, that is. (We all have our weaknesses.)

Read Plucking Hell by Polly Vernon (The Observer, Sunday 15 January 2006) and you'll learn that Polly is an obsessive plucker. She finds the pain of extreme depilation far easier to cope with than the sight of her own sprouting leg hair. As an experiment, she allowed the hair on her legs to grow until it became all too terrifying and would "physically repulse anyone I show it to." After three and a half weeks she was desperate to shave once more.

I can relate to Polly - but only in an inverted way (no real surprise there, then!) I know exactly what it feels like to go beyond two weeks without the slide of clippers on my head. It's a cruel form of self-torture. I could never achieve three and a half weeks. But put a razor, hot wax, or cream anywhere near my legs, armpits (no! never the armpits!) or (ahem) elsewhere and I'll be fighting to keep the root in every follicle.

Yes, head-shaving is my preferred form of therapy. It keeps me shiny, inside and out. It's also very cheap. Just what are British women doing spending £280 million a year on hair removal? Polly seems to know:

On a more bog-standard and British level, when was the last time you saw a woman expose leg hair or armpit hair, or (heaven forfend!) an untended moustache, on the streets of the UK? The rare female celebrity who dares to venture in front of the paparazzi without first ensuring that every last trace of excess body hair has been plucked from her lithe form is roundly and publicly vilified.

I guess this must mean that women are depilating all over the UK in order to keep out of (or get into, in some cases) Hello, Heat or the News of the World. Just in case they turn into celebrities overnight, I suppose! (Well, anything's possible - just look at Chantelle on Celebrity Big Brother.)

I know, I know - there must be times it would be just as bad, or worse even, having the neighbours or your workmates observe that you're sprouting more than the average woman. But I've said it before, and I'll say it again, it's a pretty sad state of affairs when hair is understood to be the distinguishing measure of how much of a woman (or man) you are. It all depends where on the body you're looking, of course.

There is a suggestion in Polly Vernon's article that women have to remove more hair these days because we are becoming hairier. One of the ironies I see is that my leg hair is probably less rampant than most women's (were they to let it grow) if they have been shaving or using other depilatory methods for many years. Removing hair encourages hair growth - doesn't it? Or is that one of the myths our mothers used to stop us shaving too soon?

If women are becoming hairier surely it's because they keep plucking, scraping and ripping it off. It's the hair fighting back.

By the end of Polly's article I'm able to admit I have one thing in common with the pluckers. I like hair to be in its place. Velvet and cropped on my head. Unshaven elsewhere. I enjoy the different pleasures my natural body hair gives me. I'm never repulsed by leg hair poking out the bottom of a woman's trouser. I prefer a fluffy underarm on a woman. I think it's amazingly sexy. Each to their own. My hope would be that £280 million is being spent because every woman is genuinely determined to pleasure and enjoy her body in the way she desires it for herself; not because she is attempting to buy an image of femininity and public acceptance in a gender (how to be a woman)-obsessed society.

When was the last time you saw a woman expose leg hair or armpit hair? If it was a little warmer in the UK I'd be doing it every day. I can't wait till summer.

Celebrity Everything

2006-01-07T14:35:00.000Z

My first post of 2006 and I've been feeling quite happy this week. Going back to work has involved no growling or roaring. Later in the year I'm sure there will be instances, but for now I'm enjoying the fact that the first week of January has felt like a 'bonus week' - a chance to get some things done before the whole country winds itself up to full-strength action and demands.

Of course I could just be pleased that a new rash of celebrity reality TV viewing is beginning. Having enjoyed such success in 2005, personally helping to vote Carol Thatcher through to Queen of the Jungle and Shayne Ward to the X Factor Number One spot (although Brenda really deserved to be in the final), I wonder who will receive my support this year. I'm not too sure how much of Celebrity Big Brother I will be watching, but Soapstar Superstar has already received my vote. Shame there isn't a voting option to remove judge Cilla Black, however! Next Saturday there's also Dancing on Ice, an ITV ice dancing version of BBC's Strictly Come Dancing. How can I not watch, given the Nottingham heritage of Torvill and Dean?

Talking of celebrity heritage, I was introduced to the My Heritage face recognition tool by a fellow blogger and obviously couldn't resist uploading my own photo to find out which celebrities I most resemble. Here are the results:

Tarja Halonen 64%

Kristen Nygaard 61%

Nicole Kidman 58%

Britney Spears 55%

Hilary Swank 55%

Meryl Streep 54%

Julianne Moore 53%

Diana Princess of Wales 51%

Eddie Murphy 51%

Anna Lindh 51%

I now think I need to give serious consideration to becoming a Scandinavian politician. Then again, there's just as much chance I could be a movie star. I'll definitely leave the Princess thing well alone. The best thing is I'm feeling pretty swanky myself since seeing Hilary Swank's name in that list ;-)

Shady goings-on

2005-12-31T15:05:00.000Z

It may be the last day of 2005 but I'm not going to fall into the trap of trying to sum up the whole year. I'm not even going to list my resolutions for 2006. Mostly because I'm not sure I have any. Of course I will be living my life in the laudable fashion everyone would expect.

Anyway, the closest I've come to summing up during the current holiday (and it doesn't even involve sums, as any self-respecting puzzle-bum will inform you) is Sudoku. Santa brought me the electronic hand-held version - Carol Vorderman's Sudoku, no less - and I can now select easy, medium and hard grids to my heart's content. Easy when I want to beat my own best time. Hard when I want to demonstrate what a clever clogs I am. Medium when I can't make up my mind. The musical applause on its own might be reward enough for a completed grid, but it also usefully signals to other occupants of the room that I'm done.

"That was quick," admires Andrea, so engrossed in her own jigsaw puzzle she's surely unaware how much time has passed.
"Certainly was," I say.

Puzzle-bum is an apt description for my backside. I'm sure it's looking squarer. The mind may be receiving a workout but the body seems to have been stapled to the settee for the last week. I blame the new throw I bought for the settee two weeks before Christmas (why should furniture miss out on the season of goodwill?) It could be a strange velcro effect that keeps me seated there. Frank the cat is experiencing this too. The settee has become altogether more appealing, and as Frank and I look so good draped against its orange backdrop, where's the point in moving. After all, this week brought a sprinkling of snow to contend with. Pretty it looked, too, from the first-floor window.

For those still wondering if logic puzzles hold any secrets to the universe, or any purpose whatsoever, I need to tell you about the picture puzzles - Enigma, Mosaic and Hanjie. Enigma is my favourite so far. It's fantastic. It's like colouring-in for grown-ups! Join-the-dots and colouring-in!! Match up pairs of numbers to create a trail - no trail must cross another - and then you get to shade in those trails to form a pixellated picture. The result being a little like this picture of me - only - well - let's just say - slightly more basic. Great art this isn't, but I feel an affinity with Rolf Harris whenever I'm shading in: "Can you tell what it is yet?" There are even some multi-colour ones in my book.

Ok, so last night I started thinking, who else but me actually shades in all these trails?

Someone who enjoyed their childhood?
Someone who understands the joy of a new set of coloured pencils ...?
... and the practicality of a propelling pencil?

Not that I'm looking to form a club, you understand. It's just you don't yet hear Enigma: Amazing Trails being banded around in quite the same way as the Sudoku craze. At least the Daily Mirror hasn't caught on yet. Don't know about The Times, but I doubt it. So, if you heard about it here first - remember who gave you the nod. You can't get these puzzle books just anywhere, you know. Exclusive to WHSmith (or subscribe online).

I'm off to practice staying within the lines. Then I can properly call myself an Expert Puzzle-bum.

Can you smell something?

2005-11-14T20:34:00.000Z

Someone ended up at my website today after doing a keyword search for "lesbian and sniffing". I couldn't recall writing much of interest about having a bad cold, because I'm sure that's the only kind of sniffing being referred to. Poor little lesbian, stuck at home with only a runny nose for company, turns to the web to seek out other sinus-blocked dykes for afternoon sniffs and sympathy. Or something like that.

"Lesbian and sniffing". Hmmm - it's not the best personal ad I've ever seen.

So I had to go and remind myself what my website has to do with sniffing. Fortunately, I found this pretty innocuous passage:

Specimens of lesbian writing are sometimes still disguised specimens. I play detective, then, sniffing out the codes which may eventually spell from apparently nothing L-E-S-B-I-A-N: it's the businesss of creating language from silence.

That's alright, then. It's only me playing bloodhound - sniffing out the lesbian on the page. If she's there I'll find her.

All this has got me thinking, though. Do lesbians sniff more than other women? Is there a specifically lesbian style of sniffing? Is all this sniffing an elaborate performance to attract a mate, waiting for the gallant dyke to pull out that display handkerchief from her top pocket and save the day? ...

Ok, so maybe I've ventured too far into fantasy fashions. Exactly which handkerchief and whose top pocket am I referring to? I'm not really sure, but there's probably velvet sewn up in there somewhere. At least there's not a monocle in sight. For that we'd need a whole new chapter, right? "Lesbian and squinting"!!

Fantasy Fortunes

2005-11-12T15:41:00.000Z

I downloaded my WeeMee from Friends Reunited to my mobile phone recently. So I've decided my
alter-ego deserves to have a few adventures - to get out there and see some of the world, some of the places I've seen and possibly others I haven't. The Grand Canyon is top of the list of places already visited.

It's lucky I'd thought ahead and provided a feline companion to ensure my WeeMee traveller isn't too lonely out there. It's also a form of dedication to Bradley, a lovely grey cat who adopted this house as his home and decided to share the best years of his life with us. He sadly departed this world in January 2004.

Actually, the cat friends on Friends Reunited only come in grey. The owners (soon to be ITV, as announced just last week, I'm so up on my dot com current affairs!) might want to consider a new feature - "Select and colour a pet". But at least I'm happy with this one colour choice. Bradley will never let my WeeMee down.

Where shall I send WeeMee next? It could be like the National Lottery Jet Set. Keep living the luxury lifestyle for as long as you can in a new location each week. Without Eamonn Holmes, of course - which is maybe not a bad thing. Living a life of fantasy, on the other hand, can be a good thing. Especially when you feel you've been chained to a desk for the past few months and know you're not going to travel anywhere too soon.

My head is freshly shaved today. It's the least I could do knowing that Curtis Bickham over at Head-Liner.com has just this week reproduced my essay - A Woman Shaved: a sign of what? - in his latest online volume of head-shaving stories. It's a volume all about women, too.

A Cut Above

2005-11-03T22:03:00.000Z

I've been having more hair-inspired conversations than usual this week. Perhaps it's because I actually discovered what it's like to have head hair of measurable proportions on Friday. I think a bright pink bob suits me pretty well, but I wasn't keen on the need to keep brushing hairs out of my eyes. How does anyone live with a floppy fringe?

Can a year really have passed since I last donned the pink for Wear it Pink day? Loved the suit. The perfect poser's attire. So I struck that pink pose and you see me here as a piece of street art - the kind that doesn't want to blend too easily into the background.

I won't be growing my hair. The act and art of head shaving is far too special. Elsewhere this week, I've been forming head shaving connections through hair-inspired confessions at The Book of Kellies and an invitation to visit Head-Liner.com, which pleased me with this objective: to "uphold the image of the bald head through experiences, research and community outreach". That's all fine by me. I think of myself as shaved rather than bald, but I'm all for experiences, research and community outreach. Sounds strangely like my life. Yes, I've done a bit of each of those things.

If you haven't seen it yet, go out and get a copy of the new Diva magazine (December 2005 edition). It arrived in the mail today. Proudly sport your shaved head and your unshaved armpits. (The weather is unseasonably mild for November so it's still distinctly possible to display both this time of year.) Heads don't need to be hairy in my world, but armpits do. It's about time a lesbian magazine displayed the truth on its front cover. Ok, I'm sure there's a website out there upholding the image of the bald armpit but it's not for me and I'm not going there. Not even to look a little more pink!

Entertainment on a rainy Saturday afternoon

2005-10-08T16:09:00.000+01:00

It's possible the England-Austria World Cup qualifier match will provide some entertainment this afternoon. It's the opening minutes of the match so too early to tell just yet. But failing all that - not that I want to put too much emphasis on the fail word - there's another sport I can recommend.

Check out the Internet Anagram Server. It's always good for a laugh. Put your friends' names in and see who comes out with the rudest alias.

I've just found anagrams for Out on a dike and these are some of my favourites:

I took a nude - and why not?

Forget semantics and listen to the sounds instead. I'm still smiling about this one. To oui naked.

Talking of sounds, how about Token audio?

And leaving grammar aside, there's also Ink out a ode. I sometimes do.

So, if these anagrams can teach me anything it seems to be this. That one's best clothes are sometimes no clothes at all.

No sex talk, please, we're British!

2005-10-08T15:42:00.000+01:00

From sand sculpture to burying heads in sand. Supposedly hidden facts about sex and sexuality have been in the news this week.

Newly released documents at the National Archives in Kew, London reveal that books about lesbianism put government censors all in a quandary in the 1930s. To censor or not to censor? It was understood by then that banning books simply served to get them better known - The Well of Loneliness being a case in point. But to think that women would only realise 'such practices' as masturbation and lesbianism existed through reading books, and only then start to adopt them, shows a real misunderstanding of female sexuality. It also does a disservice to the female imagination, I reckon.

See also, the results of a UK sexual behaviour survey conducted in 1949. Why should we expect sexual desires to have been much different in the 1930s and 1940s?

Sand! In Brighton?

2005-09-15T20:22:00.000+01:00

You can find the most ordinary substances in the most unexpected places. Brighton is renowned for its pebbles, so there's a wonderful irony in staging the world's largest sand sculpture festival in a beach resort which boasts no sand. The sand was imported from Holland. Holland is a little closer than Egypt and, apparently, has exactly the right kind of river sand for building tall sculptures.

I didn't even know the festival was on, so it was a treat to find ourselves in Brighton in time to take it in. I love sand but Brighton wouldn't be Brighton without its pebbly beach. I'm happy with a pebble in hand, although it was Andrea who attempted the stone-skimming into the sea. I sat and watched. Pebbles mould themselves very well to a bottom and are surprisingly comfortable. Unlike sand, pebbles aren't that adept at creeping into every kind of crease and crevice; they find it hard to be inconspicuous. Don't knock a pebble, you'll likely come off worse.

Ok - so enough about pebbles and what about the lesbian gaze? I thought there might be interest in that topic. I've prepared a sonnet.

Beach Front

I’m back from Brighton where the pebbles rush
to greet the sea with tuneful chattering.
As water softens rugged stone, a hush
swells from their tranquil sighs, imagining
a future forming sand. A train declares
the journey to Black Rock. This faster route
to sandy parts erases time and bears
us to Egyptian feast - an absolute
array of hieroglyphics, pyramids
and mythic beasts. I build a fantasy
of girls at play on Sussex beach, eyelids
held low against the glare, their gaze on me,
or mine on them. In strong light who can tell?
A glimpse of breast? I bend to take a shell.

© 2005 Nicki Hastie

The weather was fantastic, the long shorts enjoyed their outing, and these breasts and that cheeky tongue deserved more than a second glance.

Out on a Brighton dike

2005-09-05T17:13:00.000+01:00

Today I'm sorting out my best clothes ready to venture into that other British gay coastal resort beginning with B. The one that isn't Blackpool. That would be Brighton, then. The number one (it has to be said) British gay coastal resort beginning with B.

This is the last chance for a summer holiday this year so I'm packing my long shorts and my short longs. I have both, lucky me. I also have long longs, just in case the sun is cloud-logged. The only item I don't possess are short shorts. A few years ago I used to play tennis in short shorts, but as I don't play tennis any more I can safely do away with anything so unflattering. Give me shorts on the baggy side with multiple pockets and I'm ready for adventure. Long shorts measure in at knee length or just above the knee. Short longs are three-quarter length trousers reaching to the calves. That's as precise as I'm willing to be.

The Brighton-Nottingham link has turned up in other ways today. I love being able to form connections in memory and language. There's usually a book involved in this somewhere. The written word is a helpful prompt to memory, of course. There's even more joy when that book is on my shelves. My Woman-Stirred collaborator, Mary, has been talking to me about lesbian literary Paris in the first half of the twentieth century, including the lesbian gaze of American journalist, Janet Flanner. So of course I can't resist the wordplay leap from Flanner to flâneur, also strongly linked with Paris and a significant figure in the 1920s Paris salon culture represented by such writers as Djuna Barnes.

For writing on the lesbian flâneur, you can't do better than turn to Sally Munt. That would be Professor Sally Munt, author of Heroic Desire: Lesbian Identity and Cultural Space, amongst other things. This is the book I remembered to look out and which rests in my lap as I type. Our paths never crossed, but I get the feeling Sally didn't enjoy life as much in Nottingham, so it's good news for her that she found her way back to Brighton and the University of Sussex. In the move from Brighton to Nottingham in 1993 she wrote in her essay, "The Lesbian Flâneur", "in terms of my lesbian identity, I'm in another country [in Nottingham]".

Nottingham has been getting a lot of undeserved bad press recently, so I hardly dare add further fuel to the suggestion that there are many English cities preferable to Nottingham. For a holiday, especially if you like the sea, maybe. Let me just state now that I'm a very happy Nottingham resident and Nottingham has its own culture to be proud of. Still, Munt has some interesting observations worth quoting and (written over 10 ten years ago) these have absolutely nothing to do with the current furore over English city league tables.

Brighton looks to Europe for its model of Bohemia, for it is just warm enough to provide a pavement culture to sit out and watch the girls go by. ... Promenading on a Sunday afternoon on the pier, loitering in The Lanes, or taking a long coffee on the seafront, ostensibly reading The Observer, the gaze is gay. Brighton introduced me to the dyke stare, it gave me permission to stare. It made me feel I was worth staring at, and I learned to dress for the occasion. Brighton constructed my lesbian identity, one that was given to me by the glance of others, exchanged by the looks I gave them, passing - or not passing - in the street.

It's colder in Nottingham. There's nothing like being contained in its two large shopping malls on a Saturday morning to make one feel queer. Inside again, this pseudo-public space is sexualized as privately heterosexual. Displays of intimacy over the purchase of family-sized commodities are exchanges of gazes calculated to exclude. When the gaze turns, its intent is hostile: visual and verbal harassment make me avert my eyes. I don't loiter, ever, the surveillance is turned upon myself, as the panopticon imposes self-vigilance. One night last week, I asked two straight women to walk me from the cinema to my car. The humiliation comes in acknowledging that my butch drag is not leather enough to hide my fear.

Sally Munt, The Lesbian Flâneur in Heroic Desire: Lesbian Identity and Cultural Space (London: Cassell, 1998), pp.31-32.

It's really not that unsafe in Nottingham, I assure you. We just can't claim to be a gay city with a capital B. I guess this explains why I'm taking care over my wardrobe for Brighton. Not only is the weather (hopefully) warmer, I also have to be ready to acknowledge my position in the dyke stare. To be seen and known. To watch and recognise.

Hmmm, it seems my Brighton wardrobe is pretty much identical to my Nottingham wardrobe, with perhaps a little added emphasis on the shorts. Munt's point exactly, wouldn't you say? Going out on a dike is all about receiving appreciation for the effort. It's worth those hours at the ironing board when the population is stacked in your favour. It's not that the gaze in Nottingham is hostile; perhaps it just isn't always sure what it's looking at.

There's a further plus to getting away to a different city with an acknowledged gay scene - and that's the anonymity of the lesbian gaze. It's a small world - but if you're lucky - not that small. After all, the four hour drive from Nottingham to Brighton, this takes me to another country - right?

You don't always get what you want

2005-08-24T21:32:00.000+01:00

A selection (a very small selection) of films from the 19th London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival are playing in Nottingham this week at Broadway. I did at least remember to check what was on this year. Months go by and I forget to view a Broadway programme, even though they're available in the foyer where I work.

I went to see a film last night called Wanted. Well - it translates as Wanted. It was a German film with English subtitles.

Dir: Franziska Meletzky Germany ‘04 1hr 28mins Subtitled
Cast: Dagmar Manzel, Grazyna Szapolowska

A light, Sapphic romantic drama that tells a tale of friendship and growing love with cracking humour and good old-fashioned sensitivity. 40-something Dora is a lonely postwoman with a cleaning fetish who hates her job and doesn't suffer fools gladly. When Polish refugee Jolanta, believing she has accidentally killed her boss, begs Dora to hide her in her apartment, Dora agrees and soon finds herself falling for her neighbour's sexy curves and feminine guile. A beautifully composed, character driven drama that perceptively draws out rich performances from the two lead actresses.

Dora was a definite lookey-likey for Ellen DeGeneres and a character with plenty of neuroses. 'Cracking humour and good old-fashioned sensitivity' is a good description. I enjoyed it, although it seems it wasn't to the taste of all lesbians in the audience. There was probably too much subtlety and sensitivity and not enough sex for some. In fact there was no sex, but plenty of sexuality. Some came to watch Wanted and left wanting, judging by some overheard conversation. Too bad. They will have to look elsewhere for dykes really getting it on. Maybe stay at home and get a DVD in. I wouldn't have minded more sex, but I didn't need it. I like to be surprised by a bit of class when I go out to the cinema.

So that's the one lezzie offering we will get to this Festival.

There was another film we'd pondered viewing on Sunday. In the end we made the rather enlightened decision not to go. Not to go just because it was a film with a lesbian theme showing in a Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. We allowed ourselves the choice: go out; stay in. But it's a lezzie film! So! Do we have to go to every film with a lesbian label? Wow! That is enlightened thinking!

There was a time when we would have had to go. Such lesbian celluloid pleasures were extremely few and far between, you couldn't fail to be there. The films I remember in the late 1980s at the Phoenix Arts Centre in Leicester look to be packed out in my memory. It's likely they weren't, but that's the impression I have. All of us desperate for affirmation and eager for the chance to witness one woman fancying another. Even unrequited love scenes were better than nothing, although we were well past standing for another unhappy ending. Actually, we did all have a yearning for sex back then. Lesbian sex on the big screen.

Fast forward to now, though, and you would have to be incredibly dedicated to catch every film with a lesbian character or the hint of such. Not forgetting lesbians on television, of course. Ok, we're clearly lacking the out lesbian presenters. There's no-one prime-time to rival Graham Norton, Julian Clary and Dale Winton and I can't see that changing for a long while. It still seems a further step for women to come out in high profile roles. But even I don't need to video every programme with a lesbian storyline these days. I can wait for the next one to come along. Or take it or leave it. Partly because they're often a disappointment. If the lesbian storyline doesn't interest me, I don't bother watching. I've missed plenty of episodes of Bad Girls in the last three series. Sometimes I have to admit that the thought of another repeat of Tipping the Velvet makes me groan. And do you know something else? I've never watched a single episode of The L Word. I don't have Sky, I have a good excuse for that. But goodness me! What's happened to me?

Yes, I admit it. The dykey audience is a hard one to please. I enjoyed last night's film and yet I know, so often, I'm left wanting. Wanting more of my reality reflected in everything, so that it won't matter too much if the programmes and films intended for me don't always hit the mark.

Woman-Stirred and Seasoned

2005-08-20T18:37:00.000+01:00

It's alright, I haven't abandoned my blog. I've just been a bit busy elsewhere - contributing to other blogs as it happens, including designing a blog layout and logo over at Woman-Stirred.

Woman-Stirred is a new venture, a quartet of queer women writers - Mary Meriam, Jan Steckel, Liann Snow and me. It's a support network, a promotion of our work (there's strength in numbers) and a place to spotlight writing on lesbian themes. It was Mary who got me writing sonnets. She is now taking commissions for original gift sonnets penned by her own hand, and I can tell you, a Woman-Stirred Sonnet is definitely worth having.

I was also busy completing the Season of Inspiration course. Sadly this is the last course the trAce Online Writing School will be running. The course was another excellent opportunity for gaining and providing supportive feedback with other writers, and there are already plans to continue networks amongst the participants. It looks like blogging is going to help quite a lot with this.

The course also gave me the opportunity to blog as a 17 year old young man who dreams of getting on the telly and being a first-class entertainer while stacking shelves at his local supermarket. You'll be pleased to know he's well on his way, learning great lessons in life from his down-to-earth Auntie Peggy and from another fascinating blog character who began to interact with his story at the Season of Inspiration group blog. The prediction of this 106 year old visitor from the twenty-second century is that the young man will be a famous illusionist by hologram in years to come. That's all I'm going to tell you, but hearing this news from the future makes me very proud. As I usually write very much in my own identity this was an interesting exercise and helped to underline many of the pleasures I gain from interacting online.

The X Factor starts again tonight. That's two of us very happy - my 17 year old character and me. The difference being, I'm happy to stay at home and watch from the settee; I'm not aiming to get on the programme. Saturday nights are looking up. However much I enjoy this format of reality TV, I really couldn't get into Big Brother this year. Partly because, for the past ten weeks, I seemed to be plugged into my computer after work each evening. I'd almost forgotten what the television is. But there have been silver linings for Andrea. There have been no arguments over the remote control and how many 24-hour news programmes can be watched. That reminds me - it's almost time for me to claim the remote ...

A piece of TV-inspired conversation which made me laugh from today:

Andrea: I used to love watching black and white cowboy films as a kid.
Nicki: That's because there weren't any colour ones.

Symbol of Unity

2005-07-16T12:11:00.000+01:00

I wonder about the many different things I may have written if I had posted more regularly in recent weeks. This week I have seemed a bit withdrawn, dislocated. I've seemed that way to myself; no one else has commented. But I know I sat in a pub garden with colleagues from work on Wednesday lunchtime and found it very difficult to contribute to the conversation, almost watched myself sitting there.

Very likely it's because I'd just returned from a few days away in Blackpool. Possibly I'd had too much sun. Sun at the British seaside? Yes, very strong sun and lots of it. I could have done with my cap that I forgot to pack or with putting on more of the scalp moisturiser for cropped hair that I use. Still, I bought a new cap in the end, so that's one souvenir from the short holiday. Surprisingly, it doesn't say 'kiss me quick, shag me slowly' or anything else of that ilk. Unsurprisingly, I had to leave the seafront shops to find something suitable. Three nights in Blackpool actually felt like a reasonable break, longer somehow, but possibly I could have done with more days away from the usual routine.

The general atmosphere is also more subdued - and yet resolute - following the bombings in London on 7th July. Just over a week on and we know so much more about those events now, but are not much closer to the why. So many families coming to terms with tragic truth, including the families of the four individuals who chose to end lives this way. I woke, preparing to go to Blackpool that morning, to news of 'power surges' on the London Underground, then news of more explosions filtered through. Many people feel connections with London, that's clear from the 'London United' tribute in Trafalgar Square on Thursday evening and the two minute silence earlier that day. I have never lived in London but I'm a regular visitor. The area around King's cross and Russell Square, and the Piccadilly line, feel particularly familiar.

Copyright/Picture Credit www.PrideLondon.org

I was in London on Saturday 2nd July for London Pride. I've taken part in the Pride march every year since 1988. London was swarming with visitors that day, especially around Hyde Park,and not only for the Pride parade. Thousands were there for the Live8 Making Poverty History concert. In different ways, these were symbols of London being united, too. It was because there would be so many more people travelling across London that Andrea and I arrived earlier than usual at the assembly point - this time on Park Lane, just outside Hyde Park. So we walked up and down, past the floats we might not otherwise have seen. Then we heard a woman asking for volunteers to help carry the large rainbow flag at the head of the parade. I've had many different experiences of and at Pride, but never done this before. It felt really special, like being part of something very powerful. There is always great spirit on the march and from the thousands who support from the street sides these days. Carrying the flag gave me a deeper connection.

I expect I would have written about this experience differently immediately after Pride. The rainbow flag feels even more potent now. It is a symbol that has come to represent all that is lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender across the world. It is also a symbol celebrating diversity, hope and unity that surely most people would wish to embrace.

The official Pride London magazine explains the six colours of the rainbow flag as:

Red - Life / n. a person's state of existence as a living individual

Orange - Healing / n. & adj. to become sound, alleviate pain or regain balance once more

Yellow - Sun / n. & v. providing light or warmth

Green - Nature / n. a person's innate or essential qualities and the
physical power causing the phenomena of the material world

Blue - Art / n. a human creative skill or its application

Violet - Harmony / n. an agreement or concord be it materially or
spiritually

Right now, the world could do with a definite injection of healing and harmony. So in a week when visible expressions of unity have become so significant, it now feels even more of a sad act that one London borough council has banned rainbow flags, describing them as 'clutter', when other symbols representing commercialism, consumerism and greed are allowed to fly free. Read more here.

Shouldn't we all be flying rainbow flags?

A right to-do

2005-06-28T20:10:00.000+01:00

I can only eat crisps with my left hand - that's the one that puts the crisps into my mouth. I have to hold the bag with my right hand. Just like I have to hold the phone to my right ear. I'm righthanded which means if I write while I'm on the phone, my left arm crosses over my chest, keeping the phone to the right ear. Any different and it's thoroughly uncomfortable.

I guess we all show a preference for left or right in different activities. My side of the bed is the right. In the bath, I have to face the door. This means my head is always at the tap end. I've learnt to just get on with that discomfort. Better this than someone unknown creeping up on me when I'm at my most vulnerable.

Is this the Psycho shower scene I've ingested? I'd like a shower but there isn't one. The priority is a new boiler before a shower. The boiler is twenty-three years old and you can't get replacement parts any more. The priority at one time, I remember, was new carpet before installing a shower. The bedroom floor is still bare hardboard. The decision now may be carpet or laminate. Or just do nothing at all. Leave things as they are for long enough, you stop noticing.

It's time to take more notice.

I reckon habits are sometimes formed through inertia, until eventually it's the not doing, not seeing which becomes uncomfortable.

Gay Yet Wistful

2005-06-26T20:36:00.000+01:00

After looking for a poem last night (indirectly reminded of it by one of the other writers on the course), I now have a copy of Verse and Worse: A Private Collection by Arnold Silcock sitting next to me. It's unfair to put books away once they're off the shelves. They need to lie around and be contemplated for a while, especially if they haven't been taken from the shelves for some time.

The poem wasn't in there, but there are some amazing chapter headings that you could probably only find in an anthology first published in 1952. These days, given such titles, you'd expect a very different collection of verse. I certainly would.

Grave Shades from the Churchyard Gaze On Gay Graves that the Churchyard Shades

This reminds me of my trip to Père Lachaise Cemetery (Cimetière du Père Lachaise) in Paris in 1991, particularly searching for the graves of Gertrude Stein, Alice B Toklas and Oscar Wilde. Interestingly, Alice B Toklas is not considered 'famous' enough to be listed on the virtual celebrity grave tour. Trust me, her grave is next to Stein's. I couldn't find a photo I'd taken of the graves, but here's one of me in Paris on the day in question, suitably dressed for a day of grave-searching.

Gay Yet Wistful

Plenty of reasons to be Gay Yet Wistful, not only where love is unrequited. [Pause here: can't you hear the extended GYW sigh?] I can really picture this working as an American bumpersticker, complete with rainbow flag.

Queer People - He on Him and Her: She on Her and Him In Jingle, Verse and Prayer, or Epitaph and Hymn

Very queer indeed.

Then, in the chapter called Old School Books, you'll find 'Personal Hygiene for Pussies'. Not surprisingly, penned by Anon.

My old school books were never like this. But then again, yes, they probably were. Some would say this was the time when language was innocent, before all those 'queer people' ruined such beautiful words as 'gay'. And before Mrs Slocombe discovered her pussy, no doubt. Yeah, right! At least Arnold sent his 'private collection' out into the world.

Journalling

2005-06-15T20:09:00.000+01:00

Freewriting - it's part of my course ...

Written with a black PaperMate Comfort-Mate pen in a notebook labelled 'Black n' Red Ruled A5':

I'm already scribbling because I wrote the date as July. I know it's not July. I've been writing 15/06/05 on pieces of paper all day. I'm often getting it the wrong way round, though - making it look like we're in 2006 already. I'm having those conversations more and more - the ones where you admit the days are shortening and life is running by far too fast. Today, I even found myself saying, "we have to live in the moment; it's the only way to do it". I'm not sure I always manage that. And there I was also decrying the fact that we're soon at the summer equinox, the nights will start drawing in and no sign of summer yet! What is it about growing older that makes you contemplate the weather - and not just to fill silences!

Walking home, the pigeons were doing their best to dive-bomb me. I had to duck three times. I know it was three because I was convinced the first pigeon wasn't going to be the only one flying too close. So I knew to start counting. I like counting or I think I do. Sometimes I simply need something rhythmic playing through my head that I can repeat over and over, silently. Letting the words run in time with my footsteps. Obsessively memorising car number plates as they pass until I forget what I'm doing. Just a beat going on in my head. Sometimes it's definitely annoying instead of comforting. I look for symbols. I read everywhere I go. Could be a road sign or a shop name. Over and over it plays as I walk. It could be my brain going into protective shutdown, to stop me thinking of more serious issues. Why do I need to question it anyway? I'm sure this isn't peculiar to me. Does everyone do this, walking to the sound of "sausage rolls" (huh?), "Pedestrians this way", "N453UKH"?

Season of Calm

2005-06-12T16:30:00.000+01:00

We've just been out and bought a yucca plant to fill a gap on the living room windowsill that isn't taken up with the cats and their cushions. It's sitting in a bright new orange pot which works beautifully with the heritage green and orange colour scheme in this room.

I like yuccas. I've just realised that yucca is the state flower of New Mexico, which is interesting as I was revisiting memories of a road trip through Arizona, New Mexico and part of Texas only yesterday. I'm drawn to the desert landscapes of southwest America. I've decided I need more red rocks in my life. My computer desktop image is a photo I took at the Grand Canyon. It calms me. At work I have a photo of the Mediterranean Sea. Perhaps I should switch to red rocks there, too, in order to induce some extra calm in that environment.

I'm seeing tomorrow as the start of something new, so perhaps today is also a significant day, standing on the threshold. What am I starting? What is changing? It would be good to think it's the start of a long, hot summer. Maybe it will be, but I can't do much to influence that, other than not touching my rain stick for the next few months. Calm does seem to be the theme of the day. A new worker starts in our team tomorrow, someone I directly manage, and I think this can only help me get myself and various stresses into perspective. If I can't be calm for my benefit, I can for another. Giving her a positive introduction and induction becomes my priority.

Tomorrow I also start a 9-week writing course with the trAce Online Writing School. It's called 'Season of Inspiration' and that sounds good in itself. If I achieve my new aura of calmness that's not to say I can't also be inspired and passionate in my writing life. The great thing is that I begin this course already fired up and inspired. I've been writing more poetry than I have for a very long time, so although the course isn't about writing to any set genre, I think I've rediscovered my preferred form.

I've worked with the tutors - Sharon Rundle and Helen Whitehead - before and I'm looking forward to the experiences that will be shared in the next few weeks. I know how good freewriting and journalling feels and I don't do enough of it. I'm seeking to discipline my writing habits, and then, if the mood takes me, I can enjoy the pleasures of breaking out!

Somewhere in the rainbow

2005-05-31T13:34:00.000+01:00

The Pride season has started. On Sunday I went over to Birmingham for an hour to squeeze myself through the crowded streets. I amused the people selling the 'end homophobia' wrist bands by picking over the rainbow ones. A rainbow colour version is now available to complement the pink.

"They're all the same," they tell me.

But I see otherwise. The letters don't begin in the same place; there is always diversity within the rainbow.

"It depends what part of the rainbow you want to start in," I say.

I know I have a definite leaning towards reds, oranges and yellows. I choose a band with the letter 'e' stamped firmly within orange, the message leading into yellow and finishing just before the blend to green. This is the message I want to be seen, preferred colours uppermost on my wrist.

***

One day last week, at work, I returned to my computer from lunch, shook my mouse as usual to bring the monitor out of sleep mode, and found an instant messenger window on my screen.

You are gay

I stare, only for a few seconds, before clicking the message window closed. A lot of thoughts run through my head in these short seconds. I make a moaning sound aloud - not more of these messages! Every now and then a student (it's always presumed to be a student) abuses this service and distributes a message to the whole network, either to prove they can or because they really do believe they are having a one-to-one conversation. It's a blatant contravention of the university computer user policy which everyone must sign up to. The game, perhaps, is in the sender hoping they are anonymous enough not to be identified by the IT system managers. Catch me if you can!

I know this isn't a message just for me, but could it be? I wasn't in the office to witness the collective pop-up on all our screens, the one that makes us all react in some way as we're distracted from our other demanding windows. My moan goes unnoticed. What did my colleagues feel/think when those words arrived on their screens, if they received them at all? I can't ask, for wouldn't that make me seem paranoid? They already laugh (affectionately) when I treat machines as animate objects (and what's wrong in believing the printer, especially, performs more efficiently when I offer soothing tones rather than shouting at it, even if shouting makes me feel better?) There is no one using my computer, and my computer alone, to point a finger at me. With all the thousands of computers switched on at this moment around the university network, the sender was bound to hit lucky.

But this message does feel like a pointing finger. Is that finger accusatory? Jibing? Or is that finger affirming? I know it can be affirming. "Yes, I'm gay and proud to be. Thank you for noticing." It is this contradiction, the uncertain motivation behind this message which makes me uneasy.

Why would someone choose to send this message? It doesn't feel affirming. Suddenly I feel isolated in my office, knowing my heterosexual colleagues are unlikely to be carrying on such an internal debate. I know about the pointing fingers, 'lesbo' shouted from cars, whispers passed down a line, 'there's the lesbian', the crowd mentality of jeering, pornographic pictures of women being thrown my way. My world hasn't been like that for a long time. But elsewhere it goes on, and it's never too far away. The times I've heard 'You're a lesbian' as accusatory far outweigh the affirming. The first time I kissed another woman passionately was in a public street, late at night, there weren't too many around to see. "Lesbians!" someone shouted. "Yes, yes, yes, this is me!" I wanted to shout back. I've always remembered, more than our kiss, the fear in the other woman's eyes, the way she said, "We can't do this."

The message bothers me so much because it's not the first time uncomfortable references to someone's sexuality have appeared on my computer screen. When there was a string of them I know the whole network received, messages which were, that time, clearly touching on very personal lives - "Look at that guy over there", "[Name of person] is gay, he's in the library" - I reported the offence. I was assured the matter was being dealt with; the sender would likely lose their computer access rights.

So, I don't need to report this; IT Support Services will already be well aware. The university will reiterate its policy and make it clear that this is an abuse of the computer systems. But is that the whole of the offence? I know what concerns me more. Why should one of our students feel it is necessary to send this message at all? What is being done to challenge this message's inherent homophobia? What message does each of its recipients take away?

Eurovision

2005-05-22T21:39:00.000+01:00

We failed to predict the winning song in our house, but overall the British public got the top two countries right, giving 12 points to Greece and 10 points to Malta. Romania took third place, a real surprise to my ears! Israel was close behind in fourth.

Votes in our household gave the top spots to:

Israel
Spain/Malta/Bosnia & Herzegovina/Latvia (equal points)
Greece

There was a definite plethora of drums and bhangra beat this year, but the anthemic ballad can still pick up strong votes and it was a relief to come across one or two. Maybe more countries should go down this route next year. The UK, of course, is unlikely to win ever again.

Wear with Pride

2005-05-22T21:20:00.000+01:00

This week upon my wrist I wear a band.
It says end homophobia. It’s pink
and made from silicone - designed to stand
hard knocks, demand attention, make you think.
I’m waiting for the first engaged response,
for someone who will read the message whole,
not those who, from embarrassment, ensconce
themselves in ignorance. It could cajole
another to come out, to know they aren’t
alone; perhaps encourage others to
condemn discrimination, so they can’t
refuse to bid such prejudice adieu.
Ironic, then, I don’t wear everywhere,
in case the homophobes are waiting there.

Dressing up ... as Ms Pitstop

2005-05-21T12:58:00.000+01:00

Some photographic evidence:
As Penelope Pitstop for 'Wear it Pink' Day, 29 October 2004, raising awareness of breast cancer.

Dressing up ... as a bear

2005-05-21T12:50:00.000+01:00

As Arthur Itis Bear in April 2003, raising awareness of arthritis, while working for Arthritis Care.

Today's eclectic mix

2005-05-19T21:37:00.000+01:00

I've been away for over a week. It's ok, I have been writing - just not here. I even had an afternoon in the sun on Sunday. Ironically, because I was working. The university had a marquee at a local agricultural show. The giant rabbits were our most popular exhibit. Best not to enquire further on that one. I did offer to dress up as a giant rabbit but it's better to have the real thing. Anyway, it really was sunny on Sunday afternoon so it would have been far too hot in a rabbit suit. Dressing up as a rabbit is possibly something I'll never add to my list of having dressed up as Wallace (of Gromit fame), a teddy bear and Penelope Pitstop (all in the name of serious work, of course).

I've started writing sonnets. Someone out there knows why. I've also started doing Su Doku puzzles. I'm pretty sure these two facts aren't related, although both activities require counting. Su Doku up to nine, and sonnets up to ten syllables in iambic pentameter. There's rhythm and rhyme in there somewhere. I'm aware there's far more to the sonnet form than counting. Su Doku style puzzles are a version of the logic puzzle, using process of elimination, 'if not this, that' techniques. I've always been quite fond of logic puzzles - satisfying rows of ticks and crosses and a definite result. There's a satisfying form to the sonnet, I'm discovering, and that can bring clarity, too.

With all these new experiences, it's quite possible I'm strengthening the connections between my brain cells. The Spanish course has finished now so I do need to maintain the learning experience. I find if you keep learning the world slows down a little bit. Days seem to last longer when you're busy enjoying new things. More gets crammed in rather than the usual routine. It's easy to overlook routine and it can feel like the days have gone by in a blur without anything of note happening. On the other hand, it could just be short term memory loss. Another good reason to keep learning.

I'm limbering up for the Eurovision Song Contest final on Saturday (tonight's the semi-final). I will need my best counting skills to join in with the scoring. The Eurovision Song Contest is a significant occasion in the calendar for me. This year is the 50th contest. It's not really a song contest at all. It's cultural camp delight - and highly political.

Making friends

2005-05-10T22:13:00.000+01:00

The last week has certainly been interesting in its mixture of highs and lows. I'm not going to dwell on the lows. I can only come up from a low, so I might as well give my time to the highs.

I made a friend this week. It becomes harder to make friends the older you get. Or is that just a myth I've swallowed? One thing I know is that the older I get the more I've realised how many different ways there are to make friends. That's not to say that it is any easier to make friends; I just realise that there are more possibilities for 'meeting' people who inspire and give something to my life. The world really is smaller now with the web and email. I can feel close to someone I've only typed words to on a computer screen.

Where do most of us meet our friends? At work? At school? There are different kinds of friends, of course. There are those who are going to be there for life, even though you haven't contacted each other for months. There are those you click with fairly quickly and do absolutely everything with all at once and in a flurry until maybe dropping the contact altogether. It's no fun if you're the one that's dropped. There are all sorts of permutations and meaningful relationships inbetween.

We are led to expect that the whole class full of friends at school will gradually dwindle to a handful (that's if you're lucky) of trusted friends once you hit your thirties and beyond - and you're really lucky if your handful includes any of those friends you made at such a young age. Friendships in adolescence are intense. Are websites like Friends Reunited which trade in nostalgia doing so well because many people are desperate to recover some of that intensity of friendship?

I am lucky to have a couple of friends who have travelled with me a long way in my life. I wonder sometimes if the written word is powerful in that. Perhaps it should be encouraged that we write more letters or emails to each other and talk less on the phone. Perhaps it's important to write even to the people we share our homes with and wake up next to. I know a long time ago I rescued one friendship, maybe even formed it as a friendship by persisting in my letter-writing.

But I didn't manage to keep in touch with any of my closest friends from school/university in any way that could be called maintaining a friendship. Not one. I know that some of those friendships could pick up from where they left off, and maybe that's why I'm keen on the idea of a reunion. I had a serendipitous meeting with a very close school friend at a Gay Pride March (of all places) some years ago. The world is small and yet so large. We're distant again now. If only email addresses were permanent ... well ... mine's the same!

Learning to make friends is one of the first and most important lessons for young children, although it shouldn't all be based on 'fitting in'. Keeping those friends takes hard work.

Finding friends, in likely or unlikely places, is still one of the best experiences in the world. Perhaps even more so for me now.

Online Poll

2005-05-05T19:04:00.000+01:00

I've voted. Have you?

Wearing well

2005-05-02T20:41:00.000+01:00

I promised myself I would have some fresh air this holiday weekend to break up the time spent in front of a computer. I managed 20 minutes this afternoon, sitting with my Spanish books in the back garden, before the rain fell. This all counts towards my Vitamin D intake. I like the outdoors, I really do. I'm just not always sure what I should be doing outdoors. I know where I am in front of the computer.

Still, at least I haven't been working, as in working for the employer who pays the wages. I've been doing a certain amount of communicating, reading and building connections. All good stuff.

I will get out more now that it's May. It's time to look out the spring/summer wardrobe - all those clothes that aren't actually stored away neatly in a wardrobe but sit in a great (washed) heap in the back room waiting for the warmer weather and lighter evenings to come round. It's more exciting this way, not being able to see all the possibilities at once. Every year I discover old friends - a shirt, a pair of shorts - "that's where you got to!" - and they rise to the top of the pile to become favoured garments for the next two months.

That's how life is - this rise and fall, the rough and tumble of the laundry pile. Soon I'll be ironing out the creases of winter, blowing off dust and cat hairs, letting my skin breathe.

There could be plans for a school reunion - although maybe not till 2010. It's 20 years since class of 1985 left Whitecross High School. A lot has changed with the school in those 20 years. (There is now a school website, which appears abandoned and badly needs updating. Perhaps while they're about it the web manager could learn how to spell 'governors'. It always helps if educational institutions can spell.)

I'm one of only 3 from our year who have dared to put photos on the Friends Reunited website. What that says about us, I'm not sure. However, I heard from one of the other photo-posters this week. He reckons I haven't changed a bit. Ah well, perhaps that means I did have an idea at 16 of who I was or was going to be. The glasses (a relatively recent addition, since 1998) and even shorter short hair might not be ageing me just yet, but give it time.

2010 it is. We still don't know who will organise this reunion but my old schoolfriend reckons this "would give us 5 yrs to get in touch with everyone, and enough time for all of us to get rid of those flabby bits etc."

On second thoughts, let's have it this year, while some of the bits are not quite as flabby as they might be.

On this day ...

2005-04-30T17:05:00.000+01:00

On Saturday 30 April 1988, I joined the demonstration in London protesting against Clause 28. Clause 28 was passed into law as Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 on 24 May, with support of then Local Government minister, Michael Howard. How many connections there are for one week, almost half a lifetime on! Don't forget that's what the man stands for when it comes to voting this May 5th.

I remember this because it is again a May Day bank holiday weekend and in 1988 I took part in my first May Day (Labour Day) celebration, just after that march on London. I was young, naive even, but I'd been politicised, and I stood up at that May Day celebration in De Montfort Hall, Leicester, when they asked for someone to speak out for equality and against the Clause. I didn't know about the international holiday in honour of workers until 1988. Now, in 2005, the association between the May Day bank holiday and Labour Day is almost forgotten.

It's worth remembering this act of solidarity as May Day approaches:

1988 - On April 30th some 30,000 demonstrators marched in London to protest the passage of Section 28. This is still the largest lesbian and gay rally in UK history. [Reference]

It's also worth remembering that it took until 2003 for Section 28 to be repealed.

In that same week in April 1988, I was instigating my personal protest and plan to escape from university halls of residence, due to homophobic harrassment from other students. I already knew the climate of Clause 28 was doing me no favours.

At the London rally I bought my "Never Going Underground" t-shirt. I had also been at the North West Campaign for Lesbian and Gay Equality demonstration in Manchester earlier that year.

On this day we should also remember:

1999 - On 30 April, a bomb exploded in the Admiral Duncan, a gay pub in Old Compton Street, Soho, the third in a series of bombs targeted at minorities by a lone extremist. Three people died and several injured. [Reference]

The Growling Days

2005-04-28T21:12:00.000+01:00

I don't often have days when I find it hard to sit within my own skin or to share space with anyone else. Today was one of those days. I'd had enough before it began. It was a feeling shared by at least one other colleague in our small team at work today. Is there such a thing as getting out of bed the wrong side? More likely it's a build up of stress that is gradually being recognised at a similar pace. All it takes is a night of little sleep - for whatever reason - and perhaps there is far less energy the next day to contain those ordinary frustrations. I was distinctly prickly. A day when even being polite to strangers might have been asking too much - and I know how to be polite.

At least on days like this I can be assertive without the anger and irritation bringing tears close behind. I don't do angry all that well. That may be the case for many women - anger gets turned inwards. It's hard to direct it at the external targets where it's often clearly deserved. I don't get angry for nothing. I work hard to earn that emotion. I don't do relaxation well either.

I like my work but it certainly hasn't felt easy recently.

It was my partner, Andrea, who gave me the word for the day. She left me a note for when I got in from work, "Hope you didn't have to do too much growling today." There were moments of shared growling in the office. There is some reassurance in that. We know where we're at; it's the others who have it wrong.

I may not be able to relax and I may have to hide tears of irritation behind a toilet door occasionally (very occasionally), but I don't give up my self-belief. No way. And on growling days there are no tears. There is only righteous, honed anger. On growling days there is no available space for anything to be turned inwards; it spills over until it finds its mark.

Growling days could be necessary, healthy even.
In all this, I can't help feeling I seep, not seethe.

¿Qué hiciste hoy?

2005-04-26T21:24:00.000+01:00

Trabajé en la universidad como de costumbre. Soy asistente de información. Dirijo una base de datos de antiguos estudiantes. Hoy por la tarde fui a mi clase de español. La clase termina el próximo semana. Tengo el examen oral pronto. Este verano, espero ir a España para las vacaciones. Voy a tomar el sol. Si no es posible escribiré en mi ordenador.

Number 84

2005-04-25T22:26:00.000+01:00

I'm not alone in seeking the significance of Number 84. It seems 84 is an abundant number, sometimes even an excessive number.

Numberland has some interesting observations about 84, including a poem about a rude poem about Julius Caesar.
Number 84 in the Phobos list of the 100 science fiction books you just have to read is Alice in Wonderland.
There may be mystical significance for Number 84 in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

And in my forays into Google, I keep coming across these words or similar:

Every one knows that the numbers seven and twelve are the most glorious in Holy Scripture ... and 7 x 12 = 84 ... thus 84 really stands for the perfect consummation of God's salvation plan for all those whom God has chosen to save ...

That won't be me, then.

In searching for 'significance', I had hoped to reach out to something beyond maths or religion. Even though the two subject prizes I won at my secondary school prize-giving were for maths and religious education, I only ever wanted the English prize.

Perhaps that is the significance of Number 84.

In 1984, the year before I won those prizes, I realised I was in love (oh yes, far more than a crush) with my female English teacher.

So, for me, 84 indicates a beginning of sorts.

I could go on to add that 1984 was also the year I holidayed with my family in the Norfolk Broads, went out with a boy for 6 months with the pleasingly rhyming name of Sean Vaughan, bought a Wham! t-shirt, refused to read George Orwell's 1984, kept a diary in which I insisted on recording the time I got up and went to bed each day, strode out in a pair of red boots ...

Better dressed

2005-04-25T19:47:00.000+01:00

I've been playing with the source code of the blog template today so that this blog and my website look their colour co-ordinated best. The header and footer have been clothed in #ffff84 and the new overcoat - or is it a shawl? - is #840084. Better still to think of it as the waistcoat. It's always unbuttoned so each day I can write on a fresh new shirt front.

I can't help feeling there must be some significance to the number 84.

Dykeopoly

2005-04-24T17:40:00.000+01:00

I know the sun is shining and I should be out there enjoying the spring weekend, but instead I'm looking back to the depths of winter and my activities in the Christmas break, when a certain activity present kept me busy.

Following the format of the popular board game, Monopoly, you can now Make Your Own Opoly "using your PC and any simple colour printer". Buy the kit (or get someone to buy it for you) and away you go.

I can recommend it. Not only do you benefit from all the educational and creative elements of customising your own board game (alone or with friends); you then get to play it as often as you like (better with friends).

And so, gradually, in a little under 24 hours from design concept to finished output, Dykeopoly was born. The game box proudly pronounces:

Dykeopoly

Doing it the lesbian way

Live the life, now play the game

The all-important 'Go' square is replaced by The Closet: Start Here.

With my PC and my (more-than-simple, thank you) colour printer I design a pink triangle with a pound sign emblazoned in its centre. £100 and £500 notes co-ordinate beautifully as the entire note prints in delicate shades of pink and mauve. Higher denominations express their superiority and refuse to tone in with this careful styling - £1000 (green), £5000 (orange). But they are Pink Pounds nonetheless.

Rules of Make Your Own Opoly differ slightly from the traditional game. Instead of 'Community Chest' and 'Chance' cards there is 'Good News' and 'Bad News'.

I quickly translate this into:

Dykey Desires
Dykey Disasters

(Come on, you know we all have them.)

Dykey Desires #1

Martina wins Wimbledon! Each player collects £200.

Dykey Disasters #3

You go to a party and all your ex-lovers are there. Go to Bad Hangover and miss a turn.

Bad Hangover is my take on the Jail square. However much certain TV shows may be loved (and I make sure these feature later), there are too many portrayals of lesbians in prison. Dykeopoly may specialise in stereotypes but there are still more bad hangovers in my world than dykes in jail.

I replace the 'Free Parking' resting space with Browsing the Bookshelves. Silver Moon may not offer quite the same atmosphere as it used to, but I'm not going to give up browsing.

The Property cards are possibly the most revealing aspect of Dykeopoly, especially how I've chosen to group them.

Tent at Greenham Common £400; Lesbian Avengers Chapter £500
Butch/Femme £900; Lipstick Lesbians £1000; Drag Kings £1200
Local Lesbian & GayLine £1400; Local Women's Centre £1500; Local Gay Bar £1700
Dykes on Bikes £1800; Lesbians with Cats £1900; Lesbians with Kids £2000
Utilities: Manual Trades for Women £2000; Bus Driving for Women £2000
The Candy Bar £2100; Diva Magazine £2300; Silver Moon Bookshop £2500
'The' Lesbian Kiss (from Brookside) £2600; Ellen Comes Out £2700; Prisoner Cell Block H and Bad Girls £2800
1950s Lesbian Pulp Fiction £2900; 1920s Lesbian Literary Salon £3100; 1970s Lesbian Feminism £3200
Sappho's Beach, Lesbos £3600; The Castro, San Francisco £4000

You may well ask how it's possible to place a value on 1970s Lesbian Feminism or the Local Women's Centre. Do I place too much emphasis on popular culture? And how could I dare to place San Francisco above Lesbos in that prized 'Mayfair' position?

Well, what icons of lesbian culture would you choose?

Say Cheese!

2005-04-23T21:30:00.000+01:00

Why did I choose this picture? Well, I'm smiling nicely. Not so sure about my 4-legged friend.

This blog

2005-04-23T18:05:00.000+01:00

I've chosen a title with many resonances. I like the way it reflects how I am putting myself out there/here, on show, through this blog. I enjoy the irony that dressing up can also be dressing down.

Out on a dike phr. [mid 19-C] (US) going out in one's best clothes. [DIKED DOWN]

You see me here 'in my best clothes', as I choose to present myself.

The phrase also plays with origins of words, with slang and with language that has been reclaimed. It is a play on words that reflects my desire for connection with others who will be attracted to the significance of words like 'out' and 'dike': my experience as a lesbian - although this blog is about much more than that.

dyke/dike n. [1930s+] a lesbian. [ety. unknown. ? f. dyked down, dressed up; certainly some lesbians have always dressed as men ... (?) ]

At least that's how my Dictionary of Slang presents it. The second question mark is mine.

So, I'm out as a dyke, occasionally out with a dyke. What I do when I'm out on a dike only becomes your business once I write about it here.