TransBristol meet-up

I cycled down to the city centre on Friday evening, and exchanged a lovely warm spring evening for the inside of a rather dark and shiny night club.

Some of the people from My Transsexual Summer were appearing at OMG that evening, and Daryn from the LGBT Forum had suggested that people from TransBristol might like to come along and meet up, at the same time. Seemed like a good idea...

And it was. I was able to meet in person some nice folk I'd only met online; and say hello to some friends, including a couple of surprise visitors; Stephanie, for instance,  had come down from the Marches for the evening. We'd corresponded after she'd read Becoming Drusilla and written a kind review of it on Amazon. That's us, in the picture up there.

Mary Milton wandered by with a big recording thing slung over her shoulder, accompanied by Natalie, whose interview with Sarah and Karen from MTS will be appearing on Shout Out before too long...

...I took the camera along, but this was the only pic I took as it was quite dark in there, and I was reticent about taking pics after my experience at a TransLondon event a few years ago, when I'd blithely taken pics and learned later that some attendees (or possibly it was one attendee) very much objected to being photographed in a trans* group....

....and then the music got louder, and it was time for me to slip away and go home to a mug of cocoa.

Felt ambivalent about the evening; it is good to meet up, but I really don't like night clubs, especially when they turn the music up. I remember when I first ventured out in 2001, going to a club in Old Market that I had heard was trans-friendly (it was) and looking around and thinking, oh dear, do I really have to become someone who has to go to night clubs? (I didn't).

Maybe we can just sit under a tree next time....

How not to have a conversation (while wandering around saying hello to people I had not met before):

Her: So, ...are you transitioning?
Me: mmm.... I suppose so...
Her: Are you going to Charing Cross?
Me: I used to, yes
Her: Oh! -Are you post-op, then?

non-standard narratives

this is what a transsexual* looks like

I found a folder of photos from the Welsh walk, the other day, that I thought I'd accidentally deleted. It was nice to find them again.
Coincidentally, that very same walk across Wales, that forms the framework for Becoming Drusilla, got criticised recently in the first unfavourable review that the book's so far received (on Amazon, anyway).

'Just give me the facts', 'get on with it' were what I was thinking more and more as I read on. Finally I gave up. The camping interludes killed it for me. Camping doesn't interest me, the trans-gender story did. Ultimately the latter is bogged down by the former and I didn't make it even halfway....

...said Zeddy12.

It got me thinking. A big part of why we did the book was to break away from the notion that the'transgender story' is something pink and fluffy, or possibly angst-ridden, and involving femininity coaching and trips to shopping malls and nightclubs. Camp, as it were, doesn't interest me... The Standard Tranny Narrative. You know. The same sort of reason I started this blog in the first place; to provide me with my own voice, and to talk about stuff that I do and that interests me. And if I am indeed transsexual, or transgender, then my drawing, cycling, cooking, parenting, poetrying, fixing the car or whatever, even the occasional forays into trans activism, generally living, are all part of my own particular 'transgender story'.

I invited Zeddy to write more, about what he had hoped for or expected from the book. It would, I thought, be a potentially interesting dialogue. After all, if someone doesn't like the book to the point that they don't even finish it, then the book has failed, in that instance at least. And it is a book with a message. Which didn't get across.

Oh well. Can't win 'em all.


Now then. Richard will be in Bristol tomorrow, Thursday 20th October, for a couple of events under the aegis of 'Unputdownable', the new Bristol Festival of Literature. You will find him at Foyles, talking about Lazarus Is Dead, and later at St Mark's Easton, discussing and critiquing.





*yes, transsexual is an adjective. I was being ironic. Ironic? Yes, I think that's the word.

Norwich

Hey, we managed it! Richard and me, in the same place at the same time doing a reading!

Not only that, but we even managed to be on the same train, which I joined at Bristol and Richard at Didcot.

The countryside was powdered with snow. I admired the muddy inlets we passed around Ipswich, reminding me of Arthur Ransome stories. And a plastic egret guarding a lonely pond in a big field. And a rail-side chapel with a hoarding that warned us to PREPARE TO MEET YOUR GOD which I thought unnecessarily alarmist.


We had a quick explore of Norwich (Richard used to live here in his UEA student days, so he can hardly be blamed that we got lost several times) and then joined Natasha, who had invited us and organised our reading, at a tea party in celebration of the work of Barbara Ross, who has been doing good work for the TG community for some years



Here's Barbara, with the dynamic Shelly Telly, who's been very active in Norwich's LGBT History Month events.

In the evening we went to UEA's Drama Studio, and gave our reading and then had a Q and A session, which I always find a bit tricky because I'm not good at ad hoc talking. But it went well (I think) and it got me thinking about things too, which is probably a Good Thing.

It was good to meet so many good people who are busy getting on with stuff. I came away feeling rather sluggish in comparison, and determined to do better. Thank you, Norwich.

on the road again

Meanwhile, over in Norwich, there's an action-packed LGBT History Month going on. Including, on 22nd February, a talk about Becoming Drusilla, by Richard and me.

We're really looking forward to this, as it will be the first reading event we'll have done together since the launch of the book. (Regular readers will recall Richard coming down with chicken pox even as I flew to Dublin, and then me being rushed to hospital while he was travelling to Birmingham... exciting times...)

It's at UEA's Drama Studio, at 7:00, and it's free.

Here's a link to the Facebook group, too



...and, just in case you missed the blurb, here are some reviews.

Reviews

‘How big is the change from man to woman? Becoming Drusilla is a brave and intelligent book, because it is not so much an attempt to answer that question, but to strike out all the previous answers with a red pen.’
Diane Purkiss, Daily Telegraph

‘This is a gentle, wise and touching book, full of warmth, humour, friendship and humanity (though I don’t mean to be winsome: Beard doesn’t flinch over the gory details of the operations, nor, among other things, over Dru’s heroin addiction). Like the good novelist that he is, Beard has resisted the lure of a predictable transsexual ‘transformation’ narrative and the temptation to look for answers. As a result, by the end of the book, Beard – and we along wih him – has arrived at a genuine and much more subtle understanding of what his friend has been through, and what she has become.’
Nick Parker, Literary Review

‘A fascinating biography … [Beard] is an excellent communicator and excels at turning the academic knowledge into understandable sound bites … optimistic, poignant and ultimately uplifting.’
Dr Harvey Rees, Bristol Review of Books

‘Excellent … enlightening and brave … not only does he write a sensitive and subtle biography, he also deconstructs his own ideas and assumptions about himself, and what it means to be a man.’
Hot Press

‘This beautifully written and thoroughly well-researched book is Beard’s searingly honest attempt to understand what his friend had gone through … It is deliciously un-PC, unpreachy, refreshingly free of sentimentality, and, at times, drily comic.

This book’ s genius is to tackle the life of Drusilla Marland and give us a sense of her lived experience, her ordinariness as a woman, born in a particular time, under a particular set of circumstances, in a particular culture; he gently portrays her inconsistencies and foibles, her talents and weaknesses, her courage and nobility – in other words, her humanity.

Beard’s graceful admission of love and humility, at the end of this gentle tribute is touching and life-affirming. This book left me marvelling about human nature. There aren’t many of those kinds of books about.’
Dermod Moore, Irish Post

‘A wonderfully sympathetic account of how and, possibly, why Drew became Dru.’
Val Hennessy, Critic’s Choice, Daily Mail

‘A sensitive and attractive account of a renewal of friendship . . . Beard comes to realize that the extraordinary thing about his friend is just how delightfully ordinary she is.’
Roz Kaveney, Times Literary Supplement

‘Funny, touching and insightful.’
The Oldie

‘Honest and deeply thoughtful . . . [a story] gently handled by this most sensitive and, at times, very humorous book.’
reFresh magazine

‘Fascinating and funny.’
Libby Purves, Radio 4 Midweek

‘Becoming Drusilla is a remarkable story of friendship, courage and humanity. Achingly funny, bruisingly heart-rending and deeply honest and personal, the story is gracefully and humbly told and free of mawkish sentimentality.’
Irish Independent

the view from the specimen jar

After a nice weekend in deepest Oxfordshire, I'm shuffling pieces of paper around and wondering where this week will go. To start with, let's look at the state of play with the Campaign To Rescue Books With Transsexual Content From Stupid Categories In The Dewey System.

Must think of a snappier and acronym-friendly title. Hmm.

Anyway.

As mentioned earlier, it appears that biographies and autobiographies of people with a transsexual history tend to get lumped into Social Sciences: Culture and Institutions. That's if they're lucky. If they aren't, they might well find themselves among the paedophiles over at Mental Health: Personality Disorders.

Previous posts are here, here and here.

I have written to Bristol Library, whose stock officer accepted that the latter category 'is now incorrect and unacceptable', but stated that Becoming Drusilla, the book in which I have an interest, is about a change of sex, and is therefore correctly assigned to 306.768, where it can presumably be studied by students of social science. He expressed the hope that it clarified things for me.

Alas, it did not, as my reply explained.

But answer (from Bristol library) came there none. And two weeks later, Jan Morris' Conundrum is still listed in the 'incorrect and unacceptable' 616.858 category in the library catalogue.

I still await a reply from the British Library.

Thanks, though, to SteveL, who posted the link to this article, which deals with ways of ordering information, and which introduced me to the word ontology, which is a good word.

I feel rather less alone when I realise that 'othering' is an inevitable side-effect of hierarchical ordering, performed by 'experts', as in the Dewey System; here, for instance, is the category Religion

Dewey, 200: Religion
210 Natural theology
220 Bible
230 Christian theology
240 Christian moral & devotional theology
250 Christian orders & local church
260 Christian social theology
270 Christian church history
280 Christian sects & denominations
290 Other religions

...can you see what it is yet? -as Rolf Harris used to say....

As Nose In A Book commented,

I assume there is a biography section in the Dewey system? What's in there? Perhaps it's considered lazy to use it; not trying hard enough.

How come plays all get classified under 'plays'? Perhaps Hamlet should get moved to 'mental health disorders'. Most of David Hare's output could go under 'politics'...

Indeed.

letter to the British Library

a copy of today's e-mail to the British Library

21st September 2009

To: British Library

Dear Sir or Madam,

I have been looking at the way that books about transsexual people have been classified by the British Library using the Dewey Decimal System. Some decisions appear to have been made in the past that, to a contemporary eye, can appear at least questionable and sometimes plain wrong, as I hope you will agree when I highlight them.

Perhaps the best-known autobiography of a transsexual woman, Jan Morris’ Conundrum (1974), has been assigned to 616.85, Diseases: Personality Disorders. I find that in the British Library catalogue, the book is placed between two volumes entitled respectively Clinical Aspects of the Rapist and Perversion. Similarly, Duncan Ashwell’s book April Ashley’s Odyssey (1982) may be found between Adult Sexual Interest in Children and The Child Molester. There can surely be no doubt that they do not belong there.

There is, of course, a category for Transsexuality; though the position of that category within the Dewey system is itself questionable, as a sub-group of 306.7 (Culture and Institutions: Sexual Relations). Transsexuality is a condition related to gender identity, and not a mental disorder; it is not a cultural phenomenon, and has nothing to do with sexual relations. However, accepting that, as a topic, it has to exist somewhere, surely this is a section which should deal with the condition itself? There are books dealing with the medical, social, and even political aspects of transsexuality; and they are indeed in this section, and perhaps rightly so.

But I would argue that, in biography, transsexuality may be an element, and even an important element, of a subject's life; but it is not the defining element. And I am concerned that, by placing biographies of people with a transsexual history into the 306.768 category, those people are being 'othered'. This can and does happen in everyday life, where some people are too ready to see the 'transsexual' in the individual to notice that they are in fact just people too: and, in doing this, they marginalise, exoticise, isolate and even persecute them.

It was at least in part to address these concerns that I worked with Richard Beard on the book "Becoming Drusilla", and it seems sadly ironic that this book has been pigeonholed as it has been (306.768092), when the subject matter is as much the biographer as the biographee; and the book is as much a travel book as it is a biography; and, where it is a biography, it is concerned with a whole life rather than a ‘sex change’.

I should be most grateful if you would review the categorisation of these books, and the other books in your collection which may have suffered a similar fate.

Yours sincerely,

Ms Drusilla Marland

class consciousness

not a librarian

The correspondence with Bristol City Library, concerning the classification of books with transsexuality in their content (for the story so far, go here and then here), continues. Here is my latest e-mail to them.

Dear NXXXXX,

Thank you for taking the time to write to me. I am glad that you recognised the unsuitability of the old listing for Jan Morris' "Conundrum"; its reclassification is a welcome step forward.

I do still question, though, whether 306.768 is the right place for a biography. The position of the Transsexuality category within the Dewey system is itself questionable, as a sub-group of 306.7 (Culture and Institutions: Sexual Relations). Transsexuality has nothing to do with sexual relations. However, accepting that, as a topic, it has to exist somewhere, surely this is a section which should deal with the condition itself? There are books dealing with the medical, social, and even political aspects of transsexuality and transgender; and you have some in Bristol; and they are indeed in this section, and rightly so.

But I would argue that, in biography, transsexuality may be an element, and even an important element, of the subject's life; but it is not the defining element. And I am concerned that, by placing biographies of people with a transsexual history into the 306.768 category, those people are being 'othered'. This can and does happen in everyday life, where some people are too ready to see the 'transsexual' in the individual to notice that they are in fact just people too: and, in doing this, they marginalise, exoticise and isolate them.

It was at least in part to address these concerns that I worked with Richard Beard on "Becoming Drusilla", and it seems sadly ironic that the book has been pigeonholed as it has been, when the subject matter is as much the biographer as the biographee, and the book is as much a travel book as it is a biography.

It was only when I noticed the library classification of this book that I started to look more deeply into the subject, and recognised, as you have, that there have been decisions made in the past that, with hindsight, were misguided or just plain wrong. I do urge you to look again at the matter of biography and its categorisation.

Yours sincerely,

Dru Marland

rescuing Jan Morris from the paedophiles

In an earlier post, I described how I found that Bristol City Library had filed Becoming Drusilla under 306.768 (Culture & Institutions: Sexual Relations: Transgenderism and Intersexuality). Further research showed that Jan Morris' autobiography Conundrum had been placed in the personality disorders section, where it was sandwiched between a couple of books about child sex offenders and their victims.

I sent a copy of my previous post to Bristol Central Library, and got a reply yesterday.

Dear Dru Marland,

Your recent e-mail querying the classification of books on transsexuality/transgenderism, has been passed on to me as I am responsible for classification and cataloguing at Bristol Libraries.

The basic answer to your question is that we classify any book by its subject matter, regardless of whether the author has written books on other subjects or is more famous in another field.

So - 306.768 is the number for transsexuality, and as the book "Becoming Drusilla" is about the biographee's change of sex, this is the correct number. If any other material on her was published we would classify it according to what it was about - not necessarily 306.768

Similarly, Jan Morris' s "Conundrum" is about her change of sex, so 306.768 is the correct number for it. The more recent edition of the book is at this number.(the older (1974) version is, as you say at the medical number 616.8583, which is now incorrect and unacceptable, and I shall alter this). Other books by Jan Morris are classified in their individual subjects - travel, architecture, history, etc

With regard to your Noel Coward example, 822 (plays), 792 (stage presentation), 821 (poetry) are examples of the different numbers used. If a book specifically about his homosexuality was produced then it would be classed at the relevant number (306.7662)

I hope that this clarifies the situation for you.

Regards,
NXXXXXXX
Stock Officer

So, a small step forward. But more work still to be done. Watch this space. Or not, of course, as you please. I do think that, in its small way, this stuff is important, because the way we categorise things is indicative of the way we think about them. We have come a fair distance from 1974, when Conundrum could so readily have been categorised as it was, in a way that is now recognised (if only when it has been pointed out) as unacceptable. But the journey isn't over yet.

the Dewey Dewey fog

I was thinking about the Dewey system the other day. As you do, you know.

And if you don't know, the Dewey decimal classification system is that set of numbers you find at the bottom of the spine on a library book, which defines where it lives on a shelf and who its neighbours are going to be.

Down at Bristol Central Library not long ago, I noticed that Becoming Drusilla, that lively tale of an expedition across Wales undertaken by Richard Beard and me (but with some biography thrown in) was jostling between Sexual Metamorphosis- an anthology of TS memoirs, and The Phallus Palace. Strange bedfellows, perhaps, particularly in the latter case. It got me wondering.

In Bristol's libraries, Becoming Drusilla has the Dewey number 306.768

the 300's are Social Sciences
306 gives us Culture and Institutions

and then it gets interesting; we find that the Dewey people have been tinkering with terms, and what was formerly Transsexuality is now something rich and strange- and a bit of a minefield.


306.768 Transsexuality Transgenderism and intersexuality
Standard subdivisions are added for transgenderism
and intersexuality together, for transgenderism alone
Including female-to-male transgendered people,
male-to-female transgendered people, intersex people
Class here transsexuality; transgendered people
(cross-dressers, transgenderists, transsexuals)
Class practices associated with transgenderism
and intersexuality in 306.77

Crikey! It's either a travel book or a biography, for goodness sake!

OK, I am being a little disingenuous; I am a transsexual woman, after all; but the book seems to have been ghettoised. There is more to life - my life - than that.

A little test. Think of famous person who was gay. Noel Coward. Right. Look in library catalogue. There. The Life of Noel Coward, by Lesley Cole. Dewey number 792.028

700's are The Arts

792 is Stage Presentations

How odd. So the library does not define Noel Coward by his homosexuality....


On the other hand, we seem to have got off lightly in comparison with Jan Morris' autobiography Conundrum. Jan Morris is of course a travel writer and historian, with a transsexual past. Her Dewey number in Bristol Library has been assigned as 616.8583

Now anything in the 600's is Technology.

616 narrows it down to Diseases.

The 8 after the decimal point puts us in Mental Health,

and to round it off, 858 is Personality Disorders.

The book is sandwiched between Treating Child Sex Offenders and Victims: a practical guide and The Courage To Heal Workbook: for women and men survivors of child abuse.

Very cheerful making.

And this isn't just Bristol Library; checking the British Library catalogue shows that these classifications are the standard ones.

I wonder what Jan would think?

Irish Independent

There was a nice write-up in the Irish Independent, following the Dublin reading that Richard and I did. Without Richard, of course. Because of the chicken pox. But Andrea Smith pieced out our imperfections with her thoughts. And they used my fave 'group' photo from the walk, at Strumble Head in Pembs. And I've got killer cheekbones. It was worth it for that alone! Thanks, Andrea!

Following a friend on the difficult road across gender

Richard Beard had a long way to go when he first saw the man with a pearl earring, writes Andrea Smith

Sunday June 14 2009

Drusilla Marland was born the second of four brothers.

She is on good terms with both of her ex-wives.

She was thrilled to become a dad.

Thus author Richard Beard describes the breakdown of grammatical orthodoxy that is an occasional side effect of describing the circumstances of his close friend, Drusilla Philippa Marland, known as Dru.

When Richard first got to know Dru, she was then called Drew -- a motorcycling male engineer in his 30s with whom he went on camping and walking holidays. These trips were a back-to-nature quest for Richard, reminding him of what it meant to be truly alive and what it meant to be a man.

Then, after 10 years of thinking he knew everything about the friend he shared a two-person tent with, came the call that threw him into confusion. The following day, Richard went to Dru's flat in Bristol, and tried not to react when he saw his friend in pearl earrings. He noted the shaved forearms too, as he listened to his friend's request to think of him as a woman from then on.

By his own admission, Richard didn't cover himself in glory with his initial reaction, as he describes the thoughts that initially ran through his mind.

"You are a 43-year-old man whose wife has just left you for another bloke, taking your daughter with her. You have a dismantled crankshaft on the table in your front room. You drink lunchtime pints of Smiles Old Tosser and you work in the engine room of a 7,000-ton passenger ship. You are not a woman."

After this, Richard went home, read books on the subject and did his best to understand what had just been presented to him. Still seeking answers, he suggested writing Dru's story, and by his own admission, he was partly trying to catch his friend out.

"If Drusilla is not true, then in her place sits a fizzing combination of modern afflictions," he says in the book. "She's probably psychotic, possibly sexually deviant, certainly attention-seeking, and conceivably a secret special agent of the patriarchy. No wonder candidates for surgery have to see so many psychiatrists."

In person, Dru is a softly spoken woman with killer cheekbones and eccentric dress sense. At her book reading in the Winding Stair bookshop, she is by turns coquettish, amusing, gentle and hesitant. Telling the story of her difficult and often painful journey to womanhood requires bravery, not least because she has not been universally accepted.

Indeed, she was awarded £64,862 (€76,276) compensation in 2006, after a tribunal found she was forced to endure "an atmosphere of intimidation and hostility" while she was undergoing gender reassignment while working for P&O Ferries.

The Southampton tribunal found that she was constructively dismissed through having to endure "constant gender-based ribaldry" relating to the gender reassignment, and offensive remarks from other staff members.

It is no wonder, then, that her intelligent eyes glisten with sensitivity, framed by "spinster" glasses.

As the passages describing Richard's experience are read, it becomes clear that the author has also gone on his own complicated journey to acceptance and understanding of Drusilla's situation.

"I want to say I'm sorry," he says. "It must be horrible and tiresome having people look all the time, having me look all the time. Christ, I wouldn't like it, to be looked over so closely by someone like me."

Becoming Drusilla is a remarkable story of friendship, courage and humanity. Achingly funny, bruisingly heart-rending and deeply honest and personal, the story is gracefully and humbly told and free of mawkish sentimentality.

Both Richard and Dru struggle with the new and fragile world they find themselves in. The journey is traced from Dru's early days, through realising that she was born in the wrong body and her subsequent journey to full womanhood.

They still go camping together, notwithstanding prejudice from equipment store owners who insist on calling Dru, "Sir." And Richard worries about what the future will hold for his friend Dru, who is in an intensely complicated and vulnerable position, due to spending the first 43 years of her life as a man.

"I do sometimes worry that Dru will lose her way," he says. "I mean really lose her way. That she'll drop into a life of special-interest groups and Oxfam scavenging, and the occasional indignant letter to the Daily Mail. Or end up a bag lady on a permanent shuttle between ... the Gloucester Road charity shops, too old to jump into skips, her day made or broken by whether there's bottled beer in the house come five past six."

Then again, he concludes, he worries about everyone he loves, and in brighter moments, he sees Dru as an eccentric lady driving around Bristol in her Morris Minor, getting mistaken by people of a certain age for the district nurse.

"The lucky children in her street will know her as the mystery woman with many bangles who will mend a puncture before Mum comes home," he says. "And solve any problems with a bully."

Becoming Drusilla: One Life, Two Friends, Three Genders by Richard Beard (Vintage UK, Random House, €10.40)

- Andrea Smith

the Bristol reading

For me, Friday's reading at the Tobacco Factory in Bedminster, Bristol, was The Big Gig, as I'd been responsible for the publicity and there was no Richard around on the day. It felt a bit like the way I used to feel sailing my Mirror dinghy in the Solent; the difference between having someone else at the helm and taking the helm myself, with a dark sky and a squall heading my way. Try not to funk it and keep on sailing.

It was all right on the night. James Russell gave a very good performance of the Richard bits. And there were lots of nice people there. If you were one of them, then thank you!




photo by Chris Bertram

Becoming Drusilla - the reading, originally uploaded by Chris Bertram.

"Becoming Drusilla", the Dublin reading

(this post edited 4 Aug 2019, in light of John Boyne's recent book on trans matters. See postscript below)

The essential elements for a good expedition ( I just made up this list a moment ago, and will almost certainly be changing it as the mood takes me):

• Thorough planning
• Serendipity
• The kindness of strangers
• The kindness indeed of friends
• A bit of unscheduled misfortune to liven things up
• actually, now I come to think of it, thorough planning can just get in the way, so scrap that one

Dublin Airport, Tuesday morning. The engines of the Ryanair 737-800 were still winding down, and there was a great chirping of mobile phones being switched on. Followed, in some cases, by the beeps announcing messages that were coming in.

In my case it was a text from Richard, who'd arrived in Dublin on Sunday.

He'd come down with chicken pox.

This was not a good start to the day, especially not for Richard.

He was standing there waiting outside Trinity College, when the airport bus dropped me. And so was Barbara, who was both putting us up and putting up with us. She looked a lot more cheerful than Richard. And why not?

We discussed plans over coffee.

The show had to go on, but Richard didn't want to spread his germs, and the spots were popping up and proliferating even as we watched. Something Had To Be Done.

Richard's old UEA contemporary, John Boyne, whose new book, The House Of Special Purpose, is published today, was coming along to the reading anyway. Richard phoned him.

"Have you ever had chicken pox?"

Apparently not. So John bravely agreed to read Richard's bits in the reading we had planned. He came round and we did a rehearsal. Word perfect, first time.

John gives Richard a lesson in What The Well-Dressed Writer Is Wearing

And so away we went to the Winding Stair bookshop, a lovely place on Ormond Quay, and I buried myself in my notes to try to quell the rising sense of panic and Regan opened the wine and John and Barbara went off for a coffee.

The Winding Stair bookshop, Ormond Quay, Dublin: Regan Hutchins, prop.

And the reading went really well.

photo by Laura

...and after much chatting and finishing off of the wine, we sloped off to the Stags Head, a very Dublin pub. And stayed up very late indeed.

Thank you, Barbara, John, Regan, Laura of Lady List, the nice folk from TENI, and indeed everyone who came along and made it such an enjoyable evening!

Postscript in light of John Boyne's recent publication of a book 'My Brother's Name is Jessica' and the furore over his article in the Irish Times claiming to support trans right but reject the word 'cis'...

it was really disappointing to read that article, and see John's trajectory after its publication. I haven't read his new book and have absolutely no intention of doing so, so cannot comment on any possible merit it may contain, literary or otherwise. But John's attitude, as displayed over this business, leads me to suppose that it might not be very good. I did talk about it with Richard; he said that he'd met John very shortly before John's book came out, and John never mentioned it; which, given the subject matter, seems rather surprising. 

Anyway, a sad postscript. When Richard and I collaborated on Becoming Drusilla, it was very much with the aim to represent the trans experience as truly and authentically as possible; and it is generally agreed that we succeeded. Appropriating that experience by a don't-call-me-cis man seems very much a retrograde step.

Becoming Drusilla - the paperback launch

At last! I've got a small pile of advance copies of the paperback, and very nice it looks too.

Richard and I are doing a very short tour in May. I just got confirmation of the Bristol venue yesterday, so it's time to post something up. And here it is!

Tue May 5th: The Winding Stair Bookshop, Dublin, 7:30

Wed May 6th: Birmingham City University

Fri May 8th: Green Room, The Tobacco Factory, Bristol, starts 7:45, reading at 8:15

...after our reading in Bloomsbury last year went down so well, we thought we'd repeat the dramatised reading thing, with Q and A's for those with Q's to A. Or whatever.

Hmm, is that it? -I guess so for now. I'm sure I've left something out. Time will tell.

Telegraphy

Fame! ...well, nearly. This blog gets a mention in Diane Purkiss' review of Becoming Drusilla in the Daily Telegraph

Dru buys a brightly coloured top to mark her femininity more strongly. Beard thinks she must order a half instead of a pint in a pub. Must Dru also become incompetent with machines? Must she become garrulously confessional, emoting for his benefit and ours? (On her own blog, Dru writes back, and there too she's less juicily confessional than we might wish.)

Quite. Juicy confessions? In these shoes? I don't think so.

It is a good review. Intelligent. I am pleased.

I am also surprised but pleased to see one of my photos there...


...although I am slightly mystified by the bit in the corner of it that says "BID UP TV", which is, Google tells me, a shopping channel. Has someone been selling my photos on telly? -what a confusing old world it is.

Return of the interview that disappeared

Richard and I were interviewed by Gerry Ryan on Ireland's RTE2, on May 14th. I had posted a link to the show, but, last time I tried using it, I found that the show in question is no longer accessible.

The shows before it are accessible. The shows after it are accessible. Was it something we said?

Never mind, for here, dear reader, is the interview, now in glorious sensurround technicolour. Enjoy. But make a cup of tea first, it's a long 'un.

TransLondon

I met up with Richard in the courtyard of the V&A and we drank tea and ate buns and rehearsed our reading; decided that an off-the-page dialogue was feasible, and ran with it.



What a great place the V&A is. The courtyard was like being in Italy, but without the scooters and shouting. And without the heat, brrrrrr. But hey.... And then we wandered around a bit and turned a corner and blow me if it wasn't Trajan's Column. Right next to the tympanum of Santiago de Compostella.

The V&A is now officially my fave museum.

Now then, to business.

So we met up with Charlie and ate pies in a Bloomsbury pie shop, and arrived at Gay's The Word to find it thronging, and extremely welcoming.

The reading and the Q&As went well, and then just about everyone packed into the pub over the road and we all stayed up Very Late Indeed.

There was a really good buzz that evening. Everyone seems so happy about the book, and the new perspective it offers. Richard got a round of applause. They even gave me one, for that little victory over P&O. I valued that more highly than I can express.

It was so nice meeting people I've only previously known as internet presences. And meeting people I didn't know. And meeting a few old friends too. And just for the evening, we all became that nebulous and peripatetic thing, the trans community. It rocked.

knowing my place

A bit of thinking time at Schloss Marland. I was a bit frazzled after the radio interviews; in short order, we did R4, RTE2, and Newstalk (an Irish radio station).

This blog would be valueless if it was only used for propaganda about the book; I want to look at how the process affects me, too. So the disclosure here (such as it is) is difficult, in the same way as I felt uncomfortable thinking back to the Gerry Ryan interview; it is about disclosure of things which I would not normally talk about. Were my answers to his questions the correct response, or should I have pointed out to him the inappropriateness of some of his questions? -I think I did the right thing; give listeners the chance to make their own mind up about me, and about Gerry Ryan. It was funny that he obviously thought that women shouldn't work in engineering; and his disclosure that his eight year old daughter is experimenting with heels and make-up was unintentionally quite funny, if rather worrying...

Then there's the question of where my place is, or is perceived to be, in relation to the book. Because ultimately it's Richard's writing, and I am afraid of looking foolish by seeming to appropriate it as my work too. I obviously feel very involved with it, and pleased with the physical contribution I made to it, though haiku and drawings are not hugely important in the great scheme of things.



I flatter myself that I can write fairly well; I was amused when the P&O defence lawyer described me as articulate and intelligent (and a whole lot of other things), intending this description as a criticism; someone in my position is not supposed to be those things, in his world view. How much I respect his opinion, you may imagine.

But Richard is a writer; he's worked at his craft for a long time now, and it shows. I was practically hugging myself when I first read his text, at the felicity of it all. I could never come near that.

Having acknowledged that, I still feel very much part of the process.

OK, that's the Sunday morning state of the nation address.

Tomorrow, Radio Bristol. Then Tuesday, TransLondon.

Onwards and upwards.

in the air

Up to London on Tuesday, ready for an early morning car to Broadcasting House. We were on the Midweek programme. It was a good experience, and Libby Purves is intelligent and informed. And she thinks Richard is a "really nice man". I think she may be right...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/midweek.shtml



...and then across the road to a Small Back Room, for a link to Dublin for RTE2's Gerry Ryan show. This one was hilarious, with Gerry asking some extremely inappropriate questions. It's hard to say whether he's really naive or just disingenuous. But it was fun wondering. And we learned what a "Biffo" is while waiting for our slot, which cuts in at about 1 hour and 17 minutes into the show (if you have the patience to 'listen again', it's either "yesterday's show" if you're reading this on Thursday, or the Wednesday show if not, until presumably in a week's time it will slide quietly off the edge of the ether and disappear for ever into the void. Hellooo? Echoooooo!


http://www.rte.ie/2fm/ryanshow/

this is the BBC

We were interviewed by Clare English on BBC Radio Scotland's Book Cafe, this lunchtime. Richard was in a studio in London, and I was in Bristol's Whiteladies Road studio, which was a terrifically friendly place; I was invited to a party, I had a nice chat with Peter who looked after me, and when I went into the building I found that they even had one of my photos on the wall. Hey, is this fame or what?

Or what, probably. There was a display of photos from the BBC My Bristol Flickr group, so I saw a few familiar names among the credits; and this was my contribution...


Richard did well; I faltered, and then faltered some more, but the world didn't end.

Thanks to the miracle of Interweb technology, I was able to cycle home and listen to myself. Ouch. Ouch tiddly ouch.

Must think of something intelligent to say for Wednesday.

Here's the link to the programme, if you enjoy the sound of someone tripping up repeatedly. Our contribution starts soon after 20 mins into the show, if you don't want to listen to Misha Glenny. But why wouldn't you?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/radioscotland/programmes/bookcafe

are you receiving me?

Had the researcher from the BBC on the phone, just checking out a few details in readiness for next week's Midweek.

She assured me that she'd read the book and it was Very Good.

"Have you had chance to read it yet?" she asked.

I assured her that I had....

"You do illustrations?" she asked. "Animals?"

"Yes, mostly wildlife," I said. "And this book. I illustrated that, too."

Hey ho. Perhaps my intended role on the programme is to simper. Can you hear simpering on the radio?