Sketch Friday 27th August 2021

This week I’ve continued to be down with this (non covid, non covid, it’s not covid) virus. It’s been a bit of a rubbish week. Its began to feel endless. I’ve done almost nothing because I realised that every time I tried to do anything, I just went backwards. Anyway, doing nothing has finally started paying off. Today, I can feel I’ve finally turned a corner. So that’s good.

What else?

Really?

Not much else.

I watched lots of videos of people taking fountain pens out of boxes and writing with them and saying what they liked and didn’t like about them. I then got FOMO and ordered a new pen and some sheening inks. I have no regrets. Ink makes me happy. Fountain pens make me happy.

Having failed to learn German I have started to try and reactivate the long lost French in my brain via a little app on my phone. When I press the right multi guess it gives me virtual jewels that look like sweets. I can’t tell you how much I love winning virtual treasure. So far, I have learnt how to say ‘I am a student and I live in Berlin’, ‘Yes, Marie’ and ‘The orange and a horse’. (‘J’édudant et J’habite à Berlin’, ‘Oui, Marie’ et ‘L’orange et un cheval’).

I did a small amount of work. Reading and thinking about Matthew Bellwood’s #AperfectWorld project. Then, I drew some bears because bears appeared in the stories and I was tired and drawing bears felt like fun.

Uh.

Whatelse?

I lay on the bed with our cat Lara Darling and felt very sorry for myself.

I did some ‘I look awful’ sketches of my own face, that weirdly cheered me up.

Um.

I sat and watched the Green Party leadership hustings on zoom. I don’t know who I’m going to vote for yet (there are some great candidates). But the whole ‘debate’ about trans women made me sad. It’s simply demeaning. If a fellow human tells me they are a woman, I believe them. I know there are some trans folk out in the world who also happen to be asses. Sadly, a percentage of humans prove themselves to be ass-hats everyday. But denying the rights of a whole group of people, simply because a minority behave badly, seems what? illogical? No. I fear, it’s rooted in prejudice. Tons of cis people, including me, have questions. The world is changing fast and sometimes its hard to keep up / understand. Having questions is fine and human. But having questions doesn’t entitle the questioner to ‘a debate’. In the same way that if I make lasagne, you may have questions about how I am making my sauce, but it isn’t necessary each time I decide to cook Italian food for you to demand that everyone on the street drop everything and barge round to mine, so we can have a debate about whether Italian food is real food or a bogus victual that might do some kind of undefined evil to our kids. If that happened, it would make me fear that the people involved were not being quite honest with me or themselves. It would make me think ‘is this really about me putting apple in my tomato sauce or is it about them simply not liking the look of pasta, fullstop? Is this their way of stopping pasta ever being cooked on the street again, without having to actually come out and say ‘look, I just hate the idea of pasta, I only like pizza’. Which is human. But also, let’s be clear, not ok.

I apologise wholeheartedly for my ungainly metaphor. But not the sentiment behind it.

You know what? I had a hysterectomy two years ago. Since then I use HRT to help me feel more like myself, ie the woman I am. If I were to measure myself by the yardstick that some use to deny trans women ‘real woman’ status’ (having biological kids, owning a womb, not needing hormones) then by that reckoning, I’m not sure I pass. Bah and humbug. My experience as a woman is not diminished by simply trying to recognise other human beings in the way they wish to be met. I stand with trans woman, trans men and all of my non-binary queer family. Proudly. And if they are folk who also happen to want to work towards making a green future (clue, there isn’t another future that’s worth working towards) then I say ‘thank you’ and most importantly, ‘welcome sisters and siblings’.

Phew-wee.

When I wasn’t doing that.

I did some reading for pleasure. Like. Some real reading! I just couldn’t write but I found I could read. With real pages and real page turns. In real life. The book I read was Rose Ruane’s ‘This Is Yesterday’. I am about 4 chapters from the end and I’m in a turmoil of ‘don’t want it to end, but also really really need to know what happens at the end’ flutter-sadness-joy. Oh it’s good. Half of it is set in the era of my teens and it so captures that moment (about being a teenager then). All the angst and horror and tummy flip excitement of it all. The other half is set now. And I recognise far too much of the regret in this section too. It’s fabulous. And what a treat to remember how much I love reading (not just listening to books being read to me).

Also.

When I was really fed up and in the dumps, Janey sat and played pass the pigs with me. And it really cheered me up.

Finally.

I made a cat treat holder with toilet rolls. It’s basically a copy of my friend’s Theron and Rajni’s cat treat holder. But mine is a square and way smaller (cos I got impatient and didn’t want to wait to build up the ton of toilet rolls I would have needed to make their rocking pyramid style one). Anyway, I was very excited and pretty pleased with myself when I presented my little construction to Lara Darling. It’s meant to be a kind of krypton factor for cats. You pop treats in each tube. They then have to work out how to get at the treats. It’s meant to create hours of fun. Lara Darling was having none of that shit. She took one look, then knocked it over and all the treats fell out. Then she gorged all her treats in a oner. And I said ‘Ok, that’s fair. But it’s not in the spirit of the game’. She just shrugged a ‘whatever, bitch’. It’s hard to argue with that.

That’s the news from Convalescence towers here at Bingles-by-the-sea.

Love to all x