Well, I entered the BBC competition. No great hopes, but I got a reply today. My script hasn't been selected, but they have told me it reached the top 16% of entries. Now, there's a compliment!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21788238

I needed it all day, as I couldn't watch the match live. I finally saw it last night on catch-up. Those of you who are also Welsh need no telling. What an immense game! What a stunning result!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00w09yg/Transsexual_Te...

I have been attacked by a nasty little bot that tried to steal my e-mail account. Unfortunately, my 'password reset'e-mail address is wrong, in that I presciently wrote 'mal' instead of 'mail'.

I don't know if the same 'publishing phenomenon' is sweeping the Colonies, but there is apparently an insatiable appetite for a series of books about kinky sex attracting readers throughout the UK.

I have had a few bad days, with some nastiness from colleagues based largely on being different. For the first time in years, I threw a 'sickie', calling in sick when I wasn't.

I started my 'career' here with a story about a painfully shy transwoman finding love and life in a festival at Shrewsbury. She was engaged there, took her friends there, saw their own love break out from fear and misunderstanding...and it is this weekend.

There is a leave ban on. I have just finished work, and I was refused time off for the one shift I needed. The train companies also had a bike ban on, which they dropped on August 17th. I should be there, but I can't be. Next year....

[hint to self: shorter skirt next year. Wet grass...]

This is special. There was a dicumentary on Oscar some time ago, about how he has lived with the loss of his legs in childhood, and come to dominate 'disabled' running. There was also a long, long argument combined with a lot of research into whether his new legs gave him a competitive advantage over intact athletes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/19126033

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01l9z10/A_Year_in_the_...
This is a truly beautiful programme, though I know many people outside the UK cannot decode it without some trickery.
If ever anyone wanted to see what Steph'n'Geoff or Steve and the Toffs enjoyed, this is it. The farmer (whom I know slightly) has the most wonderful Gog accent, and the TG link is provided by the poet Twm Morys, son of Jan, who was James...

Interesting links here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8571487/Worlds-first-womb-...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9389469/Womb-tr...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2172420/Britain-s-...

Sorry for the sources, but I only came across the story today.

Very, very odd, reading one's own writings a year or more later, I am working very, very slowly through 'Sweat and Tears'. Not easy.

I posted quite a long comment on the 'Out of Canada' blog today, but it was about something that deserves a wider discussion. I came across rather a good link which sympathetically addresses the issues involved, and gives quite a lot of detail and history.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-trans/

Oh dear me
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/12/christian-anti-g...

This is a British Airways sponsored short film starring Timothy Spall. There is one of my story titles embedded (literally) in it, and it is about cycling, but there is no TG element.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/mice-plag...

Once more I have been asked about the list of characters in my stories, so for my small but select and appreciated band of readers I have put together a list of most of the characters in my stories set around the Surrey-Sussex border. I will do my best to top it up (the French connection is absent at the moment) and it is not in alphabetical order, more in clusters of associated people.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17453849

I settled down to reread some of my stuff, partly to keep a consistency in the characters I am writing. In 'Ride On' I refer to a Vanessa Redgrave film, 'Second Serve', and as a bear of little brain I had never looked it up.
It is on You tube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgYxHYJ5H80

Thirty years ago a very dear friend was dying of cancer at 18 years of age, I had a beard and my own hair, and there was a nasty but thankfully short war in the South Atlantic. I wrote something I was going to say I was very pleased with that involved that war, but 'pleased' is the wrong word. Satisfied, perhaps.

It has sex in. It has religion in. It has religious discussion about sex in it. I was shown it by the original for my character 'Kate' in Ride On.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/mar/02/gay-straight...

How very odd and fitting!

On the date 2/3, my kudos count hit 23,023. [Twilight Zone we-do, we-do music]

It may be a good idea not to look at this one at work. As usual the fun is in the comments for each particular product, and in the self-description. WTF is a paramedical esthetician?
http://www.mynewpinkbutton.com/content/Product_List.htm

Just been sent this. It relates to a proposed law in Russia to 'make it a "crime" to write a book, publish an article or speak in public about being gay, lesbian, bi or transgender - labeling it "homosexual propaganda" '

A lot of dramatic writing can involve the ide of conspiracy, of groups organised for evil, and I tried to get some of that across in a couple of my tales. Young children being offered for abuse, taken from town to town, raped.

I was talking earlier about this, and have posted this link so that people can see what I was on about. The footage is quite shocking, but it is better than some other links because it shows the prelude to what was, really, attempted murder, or at the very least assault with a deadly weapon.

But as it was a motor vehicle, "that's different"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17069235

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2102245/Bus-driver-u... is the Daily Hate's article, and the comments are as to be expected. For example:

I have just posted 'Too Little, Too Late?' 62nd chapter, and that is the end. The reason will be apparent in the reading. I will take up the tale later, effectively a second book, but that's all for Jill at the moment.

That time of year is here. I have linked to a BBBC prog on Welsh culture, but this is closer to home. My Christmas will be as normal; on my own, and working. Allows those with families to have their break.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00z2jfr/Max_Boyce_Live...

Very silly, but a good example of how some of us think.