Angharad's blog

Morning of frustration

My kitchen mixer tap has been dripping for some weeks. Yesterday I tried to get the cap off and failed. I went and finished reading a novel instead. Today, with a renewed feeling of intent, I got a selection of screwdrivers and set to. I had bought some washers in the week so hoped I could do the job. I have never been good at plumbing, I'm still not, but it seems mixer taps don't have washers, they have cartridges. I watched a couple of you tube videos to see what I had to do, I then looked on Screwfix site to see how much they were. There are loads.

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38 years ago

38 years ago it was a Monday morning when I went into my office as a woman and everyone was very helpful. I've had a few difficult days since then including coming to terms with a stroke and the finite quality of life. I've lost my son, my marriage had already broken up, but he took his own life in 2014, a week after I'd celebrated 28 years of being me. The surgery took longer than anticipated but gave me time to know it was right for me. I just got into the fast track applicants to the Gender Panel, so after 16 or so years as female, I actually got legal status as one.

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Proud of my daughter.

My daughter was in Cardiff the other day when a woman approached her and handed her a flier about the preservation of woman-only spaces, against transwomen. My daughter quickly scanned it and then gave it back to her saying, "These spaces should be open to all women, however they became so, as they are all women and they are all equal." She said she felt very angry that people should be prejudicial, it annoyed her feminism. I was very proud of her.

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At Last Something Uplifting About US Transgender kids

It seems transgender children are the easiest target for the self-righteous rightwing parties to target, so it's good to read a positive story for once. It may only be a drop in the ocean of hate that seems to exist these days, but it made me feel glad that someone is trying.Here is a link to the Guardian report:https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/29/tran...

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Bike (Easy As Falling Off variety)

I know that self-recommendation is no recommendation, or at least so my mother used to say, but I was recently asked a question about Bike which involved reading fifty or so episodes to answer. Now I know Bike has it's fans and many more who would probably enjoy it but are frightened of its length.

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Charlotte's Tale

I have recently reread this story that I last posted a new episode about eight years ago. Over the course of it I had many lovely comments but in the last one there were many asking for me to conclude it. It has some quite powerful chapters and it took me a lot of effort and energy to write, I thought I left it with a reasonable ending but accept some like everything done and dusted. There is a lot of me in the story and I don't want to spend hours and find no one reads a final chapter, plus it will take a while to write and to get in touch with the characters.

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Karin Bishop's Port of Arrival

I've read several of Karin's books and like many TG authors she puts together arguments as to why we are just ordinary people trying to get on with our lives, however, in this book, she cleverly introduces the fact that we all know something, because everybody does, like the burning of bras by ardent feminists or George W Bush's ranch, no bras were ever burnt, just dumped in a bin - the burning being journalistic embellishment, second, George Bush was never a cowboy or had a ranch, she asserts that he doesn't like horses, may even be afraid of them - probably the only thing he and I have in

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Gamer Girl

Many will remember that authors Bryony Marsh and Chris Archer gave away copies of this ebook some while ago, I read it at the time and enjoyed it. I have just re-read it and i really did enjoy it, it captures the emotions of the characters very well and I think the difficulties of young-love story , with all its complications when you include some gender complications as well, and for a change Kate, the older sister of our hero, Danny, is a real brick and very protective and supportive of her younger sibling.

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Definition of woman

In the Scottish courts they are actually debating this, Women for Scotland, partly funded by JKRowling, are trying to overturn the 2004 law of someone with a gender recognition certificate ( such as me) shouldn't have the same status as biological females. Read the article and see how at least one judge sticks to her principles, I admire and respect her.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/28/transgender-...

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An interesting article about a woman with a non-binary child.

Given the murder of a non-binary child in the US recently, this article was interesting. It claims the parents of other schoolkids are more trouble than the kids who are interacting with a non-binary child. And remember most opinions held by children, including prejudices, come from the parents.

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/child-non-binary-friends...

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An interesting and compassionate opinion on Brianna Ghey's murder

The children who brutally murdered a transgender girl have been named, in a positive article about her death, Zoe Williams comments that transphobia seems to be a component of why Brianna was murdered and how it is whipped up by the right-wing press and politicians, I think it's worth a read and I agree we should remember the name of the victim not the perpetrators, who will locked up for years.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/02/briann...

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I'm not sure if I'll have time to write Bike this week.

I have had two reports of bereavement in the last few days with the funeral process tomorrow taking up most of the day. As they say, one sign of old age is going to more funerals than weddings. One is my elderly neighbour, who at 97 years old could be seen as inevitable, the other a good friend and widow of an even better friend, who died some years ago. This good lady died from a stroke, which given my own experience of a similar affliction, makes it even more poignant.

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What happened to last week's Bike?

I was about to start writing this weeks and need to read the previous episode to maintain continuity and lo and behold it's no longer on the front page although other stories posted before or on Saturday are, no wonder my hit numbers are low these days. Is it worth it when I could be doing something like cleaning up after the flood in my lab?

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New meaning of TG

I've been doing some preparatory work/ study for some surveys I'm doing and also some teaching I'm doing next week. As you probably know I have an interest in freshwater macroinvertebrates (Mayfly larvae etc) and I came across TG being used in a dictionary of entomology - it stood for tracheal gills. There will be more of those than transgender people, so should obviously spring to the ordinary person's mind (or what passes for one). I knew you'd be glad to read that.

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It's Christmas.

I don't know if others have noticed that when Christmas nears, we seem to have a series of disasters, usually earthquakes, aeroplane crashes or killings. I looked at the Guardian website and beside the awful murder of Brianna Ghey, there was a shooting of 14 or more in Prague, the murder of a little boy in London, the continued genocide in Gaza, Russian atrocities in Ukraine, the earthquake in China and so on.

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Family Business by Adrienne Nash

I read this book this week and thoroughly enjoyed it, it's only been published a week or two and it is up to date with Covid and the campaign against transwomen, including the note at the end of the book. It has excitement, some plausible characters and some very interesting elements about gender dysphoria.

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I just said goodbye to faithful companion

She hadn't been well for few days, in fact really, I was back and forth to the vet for the last few months. Anyway, my Whizz developed heart failure which worsened over the last couple of days and she stopped eating or drinking so I couldn't get any diuretics into her. We had a lovely afternoon together and she knew something was up as she followed me around the house and sadly I took to the vet for the last time. I then brought her home and buried her in the garden, near to Bonzi's grave.

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Britain is more liberal

According to the British Social attitudes survey, except it seems towards transgender people.

'The study notes, however, that attitudes towards transgender people – recorded only since 2016 – appear more volatile, with a recent sharp decline in public support. The proportion of the British public describing themselves as “not prejudiced” towards transgender people fell from 82% to 64% between 2021 and 2022, when the latest survey took place.

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