Gender Bender — the trailblazers!

Despite the explosion in categories of gender and sexuality, it makes me sad when I read of the difficulties that young people can still have when they fail to fit their particularly allotted stereotype.

I don’t have many gender issues – I’m sure I’m not the only woman who feels that she is in drag when she dresses up to go to a wedding but I’m fairly happy in my skin, albeit a bit baggy, and I’ve never really been convinced that being born female has held me back — I’m still a tomboy but more often than not I’ve had more pressing problems than the trappings of gender. I’m just relieved to have been born in my time and place and to have had the privilege of a career and a house full of children.

In the early days I rather enjoyed being a novelty – for that is all I was — an ostensibly normal woman (looking quite young) practising a traditionally male profession reasonably competently – not some sort of child prodigy or weird intersex.

I think I’m saying that not fitting a stereotype should be a pleasure and not an unavoidable burden, laced with self-doubt and self-loathing, but the pressure to conform may be getting greater.

My understanding of sexual attraction is that it is mainly related to features associated with fitness to breed but women’s magazines project anorexic models as the norm — women who surely never ovulate naturally. I used to think that fashion photographers must all be gay (perhaps they are) and were promoting an android and defeminised image of women to gratify their own sensibilities — you really do wonder who their target audience is. The adolescent boyish look has given way to pale childlike look so that you wonder about the demographic of the person who finds it attractive — the paedophile or the necrophile? What is going on here – is the heroin-addict look really so attractive in a woman?

Image is all. The normal woman promoted in the media is still seriously under weight but now almost universally has large, firm and strangely inappropriate bosoms–

Thanks to Barbie Fantasies (CC BY 4.0)

— it was a novelty on Strictly Come Dancing to spot a single pair of small, normally jiggling breasts, ones that might, sometime in the future, actually lactate! The owner would be mortified.

Fourteen year old boys display their abs on Facebook and will soon be complaining about their short stature due to premature fusion of their long-bone ends and acne caused by their anabolic food supplements.

Thanks to Peter Taylor’s Memorabilia Birmingham (CC DY NC 4.0)

Buying clothes for teenage girls was never easy – the wrangle over school shoes, and it’s no comfort, when years later they proudly display their bunions, to say ‘I told you so!’

I worry about the sexualised wardrobe of many very young girls –Boob-tubes and Cuban heels for six-year olds, not to mention lewd and provocative statements emblazoned across their chests. I worry about what this says about these innocents to men of more traditional cultures. Fourteen year old girls may run rings around boys of their own age and culture but they are still innocents in the real world.

A woman in her twenties with a normal Body Mass Index ( not media-skinny or food-industry-obese) who chooses not to wear sexualised clothes is not weird or threatening. She is normal by her own parameters and probably a lot more healthy and sexually attractive ( fit to breed!) than the Barbie doll look-alikes that our image-makers and advertisers foist upon us.

This Christmas I had great difficulty selecting a gift from a local supermarket for a two year old – to my surprise, the shop had two sections for this age group – one, camouflaged, for little boys with rockets and guns and action men and construction sets with pictures of little boys building bridges with their Dads ( so they must have been taken on a Wednesday or an alternate week-end). In the fluorescent pink, girl’s department, there were tea sets and pots and pans, little plastic microwaves that pinged, ovens and kitchens, severed plastic heads to make-up, Barbies and little princesses with tiara’s. I felt ill.

I know I really just needed to find a better, independent toy-shop. Time was short and the only safe gift for any child, it seemed, was a cuddly creature, a zoo or a farm – but even the dinosaurs had been castrated! What gender confusion will that create in our two-year-old’s psyche?

Thanks to David for his image of Joan of Arc from Meridan Hill (Malcolm X) Park (CC DY 4.0)

Thoughtful

Filling the Spiritual Void — the anxious atheist

When we introduce children to scientific thinking and our reasoning becomes increasingly evidence based, our world becomes more secular and religious concepts begin to seem weird – that is when we humans may be missing a trick.

The French are ahead of us in this: for more than half a century their state education system has been secular so that, for many, religious faith is alien and impossible to fathom, it does not fit into our way of thinking anymore.

This may deprive us of several useful psychological tools.

The concept of an over-arching God, a power greater than ourselves, particularly a beneficent power was very useful. It may have been delusional but it allowed us to relinquish overall responsibility, taking us out of ultimate control. Being in charge is very stressful – all those decisions – having to understand everything and be assertive. It was much easier to have faith in the overall management and just pray – now we are self reliant but full of self doubt.

It is a sort of growing up, a loss of innocence, a loss of humility and a growing sense of our own importance, grinding self-reliance and sneaking insecurity that can be so destructive – it takes us to the Accident and Emergency Department in the middle of the night when by morning we are feeling better.

Other things have contributed – we are empowered and less restrained by gender and class, we are more free-standing, not so much a part of a family or a close supportive community.

We could however acknowledge one overarching power that is not God, but is greater than ourselves – that is the accumulation of human development, knowledge and co-operation. It is the billions of years of natural selection and adaption and one man’s knowledge and understanding, built on that of other men (and women), built on that of all men and women, since the beginning of time – that great pyramid of our achievements. But it’s not a pyramid, is it? It’s an infinite pyramidal mesh – immortal, invisible. It is wisdom – sounds religious to me! It does sound like something worthy of faith and that is, I think, what we are missing — faith, or rather confidence, in ourselves — in our wider self which is immense.

And we miss the idea of an afterlife which is the ultimate in delayed gratification, of investing ones efforts in long term projects! The converse which is a finite life without judgement, without a final moral reckoning lays us open to short-termism — live while you can and die happy (only we don’t). Does this have a negative effect on future generations? We are not, after all, going to be looking down from Heaven and seeing the consequences of our actions — nor burning in the fires of hell and damnation for the things we did that we knew all along were wrong.

Pious role model from Limerick Cathedral

We have to think of our descendants as our afterlife — that’s not too difficult and, believe me, they will judge us!

The Commandments were set in stone — that was the point. You knew where you are with commandments set in stone, you had a moral compass that avoided constant moral negotiation with oneself — my Mum knew exactly what was right and what was wrong and there was no room for negotiation — no shades of grey.

The irony is that today everyone has protocols for everything except the really important moral dilemmas where a protocol would be really useful.

We wanted to have it our way with our wonderful free will and just like that day where it all started in the Garden of Eden we can’t un-eat the apple.

Ecology, Wales

Common things being common

The grasshoppers that jumped out and away wherever you trod in our field last summer were green and there were lots of them. That might make you think that they were Common Green Field Grasshoppers but with talk of global warming, climate change and species in all the wrong places (A Dartmoor Blog https://adriancolston.wordpress.com) I have been inspired to have another look at my photos and to try to be more precise in my identification.

First impressions may well have been correct and this confirms me in the belief that things should be named for what they are, although in this case I had such difficulty in photographing him that Brown Kneed Elusive might be a better name.

If you recognise this creature please leave details otherwise he will remain Omocestus viridulus, the common green field grasshopper.

Doggy, Humour, Pedro's glog, Sheep

Pedro’s New Year Glog

I wasn’t born to be a sheep dog — more of an urban animal really — bit of a Jack-the-lad, I suppose. Not a yobbo — urbane, they say — I’ve been to the theatre twice — outdoor, don’t you know — I’ve seen Hamlet!

Sheep Dog or what?

I’m a Generic Hound, sometimes called an Original Dog, with nothing added and nothing taken away — they haven’t nibbled away at my genome (that’s what I’m told by my friend, the geneticist), I came with all my natural potentiality then just had to find a niche — that’s where I live now — in my niche.

It suits me, I like the out-door life and the rain and if you have a good brain and understand their lingo (human’s that is, despite their undoubted intelligence, sheep have little conversation) it’s not difficult. One starts by just ‘helping out’ a bit and before you know it you’re on ‘One Man and His Dog’, except that she’s One Woman and, quite honestly, there is very little chance of us attaining celebrity because of her, what shall I say, declining powers. I can understand her perfectly but she doesn’t always think situations through or, indeed, even close the right gates, but we muddle along. It’s not that she doesn’t understand me, one flick of the eyes and she knows exactly what I mean but she’s wilful — thinks she knows best and, to be honest, since the operation I really can’t be bothered to assert myself.

Aby — my trusted lieutenant.

Aby helps, she’s my ward, I raised her from a new-born lamb when she was orphaned and had to live in the new wet-room, then the kitchen — she’s the only creature that I’ve ever allowed in my basket. Not now — she’s got very big and clumsy but she still talks a lot, much more than the other sheep. She’s had lots of lambs of her own now but none of them are quite like her. We have a soft spot for each other, she and I, she lets me lick her new lambs which the others would never do — they stamp their petulant little feet and I wouldn’t mess with any of them.

Aby with her 2012 lamb who is called Eighty-one and will be having her own lamb in April.

Proud Guardian!

I do most of the remembering, I’m the time keeper, I know when things should be done, and I deal with security and pest control — I manage the cats and catch the adult rats (they really only cope with the young ones).

Protecting Boss from pesky cat (demonstrating sophisticated emotion). Jealous dog — they do PhDs in that.

It’s not all work, I have holidays, mainly beach retrieving holidays.

Here I am in Ireland.

Setting off for Devon

On the Gower

Mountaineering in North Wales.

Wishing you all the best for 2015, Pedro

Ecology, Humour

Solar Psychosis

It’s a crisp winter’s morn — heavy frost but brilliant sunshine — the man said that was the best situation for the photo-voltaic cells — got to dash — got to look at the meter — we’ve got a little house with a smiley face — the water’s hot and we are exporting — our newly minted electricity is flowing into the National Grid — that’s bad, we should be using it — it’s free — got to put the washing machine on — WE’RE GENERATING!

Whoops — No we’re not — the sun must have gone in — I’ll just pop out and look at the sky — we might manage a short wash later, between clouds — Oh no! Look! We’re importing! Oh Alan, the smiley face has gone.

Something must be on! I’ll check that all the lights are off, is the fridge motor running? You haven’t put the kettle on, HAVE YOU? The computer’s on? Oh yes, so it is.

That’s it — I’ve got it — acute green-energy dementia! I think that’s how they work, the solar panels — not so much by generating as by focusing you on switching things off!

Like a Druid I watch the movement of the great celestial orb. Our fixed panels are a compromise between a right angle to the sun’s rays in summer and a right angle to the rays in winter so are almost always at a wrong angle — this results in rumination and ranting.

We are constantly checking. Look! they are in shadow.

It’s those damn trees!

I can’t see! I’m blind from looking at the Sun!

lifestyle

Christmas Goes West

Turmoil comes in waves and these times of upheaval are our most creative — this is what I tell the children (it is no comfort to them).

It is Christmas and our five grown-up children (now that’s a strange concept) and their partners all seem to be facing new challenges. Four now have various commitments in the West Country — work, homes, other family and friends, so to make it easier to all be together this year — Mum and Dad (and Pedro) go West.

We entrust our pregnant ewes to a responsible friend — a rare thing! Then we buy Tupperware and fill up the old camper van with plastic containers of Christmas, glance at the long term weather forecast and set off to The Gables — a rented house in Tywardreath, Cornwall.

But first, as Responsible Friend has noticed a hazard in the field in which we feed the aforementioned precious ewes, we have to fill in the seventy meter trench that we dug for the solar panel cable. I use the word trench appropriately as torrential rain renders it a living memorial to life on the Somme in World War One. The week before we leave for the West we slither and shiver, often up to our knees in mud. Alan’s relationship with Digger is tested almost to destruction (not a bad thing, they were getting far too close) as her solenoid trouble makes her very temperamental and unreliable so that she often refuses to work at all and sits facing the prevailing storm with her windshield broken, getting her seat wet — but then we all have wet seats.

Cornwall is dry and comfortable, camellias bloom in gardens and ragged robins in the hedgerows. As shop assistants glower at befuddled shoppers and cars queue to enter and leave the supermarket car parks of the peninsula, sensible folk walk their wet dogs on nearby Par Sands where the China Clay factory breaths steam into the clear chilly air.

Carols are sung at the Pub.

The Sun comes out on Christmas Morning.

Christmas Day

The silvery sun makes it imperative to get out and make the most of the short days.

Gulls

Kestrel over the cliff path

Wet dogs on Par Sands

Sands and sky

Festive meals are served for various permutations of family and friends.

The wind changes, coming in from the North West, we pack up the left overs and drive home avoiding the Black Mountains, but not the traffic, to arrive home as the cold freezes the first dusting of snow into a crisp sugar coating over everything.

Wales

Brecon Beacons

Call it serendipity, call it making the most of a bad job — this week-end we found ourselves, unexpectedly, in South Wales. The rain cleared and the winter sun peeped over the hill blinding us with its reflection in the reservoir.

Pontsticill Reservoir

So we set out to explore this big splodge of green on the map of South Wales, north of the industrial Valleys and the metropolitan south. The Brecon Beacons National Park stretches from Brecon in the middle of the country right down to the Heads of the Valleys Road, along which you can drive and (if you want to) turn down each of the famous coal mining valleys that once fed the industrial revolution — that criss-crossed the area with canals and railways that turned the stone of the terraced houses, bridges and the tree trunks black and scarred the hillsides with mine workings and slag heaps.

All that has changed now but the Heads of the Valleys road still marks the boundary between valley bottoms of dense habitation and a wild paradise, though on the wild side there are still some signs of the human activities in the past — hillforts, burial mounds, quarries, mine workings and, of course the dams and reservoirs that still satisfy our needs.

Not a farm track but a hang over from a more industrial past.

Under the sward, the moss and the lichen the industrial history is written into the hillsides.

Now it’s all farming, forestry and tourism — watch out for the cyclists!

To the north is Brecon, a garrison town — the first soldiers who stayed near here were probably Roman in the first century AD, now they are Welsh and Ghurkas and that is why this sleepy little town has a Cathedral and Nepalese restaurants.

Brecon Cathedral

Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist

Cathedral Gardens — Brecon

Driving along the northern edge of the Brecon Beacons after visiting Brecon Cathedral we see the peaks in the distance

? PEN-Y-FAN (886M) and GWAUN RHUDD (746M)

Within the National Park the River Usk separates the peaks of the Brecon Beacons from those of the Black Mountains to the east. The sun, setting in the west, bathes the eastern side of the Usk Valley in golden light, beyond is the Sugar Loaf. An epic sunset reminds us what a bonus sunny winter’s day we have had in the company of one of our children.

Sunset over Merthyr

Merthyr Tydfil Pylon

Uncategorized

Ten Mile Dive

By derivative work: Harpagon (talk) Image:Australia_satellite_plane.jpg: created by Image:Australia_location_map.png: Diceman [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

When my cousin was lost (to me) somewhere in the Australian Out-Back or in Papua New Guinea, I looked at her last known address on Google Earth, which was relatively new, and wrote this poem.

Eye bagged,

not jet-lagged

but weary of travelling —

colonial first!

With cultural thirst —

I’ve been to Bathurst.

Didn’t fly —

eyes in the sky,

‘visit Bathurst and die.’

Down,

down,

to the gold-rush town.

Ten mile dive —

saw your Ute

on the drive.

It’s fifty years in our diaspora,

I’ve come to play,

what do you say,

Deborah?

Lyrical, Nature Photography

Where does the river start?

Today the air is oozing — it is absolutely still — not a single raindrop, nor a whisper of wind, but everything is wet,reflecting the mist.

Every blade of grass carries a pearl of moisture that swells and drops into the soggy ground.

All-day-dew

Water condenses onto every surface — all day dew… Dew (the Welsh for God) that seeps through the sloping fields, that runs down ruts and overflows the puddles into ditches and culverts where it gurgles and giggles to the jingling stream.

The land sings with water — not falling rain, not today, but water that’s a sacrament, a mystery and a power.

Golitha Falls, Cornwall.

Doggy, Humour, Wales

Feelgood Friend

I feel another half-baked theory coming on — pet owners live longer than other people, probably just because they are more active (getting up in the night to open doors, clearing up messes, taking long walks, searching for missing balls, disposing of bodies, washing duvets etc.). This fits in with the bowls and ballroom dancing phenomenon — any doctor will tell you that their oldest and healthiest patients are those who still engage in these strange physical practices. The key, it seems, is activity — any activity.

Happiness is also supposed to be good for you and is definitely infectious — perhaps it is a zoonosis (something you catch from animals).

All of this crossed my mind this week-end while on a camping holiday on the Gower peninsula in South Wales — we only went for a couple of days because it’s November and the weather forecast was appalling. The timing was not negotiable as Alan had been invited on a brewery sponsored trip to see the Scarlets play rugby against Glasgow at Llanelli and Llanelli is just a knock-on from the Gower — I was to pick him up after the match.

He found me in the camper van, parked in Morrison’s car park outside the stadium — I didn’t recognise him, not because of the strangeness and unsteadiness of his gait but for some reason he had donned a flat cap and a muffler — a throw-back to his childhood, perhaps. The rain was driving and the wind howled around the van which became super-cooled.

I had booked into the camp-site earlier but it was already dark and stormy. That was when I made the acquaintance of the owner of the adjacent livery stable — an animated man with a coat over his head who danced around the camper van in the heavy rain and the glow of my brake lights as I exercised a 17-point turn in his cluttered yard.

As I drove Alan back to the Gower he was relatively oblivious to the idiosyncrasies of my driving style and we found the pitch again with ease, it was the only one with a crooked number which I had adjusted earlier with the near-side bumper.

Next morning I awoke under the pile of duvets and the survival blanket, I was warm– Alan was alive, despite the hot water bottle having fallen out of the end of our bed and into the dogs basket during the night. The sun was shining through the cracks in the window insulation. There is something rather wonderful about the quality of the light on the Gower.

Something about the light — there should be a Gower school of art — perhaps there is!

If you like wide open beaches, the Gower is for you.

The sunshine bought out the crowds — we must have seen eight people in the course of the day, most disguised as seals and frolicking in the surf —

I think wet suits are quite sinister and expected our dog Pedro to pick up 0n this but it seems that they smell rubbery, like ball which is even better than stick and, it turns out, surfers are exactly his type of person.

A dog day that starts with a hot-water bottle is going to turn out well.

The Gower is his sort of place and I am left musing how strange it is that spending a day throwing balls for a wet dog can make a human feel so happy.

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