From the Med

 This view from my balcony will tell anyone who know me that I'm not at home.

I'm just taking a quick break in the sun, unfortunately an old health issues has flared up which I think will put me out of playing action for quite a while. Hopefully I will know more when I get home and can consult my Doctor. In the mean time here's another lovely picture

 

Stuff

Following the announcement in my last post I realised that it was high time I thought about changing the Strap Line on this Blog, after all if I'm no longer a working Gardener can I really still claim to be "The World's leading Transgender Conductor and Bass Trombone and Tuba playing Christian Gardener" ?  But that leaves me with the problem of how to describe myself, and my blog, since I have barely written anything over the last couple of years I don't really know how much is going to be about music, how much about my Motor Sport, how much about being trans, or indeed just stuff. Gardening is always going to be one of my passions so maybe I should just leave it as it is for while.

The eponymous Mrs T

I did do a Google search for "Tuba Blogs" and found nothing, Many years ago, in a previous life I attempted to write a tuba based blog Me and Mrs T, the Mrs T of the title being an old Hawkes and Sons BBb cavalry model Tuba. Why Mrs T, well, after working with one of the UK's premier German Bands for a Canadian Company in Seville at Expo'92 (yes really!) it was time to fly home. Since I had travelled out to Seville with the drummer in his car the journey home was the first time I had flown with a tuba. A seat was duly booked and a ticket issued, however to actually get on the plan a boarding card is needed, to get a boarding card a name is needed, so I just gave the name as "Tuba", then they needed a title! so I settled for Mrs. Somehow the "Mrs Tuba" stuck, and then got contracted to "Mrs T" The flight crew had often had cellos fly with them but had no experience of a tuba on board, after much discussion and experimentation she ended up occupying a full row of three seats, the only thing that still rankles a bit is that we never got her complimentary drinks!

Over the years I have had many instruments, yet Mrs T is the only one I have regretted selling. Indeed I have a constant eBay search for "Hawkes" just in case she becomes available again.

A time for Everything

There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens

a time to be born and a time to die
a time to plant and a time to uproot
a time to kill and a time to heal
a time to tear down and a time to build
a time to weep and a time to laugh
a time to mourn and a time dance
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them 
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing
a time to search and a time to give up
a time to keep and a time to throw away
a time to keep and a time to throw away
a time to tear and a time to mend
a time to be silent and a time to speak
a time to love and a time to hate

a time for war and a time for peace.

For those not in the know this is a quote from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes (Chapter 3) one of the "Books of Wisdom", and one that perfectly illustrates so much of my life. As I approach yet another big change in my life it feels even more pertinent than ever. Often in my life I have tried to do everything, all at once, all together ~ it simply doesn't work! Often through the years I have found that by trying to do too much I am not doing anything as well as I should. Trying to play rugby the afternoon before a gig is a good illustration!

Conducting Phoenix Concert Band, Sutton

The last few years I have been trying to play, conduct, arrange, and even write some of my own original music. I have been trying to keep up with the requirements of my garden maintenance business, look after my failing levels of fitness, my flat, my family and started out on a motor sport career! It's all too much for me now. So it's time to change. I have decided to retire! Of course I will not be stopping my music involvement, music is what defines me, but I will stop my gardening. I will be closing down my business at the end of November, or earlier if my customers can find a replacement! The last few months it has increasingly felt like hard work, and I am finding it much more physically arduous than before so I think the time is ripe.

This month I will start getting my state pension, and my "Bus Pass" so financially I will be no worse off, it does still feel like a big change, and a little intimidating as does any big change. But, this is not an end, it is a new beginning, I will have more time to devote to music, and to Motor Sport!

Photo credit Tunbridge Wells Motor Club 

I know I will miss my customers and much of the work, I will miss the reason to be outdoors in the sun, I will not miss the need to go out when I really don't want to, I certainly won't miss the aching muscles and sore back, neither will I miss storing the tools or having my car full of garden waste!

I note that only once before I have used the "Motor Sport" label, and that wasn't about me! I am now only a couple of meetings away from my second season of Sprinting. It's nothing too high octane, I am sharing a car with a friend so we can split some of the cost but it is great fun, and I think I might be OK at it. There are only three of us in the class for my club championship so it is hard to tell.

I Can't Stand Much More Of This

Over on her "Condo" my friend Cyrsti has been writing a bit about what it means to be trans, this sort of makes a nice change from the crossdresser blog post of  "I had a lovely day out dressed as...." or the many blog posts about the process of transition. I know they all have their place and can be interesting ~ or at least I hope they do as I've written enough of them myself over the years. I suppose this is a reflection of how feel now that my transition is more or less done with (I'm not sure that it will ever be complete!). Back in August 2011 when I first started Paula's Place it is was somewhere for me to relate those early experiences of going out, it quickly became the medium for my musing on gender, in many ways a friend I could talk to about the things I couldn't talk to others about. So yes I have written more than my fair share of post about what clothes I wear, the various processes of transition, coming out and of course going out!

More recently I had been writing more and more about things that interest me, Politics, Music, Gardening etc. Being trans does have an impact of some sort on pretty much everything I do, it changes my point of view having experiences as both male and female, it changes my accessibility and of course it can change the attitude of others towards me. With everything else going on in my life I just sort of got out of the habit of writing about things, instead I have been doing them.

Lots of music, a little gardening, and rather excitingly some motor sport! Of course I'm still interested in everything I have ever been, I've just not felt inspired to write much for the last few months, but something has changed.

Here in the UK our current governing Party has just held it's annual conference, we've had speeches from all the leading members, and the uniting factor amongst them all is full engagement in culture wars. We've had xenophobia from our home secretary and foreign secretary, we've had class hate from a former prime minister and transphobia and mendacity from all of them, including the current Prime Minister and Health Secretary. As long as this Government is in power no trans person in the UK can expect fair treatment. The PM has denied our very existence, and the Health Secretary has proposed that we should not be treated by the NHS as being our true gender. Over the last few years there has been a steady ramping up of the anti trans rhetoric, I have often said that it is just a very small but very vocal minority of haters ~ but as the Government itself has taken a transphobic stance it has given legitimacy to the bigots.

I'm not hearing any of our leading opposition politicians calling out the bigotry, and that lends it even more credence. The only dissenting voice I heard at the Conservative Party Conference was one gay, party member tried to call out Suella Braverman's transphobia as she tried to challenge such concepts as "trans ideology" and "White Privilege". Like most people most of my friends will share many of my views and opinions, as I go about my day to day business I am met with very little transphobia, but I can't help but notice that it has increased over the last few years. Maybe not to an everyday occurrence, but it has increased. Not so much the casual mistake, but the deliberate hateful comment ~ mercifully so far not for me the physical attack we all fear, and some experience.  We all fear because the chances of this happening to anyone of us is increasing all the time. Today we have had the latest annual hate crime figures released, over the last year hate crime overall has reduced ~ largely because of the way the figures are collected which will exclude the more minor instances ~ but even so the figures for hate crimes against Transgender people has increased by 11%

I lay the responsibility for this firmly at the feet of our Government. Their rhetoric legitimises the bigots and allows them to feel justified in their actions. When Government Ministers equate trans people with sex offenders then no surprise that we get attacked. When the PM denies the legitimacy of our existence then no wonder we are abused. Sure the words hurt, but the actions that those words lead to injure!

As Lawrence Fox and his chums are realising at the moment, while we may have freedom to express our views, there are consequences to what we say. Sometimes those consequences are for the speaker, like Lozer you could lose your job, sometimes like Graham Lineham people just stop hiring you ~ but often it is others, the people attacked words who end up suffering the consequences as they are physically attacked as well! I hope and trust that this is just a "moment in time" and that it "too will pass". I hope and trust that in the future we will look back on the 2020s transphobia as we now look back on the 1980s homophobia with incredulity and disgust, but while we are having to live through it, well, it's tough.

I needed to rant, to express how dreadful I think this Government are, to vent my frustration, and this is my medium. Now I have written again maybe I will be back with some more enjoyable news, but for now, if you have been, thank you for reading!

Manchester Gold!

This weekend I will be travelling again ~ I seem to have been doing quite a bit of that recently with a trip to Paris a few weeks ago, then after that a trip up to Lincolnshire to see my good friend P. I don't think I've seen her since she retired and moved. Although I think her husband may have got a bit fed up with our constant natter it did make me realise just how much I had missed our chats and our lunches! It also made me realise just how far I have come over the last few years.

But getting back to my upcoming trip to Manchester, this is a very different type of excursion, I will be traveling with my band ~ Croydon Symphonic Band ~ to play in the finals of the National Concert Band Festival. This will be our tenth appearance at the finals (which are by invitation), of course just being there feels pretty prestigious, but in many ways the level of award says even more. So far we have received (I think) at least six awards at Gold or higher standard, so in some ways getting anything less could be seen as failure! One aspect of being a community band is that we are non-selective, and in the case of CSB whoever turns up plays ~ this means that we rarely have a stable band for even an entire season, the instrumental balance is more down to demographics than musicality, and we never know what standard we are going to be at, all this makes the job of our Musical Director rather challenging and must add to his stress levels. It certainly says a lot for his abilities and his musicality that we have been able to play at such a consistently high standard for so long.

With Big Shiny after playing
at the 2015 finals

As well as a musical challenge the weekend should be a lot of fun. The plan is to travel together by coach, all stay in the same hotel and eat dinner together before some free time to find a suitable local hostelry. Sunday will be devoted to music and the return journey. I'm really looking forward to spending more than a couple of hours with my band friends, it's on trips like these that we build on our relationships, and it's those relationships that make bands work well together.

Another reason why I am so keen to enjoy this trip is that if our Government follow through with the changes to the Equalities Act that were telegraphed last week, and which I wrote about here this could well be my last chance to enjoy this sort of thing legally. Given that the journey is likely to take about 5 hours, there's no way that I could go that long without a "comfort break", these proposed changes would make that unviable, I would be breaking the law if I used the "Ladies" and it wouldn't be safe to use the "Gents". With no guarantee of there being any provision of a gender a neutral facility  I simply would not be able to make the journey.

Then of course I don't know what provisions are made at the hall. Many venues provide separate men's and women's changing rooms, it would be illegal for me to use the women's changing room, instead I would be expected to use the men's ~ fine, unless anyone, including me, needs to use them as a changing room! I would be put in this type of invidious situation every time I left home regardless of having obtained a Gender Recognition Certificate and had Gender Confirmation Surgery!

So, if you haven't already, please sign this petition, with over 130,000 signatures the Government is already obliged to hold a debate, but the more signatures we can get, the more support that can be demonstrated for trans people the better ~ the more we can move trans rights away from being a debate!

Yet another attack

I'll be honest, I'm getting tired of all this! When I read this article on the BBC website earlier (Wednesday 5th April 2023) I just wanted to leave this God forsaken Country and move somewhere civilised Law change could aid single-sex spaces - watchdog - BBC News

Whilst I can understand that this, like so many other stunts by the Government is all about deflecting attention away from their appalling record in just about every field, it does nothing to make it any the less bad. This is quite simply an attack on my right to exist! It is appalling that the EHRC and our own Government, the very people who are charged with protecting our safety are deliberately putting many of us at risk. ~ It is irrelevant that this will never be able to be operated even if it is enacted. Let me explain, if I have to go into hospital for some treatment that will involve an other night stay ~ I am admitted as a woman, my NHS records show me as a woman, my birth certificate shows me as a woman, a cursory medical examination will show me to be a woman. On what grounds is anyone going to be able to come to the conclusion that I should be put in a men's ward? Are all women to be subject to an internal gynaecological examination before having dental work done, or a broken arm reset? Who is going to make the call? what is going to happen to gender nonconforming cis women? Are we going to force trans men into women's spaces?

Clearly none of this has been thought out, but it does stoke the fires of the worst type of culture war, When I went out this morning and popped into my local shop I was confronted with headlines in all of the daily papers on display telling the world that I am not a woman and should not be treated like one ~ this feeds hate, anger and probably violence. We have already had one trans woman murdered and several others attacked in the UK this year ~ these are the people the Equalities Act is meant to protect but this crazy idea is designed to put them at increased risk. How many people have to be murdered, hurt, discriminated against before an Equalities Minister will do their job and stand up to protect us, the most reviled of minorities?

It feels deliberate, it feels like a concerted war, and it's not just feelings this sort of thing does have consequences, real life consequences for real life people. 

We know that this Government is not fit for purpose and needs to be replaced, clearly the EHRC is now in the same position. We need leaders who will take a moral stand and will lead, we need an equalities minister who stands up for equality and we need an EHRC that believes in Human Rights and equality.

Yes I'm angry and that seems to be happening all too often recently, but can you blame me when my own Government is attacking my very right to exist within society?

There's not much I can do, I can write to my MP, but last time I did that Steve Reed didn't even bother to reply ~ he'll just toe the Labour Party line anyway, so pretty much the only other thing I can do is sign a petition, so I have, and I ask all of you to as well! If we can get to 100,000 signatures it will force a parliamentary debate ~ maybe then somebody will choose to make a stand.

Commit to not amending the Equality Act's definition of sex - Petitions (parliament.uk)

On January the 25th the Government responded to it with

This Government believes in individual liberty. There are processes with appropriate checks to allow for those who wish to legally change their gender. Changes to the Equality Act are not necessary.

I wonder what has happened since then to make them change their mind ~ I know that the article and the statements are all stuffed full of anti trans lobbyist dog whistles, I know that  Kemi Badenoch and Baroness Faulkner are well established leading trans haters, but surely there must be some grown ups somewhere explaining to them the meaning of the word "equality" and that Human Rights are immutable and universal!

I did a thing!

Today is the International Day of Transgender Visibility, so I think this is a good day to be honest. The last couple of months I have been struggling, for no apparent reason. I have been struggling to get up in the morning to do many of the simple things that we have to do just to get through life, washing up, laundry, house work, simple checks on finance etc. In consequence I have found myself in a bit of a mess. This by no means the first time I've been like this so I always used to think that I might be bipolar, but during this period I have had a few concerts, a trip to Paris and have completed a couple of my best arrangements yet.

I now think that I may be ADHD and that my "downs" are an aspect of that rather than full blown depression. Either way it is part of me and something I just have to deal with. It is nothing to do with my being trans, but it may well be something to do with my being a musician ~ I do seem to know a lot of musicians who are neuro diverse in one way or another.

One thing that always makes me "pull my socks up" and get on with life is performing. As one of life's natural show offs performing ~ being the centre of attention ~ is one of my big driving forces. Last night I had a performance, another go at Stand Up. I didn't feel very well prepared, I didn't manage to use many of the gags I had prepared but did use some I hadn't prepared. I'm not at all sure that my pacing was right, the delivery was certainly a bit laboured.

The concept was that I was meant to be the Easter Bunny, getting old, and worried because I had all my eggs in one basket. Maybe not my best, but I think I got away with it. But this morning I got up OK, have done a few things and am feeling as though I have more energy than I've had for ages. So for me maybe laughter really is the best medicine.

Video credit to Merlin Golder

50th Anniversary!

I should have posted about this a while back, but other stuff got in the way and it all sort of got away from me.

This is the 50th anniversary of the founding of my beloved Croydon Symphonic Band. We're having quite a year already, last month we played the first of our special 50th anniversary concerts at the Fairfield Hall ~ although we may think of this hall as a local Croydon facility it is actually still one of the best Concert Halls in the Country, if not Europe! ~ we may not fill the 2,000 seater auditorium, but we generally mange to get a few hundred which is great for all of us. Next month we will be playing at the finals of teh National Concert Band Festival and then in June we will be back at the Fairfield for the second of our Gala Concerts, when we will be premiering a new work by a major British Composer! It is all very exciting.

One of the things that makes this band so special for me is how long I have been friends with some of the other members, not only have we been in this band for ages, but some of us were even in the Schools Band together. Maybe to save all our blushes I shouldn't work out exactly how long some of us have known each other!

Of course it's not all old farts like me, our music appeals across generations and it's always fun to be with young people, although I am finding that some of my "young" friends are now celebrating their 50th birthdays, and there are plenty of members of teh band who weren't born when the band was started.

These photos were all taken during the final rehearsal on the platform at the Fairfield, by a professional photographer we engaged, just this final one is of the actual performance ~ and yes that is a harp in a concert band!

We have two more concerts this season, and I'm hoping that one of my pieces "Transitions" will be played at one of them.

Music

 I wrote here about the difficulties I was having trying to get some of my music published. I understand that it's hard enough to get somebody to put out performers content, but for those of us who work in sheet music it is a real challenge. Indeed I have now pretty much given up and have decided to self publish through the "Arrange me" and Sheet Music Direct on-line wing of the enormous Hal Leonard organisation. This is actually quite an easy process, but although this makes my music available it does not give it any publicity, that's up to me!

So I have created an extra page for this blog which I've called "My Music", I think this is an imaginative name since it is a page which will feature music! on your desk top the link is just to the right of the page, on a phone it's on the pull down menu just above the posts. Please take a look, at the moment there are just three pieces there, that is all I've published so far, but there will be more shortly. I've included a video sample of each as well as a short description and link to the site to buy. I plan to add more as soon as I have prepared the sheet music ready for publication.

I would seriously welcome any feedback (almost) as much as I will welcome any sales. I don't expect to get rich on the proceeds but just like any artist I want others to be able to appreciate what I am producing ~ it feels pretty pointless writing the stuff if nobody every gets to play or hear it!

Paris!

The outside of the Church

My last post left you all a little bit up in the air, for the really perspicacious of you yes I was in Paris. The Church we played in on the Friday was Saint-Etienne-du-Mont a church with a fascinating history dating back to the 6th Century, the current building is largely Gothic with large windows and flying buttresses, but as I was only there after dark it was the interior stone work that I really appreciated. As I was only involved in one piece in the concert I had plenty of time to appreciate the setting as well as the music ~ I also had plenty of time to get freezing cold! Not quite what I had in mind for a trip to Paris in the Springtime!

The interior of St Etienne as I never saw it ~ in daylight!

Right next to the Pantheon and close by the Sorbonne the setting is a notable as the Church itself, and right in the cultural heart of the city. Despite being so close to such big tourist draws we still managed to find some good traditional French food for our pre concert dinner, and then afterwards adjourned to a local bar, where we enjoyed some of the local  beverage!

Notra Dame du Liban with
the Paris Rainbow Symphony Orchestra

For our Saturday concert we moved venue to Notre Dame du Liban, built in the 19th Century it was a lot more comfortable and certainly less cold. Still in Gothic revival even though less spectacular much more accommodating! A large and imposing interior with a strangely unassuming entrance, we could have easily walked past without noticing. 

A bit like my own London Gay Symphony Orchestra one thing that is really noticeable about the Rainbow Symphony is that the average age is quite young ~ especially for an amateur orchestra. These days I've got to an age where I don't want to be part of a group where I don't raise the average age! From preference I certainly want to spend more time with people younger than me than with others around my own age, so this helped make the week a lot of fun.

There are still plenty of things I want to see and do in Paris, I do have a bit of a thing for ecclesiastical architecture, so I would still like to visit Saint-Denis and Sainte-Chapellle. Notra Dame is still shut after the 2019 fire ~ I have been there but would love to go back now I'm older. But the great thing about this visit wasn't being a tourist and visiting the historic sites, it was about sharing the joy of making music, making new friends and renewing some old friendships.

The delightful Mathilde and Corinne
A tuba section I'm not pretty enough to get in!