I'm travelling to Britain at the end of next week and intend to stay for a month, and it's taken quite a bit of planning, hence the silence here. Of course, I used to live in Britain but, having visited twice last year, I now feel pretty alien in such a xenophobic, transphobic, run-down place. Brexit and the extremism that followed killed everything in my life there. But there are residual things for me to complete there so I must go. I shall be spending a lot of time visiting family and friends, too. Sometimes that will be pleasant, like a long weekend with Roz in the Highlands of Scotl ..read more

 I was delighted to receive my Coco Peru doll all the way from Canada. She comes with a glow-in-the-dark alien friend.    I've always liked Coco Peru with her disapproving look and catchphrase "This bothers me". Although she identifies as a drag queen, my T-radar senses there may be a lot more going on with her than mere entertainment. Her shopping trips on YouTube, for example, are enjoyable - just like any TGirl vlogging about Walmart, but with added dry humour. She's touring the UK right now. Anyway, I now have a bit of modern culture in my own home. And the glow-in-the-d ..read more

 It's a big day: here the clocks go forwards, it's easter and it's Transgender Day of Visibility. I'm focusing chiefly on the last of these as I've managed to get my makeup on without health issues and, at long last, taken some new photos.  But first, look at these gorgeous eggs a relative sent me. They're very much in my good books right now as they clearly know how much I love both chocolates and nuts! Nut coated chocolate eggs have got to be the best, right? I thought I'd best photograph the eggs immediately despite being in my ancient grey dress as they were likely to get scoff ..read more

 As part of my weight-loss programme, I'm also cutting out certain things that I've realised are not good for me.  Coffee - The most significant thing I've dumped is coffee. Now, coffee is for me a very strong drug. I never have more than two cups a day or I won't sleep that night.  For 15 years or more I've had digestive problems that doctors couldn't solve. After a lot of thought, I suspected that caffeine might be the cause, but decaffeinated coffee made no difference, and tea and soft drinks that also have caffeine don't have any effect, so I looked elsewhere for causes, wit ..read more

 I'm back to my blog after my visitor has gone, and I notice the bots have been at work. It's hard to judge what real people are reading here when there are thousands of hits a month from some weird entity. Oh well, the wonder of modern communications and all that. My recent visitor was very pleasant company and came primarily to help me sort and file hundreds of documents. You wouldn't believe the amount of paperwork that moving from one country to another generates! At lest some nice spring weather enabled us to spread everything on my outdoor table. It's so much pleasanter to work in t ..read more

 Sometimes you need a break from the routine so I took the last week or so out from the blogosphere and social media. It's not like there's as much cheerful reading out there these days as there used to be!  There are various things that have gone wrong in my home largely because of the wet and windy weather we've had of late. A small leak from the roof, a faulty air con unit and other electric problems. I continue to suffer from some sort of allergic reaction that makes me sneeze a lot and can't put my finger on it, although that's diminishing now. But, on the positive side, I have ..read more

 Some of the spectacles with a trans theme I have spotted from around the world this month.   Music 1) I wrote a lot about the huge Sanremo Music Festival earlier this month (Body, mind and Soul; and A carnival of camp; and For all the transphobia, there's understanding out there) and I'm pleased to see that the openly bi and trans-ally contestant, BigMama, who made the most impression on me, was invited to the United Nations in New York to speak at the Arts for Global Citizenship event for young people. She spoke about bullying, body shaming and discrimination of all kinds, which sh ..read more

 Despite being reassured by the London allergy clinics, with whom I spent a lot of time in the early 1990s and in 2014-16, that I have no known allergies, I have had some sort of streaming nose and sore eyes for nearly a fortnight. I am not sure why. Antihistamines are helping and the last couple of days have been better. But I suspect that, as with my killer eczema, it's probably due to my immune system being underemployed and attacking innocuous things or overreacting to something. This is one reason why there seems to be so much more hay fever, allergies, asthma and rashes these days t ..read more

 As a teenager, I was spellbound by a certain stage production of Cinderella: the ballgown to die for, the gorgeous wedding dress, the  wonderful set, the costumes, the delightful music ... No, not a pantomime or a film, but the opera by Rossini performed at La Scala opera house no less, which some kind and generous soul had given us tickets for. I wrote more about this here: Frocks to make your heart sing. At the weekend, they showed the video of that very production on TV and I sat as delighted as I had been all those years ago. I laughed at the gags, cried at the mistreatment of t ..read more

 Do you remember this cover of Time magazine, from ten years ago? (c) Time, 29 May 2014 The article is here if you're interested: The Transgender Tipping Point We really thought we were moving towards a rosier future for trans people. Clearly, in the USA, things went backwards under Trump and are difficult in certain states now. In the UK, even the deranged British Prime Minister Theresa May, for all her hatred of human rights, planned to extend trans rights, but her replacements, the crooked Boris Johnson, the mad Liz Truss and the cruel Richy Sunak have used trans people as a ..read more