Goodbye, Doc-tor!

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Doctor Who, Moaning, Money, TV

The news this week has been dominated by the frustrations of Brexit, by the sense of a governing body which has no idea or ability or appetite for the job it’s been at for over two years, and by the very real possibility that whatever happens, our faith in our democracy is already fundamentally damaged for years to come.

The event that has actually irritated me the most this past week, however, has been my decision to cancel the pre-order of the Season 18 Blu-Ray boxset, mere days before it would have shipped.

Of course it doesn’t matter. Not really. Being forty-seven and throwing my toys out of the pram over a polished-up re-release of some forty-year-old TV show I’ve already seen multiple times before… well, it’s the height of absurdity isn’t it. Yes, it would look fantastic sitting on the shelf next to season 19, and yes, rather than writing this I could right now be watching the Marshmen emerging from the swamp “in a manner that the Creature from the Black Lagoon himself would have envied” – but the reality is that you can’t feed dogs on Warriors Gate, and that the ideal situation for watching The Leisure Hive is not at an empty breakfast table with your stomach rumbling. 

I knew it was coming, if I’m honest. From the day I pre-ordered it back in December, I had a sneaking suspicion that when it came to it, when the time actually came around, I’d not be able to afford it. It’s last year’s season 12 all over again frankly, and although the cold cruel months of January and February have been warmed by thoughts of melancholy 1980s Tom Baker to come I felt certain the story of season 18 would probably end badly.

And so it has (and I don’t mean in the sense that he falls from a radio telescope to his death on the floor of TC3 (sorry, spoilers)). February’s minimal number of days made for a reduced March pay packet; and more to the point, on the other side of the balance sheet are the Council Tax arrears, and the IOUs, and (whisper it quietly) those pesky loan repayments. Not to mention all the regular delights such as rent, petrol, water rates and electric, plus, hopefully, a bite to eat. With all those reckless extravagances to waste my money on, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that there would never be £39.99 of what I believe JN-T used to call knicker elastic money, for me to indulge myself.

But… It would have been nice to be able to follow the advice of Mr Baker’s immediate predecessor, to ‘take the money at the end of the week and buy myself something nice’ and the fact that I can’t brings me dangerously back to the old ‘what is the bloody point?’ question. There never seems to be enough time or money or energy to do anything other than pay bills, clean up, work and sleep, and it doesn’t help that Twitter will be full of posts on the subject for the next week. Confirmations of despatch followed by photos of the received package, all gorgeous and shiny and new, and then awe-struck updates as buyers revel in its sheer glorious loveliness, and regale us all with how wonderful season 18 is.

Which, of course, it is. It would be wrong of me to overlook that simply because I’ve got some high-level grumbling to get through; and I hope I’m not going to be one of those awful people who puts a downer on other people’s enjoyment. Besides, once the debate moves away from how gloriously sharp the upscaled picture quality is, and how insightful the new extras are, and how magnificent the package design is… When finally everybody has got that out of their system, and the discussion turns to the actual stories themselves, then I’ll be able to join in with my own, albeit straight from DVD, opinions.

And… well, that’s pretty much all I have to say about that. No witty last quip, no neat little summing up. It’s just the end, and the moment hasn’t been prepared for.

Yours Sincerely, Confused of Devon

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Confused, Gender

The story that has caused the most debate, and prompted the most questions, in our lunchtime chats at work this week has undoubtedly been the transgender man in America who has given birth.

Our initial surprise was mainly around the mechanics of it; or rather the discovery that having transitioned, the guy in question was (still) able to ovulate and conceive. Given that the object of the exercise was to become male, that doesn’t sound like it’s been entirely successful.

To be honest, the whole issue of identity confuses me and it sometimes feels, with stories such as this, that it is continually getting more and more complicated. I can grasp the concept of feeling like you are, as they used to say, a man stuck inside a woman’s body (or vice versa) but still, it’s an extraordinary degree of certainty to have, and that continues to amaze me. I don’t off the top of my head recall ever being that certain about anything – there have been so many occasions when even the things I thought I knew turned out to be incorrect that, frankly, I feel I’m only ever a heartbeat away from a QI-style ‘WRONG’ klaxon going off behind me. Maybe with identity it’s so innate, such a fundamental assurance, that it’s impossible to understand unless you’ve experienced it?

But sexual preference is where things seem to get ‘and more’ complicated. If, for example, I was born male but felt that I was (a) a woman trapped inside a man’s body; and (b) was attracted to women; and was (c) therefore a lesbian in need of a sex change operation – how would I know that, actually, I wasn’t simply (a) a man; and (b) was attracted to women; and (c) therefore heterosexual. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m sure there IS an answer – but it’s all a bit of a minefield because unfortunately we have (in a well-intentioned but short-sighted way) ended up in a place where nobody dares ask the question for fear of causing offence.

Going back to the transgender man who got pregnant though… Presumably that person prior to transition (pronouns are so difficult nowadays aren’t they – could I have said ‘she’ there, or would that be wrong?) presumably they felt certain that they ought to have been born a man. They’ve gone through what I have to assume is a painful and exhausting process, physically and mentally. And after all that, he hasn’t actually achieved what he set out to do, has he?

To be ‘a man’ may mean many, many things but it certainly doesn’t mean being able to get pregnant. And I can’t help but wonder… If he ‘enjoyed’ being pregnant so much and responded so positively to the whole experience… If he’s not actually ready to give that up, is he in fact also (or still) wanting to be a woman?

I guess only he can know that, and really it’s nobody else’s business. But there is a wider question, given that this can happen. Namely, is the next step for people to actively request it? There’s a big difference, an important difference, between a transitioned male who still retains the female organs to (from the news story) accidentally fall pregnant – and somebody wanting to transition into a male but also requesting that they retain the ability to become pregnant. That’s wanting to have your cake and eat it, plain and simple – or, less flippantly, it undermines the fundamental driving force that the person in question feels they should have been born a man rather than a woman.

These are big issues, baffling and confusing ones. They shouldn’t be scary, and they certainly shouldn’t be any reason for violence or abuse or prejudice or stigma. We have the ‘technology’ to make these changes now, to do something about what a century ago could only ever remain a feeling or an urge or a longing; but we don’t yet seem to have the language to go with our capabilities. Nor does it feel like we have the most important thing: the sense, and the freedom, to talk about it.

John, Paul, George & Donald

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1980s, Little Bit Of Politics, The Beatles, Trump

God knows I don’t want to stick up for Trump.

BUT.

In one area of ‘policy’ at least I must, reluctantly, admit that, in principle anyway, he may well be more right than wrong: that is to say, I would far rather our world leaders were on speaking terms than not. Even in spite of this week’s lack of progress, to have Trump and Kim Jong-Un sitting down together and agreeing, even if in the most vague and general terms, on anything – well, it’s infinitely preferable to the exchange of petulant insults and escalating tensions which formerly characterised their ‘relationship’.

A shakily half-remembered history lesson tells me that, in an earlier time, the Cuban Missile Crisis was ultimately defused at a personal level, by the ‘reaching out’ of Kruschev to Kennedy. Proving perhaps that, as Kennedy put it the following year, “we all cherish our children’s futures.”

Two decades later and Sting was singing, with apparently less certainty than JFK, “I hope the Russians love their children too.” I don’t really recall losing much sleep to the supposedly ubiquitous threat of mutually assured nuclear destruction in the mid-1980s, although it cropped up at school quite a lot. In an era of Greenham Common, and when the USSR was a largely-unknown quantity represented in the news by little more than images of a collection of stern old men on the balcony of the Kremlin overlooking zealously-militaristic parades; back then there were certainly (at the risk of painting with the broad brush of stereotype) a fair number of “leftie liberals” amongst our teaching staff, all corduroy jackets and homespun, tie-dyed clothing, adorned with CND badges and the cannabis symbol.

Despite the apparent strides towards liberty and equality since then, I’m not sure that today’s teachers have quite the same ‘freedom of expression’. Those mid-80s were a time before the wall came down, yes; but it was also a time before the National Curriculum, and OFSTED, and in fact even before Section 28 – and so it’s entirely possible that there was an ‘underground’ sort of freedom enjoyed by the teaching staff of the day whether they were siding with the Greenham Common women, showing us graphic videos on the horrors of seal-hunting, or even on one occasion putting a Biblical spin on the Chernobyl disaster. (Chernobyl being the Ukrainian word for ‘wormwood’, fact fans.)

Maybe it was inevitable that teachers who had been students during the 50s and 60s should have a preoccupation with the nuclear bogeyman, even more than those of us who were pupils in the 70s and 80s. And of course it wasn’t just a political slant. I can see now, looking back, that other passions and interests carried over: as a school choir we learnt a number of ‘sixties pop smashers’ which were selected possibly for their musical qualities but more likely because, frankly, the music teachers liked them.

There’s no other explanation for why I know all the lyrics to ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ by The Beatles; and also to their rarely-heard-nowadays, bilingual ditty ‘Michelle’. (The opening line goes “Michelle, Ma Belle” from which you may deduce that the song contains many mots qui go very well ensemble).

Going back, though, to God knowing I don’t want to stick up for Trump; and clearly there’s a man who’d actually like to go back to a time before the wall came down, if his efforts to get a wall put up are anything to go by. Nevertheless, at least as a general rule, I still think, in principle, he is right to be talking to (rather than tweeting at) Kim Jong-Un.

It’s a shame this week didn’t bring any formal agreement, although it’s noticeable that neither party has exactly stomped back home bitching about the other side, adamant they’re done talking. Quite the opposite in fact, and bizarre as it may seem both leaders seem keen to meet again.

Maybe all they need is love.

A Plug for My New Blog

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Confused, Gender

I’ve put a new plug on our hoover.

That maybe doesn’t sound like anything worth getting excited about, but it’s not something I do every day. This is only the third time I’ve ever done it (and one of those times was in a school science lesson entitled ‘How To Wire A Plug’ so I’m not sure that even counts).

In my defence, nothing nowadays seems to come without a plug already attached. I know that once upon a time all electrical appliances came sans plug (in much the same way that a lot of gadgets still come ‘batteries not included’) but thankfully we live in more enlightened times, meaning that when we bought it, our hoover came with a moulded plug already wired in so that we could plug and play (well, plug and hoover) as soon as we got it home.

Until I stood on it.

This isn’t the first plug I’ve stood on, I clearly remember as a child standing on the pins-upward plug of a steam iron. On that occasion the plug won, it remained fully intact while I had a bleeding foot with a flap of skin hanging off it. Four decades on, it was a very different story – our hoover plug came off a definite second, its topmost pin coming clean off, while I’m pleased to report I suffered no injury whatsoever.

Of course, it was a pyrrhic victory, because it rendered the plug, and by extension the hoover, non-functional. Which is where I came in, fitting a new plug.

I was able to find a You Tube video showing exactly how to do it, from cutting off the moulded plug and exposing the wires, through the whole fitting process. Am I the only one who never knew the third pin is largely for show? In most cases it’s not even wired in, it’s just there to fill the third hole in the socket.

I broke the hoover on Saturday, put the new plug on late on Sunday, didn’t get to test it on Monday (sorry, this seems to be turning into a Craig David song) and in fact only got to it today (Friday).  

I have, I think, a slightly superstitious relationship with electricity. Maybe it comes from those adverts I used to see as a kid, exhorting all right-minded people to not just turn off but to physically unplug their TV set each night. Whatever the reason, my instinctive response to the outlandish notion that I have fitted a new plug, is to suspect I’ve probably fitted it wrong. As such, the last thing I wanted was for my other half to try it while I wasn’t there, for fear of her going the same way as Valerie Barlow.

So, anyway, it’s done. I’ve hoovered (twice) with no ill-effect, so I’m going to tentatively call this a success.

As ever, with these traditionally-male activities (wiring plugs, fitting shelves, changing tyres, even going to the tip) I feel an awkwardness, an uncertainty, as if I ought to instinctively know what to do, how to behave. My initial reactions to breaking the plug were: one, I hope my wife doesn’t find out; and two, I suppose I’m going to have to buy a new hoover – and when I then decided to try and avoid both scenarios by repairing it, I felt an embarrassment, inadequacy even, about resorting to the internet to ask firstly ‘Can I replace a moulded plug?’ and then secondly ‘If you’re so bloody clever Google, tell me how?’

Of course the flipside of all this gender stereotype confusion is that I now feel a ludicrously disproportionate sense of pride in my accomplishment, in being able to state that I was able to switch on and use the hoover without explosion, implosion, smoke, fire, black out, or power cut. I know it’s not really a big achievement in the scheme of things, and yet… I feel that it sort of is.

Plus I suppose it proves that there are a lot of things we can do, if somebody just shows us how.