Tuesday, 27th December, 2005

H&W

photo

(via flickr.com/people/si08han)

I'm never sure which crane is which. This is either Samson or Goliath. They kinda dominate the city. What with them being huge and all that. They weren't here when the Titanic was built though. They might have been quite handy for that

Re-Princessing, And The Dislocation of Tat

Right, having spent the past few days in enforced-testorerone-hell (ie. Northern Ireland), it should really come as no surprise that the first thing I did when I got through my own front door half and hour ago, was slip into a purple dress.

Actually, that's a complete lie. The first thing I did was feed the cats Yummy Tuna Goodness™ (because I wanted to make up for being neglectful as a mother). Then I poured a glass of wine (natch), then I read everything that had backlogged on my Mac (RSS feeds are great — but when you've been away for a bit, they become a bit of a chore...). Then I lit the fire — because staring expectantly at a light-show-throw-fake-coal coupled with a fan-heater-disguised-as-a-fire-hood isn't really any substitute to a full-on flame fest.

And then, I fired up iChat...

My brother, bless his rich-little-cotton-socks, had bought my mother an iSight for Christmas. God knows why — perhaps it's so he can talk to her across the Atlantic Ocean for free, or perhaps it's because he really doesn't get what people want for Christmas...

...(although he bought me wine. Nice one bro )

But still, part of my 'homegoing' involved setting the thing up for my Mum (as well as sorting out her Mac for her. I bleat on and on about how Macs are indestructible, yet you can always rely on my Mother to break the unbreakable)

As part of my "here is what you can do with it" introductory talk, I stupidly put my own AIM screen-name into her contact list (my boy-name, not my girl-name — I'm not that stupid). And therefore, in an attempt to show how wonderful technology was, managed to give my mother a way to talk to me — whenever — or indeed see whenever I'm around.

So, twenty minutes ago, I was sat there, iSight at the ready, preparing to do the traditional "yes I got home safely" speech (I always leave it at least an hour after I get home, otherwise they'll cotton on to how fast I drive), whilst in the back of my head a little voice was cooing "wear a dress! Wear a dress!"

So, I called her, and I was like "Hi Mum, I'm home safe", and she was like *"My iSight isn't working", and I was like "Never mind, I'll try it later"

So, to cut a long story short, I am now sat where I've wanted to be for the past few days — in front of my fire with my laptop — wearing what I've wanted to wear for the past few days — stockings, petticoat, and my little flared purple dress.

I'm not going to be online as a bloke for at least three days.

...

The thing is though, that whole experience for me was a bit odd. I'm sure that I must not be the only person in the world to go visit their parents in their new home — but, since it's me, I thought I'd try and write down how it felt.

Because I am that kind of transvestite.

It was really strange. My Dad drove me there from the ferry, and initially, it was all OK. It kinda felt like being taken to some new relatives' house or something.

When we walked through the door though, there was the unmistakable smell of my old house. A mixture of bath salts and farting.

(My Dad farts a lot. Maybe it's because I only see them at Christmas and they eat a lot of sprouts at Christmas. Or maybe they eat a lot of sprouts all year round)

What I really found odd about the whole thing was the things. My parents are more of a pair of hoarders than I am, and as a result, the new house was full of nick-knacks and tat and bits of furniture that used to live somewhere else.

In the room that they put me in, for example, were all the little bits and pieces that we'd (as a family) colelcted on our travels over the years — the little models of landmarks in other cities: the Arch De Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower (we used to live in Paris), the Mannequin Pis (we lived in Brussels too — maybe that's why Dad likes sprouts?)

But these things weren't in the places I remembered them being in. They weren't on a shelf that you passed on your way down the stairs — they were on a sideboard.

And it was this displacement of tiny little pieces of shit that disturbed me the most. It was uncanny how, in the space of two or three months, my parents had managed to imbue this new house with all the things that made up their old house.

...

It reminded me a little of a friend of mine, someone I lived with in Lancaster for while. I went round to his new house one day, and was struck by how he had basically folded up his old place, and had unfolded it in his new one. It was like this man took with him certain little things — and it was in these things that he was somehow contained. Somehow defined.

...

I found it really odd this week, seeing little things from my past — nick-knacks and ornaments that I bet left a dark patch when they were moved from the place they'd been in for thirty years — trying to adapt themselves to their new environment. Trying to look like they'd been there for thirty years.

And in some cases, oddly, succeeding.

It was very strange, stood there in a back yard in Carrickfergus, looking around and thinking "This is my parents' house" — without the effort that I thought it would take.

...

Talking to my sister though (who incidentally, wants me to go on a night out with her in Edinburgh to test the notion that she and Siobhan look very similar), it appears that all the trees at our old house have already been cut down to make way for new houses.

It was at that point that I realised I could never go back there. Not yet anyway.

I suppose, I could probably stand there with some grandchildren or something (yeah, right Siobhan) in fifty years time and point to a blank space between two hastily knocked-up Barrets homes and say "that's where I first started dressing up as a girl". But not until then. Part of me is kicking myself for not going back over the summer to get one last look at the place.

Part of me though, is loving the uncertainty of what's about to unfold over the next year.

And part of me, if I'm honest, is giggling inanely at the cheque in my pocket which makes up my share of what was left over from their move

Posturing

Actually, I remember spotting a moment of enforced-testosterone on the ferry over today, and a certain thing clicked in my head. I realised what it was I've been trying to express about Northern Ireland in amoungst all these "gay-bashers in Belfast" conversations just before Christmas.

Belfast — and to that exten, the whole of Northern Ireland — is a place where one establishes one's sense of self at the detriment of others.

There is, of course, an obvious example of this — an exampe that's been going on since King William II landed in 1690 (remind me to post a photo later).

The point — or at least the point as it seems to me these days — of the Protestant/Catholic strife in Northern Ireland (once you cast aside the more obvious notions of inequality, civil rights, and general nicesness to one another), is all about proving how "right" one is, by pointing out how "wrong" someone else is.

So, I don't think it should be too great a shck to see a group of people trying to prove their 'godliness' by denoucing the acts of someone else. Especially when that group of people are a minority that's had to take a back seat over the course of thirty years of troubles in the Province.

Basically, the story kinda goes like this...

In the rest of the UK, since the Sixties, certain groups of people have been fighting for representation and respect. Women, Gays, Lesbians, Black people, Asian people — god helps us, even transvestites.

In Northern Ireland though, people have just been, well, fighting. And as a result, no other single issue has ever had enough front-page publicity to even register on the vast majority of people's radar.

As a result, suddenly (now that "viloence" has "ended"), there is an entire nation who are about thirty years behind the rest of the world in terms of cosmopolitanism, tolerance, and general understanding.

So, basically, these people waving banners and placards in protest of the first ever civil partnerships between two people of the same sex, where utterly naive. They were stood there, (a) trying to show how righteous they were by condemming others, and (b) utterly unaware that the rest of the civilized world were looking at the, going "Meh".

This whole thing popped into my head in the smoking section of the ferry today. There were men all around me (Oi. Shut it ) stood like men do in gyms. Posturing, flexing muscles, trying to out-do each other in terms of "manliness".

And in the meantime, an effeminate poof with long streaky red hair, was chuckling quietly to himself. Safe in the knowledge that the days of brutish mannism have really had their day.

Ah, yes I didn't mean I had a photo of the actual landing That would be pretty impressive no? Thanks for the reminder though Emily...