THE GIRL OF MY LIFE

 It was 1965 and my brother dropped me off at the local youth club where I had agreed to meet other school friends. We all had a single purpose ... to find a girlfriend. So it was that I finally approached a girl who seemed shy (but then her mother was one of the women checking that everything that happened at the youth club was above board). When it was time to leave an older school friend who had a motorbike offered to take me home ... a rather scary memory etched on my brain forever.

The next month the girl, Pauline, and I chatted more and then we started going out together. There are lots of micro-memories from those days, but I do have something more ... a photo from 1966:

Friends and I used to meet Pauline and her school friends from time to time after school. It was a fun time, usually listening to The Beatles, rather than the Rolling Stones (which would have been my preference).

Of course, there was the angst of being teenagers 'in love' at the time, but this wasn't a real issue for Pauline and myself; we seemed fine together.

 ... Pause now for a few months ...

I started this thread in July, it's now the end of November. The pause has really been because everyday life (Estate matters and more) have dictated much of my day-to-day life.

Although I had known about my transvestite (as it was called back then) needs, they were deeply closeted. Years later, I concluded that I had taken on what we might consider to be a 'macho loner' persona, starting in my school years, to avoid people getting too close to the 'real' me. Through motorcycling, very fast car driving and way too much alcohol, I could have lost my life, I could have lost Pauline, but I survived and she was always there to provide comfort and tenderness. We even had a very slight dalliance with cross-dressing, but neither of us really understood what it actually meant.  We both also had dalliances with others, but always 'came home' to each other.

We moved in together at the end of 1976 in Germany when Pauline, a technical translator, obtained a post with a subsidiary of Siemens. I was just mooching about, not knowing very much about what I wanted to do in life. We decided to stay for a year and then go travelling in South America. As happens, it was after 8 years in Germany that we decided to return to England. Now we were both adrift, but I had 're-skilled' while in Germany and was undertaking voluntary stuff in wildlife conservation. This was Thatcher's Britain, but Pauline found work and eventually so did I. Time passed, my work was increasingly demanding which may have triggered an increase in need for TG expression while Pauline's work peaked and then declined which might have triggered old OCD problems that she had. Sadly, by 2003 the tensions were such that we began to live separately, although we maintained a good relationship (this is another story).

Pauline was diagnosed with Parkinson's in late 2017 and I retired at the beginning of 2018. Having already planned visiting my TG friend Pamela in Ireland in 2018, I was surprised that Pauline said she would like to join me, but she had already spent Christmas with me as Nikki. She was obviously rather trepidatious but Pamela and M were great hosts and I don't think Pauline had experienced me talking for so long with another human being every day for the time we were there. I think it was with meeting Pamela and M that Pauline concluded that being TG wasn't that weird. To that end, and with our squeezing in visits during Covid, at Christmas 2022 we posed for 'marriage photos' with me the blushing bride ... to presage our actual marrying in early 2023.

 Enough for now ... but finishing on a couple of photos I love of Pauline:

 

 

Kiel, 1972

In Corsica, 1998

7 YEARS LATER

 I guess this should be Nikki's New Life Part 2, something I never thought I'd write.

 

On 28 June, 2017, my best friend and TG supporter, Barbara, died. On 29 May, this year, my life-long love, Pauline, who married me last year and grew to understand and support TG people passed away through cancer.

I want to write, to celebrate Pauline's life. That will come in its own time.

24/06 - Feeling raw emotions as I collected Pauline's ashes today. Very strange, in the bright sunshine of the hottest day of the year, walking with a carrier bag containing 73 years of someone's life across the road amidst the everyday traffic and over to Sainsbury's where the car was parked. Then home and so, where do I put those memories? Nothing fits, nothing's right ... this shouldn't be, but that's what life is, an interruption in nothingness.

Curiously, at the end of an evening laced with brandy, I find some solace in playing Bruce Springsteen on youtube. He sings with such vibrancy about life and I remember when we saw him in Frankfurt all those years ago, back in '81. I finally have to turn off youtube when, however good he is, he isn't playing with the E Street Band and switch to BBC Radio 3, a channel P and I adopted in the last year. That brings me to Mahler, but he must wait as it's late now.

 

 

 

SOURDOUGH AND AIRFRIERS

 It's been a long while since I posted anything here. There are reasons for this, some of which I can mention here. I did write a couple of drafts on things I have since almost forgotten about, but I want to get to point of this  ... sourdough.

I enjoy cooking and baking and have devised a very successful (IM not so HO!!!), if long-drawn-out version of ciabatta, which I covered in an earlier post January 2022. I have given up the egg wash as it seemed a waste of an egg! The main thing is getting the oven hot enough, which with current energy prices can seem wasteful, but I try and time baking with other oven uses ... usually moussaka. More of this later.

My partner has Parkinson's and has also developed a malignant cancer which has occupied a lot of time - surgery, chemotherapy, hormone therapy and now immunotherapy), but eating is something she enjoys, so I keep fiddling about to provide tasty things. A while ago I became interested in sourdough, to the extent of buying a couple of books which should have led me to Nirvana. All they did was warn of failure ... everything was so complicated - temperatures, feeding, flours ... blah, blah, blah. Anyway, I did make some ferment (this is flour+water which has become bubbly) and found I had some 3 year-old rye flour, so I tried out some rye sourdough. It worked - the bakes looked good and the one I didn't try to knead came out nice and holey (LHS in pic).

The downside is that rye flour is incredibly gooey and cleaning up is very difficult. But, what kept coming back to me was that the ferment looked rather like the results of the first stage of the ciabatta making. Mulling it over at 5am (my usual time for mulling). I decided to treat the ferment just as that first stage. So one morning I took 375gm of ferment and put it in the breadmaker pan and added the contents of stage two: 1/4 tsp of fast-acting yeast + 325 gms strong white bread flour + 1/2 tsp of sugar + 4tbsp of olive oil + 1 1/2 tsp  salt + 90 ml water. This is then put on a dough programme for 2 hrs 20min. I then made up some small and medium rolls (no pix!) and cooked them in a max. heat oven for 12 minutes. If I didn't know, they could have been the old-style ciabatta. Tasting a roll, the slight sourness of sourdough came through!

What this post is really about, 'though, is how simple it is to have the ferment ever ready for baking. 

I never got round to finishing this piece. The last date associated with it is October 2023. Now, in June 2024, I am reflecting on how the title of this blog has run its course. In the first piece on this blog I describe my relationships a little. Now, change is here again as cancer has taken Pauline. 

A fuller update to this blog will follow.

Cats, Dogs, Walruses and a Bit of Sex

I've always been a bit antisocial, preferring the company of animals, even though I've never possessed a pet, and with my ecological background I am sensitive to what might be termed an animal's safe space. So it was stories from yesterday in the papers attracted me.

Let's start with the good new for the cats of Walldorf, Germany ... they are out of lockdown for this year!

Near Walldorf, crested larks breed, or try to. Trouble is, they are ground-nesting birds and now very rare (just three breeding pairs at Walldorf). They have been extirpated from previous breeding areas in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Norway and Sweden. Cats are interested in birds, and ground-nesting ones are easy game, so the authorities in Walldorf have decreed that for the next three years, cats must be kept under close control (indoors or on a short leash) during the crested lark rearing season. This should be until the end of August, but has been brought forward by a couple of weeks, probably due to climate change!

Even better news for Maggie, a Turkish Akbash dog that had been taken for a walk up Ben Nevis by three women. Sore paws and exhaustion led to it not being able (or simply refusing, as dogs do) to get back down the mountain and although the women tried carrying her down, she is 35 kg, so the Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team were called out to stretcher Maggie down! It was that, or stay on the mountain overnight.

Now, for upsetting news. Freya, the young Walrus who had been enjoying lounging on boats in Oslo fjord was euthanased killed because of a perceived public danger caused by the public. There could have been, there should have been, a better solution ...

Now for a bit of sex ... from the MIT Techology Review:The quest to show that biological sex matters in the immune system.

Research immunologists at John Hopkins are looking at the role sex (chromosomes, sex hormones, reproductive tissues) has in immune responses and Sandeep Ravindran has written a lengthy and interesting piece on this.

One of the aspects in the piece that relates to my previous blog entry is a hypothesis that takes on board  certain higher immune responses in females compared to males and suggests that "a stronger immune response in female mammals could help transfer more antibodies to their babies in utero and through their milk, thus protecting offspring from infections. The same heightened immune responses that help keep babies alive also increase the risk of autoimmune diseases when females are older, but the trade-off may be worth it from an evolutionary standpoint."

There's a lot to digest in the MIT piece. The above demonstrates how interactive everyday life and evolution may be. It's a long way from Mendel and his beans.

Stay Forever Jung!

I mentioned in Sue’s blog a while ago that I tended to subscribe to Jungian psychology as it had equivalences in ecology (my profession). I wrote I may write something on that in my blog … so here goes! I apologise in advance if some of it seems unwieldy ... but that's the way psychology is!

First things first, ‘though: I have no training in psychology and while counting daisies has been part of my ecological background, the ecology that informs my thinking is behavioural and evolutionary ecology.

I use the following terms solely for this piece of writing:

transvestite, a term used by Freud; and ♀ and ♂, to avoid the use of ‘male and female,’ terms that may carry social baggage.

Dumping Freud

I was raised at a time when Freudian psychology was mainstream (if any stream of psychology could be called that). As it affected me, his work seemed to suggest that anything that was not boringly dull was some sort of psychopathological state and for me, a ‘transvestite’ in his terms, he could provide a lifetime of analysis! I found that if I subscribed to the basis of his thinking, there was some contorted logic to his approach, but as with Blanchard et al. much later, that basis made no sense to me – it was anthropocentric with overtones of moral certitude.

What I’m Not Writing About Here

To explore (even superficially) how the basics of Jungian psychology relate to ecology is an enormous task. Rather than to try and write about everything, I’m going to take topics individually. For the sake of space I've avoided some good examples of behaviours, but am willing to add some in, if it helps interpretation. Depending on whether I get any feedback and, more generally, how much time I have, I’ll explore more. For now, it’s time for the collective unconscious.

THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

So, what is the collective unconscious and how does it relate to us via ecology (in its broadest sense). And how could that help an understanding of transgendering as a behaviour?

Initially, it is wise to demystify the term ‘behaviour.’ Anthropocentric concepts such as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ behaviour are irrelevant here. A quick look at dictionary definitions supports that, in that ‘behaviour’ relates to how an organism responds to something in its environment. The following extract from Journal Psyche expounds on that:

‘The theory of the collective unconscious is one of Jung’s more unique theories; Jung believed, unlike many of his contemporaries, that all the elements of an individual’s nature are present from birth, and that the environment of the person brings them out (rather than the environment creating them). Jung felt that people are born with a “blueprint” already in them that will determine the course of their lives, something which, while controversial at the time, is fairly widely supported to today owing to the amount of evidence there is in the animal kingdom for various species being born with a repertoire of behaviours uniquely adapted to their environments. It has been observed that these behaviours in animals are activated by environmental stimuli in the same manner that Jung felt human behaviours are brought to the fore.’

(Increasingly, ‘behaviour’ is nowadays also being applied to non-animal organisms, e.g., the turning of sunflowers to follow the course of the sun.)

The last sentence in the Journal Psyche piece is significant – an environmental stimulus triggers a behaviour for which the organism has an innate ability to express. With knowledge about how genetics act (both directly and indirectly), the “blueprint” mentioned above could be replaced by “framework within which they can behave.”

In the simplest of models of binary sex (i.e., ♀ and ♂) reproduction is the goal, but with increasing sophistication, especially amongst social animals, sex, its display, and act, may have many different meanings, depending on the species. Whilst animals cannot change clothes, some do portray attributes of the sex they are not (and, of course, some do even change sex). These abilities, whether expressed in life, or not, are innate. Since transgender and transsexual behaviour occurs across races in human species, it is reasonable to assume that the ability to express these phenomena is also innate – part of that “framework” of the collective unconscious.

Jung No More! Introducing Archetypes

Jung suggests that within us we possess archetypes. ‘These are described as a kind of innate unspecific knowledge, derived from the sum total of human history, which prefigures and directs conscious behaviour.’ (Wikipedia).

This is an aspect of Jung’s work that can be troublesome, as he moves into the realm of spirituality and beyond. An example of how Jung thought of archetypes is to imagine a snowflake. The archetype is not the snowflake, and it is not the water that forms the snowflake. The archetype has no form of its own, but it directs how the snowflake and all snowflakes form. Of course, such an analogy has limitations, although in later work Jung considered archetypes to include psycho-physical patterns existing in the universe.

These archetypes can be simply considered as sub-sets of the collective unconscious that act together to create a pattern of behaviour within the framework, providing part of the route to the conscious mind. Of particular interest are the contra-sexual archetypes – the anima in a male, and the animus in a female.

But that’s for later.

 

Psoriasis ... Agh, and more

 I've had psoriasis on my scalp for years now. It's not mattered as I have always worn a wig when presenting as Nikki. Last year I developed problems around my eyes and the GP practice (I saw several docs) treated me for seborrheic dermatitis as I'd been diagnosed with that some years earlier, and blepharitis. For the latest problem, nothing prescribed helped. Twice I had antibiotics as the docs thought there might be infection - but the only effect they had was on my digestive movements ... Using Dr Google, I did find that antihistamines could ease the discomfort (gee, thanks NHS docs for not addressing that). I do have a referral to opthalmology ... I've waited four weeks for just an acknowledgment.

Then a couple of weeks ago, things started happening in more earnest ... the psoriasis is spreading and the likelihood is that it is causing the eye problems.  For anyone who relies on make up, this is not good news. Basically, psoriasis is a bugger to treat|!

Added to that, I had a basal cell carcinoma (BCC) removed from the side of my nose a couple of years ago. It has changed the pseudo-symmetry of my face slightly; I am ok with that, but ... and it was a big but ... I was aware that I might be developing another BCC near the tip of my nose.  They are slow growing and benign, but they can damage bone and other subdermal tissue. At my age, it was a balancing act whether to hasten more surgery or let 'sleeping dogs' lie.

Today was decision day ... I shall be seeking another GP appointment seeking diagnosis of both psoriasis and BCC. The BCC should render a consultation with Dermatology in two weeks ... the thing I have to do is for that referral to include the psoriasis.

Sensibly, I can see that this will curtail my Tgirl appearances for some time to come, which at my age may bring about permanent change for me. 

But, on the bright side, the ECHR is acting against the self-serving liars etc. who seem to run England for their pals. One day, Boris, your day will also come ...

Short Update: I had an emergency appointment with the paramedic practitioner who was more 'engaged' than the docs (I think their workload gets to them). The doc previously was of the opinion that the problem around the eyes is seb derm, so the paramedic thought I should continue with treatment for such, but reduce the steroid cream to just below the eyes. I am following his instructions to the letter in terms of antihistamine, eye drops and steroid cream until Monday when I get to go back to the surgery for an appointment with a new doc, who will also look at the potential BCC. Some minor good news is that the progression of the problem seems halted, although psoriasis elsewhere continues.

Holidays, A Disturbing Find and A Trip to Brighton

 It's been a while since I last posted anything.

Sand Crocus, Dawlish Warren

We finally got away on holiday to Devon and Cornwall, to National Trust cottages booked for the previous Spring and held over because of Covid. The day before leaving I read up about a small flower I'd seen in Galicia and in Crete - a sand crocus - and realised it would be the perfect time to see it at Dawlish, one of two places it grows in in the UK, so our first day was not spent on Dartmoor but on the south coast. Then the heat wave hit and the moor was full of people embracing a beautiful Spring weekend away from the pandemic. We only got onto the moor ourselves later in the week when the weather had changed. We had a couple of walks but my partner tires easily now, being under chemotherapy. A skirt and top came out for one afternoon in the garden, but there wasn't the impetus to dress more. We then went onto Cornwall. I was meant to be walking part of the West Coast Path but, instead, we had a couple of shorter walks, and an afternoon's dressing. Then back home to continue the therapy and the regular round of hospital appointments.

We had arranged to start sorting through my partner's apartment - for years I had not been 'allowed' to visit as she is a hoarder and was embarrassed at the state of her living conditions. So it was that a 8-yd skip was procured and the clearing, with the aid of her sisters, began. Her flat was, and remains, a nightmare. One example: she would assiduously clean milk bottles and the like for recycling and then let them pile up around the furniture; another: she had a subscription to a weekly magazine and there were years of it, piled up, unopened. The skip was filled in one weekend and we expect to need at least one more. About this time my facial dermatitis worsened, so much so that we had to cancel a trip to see a concert that I had been really keen on. We don't know if there is a connection with the state of the apartment.

 

But, there was great news from the oncologist - following a scan, P was showing no signs of cancer and, despite the earlier problems with the bowel which had caused the treatment to start with chemo-, the scan showed that she could have radiotherapy in September.

 

Walmer Castle

Sheffield Park

A French flickr friend, Nadia, planned to visit England and, notwithstanding everything which was making life rather difficult, I agreed to show her places, including a trip to Brighton. On the first afternoon we went to Walmer Castle.

We had hoped to meet another friend, Jane, at Sheffield Park, but she was ill. We did, however, meet Sue in Brighton and had a fine couple of hours with her, wandering the lanes. It was a fine couple of days and the weather was superb. 

Brighton, North Laine Bazaar

UKRAINE ... TWO NAMES ... AND CALAIS, AGAIN

 Not much to write about at this time, but two names to conjour with - one, a person who was pivotal in saving the world from nuclear war in 1962, and one who through sheer charisma may be saving us in 2022.

The first, a Russian  ... Vasily Arkhipov, who arguably prevented the commander of the Soviet submarine, B-59, from firing a nuclear torpedo on October 27, 1962.

The second, a Ukrainian ... we know his name - Volodymyr Zelensky.

As for the UK PM ... everyone's going soft on him at the moment, despite the fact that he is not leading the West's response to Putin, notwithstanding his propaganda, ... the oligarchs are escaping with their billions while Ukrainian refugees are being turned back from Calais, as they need visas and our consular officials are based in Paris or Brussels. As I write, 1.5 million Ukrainians are refugees from Putin's invasion; 50 have been accepted into the UK.

I was brought up with the concept of sanctuary embedded in me. Later in life, I found out that my dentist was one of the Windermere children. 

 

Update from 13/03, six days after writing the above. From the Guardian newspaper:

"Even judged against the Home Office’s recent standards, the mix of incompetence, hard-heartedness and sheer dishonesty in response to the invasion of Ukraine has, for many observers, set a new precedent. Last week started with the admission that 50 UK visas had been granted since Russia invaded Ukraine – or one for every 28,000 people given sanctuary by the EU at the same time.

Home secretary Priti Patel then claimed she was considering a new route for refugees, but it did not materialise. Later, she announced a visa application centre had been established in Calais, but this was also untrue. By Wednesday, the Home Office said it was actually in Lille, but would not reveal where. A day later it became clear why: there wasn’t one.

Those helping Ukrainian arrivals in northern France confirm that the Home Office is more focused on media management than assisting vulnerable refugees."

 

An Apology

 For too long I have been lazy over Blogger and it was only earlier today that I realised that I had set myself up to moderate comments and not checked to see if there were comments waiting. It doesn't help that Blogger doesn't notify me that there are comments waiting. Corrective measures have now been taken!

UKRAINE - THE WORLD BEYOND MAD, DRIVEN BY MADMEN

It seems that this current situation has arisen as a result of the failure of Yanukovych back in 2014 to follow Belarus's example and rein in the populace of the Ukraine and tie the country to Russia, unlike Lukashenko had done with Belarus earlier (although he continues to have to do that).

The precise trigger for the current action is within Putin's head, but I do just wonder whether Lukashenko has egged him on. The petulant rhetoric he has been using seems to refer to perceptions of past grievances, especially dating to WW2 (Слава Україні!) and that strikes me as either someone making up reasons for actions, or perhaps an expression of a deeper and historic mistrust between the two countries (who have existed side by side for 1000 years). For today:

Слава Україні!

As a sideline ... there have been murmurs about Moldova, and in the Balkans, of Serb nationalists. While I sincerely hope the sanctions on Russia really, really hurt the perpetrators of this madness, the worry is that they simply escalate and spread their poisonous inhumanity elsewhere.

A short thought on Abramovich. He's either quite clever (although, me having been a supporter of Chelsea in the past, I doubt that) or there is some greater-than-oligarch humanity going on. BUT, the nightmare lieutenant colonel in the Kremlin never forgives, so I can understand the limits to which Mr A will go to save his own life, or he might simply be quite clever.

As for the lieutenant colonel, Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote a story entitled 'No One Writes To The Colonel Anymore' ... in due time, if he ever survives to get to the International Court, we may be faced with 'No One Speaks To The Lieutenant Anymore'.

I'll probably add to this as the days go by ... it's what blogs are about.

The Reluctant Hairdresser

I was due to visit my hairdresser when the Covid-19 lockdown started in the UK back in March 2020.  For me, uncontrolled head hair growth for another six weeks, or so, was untenable and I sought to buy electric hair clippers. Clearly, I was not alone and the cheaper ones had sold out everywhere and I ended up paying nearly £70. Since then, I have not been back to the hairdresser and the clippers have paid for themselves.

Today, I became the reluctant hairdresser. My partner's hair started falling out, little by little, a week ago, as a result of her chemo. We had discussed wigs and I had explained what she should look for ... lace front etc. So it was that I found one of mine for her to try on for size  ...  and it does suit her ... 

As P's hair continued to relocate to the bath outlet, we decided that I should apply the clippers to her head. (Other hair is her matter). I was more reluctant than she, but today, we took 'before' photos and then about 40 minutes later I took some of her Sinéad cut. It was a few moments of curious intimacy, removing something which is generally so important to a woman's self-image and one she would spend several hundred pounds a year having styled and coloured. The result? Surprisingly, the Sinéad cut worked out well. Of course, this is just an intermediate stage; before long what remains will be lost and then she will being wearing  ... my wig!!!

Dermatitis, Weight Gain, and Nails

At the risk of sounding boring, I am going to moan about dermatitis again, not to elicit any jot of sympathy, but to mark what might be seen as a hiatus in my T-girl journey. Prior to last Summer, I had various skin conditions, but all were both discrete and discreet. Then dermatitis around my eyes broke out. At the beginning, before I realised what was happening, I looked rather Panda-esque, but without the cute fluffiness. Yesterday, was the first time in seven months that I was able to apply foundation 'close' to my eyes and use eyeliner (mascara must continue to wait). In celebration, I also intended to paint my nails.

The problem I had was to find my nail varnish. After some deep contemplation, followed by wrecking my bathroom, I found the varnish and, luckily, it was still fluid. The nails were the best outcome from yesterday's dressing. Over the months I should have replaced things like lip pencil and blusher, but had relied on  tail-ends, as the impetus for spending on make up had not been there while the dermatitis was in full swing. Worse still, over the last few months, my weight has shot up and I find my tummy quite embarrassingly proud. However, vanity must prevail, and pictures were taken. 

My partner has 'spread' things around the living room (necessary as she sorts all the things she needs with the onset of chemo) so, without looking inside, I took myself into a very blustery garden. The photos were not good, but were a record (and I do like the colour of my new sweater, even if it is rather autumnal - it goes with my 'cranes' skirt). Then my partner said she had cleared up the living room, in case I wanted to take photos in there. That was really thoughtful of her ... I should have looked!

The varnish was kept on overnight and it started me thinking about the last time I wore any (given the trouble I had finding it). Going back through my flickr photos I came across this. Uh? the last time I wore nail varnish was last March and then the commentary was to do with not having painted my nails since???

To my mind, wearing nail varnish is one of a girl's most obvious expressions of femininity. You cannot hide from it while typing or doing almost anything, whether dressed, or not. They're there now ... the bold redness flying acros the computer keys. The sight of them is like lightning, a direct and immediate connection to my inner self.

 I know now that Spring 2022 must be a time of activity - I must lose weight and I must keep my T-girl awareness raised despite other problems ... more nail varnish, please!

An Anything But Wild Night in Margate and The Chemo Begins

 I don't really know why I've this sudden urge to detail my almost-daily life ... maybe simply to relate important changes as they occur. There is nothing TG in this post!

Although Margate's only 30 minutes away, Pauline and I went to Margate last night and stayed over in the Premier Inn. She was due at the hospital this morning at 08.45 and the traffic can be dreadful, so we decided to take a relaxed approach. We ate at 'Angela's', a fish restaurant near the Turner Centre. It's the first time I've eaten in a bistro-type restaurant in England in years and I was really pleasantly surprised at the the way fish cookery has taken off. I had hot-smoked prawns with aioli followed by charcoal-grilled pollock on celeriac mash with horseradish sauce. Pauline also had the pollock, which we agreed  was very nice. It wasn't that many years ago ... 30? that the local fish and game shop in Deal first started stocking pollock and from this link, it still isn't that widely known. By chance I bought frozen Alaskan pollock from Waitrose recently and was surprised that I didn't recognise it ... that's 'cos it's a completely different fish ... that's why! We had Litmus, a nice white wine from the Surrey to go with the meal.

Walking back to the Premier Inn, my mind was swirling with JMW Turner and the imagery he produced at Margate:  

Sunset off Margate Pier 

I am constantly amazed and invigorated by Turner's paintings - they always appear new.

It's a curiousity of being 'old' ... we were back in the hotel by 20.30 and barely made it to the 22.00 news before sleep overtook us!

Today ... today is a new day. After breakfast I dropped Pauline at the Viking Day Unit at the Queen Elizabeth Queen Mary Hospital in Margate for her to begin her chemo treatment. Just as England is loosening it grip on the populace with respect to covid, she enters the world of the immuno-suppressed for the next 20 weeks. Luckily, Winter will soon give way to Spring and the risk of infections will decrease.

Actually, there is something TG related  ... I wear wigs and my partner may soon be looking for one, so she's relying on my expertise to guide her through the world of wigs!!!