Comic celebrations

For most of this blog I've looked more at more the presentational side of being a feminine boy but being him involves connections to other things that connect to people and comics was one where many of mine were fairly regular comics that most boys read.

For a good number of us, our sense of being young is in part at least connected with our actual childhoods and the routines we had back then and for me at least it was the arrival of comics which in the case of this British one came out on a Thursday.

That's right, the Beano which first came out in 1938 apparently although during World War II, it was reduced to fortnightly to save paper which was in short supply.

This is special kind of a magazine with a softbook binding issued July 24th featuring a background capsule on all the main cartoon strips the comic run and the first strips of each that for me included such favourites as Minnie The Minx, Lord Snooty, Biffo the Bear, Dennis with Gnasher and the school series the Bash Street Kids that was close in some ways to my first school with its' Victorian building. Dennis has only been regularly on the front page from September 1974 taking over from Biffo.

Included in it is four glassy art prints which just adds to the enjoyment of this special issue although I often get the new regular copies and there is a celebratory featured  special issue of the regular comic that I hate to say really doesn't work as part of the appeal is the constant old style art and traditional storylines carefully made just slightly in tune with our times for younger audiences. 

That childhood runs on how I live now.

2013 Dandy summer special

It's Summer when as boys our minds were set to school hols and the seaside holidays we would be taken on and all the rituals that go with it.

It seems a bit sad but this is billed as the Last Ever dandy summer special following the discontinuing last December of the print edition of the regular comic which ended in style with special edition.

We bought this with our bucks and spades and postcards to send to our mates at the start of every holiday on the Welsh coast which as Midlanders was super convenient for us to read, doing the quizzes and search words.

We'll just have to hope and pray we do actually see another in 2014.

My trip to Whitby

A few days ago , I was out on a trip out as in a hundred odd miles out and also out as with my blue t shirt , black shorts and grey socks with naturally a travel bag.   
In my world I'm always out as me.

We were going some 312 Miles round trip from where I live to Whitby in North Yorkshire, England  which is a old Port and seaside resort although you have a long walk to get to the beach. Our route involved travelling along the M6, changing to the M62 Trans-Pennine motorway and then getting on the A64 in North Yorkshire a little South of York.

The traffic was really bad travelling along the A64 just south of York along the Scarborough road for miles.

The scenery along stretches of this route took us over Saddleworth Moors in Lancashire, a very hilly area with sheep farms even though it's near to the Towns of Oldham and Rochdale and also well into the North Yorks National Park where much purple Heather and horses was spotted. They were beautiful at this time of year.

Because we were really late arriving the first step had to be fix food fast as I was starting to space out -the perils of running short on spoons - so I called in at Trenchers fish and  chip restaurant on New Quay Road, Whitby for fried plaice, English chips and several drinks of tea with brown sugar while I took some tablets.

It won awards in 2011 and 12 and upon tasting my late lunch, it is not hard to see why for the fish caught on the day  by fishing line was most tasty and the chips had a good not greasy taste to them.

Time was running short as because of drive hours issue with the driver we needed to be back at bus for 17:00 hrs I only had the chance to look at a couple of charity stores briefly before getting something to eat as we wouldn't be stopping off on the return trip.

That's the Bridge that links the harbour to the old town where many of the shops are  to be found in small streets, some cobbled. As befits a Port, there were places selling fresh fish!

Whitby Harbour. As you can see it was  very sunny day with quite as number of boats moored.

I had to use the 105mm moderate telephoto of this camera to capture this and carefully crop it later. Thankfully the more megapixels your image has, the better the result even if you use only a small proportion of the original image.

Kerrera caught my attention  while moored with its bold colours and flags

Finally an overview of the harbour.

It was a interesting day out even though it had taken rather a lot out of me physically as I hadn't been in the North East of England ever. One just wishes to had the time to see more of Whitby.

More Liszt

Sometimes you may have two versions of title and you may of spotted my previous post around the Georges Cziffra Liszt box and wondered what this is about?

The first recording of the Hungarian Rhapsodies I encountered was this in its three lp box set form from 1973.

While I love the one in the box set, it is the case that set of recordings from 1957 and 1958 are in monophonic sound so you don't get the sense of the piano sounding quite as if it is the room with the ambience in stereo.

This was for a long time a leading recommendation and had been remastered from the analogue tapes in the 1990's to great effect now compiled over two generously filled cds.

Moreover this has all nineteen works rather than the fifteen Cziffra recorded back then so it is more complete.

Going for the one

When it comes to specialty mastered cds there are two names that are heads above most others, Mobile Fidelity Labs  and Audio Fidelity, the company formed from the ashes of the former DCC label.  

Recently Audio Fidelity issued the second disc in a re-issue program by the Prog Rock group Yes following an agreement with the bands management and Wea who hold the rights to much of their catalogue.

This was one album I have strong memories of 1977 coinciding with the period I learned a lot about rock music from being in my early teens from shows such as Alan Freeman's Saturday afternoon show when he'd play an incredibly wide range of music including new releases which this album was one of.

Originally it was released on lp, cassette and 8 track cartridge which is one of the versions I had at the time and has had three previous cd issues of which the last one I bought was the 1994 remaster by Ted Jensen.

Musically it has 4 shorter tracks of which one, Wonderous Stories, was a 45 and a good showcase of Jon Anderson's voice and the much long piece Awaken that features Rick Wakeman's organ playing which was recorded separately in Switzerland.

The original recording and mix  is one dimensional and a bit shrill in high level high notes something that even the UK original lp didn't cure.

This re-master by Steve Hoffman is surprisingly effective for he managed to find the deep bass previously hidden to bring out the organ and to carefully reduce the shrillness without it sounding as if he'd removed all the high notes losing detail.

We are given to believe Yes band members are impressed with how this turned out.

As with most recordings he remasters, it has a wide dynamic range as unlike a number of remasters on mainstream labels he doesn't severely reduce it in the mistaken belief it brings out more in the mix by bring it forward.

I also acquired the earlier Close To The Edge issue Audio Fidelity put out which is a significant improvement on the 1994 and 2003 reissues.

Technically, it is a super audio cd giving higher resolution on sacd comfortable players such as many blu ray players or sacd audio players but also has a layer that plays on regular  players.

Gender reveal and the final school years

I had written a bit around school life before on this blog around the age I was in junior school but over time as I transitioned to high school at eleven and a half the certainties and accommodations slotting in a gender divided world kicked in.

For one thing the social world of play where I could navigate between playing with boys and girls went as they moved away from playing and into adolescent matters even though mentally I still felt a young child.

And for another where I was comfortable of sorts wearing short trousers although I had showed a like for wearing skirts, boys pressured you even more than the grown ups into waring long trousers and being more like a man, something I did not feel anything like.

Thus this period for me was one of hidden exploration of gurlishness as I wore from choice skirts, blouses, tights and knickers from wherever I could find them and even where of I was lucky, girls were prepared to make me up as one.

Given the changes within me and also within the girls I associated with against the odds and queer bashing that went on, I also started to explore the more sensual, sexual side of sissiness too wearing camisole tops with matching french knickers and stockings as a gurl in the same way girls explored it.

Like them I found I wanted what boys could give me.

This said I kept parts of the younger me such as my love of teddies and plushies as did many of my female friends and unlike most of them I still had and loved to act in my more junior side playing and otherwise being a young child just more able to be hur.

It was my GENDER REVEAL as a sissy gurl.

At Ten

Do not adjust your computer peoples for what we have here is almost a deadringer for me at ten with the right shaped face, hair and so on as I ought to remember 10 as by this point we'd moved to a school that was very much 20th century, with more land so we did stuff.

The uniform needless to say is wrong needing a red sweater and the socks were meant to be white  but it's so close my head has gone back in that year!  

Stuff we did include basic gardening and plant growing which was nice considering we were in the countryside, we had some science kit and even a proper school library now.

Naturally we played Rounders still.

Oh goody gumdrops, there's a book we read with a very important moral  plus a good heart and isn't Mary looking so pretty in that dress? It was always a favourite of mine by the Authoress Frances H. Burnett, who was born in England but moved to the United States of America at 16 years of age and recently I re-read it. 

I vividly recall at 10 our class reading Emil and the Detectives as our teacher would read it aloud enjoying its engaging themes and we'd follow him.

Of course in this era, there was another kind of reading we did and I had and read this annual back in the day as a number of you probably did as well.

Great things about ten included being able to watch and understand more complex movies, having a bit more personal freedom as well could playout by ourselves so long as we we back on time for supper, being able to play more board games (no Playstation or X box then) and the music of which I listened to included stuff by Queen, Mud, lots of Motown and Phillysoul, Slade and the Tartan Terrors (aka The Rollers) that we talked about at recess.