Christmas 2013

It's Christmas which for me means it one that is back in the past even if its Twenty thirteen which means we have comic annuals from the past in them such as the Beano.

It is the 75th anniversary of both the Beano and Dandy this year which is a mighty long time in history of comics and in the Beano remains many of the characters I loved such as Dennis the menace, Minnie the mix, Roger the dodger and of course the Bash Street Kids.

The Dandy ceased regular weekly publication this time last year but had a Summer Special this year which was a pleasant surprise.

This years annual leads off with Desperate Dan on the front but includes favourites such as Keyhole Kate who's always nosy, looking into other peoples business and the great Korky the cat.

My copy has a poster included.

Also included was Diamond, a new hardback novel by Jacqueline Wilson continuing the Hetty Feather story. I like her books loads.

Mummy bought me a new and very feminine pink pair of pull on fur lined slippers and some cute socks.  By the way that bell is old and loud!

I also had this Hello Kitty hand towel and face cloth set for when I go away with friends.

The trouble with being a sissy gurl tends to be less the boy stuff you get but the lack of anything feminine even when people know you are so things like gloves end up being converted to smaller girls gloves that do fit and ditto the socks as my feet are child sized and not man sized.

So while I'd rather that kind of stuff didn't happen, there's no point obsessing over it as you can deal with and anyway not everyone is fortunate to receive presents at all.

Doing the Little Sissy Schoolgurl thing

The World of the School for Adult School Boys and Girls too I might add is not one some are familiar with so perhaps it is hardly surprising that ill informed comments abound when it come to light in the popular press one is operating in town or city.

The School offers a place for adult littles to be returned to the classroom experience of their actual youth such as the coat hooks in the cloakroom not not a million miles removed from those in my first school which I remember quite vividly and obviously uniforms.

The area around presentation in so far as it goes with me could be either way although it must be said most who run such places are very much traditionalist only bending for "special gurls" which isn't really inline with education in the last twenty or so years.

Back then I didn't have this option which I do love  but it would need to be as a little sissy gurl with all the names and pronouns and not some pretend girl thing.

This "boy" in strict uniform, being more strict than my actual junior school but he attends and needs to wear at least a kind of uniform that marks him out as a "boy" and from that point takes away most adult presumptions so he's very much back to being a school boy in class under a teacher.

One way you can tell is the cut of his shorts are quite short, clearly  to make him look more juvenile. 

If I was to present in shorts, then they'd need to be at least this length if not a tadge shorter approximating those i did wear back then

The more usual approach is a traditional more Prep school uniform such as the above which may well include a cap or for gurls straw hat which as state school junior I didn't have and there is old school revolving chalkboard in which the teacher for the day would put his or her work on.

The "Boys" or "Girls" normally would sit at a desk again most likely to be wooden one, taking work down into their exercise book to do or into a jotter again as anybody educated in the 60's, 70's and 80's would recall.

Miss or Mr would be just that, no "Lindsey is my Teacher" stuff as old school manners and formality is in and enforced.

Elton John: Rocket Man

Getting set for Christmas now so here's a small piece of value coming to you shortly, to paraphrase an old Jefferson Airplane song!

Like a good many people, my interest in Elton John came about in the early 1970's where I owned the UK lp versions of both his Greatest Hits albums, borrowing other titles periodically from the library.

In the intervening years I slowly built up a collection of what I consider to be albums from his classic period plus a few from the early 1980's on compact disc being a mixture of early 80's American MCA discs and a few European DJM issues of the same era as the "Classic Sound" titles issued in 1996 that  to me sounded too loud and bright plus the MCA issue of Greatest Hits II with the song, Levon, a fine track included.

Recently I acquired a few specialty releases that sound amazing that I wish to talk about.

This disc issued in 1994 by the now defunct DCC label followed the US MCA edition track order but added Candle In The Wind which featured on the UK version at the end, has a great selection of Elton's earliest songs in possible their best sounding versions. Bennie And The Jets sounds just like you're in a concert.

Volume II was to been issued by DCC but an eleventh hour licensing issue between Dick James Music and MCA  put an end to that after the test discs were made, which was a great shame.

Issued at the beginning of this year by Audio Fidelity, this edition of Rock Of The Westies originally released November 1975 and  the Home of Island Girl, Grow Some Funk Of Your Own and Dan Dare, is the best version on cd of this title with a wide dynamic range.

Strangely enough this disc originally in late 1989 by Mobile Sound Labs Inc of Illinois was the first edition with the whole double album on a single cd.  

In the opinion of many it remains the best sounding version on cd and being the home of Candle In The Wind, Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting, and Bennie and The Jets plus many other memorable songs. 

My copy is a slightly later US pressed UDII one.

In 1983 this compilation one of three with the title Love Songs  was issued with a cd issued very shortly afterward in those halcyon cd days by Rocket Records in the UK.

As the title suggests this is a collection of love songs drawn from the  Rocket era catalogue so it takes in the albums from 1976's Blue Moves up to 1982's Jump Up and is a very good summary of this era although it misses of  Part Time Love originally on the 1978 A Single Man album for we get most of the 45's and choice album cuts. 

Although this is an early regular cd, it seems some effort was taken to find good sounding analogue tapes leaving it with a lush presence in the midband, great for making the most of Elton's vocals.

I've transferred these discs to my iTunes library for portable listening.

Moving ahead through cubbing

As time went on my balancing of feminine and masculine  things started to move through to other areas of being me.

We talked at the very beginning around not being immersed in the World of boys and  how rough play which lies at the core of boyhood play was discouraged even though when I did breakaway and  allowed boys to play very physically with me and I even played like that with them, I really liked it.

That was another sign that at the core I had aggression even if I could do more gentle play such as playing house or with dollies which I longed to do but that era was hard on you if you did as a more feminine gurl who the world thought was a boy.

Another area of that passivity was discouraging exploration as even though there was no reason for me not to had been enrolled into Cubs and actually I helped my brothers in their scouting behind the scenes, my parents did not enrol me.

While obviously one could not join junior scouting officially today, I decided to follow the spirit, principals and the sorts of activities I would of done back then so I started to learn many of the skills through practise that as that sissy gurl back then I'd of learned and to go out being physical, exploring the natural world around me.

As one of the core parts of regression in its very early days was that, finding and secretly wearing my younger brothers uniform as he'd left by that point it made more sense and I also established a uniform.

The awkwardness of the gender gap within the scouting movement then and some present issues aside such as longing for a more feminine style of uniform at least in the form I can relive is something I can change to get the best balance for a gurl who wanted and loved the scouting ethos.

This helped a lot in both shifting the negativity I had toward myself moving from being very risk averse to learning to work with risk handling it to take care of myself and to let my sense of adventure out.

By engaging with that it I was on the way to becoming a confident thoughtful feminine gurl who accepted their more sissy traits.