Summer holiday time edition

 As I'm typing this I'm on the umpteenth glass of pop trying to stay both cool and hydrated this warm weekend.

 Naturally school is off even if sadly it was only half on at best since Spring as I struggle to recall anything like this from my own childhood as more or less everything isn't what it was since the word Covid-19 entered the daily news reports.

It's really rather more the outdoors that I've clung onto, watching birds and insects going about their business, enjoying the tree blossoms and flowers growing  and even looking after this.

 I've also been reading a fair bit from comics and comic annuals to the books I adored as a child probably cos in this messed up world I have the same needs for escaping what's around me.

These two books are quite intriguing not least The Mystery of the Co-ed School which is unusual as most fiction of this sort is normally set in all girl schools and that illustration is rather puzzling.

I mean just what is that boy doing sneaking around by that door as a girl is running away toward the school gate with him in pursuit pursued by a Headmaster?

 It seems the same needs for repetition, routines and security I had then apply now and in odd sense never really being fully adult seems to aid it as inevitably we have to try to work our way through this one day at a time.

Because this month I may not be away with friends due to you know what doesn't mean I cannot look back at those moments and some of the views I saw such as walking around this lake in East Anglia enjoying the tranquility of it all.

It's the memories we make that help us get through difficult times such as those we are all facing presently.

On relationships

Sometimes I do talk a little about other issues here and to me relationships and the things that go with them is worthy of consideration.

With many challenges in the world today, values it seems are a thing that do matter but we seem really reluctant to talk about.

For instance to get through the restrictions we are all facing present with Covid-19 we need to understand why they exist and to feel we can trust each other to keep to them, having a sense of responsibility toward one another.

For me and I suspect a good number of others these are things we started to learn about as kids in out homes, in school, in church or through things such as scouting.

We rely on each other and so we slowly but surely start to understand that we need to follow rules and when we agree to do something, that we must keep our Word and if we didn't we'd be at least spoken to quite firmly about it because it matters and as get older and so are expected to do more, more so.

One thing I do feel we need to talk about to is the love of each other - I don't mean romantic love - but the love between us that you may of had for a sibling or your friends at school or in brownies.

It's not just that we say we care about them it is out actions in looking out for them, helping them as best we can according to our abilities, even just providing an understanding ear when they need it.

Sometimes we fall short in showing that and sadly even in being able to accept the love others have for us.

Let's try to do our best.

Holst, Copland, Chavez and Haydn

As I write this, it's really been something of a damp squid of a weekend with very heavy rain, power issues in parts of the country and no good for being out of doors which as I said the other week is really more my thing.

So apart from sorting out the Bookmarks on my computer removing any dead ones I've been listening to some music .

While there is no shortage of regular cd's with excellent accounts of Holsts's ever popular Planet Suite none had matched the heights of my Boston Symphony conducted by William Steinberg account of 1971 for playing and indeed technically very good being originally engineered for four channel quadraphonic sound

It was with some interest that recent this super audio cd came out by an orchestra whose reputation has grown over this century going beyond the works of Grieg and other Scandinavian composers.

This does match playing excellence with technical excellence offering an enjoyable performance that keeps you on your toes but free from wilful showmanship so we hear what Holst had to say rather than the ego of a conductor and his orchestra.  

This may well be the final word on digitally recorded multi channel discs which given the dirth of really good accounts on sacd at least puts an end to the search for the holy grail of this format.

Next up is a two album on one disc release that does work in that both works are North American and both were original recorded for the same label - Columbia Masterworks - in the same year

Starting with the first of three works, Carlos Chavez who was a Mexican composer who dead in 1978 conducts his Ballet Pirámide which has four acts  which in this recording has just acts Three (The Elements) and Four (General Dance) and Los Cuatro Soles (The Four Suns).

For this 1974 recording he uses the London Symphony Orchestra and the Ambrosian Singers which was taped at London's Abbey Road usually used by EMI/Angel in the UK.

The third work is Aaron Copland's masterpiece Appalachian Spring ballet with a difference being the original version of it conducted by the composer himself with the Columbia Chamber Orchestra which remains one of the finest recordings of this work with its Shaker inspired theme.

After all that Copland, I'm looking at a cd that came out on May 29th by the great Austrian composer Joseph Haydn

The Six String Quartets, Op. 76, form one of the most renowned of Haydn's sets of quartets, and carry the stamp of their maker: No other set of eighteenth-century string quartets is so diverse, or so unconcerned with the norms of the time.

 In the words of Haydn's friend and contemporary Charles Burney they are full of invention, fire, good taste and new effects. On the present disc, the first of two, we hear the first three quartets, including the Fifths quartet (No. 2) so named after the falling perfect fifths with which it begins. The most famous of the set - and possibly of all Haydn quartets is No. 3, however: the Emperor quartet with its second movement: a set of variations on the Kaiserlied which Haydn had recently composed to the greater glory of the Austrian Emperor Franz II. 

This is played on period instruments, usually a turn off for me but this performance by the Chiaroscuo Quartet is tuneful with body and is extremely well recorded on this stereo and surround sound Super Audio cd, playable on regular cd players too

In March of 2021 I added the follow up disc of the No. 4 to No.6 opus 76 quartets 

I did pick up both discs issued June 30th 2007 of his "Sun Quartets" Op.20 they recorded to considerable acclaim.

The playing is exquisite.

The Age Dysphoric Brownie

One aspect of both the battle over my sense of identity and of my age dysphoria is that I am in spirit  a Brownie in the tried and true feminine place in scouting, GirlGuiding, who loves going on adventures and  exploring learning practical skills.

What that amounts to is following the sorts of programs linked to badges the modern brownie does which also was what I wanted to do when I was in juniors with my friends but but my family didn't seem to think I would want to  or they would have me even if many of things in it actually would of been beneficial.

The idea of having a code of honour  with Brownie Law and Rules would also of provided me with a sense of moral discipline, a framework for being a gurl of value to hur community and of learning self respect and self discipline.

With consideration for where I might be and the likelihood of encountering bio-girl browniess, I tend to wear a fairly traditional skirted uniform.

Molly Brett was a great illustrator who did a number of  Enid Blyton's illustrations but she also had a lot to do with Guides, designing the original certificate of induction into brownies and wrote this short Brownies story which is from 1951 that I acquired recently.

Going forward with the Brownie ethos makes sense for me. It'll make a good gurl of me.

Age Dysphoria

I did not realize it it until this week there is a specific term to describe how somebody like me feels  and that word is similar to a word I do know that some people tried to use on me and which I have commented earlier on about.

The word is Age Dysphoric. Basically it means you are deeply ill at ease with you chronological age to the point you feel you cannot function as that person of that age, that you feel the pressure to be the age you haven't reached you may feel suicidal or at the very least really stressed by and you cannot relate to others in your peer group because you're really that much younger.

The emphasis placed upon being Adult, especially Adult at eighteen when it wasn't long after I was born that actually the legal age of adulthood was brought down from 21 by which point you could vote, stand in an election and would of finished a under graduate degree course is intense and it doesn't even actually start at eighteen.

Some example of the Age Dysphoria include such things as chewing at the emerging hairs on my arms frequently because I couldn't stand the sight and feel of adult arms growing on me and cutting my pubic hair off.

I can remember a painful experience when I was ganged up on and bullied by health professionals at a school because they felt at seventeen I should of known a pre-prepared meal for me was as I was late returning to school looked like and distinguished that from one put aside for a diabetic child when I did not know what the meal was and in any event I had asked a grown up to get it for me and had said I wasn't a diabetic.

If it was anyone's fault I had the "wrong" meal it was the person who worked in the kitchen but they kept going on and one about it, how I'd deprived a child for a meal, that at My age I should of known so much it triggered my sensory overload and thanks to my audible processing disorder I just froze over and all they could do is then berate me publicly for ignoring them ignoring my known and documented disabilities just cos they weren't physical.

See age had nothing to do with my problems in that sense as it wasn't a matter of age so much as they felt I should of had the expectations of a child who did not have my conditions which include brain damage and almost certainly autism. 

A child was was actually no where no the cusp of adulthood and NEVER could of been.

It was just a stick the able bodied staff used to beat me with.