Summer fun

We're officially into Summer  as much as it doesn't seem so long ago that we'd entered a new year.

That means going away for a break where I can explore things, make things in craft sessions and play in the sun.

Here I am being that little sissy gurl dressed  in a juniors black  boxy pinafore dress, black gym knickers and grey long socks with pretty bows on them playing croquet

One thing I have been doing is reading old annuals  not least comic ones and there's a kind of storyline in them you don't see in today's versions.

No that's from November 22nd 1952 which I might is before I was born but it's a comic strip where wrong doing gets swift punishment - whacked with Biffo's skipping rope but this kind of ending was common place when I was (allegedly) growing up and actually in the 1975 Beano annual I did have this year there were a few like Rodger the Dodger getting a spanking.

That may seem incomprehensible to a modern child which may be a reason why it doesn't feature - it could alarm some - in the way that for us it was everyday life wherever adults ruled so it was seen as normal if unpleasant. 

lt is an indicator of how over time society changes.

A new computer for Tammy

Computing with me has come on from the old days of big tower units with separate monitors and keyboards that were hard wired into your internet to the longing for more mobile working fitting in with my life rather than being it.

Recently I bought a new, simpler kind of a laptop computer that fits more into this life I live.

This is a Asus C202 in white l that has a 11.6 inch screen with a unspectacular but adequate 1366 x 768 resolution which is fine for general usage or watching anything from the BBC iPlayer on.

It has 32gb of memory but that's expandable to whatever you want using a SD card and 2gb of RAM which unless you've got absolutely heaps of tabs open is fine with the Chrome Os which is a kind of Linux in a browser system that doesn't suck processing power unlike Windows.

It comes in nice white trim and like practically all of the species has a built in video cam should it be needed.

Unless you're doing anything that requires a program running in the machine it's fine and today many things can be run as Apps from the Chrome browser, even basic photo editing.

Hopefully it won't be long before it arrives and be quickly set up.

Mozart Sonata's - new set

This week we're back to music and looking at Sonata's.

What is a Sonata I hear you ask?

A Sonata a composition for an instrumental soloist, often with a piano accompaniment, typically in several movements with one or more in sonata form.

One composer who wrote an awful lot of them was Mozart, who if you're familiar with this blog (and it's bigger companion) you will know is a composer I've always had affinity with to the point of buying over twenty recordings in 1991, the two-hundredth anniversary of his death which included a few sonatas.

Music of this era is very much in the firing line of the battle between traditionalist and those who believe in 'historically informed performances' with replicas of older instruments and looking for clues to how originally they were performed.

The young lady on the left may be familiar to some blog readers as she's the acclaimed baroque violinist Rachel Podger who started a long running survey of Mozart's sonatas in 2004 with the pianist Gary Cooper.

This disc covers four, KV 6, KV 379, KV 547 and KV 378.

This was followed up with KV 303, KV 7, KV 301, KV 30 and KV 481 in 2005

In 2006 they recorded volume three that covered  KV 454, KV 28, KV 402, KV 404, KV 8 and KV 380.

 Volume four came out in 2007 which took in K 302, K 9,K 304, K 29 and K 526

At which point you are probably saying and what's with this "KV" number?
KV happens to be  an abbreviation in German for Köchel Verzeichnis. 

 It is indeed a register for all the compositions of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), not only the symphonies. K stands for Köchel, the last name of Austrian publisher and collector Ludwig Alois Ferdinand Ritter von Knöchel (1800-1877).

All Mozart's  music is catalogued in order using this notation which makes things simpler.

These performances and others in the series I'm slowly picking up, are widely regarded as the finest modern ones and the smooth effortless reproduction  the super audio format allows for sounds most natural, as if you were in a room listening to a recital.

Personally I just love the playing.

Take three discs....

It's a bit of a round up of sorts here with not making  a 'proper' entry around the discs I have recently obtained

Edward Elgar is an English composer that I first listened to as a young child and started buying recordings of his symphonies cello and violin concertos as they came out in the nineteen eighties on cassette and then in the 90's replacing with the compact disc versions.

I had been looking for a decent modern recording of The Music Makers for a while and this Chandos one on super audio cd from 2016 ticks all the boxes as Andrew Davis really gets into the music in much the same way as the late Vernon Handley whose recording I bought back in the day.

Berlioz was a French composer who again held my attention, this time in my teens that I am slowly building  a collection of beyond the Symphonie Fantastique and this, his musical account of the tale of the Faust with its vocal parts is served will in this recent release in the London Symphony orchestras own recording from the Barbican Hall, London, performed live.

Transcribing works written very much with one instrument in mind for another often causes controversy inviting the question "What is to be gained from it?"  but one thing to bear in mind is a good number of composers did in effect produce other arrangements for other instruments themselves.

Ms Podger herself, a highly regarded Baroque violinist, has carefully done this to get around the restrictions of the violin not having the five strings of the cello and keeping the flow of the pieces.

In the opinion of many of us, she has succeed well here producing transcriptions that hold your attention - indeed she premiered them in concert before recording to much applause - caught in a spacious acoustic well reproduced in super audio cd.

* All the discs are hybrid Super Audio cds that play also on regular cd playing equipment.

Summer Comic Specials

Summer in the UK is marked by the start of school holidays that usually start around the third week of July and run for typically 8 weeks which makes it a highlight of your childhood years and depending on age and in some cases districts marks such milestones as graduating to Juniors or moving on to Secondary schools at 11+ and college/uni at 16 and 18 respectively.

Something else generations of British children also looked forward to was the publication of unique Summer Specials of their comics that came in full colour on better magazine quality paper with a binding.

They were and are almost like miniature annuals, which are a staple of childhood Christmas's  over here with special cartoon strips, games and things to do in them that you'd pick up before you went off on your summer holidays.

The company D C Thomson are a well known Scottish print media magnet printing magazines, comics and newspapers and two comic titles they are known for is The Beano and The Dandy.

Recently I got my copies of these two Summer Specials.

The Beano is a current comic, read by today's children as well as sizable number of adults who are continuing a enjoyable interest from childhood aimed at both girls and boys  whose cartoon strips have changed by the times with some old ones discontinued for new ones and some changes within the older ones to reflect more the society around today's children.

Thus it features such long established series as Dennis the Menace with his dog, Gnasher, Minnie the Minx, my heroine and the Bash Street Kids set in a working class junior school together with newer ones such as Rubi JJ and Pie Face that feature disabled children and people of colour in an attempt to be more 'inclusive' and all are drawn especially for this years summer special.

It has stickers, games and quizzes too clearly aimed at today's children.

The Dandy's is different because it is no longer published weekly and like the Annual is aimed more at those who remember reading the Dandy as I did as a kid and so has decided to make it a compilation with illustrations of some front covers, of some vintage comic strips featured in past summer annuals.

Reading that does bring back past memories and really childhood nostalgia is where this one is aimed.

Two specias aimed at different markets all a great summer read.

Some great reading

Reading can have a bad press some of which may be down to the lack of encouragement in reading for pleasure especially in an age of instant electronic gratification but part of this I feel is actually the the lack of appreciation of what is people love to read about.

The modern age has many pluses but one negative is the tendency to write notionally gender neutral stories that read more as stories for girls with lots of details around friendships, drama and relationships which is not something that instinctively does anything for you.

You like mysteries and adventures that hold you in suspense and even when they are, the political correct requirement to make the key characters female for gender empowerment   means there's nothing boys can relate to.

One author whose work I loved as a boy and still love to read is Enid Blyton and at least in her world boys are really boys who do have gumption and who doesn't feel the need to write to an agenda.

As a sissy gurl I'm glad boys have a proper place in the scheme of things.

Today I'm looking at a few I think are good for littles

While being a mixed gender series, The Six Cousins series has  quite a bit for a boy looking at the lives of six boys and girls, three of whom has lost their home in a fire and three whose lives are affected by having them stay with them.

It's less a 'kitchen sink drama' thankfully as more an adventure looking at the different characters in the area such as shady poacher, a wondering philosopher the older boy lionizes who tunes out to be a thief  and the importance of working hard.

It looks too at a topic that is relevant today, how it is some boys seem to lack that spirit, more concerned with looks within the older boy being more namby-pandy and yet the one who initially was and clearly most effected by the fire finds meaning in life on the farm letting his sense of maleness out.

The role of a too soft Mum in the upbringing of three of the children and her own lack of adult maturity are explored too

Although aimed more at the eight year old reader, this is the story of Donald who can't really concentrate on academic things in school as he's always dreaming about a life with animals sometimes seeing himself as a naturalist, sometimes wanting to be a vet although his school reports are a concern for his father.

When is Grandma offers to get him a puppy for his birthday his excitement is shattered as at one his parent reject it and the story is of his attempt to secure the object of his fascination -that puppy.

Reading it again, his boyish nature and the longing for a pet really connected to me.

The Boy Next Door is an unusual novel in the extensive Enid Blyton catalogue in that while it is an adventure, the focus of it is a mystery around a boy, a ten year old American boy called Kit who on the outset we are told lost his father and was moved to England for his own protection as his father had left a huge amount of money to him when he's of age and is a target for kidnapping not least by his uncle.

Kit is meant to be hidden away in property miles from anywhere, free from being overlooked where he has a housemaid and a tutor but can be seen by Betty, Lucy and Robin who live next door here he's playing Cowboys and Indians with red indian* dress up attire on.
They didn't know of a boy next door nor did their Mummy.

The book looks at how even though he's not meant to be seen by a soul, he plays with them having adventures although though he's threatened with a spanking if does, how two people suddenly arrive nearby looking for him and ultimately how he foils a kidnapping with the boys and girls help. He also is reunited with his father!

We also learn the source of where he was to be found for the two looking to kidnap him was very much closer to home.

* Intuit or "First Nation" is the preferred term today in Canada.

As unfortunately with most of Enid's works since the 1990's the editors have been changing names of characters, removing unpolitically correct references and the like so to really enjoy these you need to find copies BEFORE 1990.

Dean's editions before this point are easy to find even if they lack all the original illustrations without breaking the bank and Armada paperbacks exist too which the Cousins series in my collection are part of.

The need to look at root causes in dysmorphia

 Dysmorphia is the intense disconnect and feeling of disgust a person may feel toward their own body and it is true that people have been reporting it in terms of Gender Dysphoria although the the term gender isn't really accurate as its about their bodies sex although the confliction is in their heads as they 'see' themselves as a person who isn't of their sex.

Why is it somehow transphobic that we even propose more time and resources to further study gender dysphoria in order to find its root cause?

It's already clear that we know "people don't feel like the body they were born in." But why is it wrong to ask why?

I have lost and ended up losing friends for posing this question

I mean it's not uncommon for people to remain depressed and even commit suicide after transitioning. This has caused many questions for me. I'm started to think perhaps we don't have enough science yet and we don't know the true cure to this dysphoria. So why are we acting like we do?

Is it not possible that to some extent at least their body because the focus of all they feel is wrong or uncomfortable with, that somehow if it were 'fixed' everything would go aright in their lives when in reality no matter what you may do regarding your appearance, actually you're carrying the feelings in your head?

Maybe you've never really been to 'me' and the issue may be more around societal expectations which are limiting which some boys make self limiting by imposing on their rigid behavioural codes?

You may have some qualities traditionally associated with femininity, perhaps you're a nurturing, sensitive kind of a guy who has always felt the jocks and would be drill sergeants bullied, humiliated and intimidated you at high school.

And that left you feeling 'less of a man'.

Actually they may be the less rounded real men than you if you understand it's part of a guys role to care for his family and children and his colleagues as a man.

So actually looking more into this stuff could help people make good choices to move on without the mistakes of transitioning without really understanding you and what's the actual issue.

If like me you are gender fluid and mix in a feminine and a masculine side you probably are more balanced all round anyway.

Our issue is other peoples attitudes and opinion, it certainly isn't us.