You Don't Live Like I Do

Last night I was having a relatively pleasant dream after a nasty anxiety dream. I was playing some kind of 5-a-side football match as a LGBT+ charity fundraiser. The referee was a drag queen, and the players were activists. I'm not very good at football even in my dreams, and my side were losing heavily. At one point I saw the ball coming towards me, an open goal in front of me, and I took the opportunity to level the score a little by kicking the ball hard...

...and woke up in agony, having just kicked the bedside cabinets really hard in my sleep.

( Slightly icky health details )

It took me ages to get back to sleep due to the shock, and I didn't sleep well because of the pain. Today I've just been feeling slightly sick from the lack of sleep. The toenail is still sore, still bruised. I've trimmed it back to stop it catching on socks etc. I'm glad gym circuits class is cancelled due to the Bank Holiday, as I'd probably need to skip it anyway.

And I never got to find out if I scored a goal!

Last Saturday, I went to Trans Pride Manchester for the second time. With the far right protesting in the city centre, I wanted to be there to help protect my trans friends, if only by being tall and huge at potential troublemakers. So I got on the bus with cosmolinguist who was heading to the gym. A few stops later, some student-age young queers got on with their mobility aids and trans flags and we made eye contact and nodded. There were also half a dozen middle-aged ladies speaking some Southern European language too fast for me to identify it; their leader asked me in halting English if I knew how to get to Oxford Road station and I promised I'd tell them when to get off the bus.

The bus was just about level with the Manchester Aquatics Centre when the driver got a phone call and stopped the bus to take it. After a long conversation, he announced to us passengers that bus routes through the city centre had been suspended due to the presence of the fash, and we'd have to get off and walk into town. We were about a mile short of my intended stop, and between the delays and extra walking there was no way that E would make the gym, so he decided to come along with me.

The middle-aged ladies and the baby queers didn't know how to get where they were going from where they were; we were going to the same place as the latter and it took us past the former's destination, so I ended up leading an odd convoy! It turns out that the ladies were from Spain and were escaping the heatwave in Barcelona by coming to Britain; they were headed to Liverpool for the day. They asked me why the bus had stopped, and I simply replied "fascists". It's a usefully international word in that regard. When they got to the station their leader kissed me on both cheeks, wished me "Adios" and "Gracias", and they filed off up the station approach.

We escorted the baby queers to Castlefield for the start of the march. We avoided St Peter's Square where there was some kind of noisy demo, and instead took part of the march route, backwards. It was their first Pride-type event and they were excited. They found their friends, we sat on the grass in the shade and relaxed among hundreds of trans people and allies, recognising a few faces and saying our hellos here and there. We listened to speeches and poetry, fierce and angry and proud. Just as the march was starting off, we met up with some friends as planned, and the four of us walked together. The march was great - no trouble, lots of chants, good signs, seemingly lots of support from passers by and even the motorists we were holding up. The route kept us away from the city centre so there was little chance of running into the far-right. However at one point the stewards forgot the changed route and started marching towards Piccadilly Gardens, before doubling back on themselves and heading down into the Village. This was great because it meant that people on the march got to see other people on the march. And also because it happened right by a Yates pub, where a bunch of fash who couldn't get served in Piccadilly Wetherspoons had ended up, so they got to see even more of the happy, weird queers marching past them, chanting and waving banners.

We ended up walking through the Village and into Vimto Park on the old UMIST campus on Sackville Street. Originally we'd planned to picnic there but it was clearly too crowded. We ended up in the beer garden at Yes on Charles Street, a good enough place for food and drinks. We spent a few hours eating, drinking and talking nonsense with our friends, before getting the bus home, back on its normal route. On the way back to the bus we ran into one of the baby queers who'd been to the LGBT Foundation to have their deed poll witnessed by a lawyer, and they were clearly stoked by the experience.

All in all it was a very positive day - we actually outnumbered the racists in the city centre, not that we got any press coverage. There was no trouble that I saw or heard about. People were supportive. We made new queer friends and helped some foreign ladies. The only shame is that E didn't make the gym and had to walk too much on his dodgy ankle.

On Monday night, I went to see The Mummy at the cinema with cosmolinguist and P. This was part of Cineworld's '99 Season, showing films that are 25 years old this year. I'd not seen it before, but was aware of its memetic status as being responsible for many people's bisexual awakenings.

It's a very 90s film certainly. The sexual assault leading to romance, the omnipresent racism... I suppose both are accurate to the 1920s time period, but then so are revolvers which fire six shots between dramatic pauses for reload rather than the 10-15 that Rick routinely fires.

It's also a very horny film. The Carnahan siblings are having a brother-sister battle for who gets to fuck Rick. Evelyn also clearly has the hots for Imhotep while he's still... juicy, and loses interest once he looks more human. Everyone wants to fuck Ardeth, including Ardeth. So yeah, I can see how it awakened things in a lot of my friends.

It's the perfect age for "CGI is hugely expensive so we only use it sparingly" - that means the ageing CGI doesn't distract too much, while the majority of the effects are practical and still stand up.

All in all a great way to spend an evening!

Went to the opticians for a check-up. As expected, my prescription is a little stronger than it used to be - I'm up to +1.25 in each eye, from IIRC +0.5 in one. This explains why I've been holding things further away to read them. New glasses ordered and should be here in a week. mother_bones and cosmolinguist still get to laugh at my pitifully weak prescription.

Last night, a memorial was held for Bat in the back yard of his house in Texas. It was live-streamed for those of us unable to be there in person. It started at midnight UK time, but didn't really kick off until Bat's ashes arrived. For some reason, and in very Bat-like fashion, they were three hours late.

While we waited, cosmolinguist and I were chatting to various friends-of-Bat on Discord, swapping selfies and pictures of our pets, as well as memories, jokes and stories. Someone contributed a poem to the Discord which was later read out to the in-person gathering. We had a few drinks, watched people meandering around on the live stream (but couldn't really hear anything.

It was 3am by the time people started talking over the PA system, telling stories, memories, poems etc. The stories were pretty much what you'd expect of Bat - drunken shenanigans, combined with a kindness and love for everyone he knew. He loved us, and he helped us love ourselves better. Many people attending were his found family, a lot of them rejected queer kids whom he adopted and looked after.

We tapped out about 4am, unable to stay awake any longer, but it was a lovely commemoration. Apparently after we signed off, someone read out E's wonderful poem, which he'd shared with everyone on Discord earlier.

Now we've had a smart meter fitted, I've started to want to put together some kind of in-home monitoring of energy usage, temperature etc. with the intention that eventually I could start doing things like smart radiator control and so on. Obviously this will need a computer that's on 24/7 to look after things. The only computer in the house that fits that description is my fileserver - it's an old HP Microserver with a 4TB RAID where I keep backups and other files. It's been struggling for a while just running a few services such as the Unifi wireless controller, so it's clear it wasn't going to cut it for anything more.

( nerdy stuff )

This means that I'm now able to take full advantage of the AMD RX 6650XT graphic card which cosmolinguist bought for me. I'm enjoying the dappled sunlight through the swaying branches in 7 Days to Die and I'm struggling to get it to drop below 60fps, the maximum my monitor will support. Not only that, but I'm now in a Steam "Family" with gamer stepson L, so I have access to his vast library of games. This means that I've dipped my toes into Helldivers 2, a co-op shooty game which is basically Starship Troopers with the serial numbers filed off. Some of the local Discord people play it and I've joined in a co-op session with them now. Even though it's a Windows game running through Proton (formerly WINE), I'm still getting that maximum 60fps with lovely quality graphics (by my relatively low standards).

All this gaming has rather distracted me from the original purpose of this hardware - I need to transplant the hard drive from my old desktop into my new workstation when the NVMe adapter arrives, then transplant the hard drives from my fileserver into my old desktop and use it as the always-on system that'll monitor the house. So maybe that's a project for the coming weekend...

Tonight is the fourth anniversary of the Chaos Emergency Doof Broadcast Network, an online Twitch club stream which started during the UK lockdowns and have continued throughout the ongoing pandemic. It remains my only regular social / entertainment contact during the ongoing pandemic. I've discovered some great new music, and met some lovely people through the Discord.

Since I can't go to gigs or clubs any more because #CovidIsNotOver, it's really nice to have something to look forward to each week. It's a fantastic little thing and it's free and it's all thanks to the ongoing commitment of Lee and Tes who've sunk do-not-do-the-maths hours of their lives into it, both on air and behind the scenes.

As is traditional for a birthdoof, we got silly party food for dinner. In previous years this has involved 80s British party food, such as cheese and pineapple on cocktail sticks, mounted on a jacket potato so it looks like a hedgehog ("spudhog"); Angel Delight; and vols-aux-vents. This year the savoury options were a collection of easy oven food - garlic mushrooms, onion bhajis, vegetable spring rolls. Because last night I had a Cunning Plan.

I'm not much of a baker, but I roped mother_bones and cosmolinguist into helping me make a Birthdoof Cake. It was a simple sponge cake, with a layer of yellow-dyed fondant and green fondant edge chevrons to match the Doof logo. E cut the letters "DOOF 4" out of black fondant and we arranged them on top, along with four glittery candles. We did the baking last night and dyed the icing, then today we rolled it all out and arranged it. One of the Doof DJs lives in south Manchester, and we delivered it to her about 40 minutes before she went onstage. She graciously gave us a couple of slices to take home with us so we could taste the fruits of our labour.

I'm really happy with how this turned out. It was a silly idea for no benefit other than to make someone happy. It stretched my skills a bit but I had people I could rely on for support, including getting some fondant advice from my Mum. I feel like I achieved something but the stakes were very low.

This weekend contained some exercise and some much-needed socialising. The trans gym class I've been tagging along to has been getting really popular in recent weeks, to the point that classes have been booked out. I was happy to go along when it was scraping by in terms of attendance, but I absolutely don't want to take a trans person's place there, so I've not been while it's been busy. This week however there were still 3 places left late on Friday evening, so I booked just before booking closed. It was good to see friends, and the trainer was happy to see me back.

On Sunday I had intended to go on a ride organised by a local. Their easiest "pink" rides are aimed at kids, only a few miles long. But their blue rides are usually far more than I can manage. This blue ride was a bit of a stretch at 14 miles, but I figured I could drop out early. And more importantly, some people I know from Discord were planning on going along. As it turns out I was feeling terrible on Sunday morning and didn't get out of bed in time, but neither did half the Discord people. So I missed out less than I thought.

Despite feeling terrible, I dragged myself into the car to drive across the Peak District to Matlock, to swim in an open-air pool with friends. cosmolinguist came with but didn't swim, so I had car company, and when we were finished we went back to one of said friends' house nearby for tea and nattering. The swimming and socialising actually made me feel a lot better, and we came home feeling like we'd actually done something with the weekend, which was lovely.

I posted this to social media on Wednesday. I meant to post it here but I haven't been on my laptop much recently.

I woke up this morning to learn that Bat is no longer with us. One of my oldest and dearest friends, we met via Usenet in the late 90s. We flirted shamelessly on ICQ late at night when I had lectures in the morning.

We drifted in and out of touch for a while in the noughties, but always managed to bump into each other again, often with a new handle, name, or pronouns. It seemed a wonderful inevitability that we would always be in each other's lives, and I am sad beyond words that this is no longer true.

I'm so glad we managed to meet in person a few years ago when he came to the UK, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the friends we had in common or at one remove. I remember going to Cane & Grain for his opinion on Texas ribs ("good ribs, but this is a South Carolina sauce"), and introducing him to a lamb Sunday roast. He was the first guest in my house's spare bedroom and we've referred to it as "Bat's room" ever since. We often talked about when he might come stay again.

We shared monsterfucking memes and videos of hench women (he was always looking for someone who could bench press him). I'll always get a funny tingle and think of him when I see a black nitrile glove, and I honestly can't think of a better commemoration.

Goodbye Batrick. You'd better come haunt my dreams. I love you.

I've had an umbilical hernia (a hole in the muscle wall around the belly button) for a while. I first noticed my belly button being an "outie" which I could push back in, about 18 months ago. I suspect it's caused by IBS, as I spend more time straining my abdominal wall than most. Anyway, I finally got round to seeing my GP about it earlier this year, and he referred me for an ultrasound which confirmed that it's a big one and needs urgent treatment. Due to my hernia I've not been doing as much exercise as I'd like - while swimming and cycling are OK for me, a lot of core muscle work is advised against in case it makes the hernia worse. So this has gone onto my list of excuses for not exercising along with, y'know, the ongoing global pandemic.

Not long after my GP appointment, I got a referral to a private hospital which does NHS consults. Apparently hernia surgery (sewing a mesh into the muscle wall; done under anaesthetic with no overnight stay) is a quick way to get a big impact on surgery backlog statistics so they're processing them quickly. Wednesday 11th October was my pre-surgery consultation.

( CW: Medical Fatphobia )