… but I haven’t got a stitch to wear! So croons Morrissey in The Smiths’ song ‘This charming man’, released in 1984. It was in that year, my first year at university, that I was introduced to The Smiths, and for some reason theirs were the first songs I’d really paid attention to for their lyrics.… Continue reading I would go out tonight …
Chinks of darkness: a visual postscript
In my previous post, I described how my mood had sometimes felt almost totally dark, but with occasional chinks of light breaking through, while at other times it had seemed almost relatively ‘normal’, except that there were chinks of darkness bursting up from somewhere. This is what depression looks like at times, when I’m in… Continue reading Chinks of darkness: a visual postscript
Questioning my neurotypicality
I recently read a Twitter thread by Mia Steinberg on auditory processing disorder (APD). Earlier I had watched the #TakeTheMaskOff launch video by Christa Holmans (the Neurodivergent Rebel), Kieran Rose (the Autistic Advocate), Sara Jane Harvey (Agony Autie) and Hannah Molesworth (Do I look autistic yet?). Both the Twitter thread and the YouTube video talked about zoning out in conversations – perhaps for different but overlapping reasons. This made me think about times when I zone out (which I hope isn’t always obvious!).
Chinks of darkness
This was very nearly an ‘unpost’, but I think I have given it just a little too much thought for it to fall into that category. I’ve had a lot of issues surrounding a wedding I was at this weekend. Despite the lovely weather we’ve been having here recently, my inner life has been rather… Continue reading Chinks of darkness
Shame and shamefulness
In June 2001, a friend (now a Church of Scotland minister) forwarded me an email from the Evangelical Alliance (EA) advertising the appearance of Joel Edwards (who was at the time their General Director) on the weekly BBC TV programme Question Time (which was at the time something I might have considered watching). By this… Continue reading Shame and shamefulness
Unpost III: simulcast
This post will be broadcast simultaneously here and on Twitter. I probably don’t have time to write very much today (which is perhaps just as well given that my uncollated thoughts are being spewed out on two channels at once). Having been to the cinema twice already this week, I’m seriously overdoing the film thing… Continue reading Unpost III: simulcast
Image, mirror, selfie
Time for a proper blog post drawn from my cabinet of writing ideas. This one seems apt, since – according to Twitter – today is #NationalSelfieDay. Unhelpfully, the hashtag doesn’t tell us which of the couple-of-hundred-odd nations of the world celebrates this day. (It is, of course, the United States – a country that could… Continue reading Image, mirror, selfie
Unpost the second
Another stream-of-consciousness ‘unpost’ written on the bus to and from speech therapy. I’m very conscious that it’s been a long time since I last posted anything. Perhaps that's because I have grand ideas for a couple of series of posts that are blocking me from doing anything ‘trivial’ (so this unpost is very necessary to… Continue reading Unpost the second
Close reading: Hinsliff on gender
It’s been three weeks since my last blog post. (I’m sorry if that’s inconvenienced anyone who’s come to rely on at least one post a week from me!) Although I have plenty of blog-posts-in-waiting, I haven’t had a lot of time to do any writing recently, in part because it’s school exam season here in… Continue reading Close reading: Hinsliff on gender
My first Anna-versary
On 20 April last year, I made my way to court, accompanied by a friend. There, in a tiny side room, in the presence of a lawyer, I completed and signed a statutory declaration and swore an oath to the effect that I would from that day forth use Anna as my legal name, on… Continue reading My first Anna-versary
