Lucy Melford

Well, quite new. I bought them on 22 November, at a shop in Chichester called Rachel George. They are by a German maker called Caprice, and are made of grey leather and grey waterproof fabric, with white laces, a white fleecy lining, and a grippy black rubber sole. Here are some pix:

And here they are, in action, alongside the boots of my natal female friend E--- at Scotney Castle yesterday (of which much more in tomorrow's post):

These new Caprice boots are warm and comfortable, and they must somehow look like ski boots, because people's first reactions so far have generally included lines like 'I didn't know it was going to snow tonight!' - clearly said in comedy, but lost on me of course, not having a sense of humour (although maybe I'll get one as a surprise Christmas present, batteries included I hope). The laces are just for show. There are discreet zips up the side of each boot, so you can get them on and off very easily.

I bought them for short but regular winter afternoon walks around the village and nearby towns, with some extra exercise in mind. I wanted footwear that would laugh at a cold day. It's too easy to use the lack of proper footwear as an excuse for staying indoors with the central heating full on. I needed boots that were no bother to put on and take off, boots to lure me away from buttered toast, endless cups of tea, and the ever-open arms of Morpheus.

Although the Caprice boots will cope with wet grass, they are much too pretty to get covered in mire. So in that respect they are not so versatile in snow and slush as the brown-and-tan Dubarry boots, which (in case you can't remember) look like this:

Not that I would like to spoil the Dubarry boots either, but they can take a little more punishment. Still,one does not abuse posh boots. They are too much of an investment. For farmyards, or for walking along any Sussex path in winter, it has to be the ultra-rugged, take-no-prisoners pale blue Joules wellies:

Sussex becomes one vast Wealden swamp in the wet. That's the natural state of the county, at least when one is down off the chalky South Downs. A bit of rain on any path or track - and especially anywhere that horses can go - and deep oozy mud instantly forms. People can get sucked under. Towns sink beyond trace. You need proper wellies. So when civilisation ends, and the lights go out, and the world turns into a misty waste, and nature takes over again, and wolves howl once more, I'll be stepping out in my blue wellies with the hens on them.

Meanwhile, the new grey Caprice boots must surely represent the pinnacle of ped attire this winter!

I wonder if I should now get a ski hat to enhance my image as a girl who spends her life on the piste? Or just stick to the après-ski?

Two days ago I collected E---, a natal friend of thirty years' standing whom I meet up with now and then, and took her off to two castles on the Kent/Sussex border, both in the care of the National Trust. Being a Life Member of the NT, I can get both of us in for nothing (Mr Scrooge would approve of that). NT properties are great places for having a tasty lunch, or afternoon tea, and the loos are always excellent - great reasons on their own for dropping in! But the properties themselves are high-quality, beautifully kept, and often highly photogenic.

We went first to Scotney Castle, near Lamberhurst, and had lunch there. Actually there are two castles: the picturesque remains of the old Tudor one, on an island in a lake; and the newer Victorian one, which looks commandingly down on the old. The hilly landscaped gardens that connect the two castles are lovely. We caught it all on a cold but sunny afternoon. Here is E---, looking down from a terrace onto the old castle; then some views of it:

The 'new' castle wasn't open, but we'd seen the very interesting interior on a previous visit. It looks like this:

There was enough daylight left to drive on to Bodiam Castle, which is the epitome of a moated castle:

I'd been to Bodiam Castle several times over the years, but never close to sunset so late in the year. I very much wanted to take photos in this type of golden light. I wasn't disappointed! We weren't the only visitors, but for once people didn't get in the way of the sort of shots I was looking for. We were greeted at the castle entrance by an enthusiastic member of staff named Laura, who was very friendly and helpful. We went first up a steep stone staircase to the upper rooms of the entrance, then along the battlements to one of the towers.

That's E--- taking the lead. It was tricky climbing up! The steps were narrow, and we got puffed out. I kept treading on the hem of my long overcoat, and soon had to hoick it up around my waist, using the strap of my orange leather bag. The view at the top was however wide and well worth the effort.

The castle is built on a slope above the valley of the River Rother, and you have to imagine that when it was constructed in the late 1300s the river valley was actually a sea inlet, up which the French might come (and repeatedly did come) in ships, bent on pillage. The original owner, Sir Edward Dalyngrigge, got a 'licence to crenellate' from the King, which ordinarily meant that he was allowed only to add certain defensive features to a regular house. However, with the French raiding as a kind of justification, he got away with building a full-blooded personal castle instead, complete with a serious moat to counter undermining of the castle walls. Not many private individuals have ever been allowed to construct their own impregnable castle, for obvious reasons. Naturally each tower had cunningly-positioned firing slits to pick off attackers who tried to scale the walls:

Day-to-day life inside the castle would have been fairly snug and civilised, albeit with the inconveniences that come with living in a stone fortress. Inside the walls was a suite of fine private rooms arranged around a courtyard, with separate quarters for the servants, separate (and easy-to-isolate) quarters for the untrustworthy garrison of paid mercenaries, the usual kitchen and utility rooms, and a chapel. Apparently there were in all 33 fireplaces and 28 toilets. A proper little community. All safe and sound behind portcullises, and defended by the cold waters of the moat. Well, one might feel secure surrounded by water, but it would mean extra dampness. It was pretty chilly posing for this shot:

As sunset approached, we saw a thick white mist come up the valley, very eerie, but perhaps it stayed by the river and never enveloped the castle itself.

On the way out of the castle, we spoke again to Laura, who was doing her final rounds. She said she made a thorough job of it, going up each stone staircase looking for anyone who might still be there, because she didn't want to lock anyone in for the night. It nearly happened once, but fortunately the visitor switched on a light as a kind of signal. That was seen from the nearby ticket office before everyone went home, and so they were rescued. But once it was all closed up and dark? I fancy it would be no good trying to phone for help. I didn't put it to the test, but I'd think the interior of the castle would be a poor place to get any mobile phone reception, considering the very rural location and the very thick stone walls. So once locked in, you might have to stay there all night! Spooky!

We walked back to the tea room before the light faded too far. E--- and I had a pot of tea for two and shared a mince pie. Then we headed back to her home. It had been a very nice afternoon indeed.

By the way, there is some controversy about how to pronounce 'Bodiam'. Ah! Bode-ee-am, you might suppose. Not so. It's Bodge-um. It's that crazy Sussex dialect! It's the same all over Sussex. At the other end of the county, on Chichester harbour, we have Bosham - which isn't Bosh-am but Bozzum. It's a minefield.

You may have noticed that the Google Blogger Search Gadget has disappeared from my blog. I removed it because it wasn't working. I checked the Search Gadget setup, but in vain, and a little research on the Internet generally has suggested that although Google know their Gadget can go wrong, they aren't minded to give it a priority fix.

It's not a new fault - other people have reported the same thing for some time. Perhaps its search capability is strictly limited, and when the number of posts to look at - or more likely the total number of words to search - becomes too large, it times out and never gets round to producing a result. Even so, I'd expect a Google-made Gadget to cope with (in my case) only 1036 posts, and not more than 733,000 words at the last count. It's just not good enough.

One consequence is that anyone wanting to find something particular is reduced to reading all the post titles one by one, making a shortlist of the most likely posts, and then wading through all of that. What a task!

Getting at each post is easy - you simply look at the Blog Archive on the right-hand edge of this web page - but the post title won't always give away the contents because like everyone else I don't always offer a straightforward post title. Suppose you wanted to search for 'Darth Vader' but couldn't because of the removed Search Gadget. Unless I had told you plainly that 'The tale of my epic battle with Darth Vader, and how I saved the Universe, is in my post titled 'Something useful done on a rainy afternoon' dated 14 November 2010', you might be stuck.

This has its upside of course: Daily Mail reporters seeking salacious copy lifted straight from my canon would need extraordinary patience. I think they'd get tired of my endless blah, blah, blah, give up, and go away. They are busy people with vitally important jobs, after all.

So come on Google, get your finger out.

Sequel
Angie has just emailed me with a fix that works! It doesn't present the search results quite like the previous Blogger Search - you get the posts in full straight off, and there is no intermediate list. It's as if the search process applies a filter that excludes every post except those containing the search word or words. You can also sort the results for date and relevance. Well done, Angie!

I went to my dentist for a much overdue check-up today.

I hadn't been since September 2012. There was no especial reason for not going back sooner: I suppose holidays and other expenditure had drained me of funds so much that throughout 2013 I never felt free and easy about making an appointment and paying for the consequences. But an occasional twinge from one of my upper right molars made me suspect that a filling was due, and I had better deal with it. I did not want the tooth getting any worse. And if Nina (my dentist) decided that a crown would be best, I'd just have to bite the bullet. (Well, only figuratively, of course! Biting a bullet would probably break most of my teeth!)

I'm afraid that all my molars, top and bottom, left and right, show the destructive effects of consuming confectionery when young. If not already crowned, they are all heavily filled. The first crown came in 1994. Several more have followed. I have to say they have all lasted well. Some of the fillings have had to be replaced, and when this has been necessary I have always opted for the more expensive white filling. It looks so much more natural than the silver filling.

So my dentition has been gradually tidied up and made more durable. Despite my age, no teeth are missing. None are stained, none are broken or crooked, and, thank goodness, not many have got out of alignment. All the ones that get bared in a smile or a grin look wholesome and (though I sez it myself) pardonably attractive for someone who in days of yore spent their pocket money chiefly on sherbet, Mars bars, and Cadbury's Fruit and Nut!

Somewhere along the line I lost my yearning for sweet things. I gave up sugar in tea and coffee in the early 1980s, and at the same time began to drink my coffee black. The bitterness didn't bother me. Generally I stopped feasting on sugar, and although it took a while to give up sugary cereals (such as in Sugar Puffs and Frosties), eventually I reduced my obvious sugar intake to a minimum. This must have drastically slowed down tooth decay.

More recently, since 2009 in fact, I've confined my consumption of sweet things to bread and jam, dried fruit, apples, and the occasional irresistible dessert when dining out. I've sometimes sipped a glass of Coke in the summer, but I do it for sheer refreshment when out on a very hot day, not because I am hooked on sweet drinks. In fact, I keep no soft drinks in the house at all - unless Elderflower cordial, diluted with tap water, counts as a soft drink.

No, I've shifted to the savoury world. Given a choice between a cup cake and a sausage roll, it will be the sausage roll every time. I'm not kidding. And I like Marmite.

All this has a bearing on what to stock up with at Christmas. I have no plans to entertain at home, but I'm sure that a lot of people will take the view that I absolutely must get in a stock of sweet goods, just in case. They will say that Christmas is utterly incomplete without Christmas puddings, dates, turkish delight, satsumas, chocolates, mince pies, cakes and toffees!

But without a blush I am going to declare, here and now, that I'm going to make do without them.

I want to see if I can get through Christmas this year without expanding my waistline any further. I shall buy only savoury stuff, try not to eat too much of it, and rely on my usual apple as a dessert. This plan will be foiled somewhat by any meals away from home; but then I'm not going to spoil anyone else's Christmas atmosphere by piously refusing a sugar-covered mince pie or two, although that'll have to be my limit.

I do of course have to go back to the dentist for treatment in the New Year. One of those upper right molars has developed a crack, and another (the wisdom tooth, actually) needs a small filling. So it would be very wise to avoid eating anything that will attack my teeth further, before Nina can do her stuff.

I've been invited to an adults-only Christmas Eve Dinner at V---'s in Brighton. When I last heard, there will be anything up to eleven of us, depending on who can actually come on the night. Dress is to be classy but comfortable. It'll be a very pleasant evening.

I offered to cook something and bring it along, but V--- wouldn't have it. However, she said, could I bring some nice champagne instead? Indeed I could.

Not wanting to get caught out by looking for champagne too close to the day, I decided to see what the main supermarkets were offering, and buy whatever appealed. The first step was to visit MoneySavingExpert.com and find out what they had to say about cheap champagne for Christmas and the New Year - see http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/cheap-champagne-sparkling-wine. From that webpage I made a shortlist of what to look out for in the supermarkets within easy reach of my home:

Sainsbury's
Veuve Clicquot on offer at £27, formerly sold at £37.

Tesco
André Carpentier for £13, was £26.

ASDA
Moët and Chandon for £25, was £33.
Heidsieck Blue Top for £15, was £30.
Pierre Darcys for £10, was £24.

Lidl
Comte be Brismard for £10, was £13.

Aldi
Veuve Monsigny for £10, was also presumably £13.

None of these stores was exactly on my doorstep, and the cost of a round trip in Fiona would have to be factored in - anything up to £3, depending on whether it was a one-store dash, or a try-them-all crawl. ASDA was not quite the closest - Lidl was - but parking at ASDA would be free, and that store had the longest list of bargains on my shortlist. So 'logically' ASDA needed to be my first port of call. If they didn't have anything I fancied, then I would go next to Aldi, then Sainsbury's, and then Lidl. Tesco wasn't a store I enjoyed visiting, and so it came last.

Actually, I disliked ASDA even more than Tesco. But I decided to set aside prejudices and past bad impressions, and make for ASDA first.

I set off mid-afternoon, but it was dull, and the light had almost gone when I reached ASDA. The first space I parked in seemed vulnerable to careless drivers who didn't pay attention to where they were going, so I moved Fiona into another space where she might be shielded from a crash. The store itself was unchanged from my last visit. It didn't help that I was unfamiliar with the layout, but a sense of oppression and exhaustion set in almost at once. I think I was reacting to the customers. These were people of a kind you never saw in Waitrose. They looked untidy, unstylish, tired, harrassed, and they made me feel the same. Thank goodness I'd come at a time when they weren't very busy. When ASDA is seething, it's unbearable.

Well, I found the drinks section, and, after a search, the champagnes. Let me say at once that I know precious little about champagne. Of course I was aware of the big names. But not Pierre Darcy, for instance. The labelling on the bottle put me off. It looked cheap and nasty. Same for the Heidsieck Blue Top, although a man in an tatty fur-trimmed jacket grabbed four Blue Tops in his big hands and popped them into his trolley. He was surely mouthing 'bloody good bargain, yeah' as he did so. He didn't look as if he had a well-paid job, but nevertheless he had chucked £60 worth of booze into his trolley, just like that. £60 worth! Phew. It amazes me how important booze is to so many people, and what people consider to be 'priority expenditure'.

I was still hesitating. No, the 'bargains' looked way too tacky. I had no confidence that the fluid within would be exceptional. Predictably, I played for safety and reached up for one of the yellow boxes containing Veuve Clicquot. This would cost me £30. It wasn't much of a bargain - my list told me that if I bought Veueve Clicquot at Sainsbury's instead, it would cost me only £27. But it was now dark outside, and the late-afternoon traffic was building up, and Sainsbury's was a few miles away. Did I really want to blow £2 worth of diesel getting there? Or any of the other stores? I did not.

I took my champagne to the till. There was a potential problem. The box had a bar code that scanned, but the bottle itself should have had a tag to cut off. In my local Waitrose we'd have a good chuckle over this, they would apologise to me for the hold-up, while somebody checked to see whether a tag should have been present. Meanwhile the other customers would simply wait good-naturedly. The queue at my till in ASDA didn't look nearly so easy-going. However, it was all right. I escaped before things turned ugly.

So ASDA got my cash. I don't think they'll get any more though, not for some time.

I really do think there's something very wrong with the atmosphere in ASDA. It isn't the staff (they are friendly and helpful), it isn't the green colour scheme (the lime green they use suggests freshness; and besides Waitrose also uses a green colour scheme), and it isn't the layout (you can get used to that). There is something going on - perhaps a subliminal background drone? - that numbs your brain. One woman nearly barged into me with her trolley. She stopped just in time. 'Sorry, love, I've switched off,' she said. So it wasn't just me. The atmosphere affected other customers too.

Mind you, although the muscled thugs I've seen at ASDA in the past weren't there, a lot of the customers do have a cross, over-assertive look about them that develops from difficult working conditions, low income, poor housing, and unhappy kids. If you're chronically living under stress, you take stress everywhere you go, and spread it about. I might be picking up on that.

And perhaps I feel out of place because I am not stuck in a dead-end job with a family to feed, and facing yet another expensive Christmas that can't be afforded. If I were, maybe champagne would seem much more important. When there is nothing much to celebrate, perhaps popping a few corks is a great consolation.

You may recall that earlier this year I created a new strap for an Italian bag that had never been used, mainly because the original short shoulder strap wasn't practical. It had looked like this:

I substituted a long cross-body strap that made all the difference:

I've been using this bag ever since, for nearly every occasion. But it's had a weakness. The clip-on brass fastenings were cannibalised from an inexpensive holdall, and they weren't very robust. I could have used the substantial original fastenings, but was reluctant to cut them off the shoulder strap before I knew for certain that this bag would become my favourite. However, the time has come to do just that. While out last night, one of the 'holdall' fastenings failed. You can see the situation in this shot:

Centre, the surviving clip-on 'holdall' fastening. The lower section swivels around in a hole. Right, what happens when the metal wears away and the hole gets too large: the lower section falls out. Left, the much better-made and heavier-duty clip-on fastening for the original shoulder strap.

I have unpicked the sewing on the long cross-body strap, in readiness for the better fastenings. There was another thing I needed to do: trim the leather to accommodate the circular part of those fastenings. The original shoulder strap was my template:

Now it's just a sewing-up job in good daylight. I'm all ready to go.

It was time for another visit to Trevor Sorbie, my hairdresser in Brighton since March 2009.

I really like going there. For one thing, they know me by name at the reception counter, and cry 'Hello, Lucy!' every time I pop in. It makes you wonder whether they get special face-recognition training. Or whether, as you enter, sophisticated cameras instantly scan a photo archive, get a match on your face, and flash your name up on the counter screen! Perhaps they just naturally take such an interest in their clients, so that they remember who you are from month to month.

Georgia on reception is one in particular who always gives me a warm welcome, and it makes me feel special and valued. And it's not just reception. Even the girls who wash your hair and massage your head - and how I love firm fingers on my head as I lie back, something I get nowhere else - know who you are. Robyn is my usual for the wash and massage, although today I had Chloë, who was sporting a daring hair cut with one segment of it blonde, while the rest was chestnut. So we discussed hair colours. Not that I have any intention of colouring my hair. And indeed, while waiting for my stylist, Morgan, to take me off, I was chatting to a woman who had come in after me to get her hair recoloured. She thought I was so lucky to have a naturally attractive hair colour, and she begged me to stay with it. Well, you don't ignore such comments, do you?

This was the last time I would see Morgan for a while. She is flying off on Christmas Day evening for the Far East, travelling with a girl friend, and not returning till early May. A holiday of a lifetime, certainly as regards duration! Another stylist at Trevor Sorbie, Alison, is to be her official substitute; and last time Alison sat with us, to note carefully what Morgan did with my hair. I'm sure I shall be in very good hands, but I shall miss Morgan, and I really hope she does come back.

Anyway, I had a Christmas card ready for Morgan, with goofy reindeer on it. We swapped news of course. She brought me a second large glass of wine (the wine came free) and a mince pie (I protested over the pie, but cheerfully gave in), and after the cut, and the blow-dry with a little hair twirling to give me a slightly ruffled look, we gathered at reception for payment and farewells. And a little photography! Here's Georgia and another girl beckoning Morgan to join them for a group shot, and the three of them together (Georgia centre, Morgan right):

And here's Morgan with me:

They are all gorgeous girls. What they must think of frumpy me!

Afterwards I met my friend Alice outside a pub, the one who has 'starred' in a film, and we went in for lunch and a couple more drinks. What a life.

Cast your mind back six months, and I was up in Scotland, along the coast east of Edinburgh at Yellowcraig, just outside North Berwick. My stay there in the caravan overlapped that of a cheerful older couple from Banchory, up the Dee valley west of Aberdeen. They were called Vera and Charlie. I mentioned them briefly in a post on 19 July 2013 titled Potential embarrassment outside a St Andrews caddyshack. Here they are:

They had a dog called Ben. After a few polite exchanges they must have made up their minds that I was a Nice Person, and so one afternoon they gave me tea and cake, and a look inside their caravan. Then we sat outside and chatted. I found them very pleasant, very sweet, and I enjoyed their company and hospitality very much. We swapped addresses, as you often do on caravan sites. We also took a couple of photos. I wanted to remember them, and once I had my trusty digital Leica out, they disinterred their trusty film camera. Back home, I kept a promise to write and enclose prints of my best shots.

I did not really expect to hear from them again. We lived too far apart. It would be one of those memorable encounters with no follow-up.

Then, yesterday, I got this. After six months.

Wow. I was touched, almost to the point of tears. To think that I had been thought of, after a space of six months. And with the card came prints of two photos they had taken of me, that I had quite forgotten about. Here's one of them:

That's Fiona and my caravan. I was about to drive off for a long day out in Fife, and would see the Forth Bridge, view lots of pictures at Kirkcaldy, buy Rosie (my Wemyss Cat), walk the streets of St Andrews, and end up devouring fish and chips at Anstruther.

It was too late to send Vera and Charlie a Christmas card. But I will write to thank them in the New Year.

I seem to relate many heartwarming tales of how my caravan holidays generate friendships along the way. I suppose it must help that I'm not shy and reserved, and that I'm quick to detect a kindred spirit. But in my situation, I can't afford to be any other way. In the Old Life I was subdued, rather secretive, and my private life was determined by my partners, and populated with my partners' family and friends. I made almost no friends of my own. How surprised those Old Life people, who thought they knew me inside out, would now be! And items like Vera and Charlie's Christmas card prove to me that it isn't simply a case of caravan site bonhomie, so easy to assume, so easy to set aside after saying goodbye.

Friendship is so important. It costs nothing to be approachable, pleasant, cheerful and helpful.

I do wonder sometimes whether Making Friends and Valuing Others ought to be a compulsory school subject, taught continuously from the nursery stage, and repeatedly examined throughout every pupil's school career. If all children were taught the reasons why it's good to make friends, what the advantages are, and exactly how to do it successfully, then I'm sure it would help an awful lot of kids to enjoy a brilliantly rewarding childhood, and confine any tendency to bully and disrupt to the children who are frank psychopaths. Such teaching would also help them resist the pressures at home and elsewhere to take sides, to become prejudiced, and to believe that certain people should be sneered at, pushed around, and perhaps killed without pity.

Fourteen-week-old baby Matilda has sent greetings to her Great Aunt!

How sweet! And such well-formed handwriting - remarkable for one so young! Clearly she will go far.

The Christmas Feeling is with me this year. I've decided not to descend into cynicism, however fashionable. So no Bah, humbug! No wearing the green willow. I'm going to enjoy it, wallow in it. After all, I may only have twenty or thirty Christmases left to celebrate, and I'd best make the most of them!

So let's be hearty, and tuck into goose and turkey roasts, and all the fixings! And pull crackers, even if they don't go BANG!!! as expected, but simply scatter daft plastic gifts, and jokes that make you cringe. And let's wear silly paper hats that slip down onto your nose. And laugh till we hiccup. Or cry. Funny how laughter makes the eyes brim, as you remember the Other Things that are so sad. Then, if partying, you have to lock yourself in the loo and howl. Even me, sometimes. But then you rejoin the throng, as if nothing happened.

Amid all the carousing, however, my real personality will assert itself and I'll drive off on my own to some beach, or some peaceful woodland, or to a quiet ancient town - or just drive - reflecting on the chance events of my life that, for better or worse, brought me to this point. And since I believe that this is my real moment, the truest time of my life - and to be frank the most rewarding bit of it that I've ever known - I have to salute whatever and whoever got me here.

The far future however lies with babies like Matilda. Does she have a fighting chance? Of course she has. So long as she believes in happiness, and never gives up. I'm looking forward to seeing her turn into a lively and beautiful little girl.

(The green willow reference, not specifically a Christmas thing, comes from Steeleye Span's 1975 hit, All Around My Hat, which some may remember. Good stuff.)

This is the name of a board game by Waddington's that my younger brotherWayne got as a present for Christmas 1964, when he was aged eight, but closer to being nine. I have never heard of anyone else owning this game, and I suspect that it was soon dropped from Waddington's stable of games because of (a) increased consciousness of the injustice done to the American Indian nations - it wasn't good to cast them as 'the enemy' in a game intended for impressionable children; and (b) more sophisticated appraisals of General Custer, and the campaigns against the Indians generally, which were more and more seen as a cynical exercise in land-grabbing and ethnic cleansing - especially obnoxious in the supposed Land of the Free.

But in 1964 it was still possible to enjoy a game of Cowboys and Indians - or cheerfully re-enact Custer's Last Stand - and my brother and myself certainly liked playing The Battle of the Little Big Horn very, very much.

As I said, when bought for Christmas, he'd be eight, and I would have been twelve. It was in active use for some years and might have become tatty, but Wayne, like me, looked after his stuff, and guarded it jealously from harm and pilfering. So that's why, even forty-nine years later, it is still in decent condition, with nothing missing. I wouldn't mind playing it again - how odd is that? - and if Wayne were still around, we would surely by now have got into an annual ritual of battling it out by the Big Horn every Christmas. But of course he was killed eighteen years ago.

This game is one of the very few tangible objects I own that belonged to my brother. I've got his guitar, some of his LP records, some tapes on which his voice is recorded (which I can't, even now, bear to listen to), and this game. So it's precious indeed.

However, it's still a game meant for children, and it shouldn't be seen as a relic but as a source of excitement and amusement, especially if you like battles, and playing with plastic figures. Let's have a look at it.

First the box, which has a stirring scene on the front worthy of any John Wayne cavalry film (e.g. She Wore A Yellow Ribbon - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She_Wore_a_Yellow_Ribbon):

The bottom side of the box describes the historical background - simplified of course! - and what's in the box. Wayne has written his name there in different-coloured inks:

Lifting the lid reveals a folding cardboard battle-map, which, in Indian fashion, resembles a stretched painted skin inside a wooden frame:

Removing that discloses the hand-painted plastic figures, the Seventh Cavalry Flag, the single dice (or should that be die? Or douse, as in mouse?) and the rules of play:

A little of my own handwriting from the early 1970s is evident, so we must have been playing this game on and off for ten years or so! The figures, whether Cavalry or Indian, are splendid, and worth closer examination. First, Custer in his buckskin jacket, toting sixguns, and the Flag:

Next, his two officers:

Wayne and I named each one of them 'Swordid' for obvious reasons. Next, the other men:

We called both the standing troopers at the top left 'Wangy Man', because they tended to flop over too easily if you accidentally touched the board. Each of the two men firing on one knee we called 'Shorty' - why, I know not. You'll note that although this is the US Cavalry, none of them, not even Custer, has a horse. They can therefore only escape from their exposed battle position one square at a time - a huge handicap.

Now the Indians. First, the three mounted chiefs. The top shot includes my fingers, to give a sense of scale:

Next, the three mounted braves:

And the Indians on foot, with the die, douse or dice:

Gosh, quite a lot of hand-painting here! It must have been hard to keep manufacturing costs down. Let's now set up the game, with the board flattened out on the carpet:

Actually, I've set it up wrong. The mounted Indians ought to start in the positions behind the rocks on the far right of the board. And they can't ride around in bushes. In a proper game, the Indian encampment would at first be defended only by braves on foot.

Like Custer and his men, the unmounted Indians can only move one square at a time. But the six mounted chiefs and braves can move three squares at a time, and clearly this enables them to swoop down, and whizz around the board, in a very satisfying fashion - although of course horses can't go on squares containing rocks or bushes, and no figure (on horse or not) can cross the stream except at the fords. There are also distance and sightline limitations on who can engage who - it matters much whether you attack with a rifle, or are in cover, or if there is cover in between. The outcome of combats is decided by a roll of the dice. This may signify a miss, or force one figure to retreat, or it might mean a kill. A six means instant death.

The Indians are likely to win, of course! They need only eliminate Custer and all his men. Or capture the Flag. But - unlike historical fact - it is possible for the Cavalry to win, if they kill all three chiefs, or somehow get the Flag to one of the two blue arrows at the left corners of the board. I'm afraid though that a Custer win is rare.

Nevertheless, the game is well worth playing. Wayne and I liked being both the Indians and the Cavalry, taking turns, with no great preference for either. If the Cavalry, we treated Custer as a self-glorifying idiot, eminently expendable, and, leaving the Flag in the safe hands of one of the Swordids (serious men of good sense and high duty) we'd let Custer (stupid and insane) draw the mounted chiefs' fire out in the open. In this way, Custer became a kind of mindless and relentless Terminator figure to the Indians, a slow-moving but deadly Nemesis, someone who menaced their free movement and had to be destroyed before they really got down to business. On at least one occasion, Custer got lucky and managed to shoot down all three chiefs before anything else happened, bringing the game to a premature end. The bastard.

Who put up the best show? Well, all the Cavalry men (except Custer) were valiant beyond belief, to the very last man. Custer was a slobbering mad dog. All the Indians on foot were notably brave and self-sacrificing, although we tended to regard the three with red loincloths as lesser men, fit only for guarding the fords ad wigwams (wherein, presumably, squaws huddled). The three mounted braves with tomahawks were definitely the ultimate in reckless courage. The conduct of the three mounted chiefs was, on the other hand, always rather questionable, especially if there was only one left. He tended to skulk in the rocks, preserving his cowardly hide, and would only emerge at a gallop if the Cavalry were in danger of winning.

We did play to win. But we didn't play scientifically. We wanted fun and side-splitting laughs. Most often we'd each employ Kamikaze tactics, on foot or mounted, turning the game into an unpredictable but hilarious bloodfest.

But you can of course tackle matters in a cool and properly-analysed way. Have a look at this: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/725087/a-beautifully-crafted-game-from-the-1960s-that-tur. And if you want some insight into the world of uncomputerised weekend War Gaming with model figures, then this also: http://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/cow2010-personal-review.html. My word, they do take it seriously - but gaming done that way should be.

As for the historical facts of the real Battle of the Little Big Horn, so far as known, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn.

I suppose I'd better put Wayne's game back up in the attic. But not till after Christmas. It's one way of having him around.

I had a very jolly Christmas Eve down at V---'s in Brighton, and an equally jolly Christmas Day at my sister in law's in Gosport, and a post on it all may follow, once I have processed the many photos. Lots of pix always indicates an enjoyable time!

But Boxing Day has been a comedown. Most Boxing Days are. This one is no exception, despite a cheerful exchange with a family walking their dog this afternoon, while I was getting some local fresh air, and some light-hearted texting just now with J--- my next door neighbour, who, with husband and two dogs, has been spending Christmas (and will be seeing the New Year in) on their narrow boat somewhere in the Midlands. Perhaps J--- and K--- have a romantic stretch of canal all to themselves, like this:

Or this:

But I expect they are actually moored with a lot of other like-minded boat-owners, and making a party of it:

These pix are from my own archive: I quite like narrow boats, and canal life has a certain appeal - provided that you can keep snug and warm. My neighbour J--- assures me that their boat is presently so warm they are roasting.

In the distant past - I mean in the mid-1970s, when Mum and Dad still lived in Southampton, and I was still at home - we would drive out to the New Forest on Boxing Day, almost always to the The Old Beams pub at Ibsley, near Ringwood - a thatch-and timber-frame sort of place - and have a drink there, sometimes a meal too. It was practically an annual ritual. I liked doing it. The Old Beams is still going strong, and seems unchanged externally from how it looked forty years ago. Here's a summer shot, taken off the Internet:

Now why am I really not so joyeuse today?

Well, the social life has been turned off for the next few days, partly to preserve funds. It's expensive to party every other night! But I'm already starting to miss seeing friends. I'll almost certainly relent by Saturday.

And there's precious little to interest me on TV. We did watch Toy Story 3 yesterday in Gosport, but as usual I found the storyline hard on my emotions, tears running down my cheeks at the end. My niece was very sympathetic! Well-loved toys do seem to have an inner life of their own, and whether that's completely imaginary or not, it feels true, and I can't understand people who sneer at the devotion children often give to their favourite toys. You hear of people throwing themselves into rivers in spate to rescue a dog. Well, I'd do it for my teddy bear. Anyway, if a toy comes to harm, I personally find it upsetting; and my goodness, the toys in this latest Pixar tale have a lot to contend with before the happy ending!

The only other film I have watched on TV was a bleak and scary Vin Diesel thing the other night. Set in deep space, it was called Pitch Black, and like all these attacked-by-unseen-aliens films, it goes too far and isn't at all within my definition of 'entertainment'. Tonight's film was Independence Day, which - OK - has a happyish ending, in the sense that the aliens get defeated, but the devastated cities and zillions dead can hardly be overlooked. Are the TV companies trying to depress us all?

But the major issue today, the one that got me down most, was my Sony tablet not accepting an SD card in the slot provided for it. It was time to backup my important files onto an SD memory card, something I do every three days; and if home I then copy the backup onto my PC as well. Call me 'backup mad' if you will, but these are essential Word and Excel files which I fear losing.

The SD card slot is obviously a key element in the backup. It must work. But for some reason, the card wouldn't stay in when inserted. I couldn't believe that the slot had suffered mechanical failure. After all, the SD card slot on my camera has been used hundreds of times without trouble. I've never heard of one going wrong. I struggled with the problem for two hours, and then suddenly the card slot was functional again. Just like that. The delayed backup then went smoothly. The problem was somehow solved, although I do not know what exactly made the thing work again.

But, being a Thinking Girl, I reflected on the episode and found much to feel unhappy about.

I thought it was sad that the Digital Age had made making backups so essential. However achieved, it was vital to copy and preserve one's data. Modern life depended so much on it. Losing all one's data was a calamity, and I had a lot of it to lose. And yet, my parents hadn't had such worries.

I was surprised how panicky I felt when my usual backup method - not the only one I could use, of course, but the one that was the most convenient - seemed to fail. Panicky with real emotion. I was upset. And actually, it was only the backup that couldn't be done. I hadn't lost the data itself! What a state to get into...

I had actually wondered (after two fruitless hours of trying this and that) whether I should immediately junk the tablet - an expensive one, incidentally, that had been working faultlessly since purchase in 2012 - and buy another tomorrow. And to hell with my New Year Savings Plan. Well! I thought I was proof against hasty impulse buys! Not so! That really is awful.

It's now time to cook something, so I'm not going further with these reflections, but honestly it says something very disturbing about myself and/or modern life, that a temporary SD card slot malfunction can transform the mood of the day from mild anti-climax to outright panic. That's bad.

It would be completely false to give the impression that my Christmas was brought down by computer backup problems. I actually had a great time, as this and the next post will reveal.

Let's kick off with Christmas Eve. I was going out that evening, and decided to wear a long dress that, strictly speaking, was more suitable for a visit to the opera in summer. But I couldn't resist. Here I am, trying it on at home. I was wearing my pearl necklace, and intended to put my hair up at some point. For a bag, it had to be the glamorous black Prada, what else! Underneath, no bra, just panties and hold-ups - possibly a little too unseasonal? - but I intended to take a black angora cardigan to keep the chill at bay, and in any case I had for my outer garment the classier of my two long grey Windsmoor overcoats. Black flats completed the ensemble.

The shot above wasn't a 'selfie'. I got my cleaning lady T--- to take it. Here she is, hoovering my study a few minutes earlier:

She's a very cheerful person. She's been cleaning for me since the middle of 2010, but has known me since from the early days of my transition - three and a half years already! A trusted ally.

Anyway, satisfied that my kit would pass muster, I left T--- to it, climbed aboard Fiona - with the Veuve Cliquot champagne in the Prada bag, but (of course) forgetting the angora cardigan at the last moment - and we raced off to Brighton. By six o'clock I was at V---'s.

It was going to be a mixture of her family and friends, but sans the children. The initial line-up consisted of V---; her sister C--- (over from Paris); fellow-shopowner A---; friends B--- and her husband I---; K--- (helping with the cooking); J---; and myself. Later on, after the meal, we were joined by I---'s sons T--- and A---, both down that evening from London; and then even later by V---'s youngest daughter L--- who came in at midnight with romantic news. I knew everyone except the two sons. So eventually there were eleven of us. Plus Co-Co the little dog.

First things first. Champagne! There was Lanson Black Label on ice. (There was in fact so much Lanson Black Label in the house that we never did open my bottle of Veuve Cliquot, but V--- is keeping it for whatever celebration turns up early in 2014) And not only champagne, but smoked salmon and pâté on toast, so much that the two sons T--- and A--- were able to snack satisfactorily on the remains despite missing the main meal.

Champagne has an amazing effect. You become so frivolous!

Then V--- and B--- helped me put my hair up.

I checked the effect in better light in the bathroom. The photos tell me how to gather the hair, ready for pins or a claw, and what the result looks like - so they are in fact instructional and not just narcissistic (that's my line, anyway).

At some point - if the photos do not lie - we broke into a song. Here's V---, B---, K--- and myself doing an ABBA. Mama mia! But it was the champagne singing. I'm pretty sure nobody said Thank You For The Music.

Then we sat down to eat at the main table, which was groaning with plates and bottles, and the lovely food that V--- and K--- and cooked. Crackers were pulled, jokes were read, paper hats put on (then taken off, because you needed to be a pinhead to wear them), and there seemed to be much to laugh about while eating.

V---, by popular request, played on the piano:

And thus the evening passed, full of fun and good cheer. I had a lovely time. As it happened, the cardigan would not have been needed. After midnight, I dropped K--- and J--- off on the return journey. I had paced myself well. I felt full up, but there was no hangover or headiness whatever. Just as well, because next day, Christmas Day, it was going to be the turn of my own family, and I wanted to be fresh for that. Tomorrow's post.

On Christmas Day, I drove the fifty-plus miles westward to Gosport to the home of G--- and C---, my ex-sister-in-law and her husband (she was married first to my brother in 1978, then re-married in 2003), to make up a family party of five, the other two persons being my niece J--- and her husband K---. Plus Sooty and Sweep, the two cats.

All I had to do was turn up with a cheerful face and a bottle of wine, and spend the rest of the day chatting and eating. In short, an easy, relaxing day free of worries and disharmony (because we all get on well). It was much quieter than the previous evening at V---'s, but small family gatherings tend to be like that. I didn't mind at all. It was cosy. The cats gave me plenty of attention. They seemed to think I had influence in the kitchen. They liked duck with all the trimmings, too.

Getting to Gosport was a journey full of freaky weather. It started off just dull, then there was a pitter-patter of rain. Then it lashed down, with hail from time to time. I'd decided that the 'fast' road, the A27, which is fairly direct and stays near the coast, would be crowded with thousands of families driving to and fro in a bid to get to a Christmas Lunch somewhere else. In fact it would be excruciatingly slow. So I was using the inland route via Storrington and Amberley. West of Amberley the road crosses the valley of the River Arun on a low causeway, just a few feet above the water-meadows that flood now and then. As I approached the causeway I saw that major flooding was in progress. The water wasn't yet across the causeway, but would be very shortly if the rain kept up. At the other side of the valley I pulled in and took these shots, looking back:

I could see that valley becoming a big lake within the hour. I've driven along submerged roads in the past. It's no fun. The sideways pressure of water is disconcerting, and it's scary not quite knowing where the road is. It's certainly not to be attempted after dark. I made up my mind that I would definitely not come this way going home! (I took the A27 all the way instead. But saw three road accidents, two of which involved fire engines and foam on the road. What a horrible way to end Christmas for the victims)

The next potential hazard on my outward journey, once back on the A27, was where that road joins up with the A3(M), the motorway coming in from London to Portsmouth. It then becomes a five-lane racetrack in both directions, with people dodging suddenly and inexplicably from lane to lane, generally without signals. The best plan is always to stay in the outermost lane, close your eyes, say your prayers, and push the accelerator into the floor with your welly. That way you can keep ahead of the pack, and may live to tell the tale. Lashing rain, pooling on the surface of the tarmac, just makes the experience more intense of course. This time, survival was a little easier than usual. The traffic was thinner, and I made it onto the M27 safely. Thenceforth it was plain sailing to Gosport.

It was so nice to see most of my 'close family' together! Missing were my nephew M---, his girlfriend C---, and Matilda, their very young baby girl who was featured in a recent post. Although Matilda is not too young to travel, they don't possess a car, and it would be a long and awkward journey by any other means, involving a train journey from (say) Wimbledon to Portsmouth Harbour, the Gosport Ferry, and a couple of buses or taxis at each end. However, I'm sure they'll be there next Christmas.

As mentioned above, we had duck with all the trimmings. It was a very nice meal. Here's my niece J--- with her Mum G--- in the kitchen beforehand:

And this is J--- with myself:

That's my late brother's daughter, you know. She and I have always got on exceptionally well.

I took two other pictures of myself that I almost threw away when editing. One was taken to record an attempt at putting my hair up, but the shot turned out way too twee:

This was the other photo, which I thought made me look way too old:

My goodness: I could see my Dad's face, a feminised version of it. Compare it to these shots, which I took of Dad in 2009, during the month before he died - one on the cruise, one in a pub:

There's such a resemblance. I wonder what Dad would have thought of me now, nearly five years on? Surely he would have become accustomed to Lucy, and no longer horrified or embarrassed?

He'd be 93. Too old and tired and achey for cruises, but still up for a pint in a country pub. Like so many a Christmas in the past. My becoming his daughter wouldn't stop us clinking glasses with a smile.

Cheers, Dad!

After some deliberation, I've decided to open a Google+ account. Not, I may say, for 'social networking'. I simply wanted to set up another type of connection with people on the Internet, having already firmly rejected Facebook and Twitter. It will function as a link to my blog and my photo stream. It won't be a substitute for proper contact with people through emails and physical meetups.

The style and presentation of Google+ seems on first acquaintance a bit more to my taste than that of its more popular competitors - more orientated towards 'serious' special-interest and business groups, less open to misuse or the accidental leakage of information, and certainly easier to set up and control. Some say however that Google+ has a dark side, and is none other than The Matrix in real life, so that it will by stealth take us all over. I see what they mean; but I don't expect to build my life around it and render myself vulnerable to manipulation, nor in any way become dependent on it. I'm hoping that Google+ will, through its links, simply reinforce my existing Internet presence on Blogger and Flickr.

I will give it a fair trial. If it proves redundant or a nuisance, it will be closed down, or at least reduced to an empty shell. I read somewhere that if you get rid of Google+ completely, there is the danger of losing your Gmail account along with it, and I don't want to do that!

Immediate sequel
Guess what. Yes, I've deleted my Google+ profile already! Nothing had happened, nobody will be affected. And I don't think, reading the notes on consequences, that deleting Google+ will impact on my Gmail account (but fingers crossed).

This is now a familiar pattern of behaviour with me. I open a social networking account, then very quickly change my mind. I've done it with Facebook (twice), LinkedIn, Twitter, Ask.fm, and now Google+. Interactive social networking is, for me, unappealing and I don't know why I occasionally experiment with it. I need to tell myself firmly that setting up a networking account merely gives the host website valuable personal information, adds complication to my online life, and creates a potential portal for criminal exploitation. I should stick exclusively to the much more controllable environment of blogging.

What a saga...and what a relief to get back to blogging, albeit after midnight! I've had a frustrating day. An abortive visit to PC World, then a whole afternoon and evening wasted trying to find a workaround for not being able to use the SD card slot on my tablet any more.

I don't expect anyone really wants to hear any of what follows, but I won't sleep unless I get it off my chest.

A few posts ago (see Boxing Day) I mentioned how upset I got when the SD card slot failed on my Sony Tablet S. I'd been using an SD card for a regular comprehensive backup of the Word documents and Excel spreadsheets on the tablet, some 650 of them. Sony had a convenient app that let me copy files to the card. Then they could in turn be copied to the PC. Every three days. It sounds a bit of a rigmarole, but it wasn't. And it let me perform a proper backup (to at least a card) even when on holiday. Losing the card slot was a real blow.

But I still had some alternatives.

I could, if home, use a micro-USBcable to copy files from the tablet to the PC. And it might also work when away from home, with my olde and trustye laptop. But the snag here was that the micro-USB socket on the tablet wasn't terribly robust. In fact it looked distinctly fragile. Too much use, and I could see problems developing. And I wanted that micro-USB socket to be fully functioning when the time came (in 2016 perhaps) to replace the Sony with a newer tablet. It would be needed for some bulk file transfers to the PC or laptop, before reloading it all onto the new tablet.

Bluetooth was of course available as a standby, but it was awfully slow, and each and every file had to be OK'd. In addition to the 650 Word and Excel files on the tablet, I also had 3,400 selected photos. It would take a very long time to deal with all of that by Bluetooth.

Then there was the cloud. Some cloud storage was free, if the amount to be used were small. I'd heard of Dropbox. And I'd heard of Google Drive. The only quibble I had was that if my files were placed on the Internet, someone would find them and look at them. I wasn't keen on that idea. On the other hand, sensitive stuff like bank account information wasn't going to be sent to the cloud. So I kept the notion of online backup and storage up my sleeve.

I definitely preferred to get that SD card slot repaired, if it could be done at reasonable cost.

So this morning I was up early and drove over to PC World in Hove. I was seen straight away: a good sign. Thereafter the experience was not nearly so good. Was the tablet still under guarantee? If it had been, we'd have sent it straight off to Sony. We can't repair it ourselves, you know. It's a sealed unit, see?

They could only recommend a local firm who had the means to open it up and investigate what might be done. That firm would charge £30 for taking a peek and then resealing my tablet, if a repair were uneconomic. PC World wouldn't say how much this firm might end up charging me if a repair could be done. But it sounded like a lot. I felt they weren't really interested. Discouraged, I thanked them and walked away. It seemed clear that I'd best live with the slot not working, and save myself a minimum of £30. PCW were polite, but they had hardly lived up to their 'KnowHow' blurb. They had passed the buck.

I went home, and for the next few hours (when I should have been doing something much more useful) I played with the idea of an incremental backup routine using Bluetooth. But all this did was to mess up the Bluetooth pairings between the tablet, my phone, and my laptop. Yes, it reduced me to tears again.

Finally I conceded. I must embrace the cloud.

I chose Dropbox. Google Drive had a larger free allowance, but I didn't want to convert my many files to Google Document format, whereas Dropbox worked with most formats. My free Dropbox allowance was actually not the normal 2.0GB but 2.5GB, because one of my friends had (some time ago, and unknown to me) put me forward as a potential Dropbox user. How prescient of her! The extra 0.5GB of online storage space was my 'reward' for now becoming a customer, albeit one who wasn't going to be paying anything if she could avoid it. (I was in fact well within my free allowance - I needed only 80MB for my document and spreadsheet backup)

It was easy to set up my files - first in bulk on the PC, taking them from the last comprehensive backup on 29 December; then updating some twenty of them from the files on the tablet. It was good to know that PC, tablet and phone would all now display the same files in their individual Dropbox folders. No more tears of woe. Problem solved. Thank goodness.

If there's a song that always makes me sad, it's She's Out Of My Life, which Michael Jackson recorded for his 1979 Off The Wall album. The way he sings it gets to me every time. In 1979 I was actually in mid-relationship, but it touched me nevertheless. There has always been someone in my life who has just slipped through my fingers - or seems about to.

Shortly before New Year's Eve, A---, my ex-stepdaughter in New Zealand, whom I thought had given up on me completely, got in touch with a personal email.

She had never stopped sending me 'general release' emails with chatty news and family pictures, but these were shared with lots of other people in her address book. They lacked any words entirely specific to myself. This latest email was however for me alone. It was brief, but the urgent language she used suggested that she was worried about me.

I'd actually been quite close to writing her off. Keeping up our connection had become very difficult; a bit too draining on my battered emotions, and for no reward.

I'd become that way since 2012, when her longed-for visit to me proved such a failure. We had not been close. We'd not had that vital one-to-one conversation about why I was Lucy, and what it meant for both of us. She still hadn't got to grips with what had happened to me, and was clearly still unsure what to make of me. There was no building bridges, nor any discussion of where we would go now. Afterwards I followed her down to Cornwall to create an opportunity for (say) a two-hour walk on some beach, to thrash things out. But she still kept her distance, and no meetup took place.

The huge geographical distance between us was clearly a big factor. I wasn't in her day-to-day life. There was no practical purpose in her facing the issue. I had remained unfamiliar and strange, and disturbing.

I had looked at the situation, and had decided that it might be best if I maintained a silence, and just let her drift away. Then we could get on with our separate lives 12,000 miles apart, with no connections left.

But now this email from her. I immediately threw away all thoughts of staying silent, and responded at once. I had no idea what she'd make of what I said - which was basically that I was fine, was very glad to hear from her, and had been feeling resigned to losing her.

Then, while I was eating smoked salmon at V---'s on New Year's Eve, she emailed me again. She explained what had been going on in her life, the pressures as well as the pleasures. We'll skip those. The important thing was that she still loved me, was on my side and would always be, and wanted us to stay in touch.

I was overwhelmed as I read this, and couldn't stop the tears of joy running silently down my cheeks. These tears were noticed, but sympathised with: they revealed that I had a heart that could be reached. It was the best possible thing that I could have wished for, knowing that we were not finished, but still had a future to explore in the time to come.

Of course I sent her another email next day. And I will henceforth keep her up to date with big news. I will keep in touch by any means open to me. She needs contact, so that she can get used to me, and move towards full acceptance all the faster. She's now stopped calling me by a version of my old name, J---. It was 'Dear L', which is a significant advance! A--- is not blog-minded, but she likes photos and will make a special point of viewing my Flickr site as often as she can. So I'd better keep that well-stocked with shots of new adventures in the year ahead!

So she's back in my life, albeit at great global distance.

Less than half a mile away lives another person who has lapsed into silence. And I worry about her. But a protective barrier has been erected. I don't think M--- will risk the pain that might be involved in opening up a dialogue. I can't blame her.

This is mainly one for railway buffs. But (if you read to the very end) that means attractive young women, as well as nerdy men.

Not so very far from me is the port of Newhaven. In the early part of 2009 I lived just north of it, at Piddinghoe. Newhaven is in fact an old place, and is so called because centuries ago the River Ouse changed its course. It then carved out a direct line to the sea instead of reaching it at Seaford, and a new port sprang up. What you see now is a slightly down-at-heel town that was once an important place for crossing the English Channel by boat.

It still has a twice-daily ferry service to Dieppe in northern France, at 11.00am and 11.30pm. The return cost at this time of the year, on a Monday, as a foot passenger, is £30. It's possible to leave Newhaven on the 11.00am ferry, arrive in Dieppe four hours later, spend two hours there, and then return on the 5.00pm ferry from Dieppe. So you'd be back at 9.00pm after a rather pointless day out - unless cruising on the Channel for eight hours altogether is your aim. Let's face it, you can't do much in Dieppe with only two hours at your disposal. However, I might do the day trip sometime during 2014, just for the hell of it!

As a car ferry, with a week in France in view, the service makes more sense. Newhaven is the only ferry port between Portsmouth and Dover. It's very convenient for Brighton, Lewes and Eastbourne residents.

In the days when most people and goods travelled by train, Newhaven was a busy port. It was well-served by the railway. It was on a branch line to Seaford, but whereas Seaford merely had its humdrum terminus station at the end of the line, Newhaven had a complex of quayside sidings and no less than three passenger stations, all within easy walking distance of each other. The main one (then and now) was Newhaven Town station, closest to the town centre (and adjacent to the new passenger terminal. So it is well-used). Then there was Newhaven Harbour station, a quarter of a mile to the south and near both the original passenger terminal and a passenger hotel that has long vanished (this second station is still open, but not at all busy). Then, two hundred yards further on, off on its own siding, was Newhaven Marine station (technically still open, but in fact now disused). The Marine station was for boat trains.

There is some further information on Newhaven Marine station (as it is right now in 2014) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newhaven_Marine_railway_station, and http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=34630, and on this link you can learn the Department of Transport's 2012 view on why the station continues to exist: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/newhaven_marine_station.

For most people interested in stations, and the train services using them, the 'ghost train' of Newhaven Marine is the attraction. Not literally a spectral train, but an empty train that enters the station, waits, and then departs again. Just so that it can be said that the station is still 'in use'. But no passenger can get on it.

Long before I heard of this train, I would drive down to the station and have a look around, and I have photos from as early as 1991. Here are some from May 2008, two years after the station saw its last ordinary train that passengers could use. First, a view looking back towards the Harbour station, so very close by. It's where the blue footbridge is, visible beyond the signal box:

The Marine station itself - rebuilt as recently as 1983 - was already looking somewhat forlorn in 2008. The decayed and supposedly hazardous platform roof panels had been taken away, leaving just the support struts, and the platform edge had been fenced off to prevent anyone falling onto the line - or boarding a waiting train not intended for them!

Then on 4 June 2008, after discovering the existence of the famous 'ghost train' on the Internet, I actually managed to see it - an untimetabled 6.52pm departure. Here are some shots. First, the train waiting at a halt signal for its regulation ten minutes:

Then it gets the right away, and moves off:

Show's over, folks! Strange that this train had nothing at all to do with the Transmanche ferry boat that could be seen close by on the quay:

Of equal interest to me was the passenger terminal itself, incorporated into the station building. By then a new terminal was in operation a few hundred yards away, and this one was closed. But, looking in through the window, it seemed as if a magic wand could bring it all back to life again:

May 2008 was only just before my transition kicked off. I thought no more of Newhaven Marine and ghost trains for some time. But I went back there on 29 December 2013. Just out of curiosity. And by now I didn't care two hoots about 'railway stuff' being 'ungirly'. I was prepared to deal forthrightly with any person who questioned my presence there. After all, I was only going to take a few shots with my camera.

Access was as simple as before. I parked in a nearby street, walked onto the Harbour station (little used and usually deserted), walked over the footbridge (fine views), and out onto the expanse of empty tarmac that stretched over to the Marine station. Nobody was about. On the way I passed the signal box, still immaculate:

The Marine station wasn't so good though. It was in a sad state. The former passenger terminal was boarded up. A plaque next to a security door with peeling paint announced that the UK Border Agency was now officially in residence, but only one upstairs room was showing a light. Creepy. The platform was much as before, but distinctly more decayed:

The track was rusty, as if 'ghost trains' still ran, but not nearly so often:

I got onto the platform edge by squeezing through a gap in the fencing that someone else had made. Naughty me! All this decrepitude was rather depressing. But the Marine station's semaphore signal was still in good nick:

Let's end on a brighter note, with two videos from 2011 and 2012 that show the 'ghost train' in action.

The 9 August 2012 video first, which shows the train arriving and departing, but without a commentary. Click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1-Eh4opA_w.

Now the 1 June 2011 video, which is light years better, and has a lively commentary. Click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTmumbrKohs.

The engaging young woman narrating the 2011 video is called Vicki Pipe, and her unseen friend (I should say, boyfriend) and video-making professional is Geoff Marshall - see http://www.geofftech.co.uk/index.html. His interesting YouTube channel is at http://www.youtube.com/user/geofftech2/videos. At the time, and on into 2013, Vicki Pipe was a Learning Officer at the London Transport Museum (see http://blog.ltmuseum.co.uk/author/vicki-pipe/), and for all I know still is. It perhaps explains her interest in transport matters, and proves that a fascination with trains and stations is not inevitably the preserve of middle-aged men. Ignorant sexist folk who think they 'know' what is appropriate for women should take note!

If you are an ABBA fan, you will recognise the song title in a flash: a big hit from 1979 in almost the last phase of ABBA's existence as a performing group. The two men (Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson) and the two girls (Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad) had found love together; but the marriage of AgnethaFältskog and Björn Ulvaeus had already failed, and they were lately divorced. The song is about divorces in general, but has clear and poignant resonances with their own. I have always been amazed that Ulvaeus and Andersson were able to write it so soon after the divorce, and, even more so, that Agnetha Fältskog found it in herself to sing it so expressively.

I have seen the 2007 interview with Ulvaeus, in which he denies that divorces really do have a clear winner and loser, in the way that the song lyrics suggest. I'm glad he has denied it, because in my personal experience divorce is a tragic mess with nobody coming out of it well. Oh yes, you may be able to 'do it in a civilised way', and have a 'fair settlement', and 'get your freedom to move on', but there are subtler effects that change your life forever. I am sure that every divorced person will agree that nothing is ever the same after a marriage collapses, especially a first marriage.

It happened to me a long time ago, with separation in the New Year of 1991, and the divorce itself following in 1996 after five years of frustrating delay.

A--- had left school after taking her A-Level exams, and in 1990 went to New Zealand for a year. She had been the glue that kept the marriage intact, and all those bubbling irritations under control. Left alone, W--- and I quickly began to annoy each other. There was nothing specifically in contention. It just became obvious that we were not now suited, and that love had gone. It was so hard to be jolly at Christmas 1990, and then even harder to welcome in the New Year. We were both sincere and sensitive people, and we hated living a lie. Almost with relief, we agreed to separate. That done, there was an immediate illusion of peace. We had called a truce, and could relax a bit.

But actually our lives were merely on hold. Unless we came together again (and I for one never considered doing that for an instant: I knew we were right to part) all the bother of a legal process would have to be set in motion. Not only that: the physical effort of selling the marital home and dividing our shared possessions seemed daunting.

If one partner was inert about facing up to this, or just positively unwilling to co-operate, then the partner anxious to begin divorce proceedings (myself, in our case) had to wait a full five years. So it was. It was a very long time. Too long. The relief of living apart, and not bickering every night, and having some freedom, turned in the end into a test of endurance that fostered resentment and impatience. Not a good way to finally end something that had started rather well in 1982.

However, in 1996 we achieved legal closure. The divorce settlement simply split the equity in the house, and divided our jointly-owned personal possessions fifty-fifty. We didn't actually have to fight it out in court. The court merely gave its approval to our negotiations. We ended up with the same for each. We both took away some furniture and £18,000 cash. We kept our own cars. We both still had reliable jobs, so no maintenance was in question.

My £18,000 was enough for a deposit on a house elsewhere in Sussex - where I wanted to be. W--- had a lower income, but could afford to buy a flat in London - where she wanted to be. We were therefore both still able to be householders, both able to be independent, both free to make a fresh start. A--- coped magnificently with the marriage failure and its fallout, and developed an ongoing relationship with me. It was a civilised outcome.

But the experience left a lasting mark. In the years that followed I often thought about my former marriage. I grew to see more clearly why it had come unstuck. I came to see how I'd been inadequate for the challenge involved. I wondered why I'd ever launched myself into it at all. Its failure was evidence that my judgement was poor, that I had mistaken attraction for enduring love, that I clearly couldn't handle close relationships, and couldn't give the required commitment. In short, I thought much less of myself, and my self-confidence suffered. However, I still clung to the idea that there were other people out there who would make a much better match.

When M--- entered my life, I decided that she was such a one. But during fifteen years together we never married, although I was happy to talk about it from time to time. Marriage was however never seriously on the table. And I think that if pushed I would not have done the deed, not after my previous experience of what it might involve, and the legal issues. It was 'once bitten, twice shy'. But the way M--- and I inter-related was very much like a marriage, and when our relationship collapsed it was all terribly reminiscent of what had happened years before. The same thing all over again, but much worse. There wasn't of course a divorce as such, but it felt like one. A bad one. And nobody was the winner. M--- got all the cash (and it was a small fortune). But she lost her man forever. I got a brand new life as Lucy. But I lost the love of my life. No, there was no winner.

Nowadays marriage has no appeal for me whatever. The essence - as I see it - seems to be a wish to be committed to someone else, and to share each other's lives for better or worse. An important add-on is the creation of one's own family, but the pair-bonding element is the core of it.

For a decades I embraced this. But now I know that I was wrong to try. People like me should stay single and pursue a different path through life. If I'd understood that, then I could have spared W--- (and M---) a lot of trouble.

One of the deep-seated fears of post-op trans women must be that one day they will face a set of scenarios that deprive them of effective feminisation. And, so deprived, their appearance will decay in the direction of maleness. None of these events are especially likely, but the notion that they could happen is an alarming one.

What kind of event?

It could be for instance a development in their state of general health that makes it dangerous to continue with the type of hormone treatment they take. Perhaps liver disease if they drink too much, making it risky to take pills. Or a skin sensitivity that may rule out patches and gels.

Or the treatment becomes unavailable because prescription is restricted, or is simply banned. There have certainly been unfortunate instances around the country where doctors have been inhibited in prescribing ordinary hormone treatment because of some regional NHS policy. And some individual doctors, with their own hang-ups about treating trans patients, have been obstructive.

But one can also imagine getting caught up in some conflict while abroad on holiday. What happens if taken by some rebel group and held hostage? Or officially arrested and imprisoned? Some of these detentions can last a very long time. And if one's pills or patches or tubes of gel run out, without any opportunity to replace them? The idea of slowly reverting to a male look, and suffering violence as a result, is a nightmare one. I should think that this is one reason why all thinking trans people aim to live inoffensive lives, both at home and away, and do whatever it takes to stay out of jail.

But ordinary ageing has its problems too. Gradual changes in the body's tolerance of medication as one grows older might make it advisable to reduce the level of hormone treatment. But, post-op, too much of a reduction will lead to bone deterioration, as well as a lessening of physical femininity. What to do? The decision on treatment is currently made difficult by the lack of exact information to refer to on the long-term effects of hormone treatment in older trans patients. It may be best to err on modest doses, but increase them gradually if they are not sufficiently effective. In other words, proceed by careful experiment, because there is no standard dosage, and the effect depends on the individual patient's reaction to drugs.

I see my doctor again in mid-January, and will have the usual blood tests. I shall be especially interested in the result for oestradiol. These are my results on each occasion tested since my surgery on 1 March 2011:

14 April 2011 427 pmol/L
29 September 2011 461 pmol/L
12 March 2012 306 pmol/L
6 August 2013 146 pmol/L

These results suggest that my medication, unchanged throughout at two 100 mcg oestradiol patches weekly (taking Estradot), has lately been losing its effectiveness.

And yet it is not so simple, because my body hair continues to reduce, my skin tone is still improving, my breasts continue to slowly grow, and, overall, the photographic evidence (much published on this blog) tends to show that my physical charms - such as they are, of course - have by no means diminished. The Neanderthal Man look has not yet taken over.

I think my point is made, despite the big noses in these shots being much the same! In addition, a hospital scan on 12 March 2013 revealed that my bone density was better than average for my age.

Despite this, I will be concerned if the upcoming oestradiol result is even lower. If it is, I will go back to my doctor to discuss increasing my twice-weekly dosage by 50% to 150 mcg.

There is a precedent: in September 2010, in the run-up to my op, Dr Curtis in London agreed to recommend 150mcg after the latest oestradiol result on 3 September 2010 had dropped to 176 pmol/L. The 50% increase then clearly boosted my oestradiol level considerably - despite being pre-op - and there were no adverse effects whatever.

At this point I am chiefly trying to ensure that I have adequate protection from osteoporosis. But nearly as important is the maintenance of feminine characteristics on which successful socialisation depends. Expect another post on this in late January!

I never was a child who loved building things with Lego, nor was I ever a modeller. Constructing little plastic buildings simply didn't appeal, even though I had adequate encouragement from Dad, whom I remember was for a while keen on Airfix kits, and successfully put together various figure models of the military sort, painting them beautifully, such as a Roundhead officer of the Civil War. But his example did not inspire me. I was not good with my hands, nor did I want to be.

One Christmas, when eight or nine, I was given a basic Meccano set, which I fiddled around with for a short while because it was clearly a superior present, had cost my parents money, and I felt I ought to show some appreciation. The metal plates were green and red, the axles were dull grey metal, and the nuts and bolts and cogs were brass. It took ingenuity to make anything impressive out of my limited set of components, and I hadn't the inventiveness. Besides, I soon found that tightening up the nuts and bolts hurt my fingers. I quickly lost interest, and returned to my books and world atlas and cyphers. I was not made of the right stuff to be a Junior Engineer.

Childhood passed, and soon enough I began to think that an opportunity had been missed that would never come again. I began to grieve for a Lost Childhood even before I was out of my teens. Too late, I wished that I had put at least some effort into boyish things, instead of ducking out of everything that seemed boring, or vacuous, or perplexing to understand, or slightly dangerous, or involved an impossible co-operation with someone else.

But my own nature had stopped me embracing or developing a love for things typically boyish, and especially things mechanical. It could never have been otherwise. I had to accept that boys who had done amazing things with Meccano - or who had found pleasure and satisfaction in any number of other classic childhood toys and games - were gifted or talented in some way that was quite beyond me. I strove to conceal the fact that I'd been different, inept at all forms of play except possibly board games and cards. In my view, I'd had a failed childhood, certainly a substandard one, and I was desperately anxious not to admit it.

All this said, I retained a nostalgia for the toys I'd never had, or had never wanted to play with.

So I was fascinated when James May began to present a series of TV programmes from 2009 devoted to showing how the classic toys of yesteryear - boys' toys, that is - could be used to achieve some astonishing feat. Wikipedia has a full description of them all at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_May's_Toy_Stories. I featured The Great Train Race (the toy Flying Scotsman running on an immensely long toy track between Barnstaple and Bideford in North Devon) in the second half of my post It's not just gender on 16 June 2011. A week ago he did a programme on building a motorbike and sidecar out of Meccano - and then riding it around the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy circuit - while the racing was on! He was in the saddle, and his friend Oz Clarke was in the sidecar (at least some of the time, anyway). There was the usual Man Lab team on hand to come up with the design and trouble-shoot problems.

Yes, it all sounded like men reverting to children in a self-indulgent way! But I think James May was perfectly sincere in his wish for children to see the true potential in their toys, and how they could have grown-up thrills from them. Just as Man Lab had been an attempt to convince modern adult men that they can recover and build on the skills of their fathers. And I didn't see why a failed girl-child like me shouldn't be carried away by May's enthusiasm. It was an achievement to race a cherished toy train over an extraordinarily long track; or to create a balsa wood model glider capable of flying twenty miles over the sea and landing on Lundy Island; or, in this instance, to put 15,000 bits of Meccano together to create a roadworthy vehicle that would stand up (just about) to the rigours of a 38-mile racing circuit through mountains. He was speaking directly to my own latent, and emotional, yearning to achieve something really worthwhile. I did not think the project was daft or trivial.

The team put together this bike, seen here after the 38 miles had been covered:

The round blue bits in the side view were electric motors, as was the black thing bolted to the rear wheel. The rest was bog-standard Meccano. No soft seats: just shaped metal plates - with nuts and bolts to dig into one's botty! Somewhere on board was a battery that would run out of power every few miles, and have to be replaced. So in fact there was a van behind, with the engineering team; and in front was a Range Rover for the film crew. Plus a discreet police motorcycle escort. The filming however gave the illusion that for much of the time James May was struggling out there on his own, day and night.

The bike was, amazingly, street legal. The Isle of Man Government had granted a Certificate of Approval, and a fee of just £12 had secured a tax disc:

Interesting that their 'Department of Infrastructure' was responsible; even more interesting to read the Manx language equivalent: Rheynn Bun-troggalys.

This was the bike as completed. There was no time for road testing before the race began.

May and Clarke had to leather up, hop on board, and get to the starting line in Douglas pronto. They were assigned a departure slot of only a few minutes. But when given the flag, nothing happened. At least not at once. The weight of two men, and friction between various rotating bits that had not yet been worn smooth, were a bit too much for the little battery. But after a few seconds they inched forward and then gathered speed. Well, they got up to walking pace. The spectators cheered.

At the first incline, Oz Clarke had to get off. The bike hadn't the power to carry two uphill. Being the sort of person he is, Clarke contrived to spend much of his time away from the sidecar sampling and purchasing the locally-produced bread, beer, and smoked kippers. Plus a trip on the Isle of Man Steam Railway...

Meanwhile, James May was discovering that Meccano wasn't really designed for such extreme uses. Two wheel rebuilds were followed by a failed wheel bearing that needed a long stop at a machine shop. But eventually he got going again. Here he was at Sulby, about halfway round, with sunset approaching:

He was now under pressure to complete the circuit before the next day's race started. He was so far behind schedule, and the bike was still going so slowly, that he'd have to continue into the night:

Coming out of Ramsey, the mountain section had to be tackled. But at this point, something loosened up and the bike began to go much faster, despite the hills. Dawn saw May tired but elated, as he descended into the northern suburbs of Douglas, and picked up Clarke (still carrying the kippers) for the home stretch.

Now, the last couple of miles. At this point the bike began to feel slightly wobbly, as if a strut had come unbolted, or something had worn away. They decided that there was no time to stop and investigate - it was the finishing line or bust. They pushed on. The crowd was waiting.

Then the finishing line came into view. And at last they took the chequered flag in triumph!

Now that's what I call a happy ending. And what an inspiration to Meccano fans, although I was not personally converted to a life of metal construction. I was so pleased for May and the rest of his team, though.

I have to say the Isle of Man seemed a very nice place indeed, if not always sunny. If I wanted a few days there, Monday to Friday say, I could presently go with Flybe from London Gatwick and take 20kg of baggage for just £54 - that's using a late-morning or early-afternoon flight. No doubt there are extras that bump this up, but the likely final cost doesn't seem outrageous. However, four nights' bed and breakfast have to be added on...another £200? Plus buses and evening meals, and some train and tram trips. It's doable, but not this year!

The flight would take an hour and a quarter only. That's not long!

New boots

Two castles

Searches

Sweet versus savoury

Champagne

More sewing

Fun and good cheer at Trevor Sorbie

Vera and Charlie send me a Christmas card

Matilda sends me Christmas Greetings

The Battle of the Little Big Horn

Boxing Day

Happy times with friends and family 1

Happy times with friends and family 2

Google+

Dropbox to the rescue!

Not out of my life after all

The ghost train of Newhaven Marine

The Winner Takes It All. Really?

Could it all come back?

Another James May Toy Story