yonmei

06:40 am: Emotional shocks, sleepless nights, and travelling to Glasgow
Yesterday at work I had a big emotional rock thrown through my window (metaphorically speaking). So I slept badly last night. Also, while sleeping badly, I didn't notice that Bob was outside until I woke up this morning and it occurred to me that she wasn't there.

Also I have to go to Glasgow this morning for a 10:30 meeting, which is not unfortunately in the dead centre of Glasgow where I could reach it within 10 minutes walk, or I would plan on getting the 9:15 train that gets me at 10:06 and costs my project £11.50. No: it's just over a mile away, which is doable in 20 minutes if I walk briskly, but a route I don't know and an address I haven't been to before, and I had rather plan on getting there early than late. :-( I'm an Edinbugger: we're good at getting lost in Glasgow. Anyway, so, I figured I should probably plan instead on getting the 8:30 train (makes no difference: any train before the 9:15 one will cost my project £18.80) and get there at 9:21 and have loads of time to wander over.

This doesn't interest you, I know: it's boring. I promised myself I would make it to a transgender day of remembrance ceremony this weekend (since the MCC is doing one of their determinedly-not-too-religious ones on Saturday) but Jo Clifford is running two, lunchtime and early evening, at GOMA, today: so I thought I'd go there at lunchtime. I like Jo.

(I've never been into dresses. But this is definitely a Dude, where's my jetpack? dress. It's a shame that apparently no one's ever worn it. "A woman can never be too fine when she is all in white." Then she lights up the room.... H/t: Avedon.)



I hope Bob shows up before I have to leave. *frets* (The front door downstairs is open: the glass inner door is closed: I let Wolf out. This is usually a good way of getting Bob in, assuming she's not curled up in a neighbour's house right now.) [Update, 7:45 - Bob trots back in, complaining that she's been OUT ALL NIGHT. Yes, lovecat, that tends to happen if you insist on going out in the late evening when I'm TIRED.]

Tags: bob, glasgow, insomnia, weird stuff

08:23 am: A Gude Cause Maks A Strong Arm: Day Minus 19
From Revolt on the Clyde by Willie Gallacher (link):

In Govan, Mrs. Barbour, a typical working-class housewife, became the leader of a movement such as had never been seen before, or since for that matter. Street meetings, back-court meetings, drums, bells, trumpets - every method was used to bring the women out and organize them for the struggle. Notices were printed by the thousand and put up in the windows: wherever you went you could see them. In street after street, hardly a window without one: "We Are Not Paying Increased Rent".
These notices represented a spirit amongst the women that could not be overcome. The factors (agents for the property owners) could not collect the rents. They applied to the courts for eviction warrants. Having obtained these, sheriff's officers were sent to serve them and evict the tenants. But Mrs. Barbour had a team of women who were wonderful. They could smell a sheriff's officer a mile away. At their summons women left their cooking, washing or whatever they were doing. Before they got anywhere near their destination, the officer and his men would be met by an army of furious women who drove them back in a hurried scramble for safety."

The landlords began suing through the small debts court for the right to impound wages to cover unpaid rent. The women organised a demonstration for the day of the trial of several rent strikers, and the factories emptied all across Glasgow as the men went to join it:

"From early morning the women were marching to the centre of the city where the Sheriff's Court is situated. Mrs. Barbour's army was on the march. But even as they marched, mighty reinforcements were coming from the workshops and the yards. From far away Dalmuir in the West, from Parkhead in the East, from Cathcart in the South and Hydepark in the North, the dungareed army of the proletariat invaded the centre of the city. Into the streets around the Sheriff's Court the workers marched from all sides. All the streets were packed. Traffic was completely stopped. Right in front of the court, John Maclean was on a platform addressing the crowd as far as his voice could reach. In other streets near the court others of us were at it. Roar after roar of rage went up as incidents were related of the robbery of mothers and wives whose sons and husbands were at the front. Roar followed roar as we pictured what would happen if we allowed the attack on our wages.
It was obvious to the sheriff that the situation was too desperate to play with. He telephoned London and was put through to the Minister Of Munitions, Mr. Lloyd George. "The workers have left the factories," he said after explaining the nature of the case. "They are threatening to pull down Glasgow. What am I to do?" "Stop the case," he was told, "a Rent Restriction Act will be introduced immediately."
From Glasgow Herald of 1915: "Thanks to the fine stand made by Glasgow women and the determined attitude of the Clyde munitions workers, the Government has introduced a Bill to legalize pre-war rent during the war and for six months thereafter."

Ninety years later, Jean Donnachie and Noreen Real had the same organising flair as Mrs Barbour:

To the politicians, Noreen and Jean said: You've asked us to make these people welcome to our community. We have taken them in and with the next breath you come with a battering ram.' When they, along with other local people, watched a couple of families trying to escape and saw a man jump from his third floor verandah to get away as his door was being battered in, they knew they could not stand by.
"Then Jean and I decided we were going to start doing dawn patrols in the complex," says Noreen.
"We got every asylum seeker in the block to give us their mobile number and their house number and, depending on what block the Home Office van stopped at, someone would run in and tell Jean and she would phone every asylum seeker in that block and get them to come out by the stairs."
The Home Office people always went up in the lifts.
"We would even get people into a neighbour's house because the Home Office did not have the power to go in and we started asking people to leave their fire escape gates open."
They held candlelit vigils during dawn raids and kept 5.30am vigils for months - and won their fight to stop the raids.
Jean was one of those who went to see First Minister Alex Salmond, demanding to know why it took so many years to work out if a family can stay or not.

( In the tenements o' Glesga in the year one nine one five It was one lang bloody struggle tae keep ourselves alive We were coontin' oot the coppers Tae buy wor scraps o' food When the landlords put the rent up Just because they could A' the factories were hummin', There was overtime galore But wages they were driven doon tae subsidise the war Oot came Mrs. Barbour from her wee bit single end She said, I'll organise the lassies if I cannae rouse the men! )




Tags: glasgow, gude cause, history, i am a feminist, poetry

08:05 am: Still too hot
If you wonder where I was yesterday, I was in Glasgow, having a prolonged meeting for work purposes, and then as it was already 1pm I stayed on till 4pm to see Before Stonewall at the Gallery of Modern Art. Which was quite fascinating - the weeks leading up to Stonewall, as told by a drag queen who was one of the habituees of the Stonewall Inn.

I had been in two minds whether to stay on for the panel discussion afterwards or head back to Edinburgh and perhaps score a two for one, if I got there in time to see Jesus of Montreal at the MCC Church, but the film had brought so many ideas to mind that I thought I'd stay.

Which meant I got to chat with a young Muslim who's just starting an organisation for LGBT Muslims in Scotland, and with a South African called Paul with whom I had a very funny exchange "My family's more screwed up than yours!" over the "refreshments" (white wine, cheap juice, packets of crisps, a couple of plates of grapes and cherries - it looks like they had either no budget for this event or about £10 worth of budget and used the leftover wine and juice from the exhibition launch last week) between 5:30 and 6 - and then headed into a boring non-discussion in which three panellists and a.n.other explained to us why they were there, and what they thought about the issue of LGBT identity, and allowed 20 minutes or so at the end for the audience to ask questions. There wasn't really much time for ideas.

I also got to exchange greetings with the curator, who remembered me as the visitor last week who'd pointed out that the Mapplethorpe isn't the only picture of a sex act in the exhibition: there is also the picture of two women's hands making love to each other in almost Escherish closeness. He was very nice about it and thanked me - "you were quite right, I'll remember that for future tours". But oh dear, the discussion was pants.

Reminded me though, of how things are changing: that more and more younger LGBT people do not give a damn about identifying themselves at such, any more than the straight kids do. We really are working ourselves out of a job. There are kids growing up in Edinburgh and Glasgow today who have no notion, not only that it used to be against the law for two men to have sex, but that it used to be perfectly legal to fire someone from their job for being lesbian or gay. Not now but in fifteen to twenty years, when these kids are teachers and nurses and lawyers and construction workers and secretaries and doctors and parents - maybe it really won't be a big deal. At all.

I got online briefly yesterday in a tapas bar where I drank sangria and nibbled bread and worked a bit, but I had other things to do on my limited connectivity than journal. Sorry.

It's still way too hot. It's already 16 degrees and it's only twenty past eight: yesterday it was 22 degrees. It's Scotland. We're not built for this.



Tags: being queer, glasgow, weather

08:34 am: Wine, art, and the Corinthian
I had a big glass of delicious Rioja at the Corinthian in Glasgow, which is easily one of the most beautiful rooms I have ever been in, and then viewed queer religious art and transgender art with solo. Also, drank very bad red wine that the gallery had bought. Not enough for a hangover, though *is smug*

It was fun: I was glad I went. I got to look round the sh[out] exhibition again.




Tags: glasgow

01:24 pm: Chocolate, art, cats, and warnings
Danish chocolate isn't particularly good. At least, not the box full of berry-flavoured marzipan chocolates Transamurai brought back from Oslo. I like marzipan, but these were dull.

I'm going to an art exhibition tonight in Glasgow, meeting up with solo. I think it's going to be fun, but I'm glad I'm going with solo.

Because I wasn't going to be back till late, I turned Bob back from eating grass in the garden this morning. She was not a happy kitty.

On warnings for fanfic: The distinction is not between people who have suffered a trauma and people who have not: it it is between people who like being warned of anything untoward in their reading before they take a look at it, and people who do not. The categories are not identical, and indeed I am not sure they even overlap in any significant way.




Tags: cats, chocolate, glasgow, imaginary friend meetup, meta

06:10 pm: Just My Life Really
On Tuesday evening, which is cheap night at Vue, I went to see Star Trek. It wasn't good. It was the sort of kind of film where, having taken care to check how long it lasts, I keep glancing at the clock on my phone to establish how much plot there must be left.

There were three women in the film who had names and lines, and a fourth who I think wasn't named: an Orien green cadet who has sex with Jim Kirk and a few lines of dialogue and let Kirk see Uhura in her underwear. One of the women existed to give birth to Jim Kirk, and is thereafter never seen or heard again (she wasn't even allowed to be the voice on the product-placement phone telling Kirk not to steal the car and drive it to Arizona). One gives birth to Spock, and is thereafter used to make Spock go apeshit: she gets pushed into a metaphorical refrigerator fairly early on. One is supposed to be Nyota Uhura, and exists to be appallingly, skeletally skinny, be hit on by Kirk, prove that in the modern Starfleet men don't obey women officers (in that bar fight? If the real Uhura had yelled at them to stop the redshirts beating up Kirk, they'd have stopped), and to hit on Spock, thus (the director and scriptwriter and stockholders presumably hope) forestalling the slash fans taking hold and writing the K/S for this universe. Because these are het guys. Straight, straight, straight. Hell if it'll work: I say Uhura and Spock are totally cousins. The young Bones was OK even if the old joke got taken away from him and replaced by a new and much stupider joke referring to one of the few other women in this AU; Baby Sulu and Baby Chekov and Baby Scott were ... okay, I supppose: Janice Rand and Christine Chapel and Number One, the first First Officer of the USS Enterprise, were... absent. (See also: feministsf and jekesta being brilliant.)

Afterwards I wandered home and Bob was missing and it turned out a neighbour had accidentally shut her into his bike shed, because late at night when the street was quiet I went out again and heard her yell and it was too late to wake up my neighbours, so I left notes in their door and on their fence, and went to bed and slept badly. My Twitters are full of me Not Panicking. She got let out first thing the next morning, and is fine, though very clingy: but the part where it turned out I have the nicest neighbours in the world?

The neighbour who had shut her in the shed (by accident! I know he wouldn't have done it on purpose!) came round on Wednesday evening with a card and a bottle of white wine to apologize. Which I found myself without a polite way of refusing, though the bottle of white wine is still lying on the couch where I put it (the card is on the mantelpiece) and fills me with helpless rueful giggles whenever I think of drinking it. Because, after we were dialoguing on the step and he was saying how sorry he was and I was saying "Thank you for letting her out!" (it was actually his partner who had slipped down first thing and let Bob out, as soon as she saw the note) and then Bob wandered out. And I picked her up (she feels terribly light and thin these days, which I'm worried about, because this reminds me of Cally, but she's still eating....) because I did not want to let her go wandering again... and my neighbour started chucking her under the chin and apologising to Bob. So I accepted the card and the wine, and still think I have the nicest neighbours in the world.

Thursday I had a meeting in Glasgow, and after the meeting I went to the SH[OUT] exhibition in GOMA, which was absolutely fantastic and I want to go again. Maybe I can persuade Ajay to come with - it had several things I thought she might like, especially a picture of a Thai man, a prostitute, standing on a stage, not quite looking at his audience - but the whole picture was so richly painted, and the frame was ornamented, and it looked as if he/his image was a gift to us. The other I remember vividly was a picture of two older women, who had been burlesque artists in their youth, painted as they lay holding each other on their bed. It was the kind of oil painting that looks more real, has more depth, than any photograph could. But, speaking of photographs: the Mapplethorpe photo. I'm told there was some dispute about including it, and its inclusion was probably the main reason the exhibition has been banned to children under 12. But I am so glad to have seen it. I had read about it - it's a famous photograph, politically as well as artistically, the depiction of a standing man pissing into the mouth of a kneeling man, which a court case formally established as having artistic merit and therefore (in the US) protected under the First Amendment. But words and reproductions do not do the photo itself justice: it is an extraordinary work of light and shade, balanced images: it is simultaneously a depiction of a sexual act in pornographic detail and it is a work of art. In many ways the exhibition felt like a series of windows into other exhibitions, that I wanted very much to see as well - if there had been money to produce a catalogue, I would have bought it.

After I had looked round the exhibition, I wanted to see if I could get my T-Mobile dongle to work, and after trying unsuccessfully and calling the helpline, it appeared that the problem was I'd put the wee card in the wrong way round - and it was fairly jammed. So I asked the helpline to find me the nearest two T-Mobile shops in Glasgow, and set out to find the one in Buchanan Street. (On the basis, as I told them frankly, that if someone were going to break the card getting it out, I had rather it was someone working for T-Mobile than me.)

The T-Mobile shop was in the Buchanan Street Galleries, which are just above the Buchanan Street Tearoom, where one can get a very nice cream tea for £2.50. So, after I'd got my dongle working (oo-er) I went there and had tea and a scone with cream and two sorts of jam, and it was very nice. (They supplied me with butter as well as jam: I ask you, what kind of person puts butter and cream on a scone?

Then I walked round the GOMA exhibition again, to fill my eye with it a second time, and caught the 4:15 train back to Edinburgh (safely in the cheap zone) and surfed the net and wrote a bit on the way home. I was due to meet my parents and the young man who is helping them clear out their flat (a bit) at the Ann Purna that evening.

We had a nice meal: my mum told me about seeing a sign in Bakewell, where they'd gone for their holiday, about marriage between a man and a woman being the law of the land, and she said she'd wanted to add a sign about civil partnership but hadn't had paper/tape to do it. Still. It was nice of her to want to.

Friday has been a fairly ghastly muddle, in which I got not enough done and that too late. But I am drinking wine and eating nice food, and TGIF: it's the weekend now.



Tags: bob, glasgow, i want a cup of tea and a tonne of sympa, just my life really, scones, star trek, yarg

11:46 pm: It's been a funny kind of day
DEAD:

NEARLY DEAD:

NOT QUITE DEAD:

EGGZ:

It is not even the most weird part of today that I saw a tree growing in Glasgow that had a penis and a vagina. (That was in GOMA, at SH[OUT]. There was also a Mapplethorpe photo or two of the kind they don't let children under 12 in to see. One of them was very beautiful: a b/w photo of a man standing in shadow pissing into the mouth of a kneeling man in light. Perfectly balanced forms of light and shadow. Obviously this is the kind of thing you cannot allow children under 12 to see and discuss with their peers, parents, or teachers, though it would be perfectly proper for a child under 12 to see topless models on page 3 of the Sun.)

Tags: dragons, glasgow

11:15 am: Back from Worldcon
Home again. Still tired. This is only my third Worldcon, but already I feel qualified to make generic, sweeping judgements: Worldcons are too big and last too long to be an unqualifiedly good experience.

But, on the whole, very glad I went. Nice to meet you all. (Especially the Heretickal One, who is lovely. As well as heretickal.)

Am planning to do a con report. Yes.

Tags: glasgow, worldcon

07:18 pm: At the Worldcon, 2
Most fun thing happened to me at the Worldcon so far: too many to count, but getting to meet Ellen Kushner has to be close to the front. (I bought Thomas the Rhymer from her, and she signed it and said *bounce* *squee* it was nice to meet me, and you know, like she actually meant it.)

Most bizarre thing happened to me at the Worldcon so far: being told I couldn't volunteer to be a gopher at the Hugos because I wasn't properly dressed. (I am wearing, today, my bid t-shirt for Glasgow 2005, the one with the rather nice art deco spaceship on it: blue jeans: and trainers.) Apparently "properly dressed" for the Hugos means no jeans, no t-shirts. Hum. I believe this may be why gophering at the Hugos is on the Gopher Hole emergency board.

Most annoying thing happened to me at the Worldcon so far: the consistent habit at the Gopher Hole of saying they need more volunteers, then signing several too many people up for the same time slot. I have stopped going back to complain, and just started taking the hour anyway.

I handed out all 30 copies of Bah! to various people. If you would like a copy posted to you next week, comment here or e-mail me (Update: Up to 10 copies, anyway). Am having a curry with hfnuala and the Heretickal One tonight, instead of volunteering at the Hugos, on account of being Improperly Dressed.

Tags: ellen kushner, glasgow, worldcon

12:20 pm: At the Worldcon, 1
I have: spoken on a panel about lesbians in genre TV, been to a panel about the "yuk factor", had a lovely evening drinking wine and talking about slash with flambeau, volunteered for a couple of hours distributing newsletters and stuff, been swimming (the hotel is fabulous: I am Eternally Grateful to hfnuala, though not to the extent of actually sharing my Alpen*.) I may even, thanks to davidcook, get to publish Bah!. Having a wonderful time. If you're here, I'm glad you are, and hope we get to meet.

Oh, and I have met so many people who haven't seen me in five-to-ten years who say "Jane, you've... shrunk!" or variants thereof.

*I tried to share it. But it turns out hfnuala does not do muesli. Actually, I'm feeling terribly guilty about being so well-stocked with food... we're not doing breakfast in the hotel because they want to charge £15 each for it.

Tags: breakfast is a good meal, glasgow, worldcon