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The NHS is currently going all TERFy in the England. The proposed clinical guidance for the new Children and Youth Gender Identity Clinic is, to use a phrase, a hot fucking mess*. The comment period is open and I had some words…

Just in case they’re useful to others, they’re here:

To what extent do you agree with the four substantive changes to the service specification listed in the supporting documents?

a) Composition of the clinical team

Disagree
Share any further comments about this:

I am deeply concerned that the proposals as written will lead to increasing delays in a treatment system which already fails to meet the 18 week standard for treatment not merely by months but by years. As such, while more expertise could be welcomed, I’m deeply concerned that these proposals will lengthen, not shorten the wait for treatment. Further, that the addition of experts indicated within these proposals will be used to prevent individuals’ access to care rather than working to improve their access. I’m particularly concerned that neurodiverse people may find themselves completely barred from treatment.

Furthermore given the NHS’s lacklustre history of training clinicians in issues that impact the LGBTQIA community, I’m deeply concerned that the experts proposed will lack adequate training to successfully care for transgender and gender diverse individuals. The proposed experts must be adequately trained, and trained using clinical evidence, not the ideological bias that appears to pervade these proposals.

b) Clinical Leadership

Partially Disagree
Share any further comments about this::

While the proposal that a medically trained doctor is the clinical lead is, in and of itself, not necessarily bad the proposals continue to medicalise the care of, and pathologise the experiences of, transgender and gender diverse people.

This medicalisation bias is very clear through the structure of the proposals despite the WHO and WPATH providing clear evidence that a move away from this old-fashioned, harmful and outdated approach to the care of gender diverse and transgender individuals is necessary. It is therefore vital that any doctor in a clinical leadership role is an expert in the care of transgender and gender diverse children and young people, and that the expertise must include up-to-date knowledge from beyond the boundaries of the United Kingdom.

c) Collaboration with referrers and local services

Partially Disagree
Share any further comments about this::

While this proposal includes elements that have the potential to be positive – better local service integration and better support to those on the waiting list – there are significant concerning aspects.
– The assumption that people will be on the waiting list for a long period seems baked into this proposal and indicates the complete failure of the NHS to adequately address the elephant in the room – that self-ID with adequately trained GPs providing non-surgical care (access to puberty blockers and as patients demonstrate Gillick competence, hormones), and acting as a point of referral for other treatments would be the more clinically appropriate and financially prudent approach.
– A pre-referral consultation may further delay treatment in a system that is already substantially failing, may place further barriers to access, and may push more people to start treatment without medical care.
– The pre-referral consultation assumes the presence of a supportive GP. There is significant evidence that GPs in the UK lack the training and knowledge to perform this role – and multiple studies have indicated that GPs often act to prevent individuals receiving treatment in contravention of the existing guidelines. For them to fulfill this role will require more training and very clear rules and expectations which have disciplinary force available as recourse for those GPs unwilling to engage.
– The proposals appear to indicate that the new service will not accept new referrals until a large proportion of the existing waiting list has been seen. This leaves many children and young people in an unacceptable state where there is nowhere for them to be referred to (and later sections are coercive about preventing them seeking treatment elsewhere in the interim, a particularly unpleasant catch 22).
– The proposals do not indicate how an individual who has, per their local consultation, ‘not met the access criteria’ would move to obtain a second opinion, lodge an appeal, or whether it is possible for that to occur. This is simply unacceptable.

– Again, this proposal fails to indicate any way in which the service could come into compliance with the 18 week standard.

d) Referral sources

Disagree
Share any further comments about this:

This guidance is simply inadequate. The implication seems to be that only an individual’s GP or NHS professionals can refer. It does not define who an NHS professional is, and in what capacity it would be appropriate for a non-doctor / nurse practitioner to refer, and in what circumstances those referrals would be accepted. Given the lack of training provided to doctors in the UK on gender related issues, and the lack of support that many transgender and gender diverse youth cite, self referral, or referral through other support networks (teachers, social workers, youth workers) would be appropriate.

Given that many GPs fail to follow the existing guidance for referral, profess a lack of knowledge on how or when to refer, or simply refuse to refer this additional step is particularly concerning.

Furthermore, it continues to build in an unnecessary medicalisation of treatment for transgender and gender diverse children.

To what extent do you agree that the interim service specification provides sufficient clarity about approaches towards social transition?

Disagree

Please expand further:

This section is completely inappropriate. Social transition is not a medical process and there is simply no possible valid reason for it to be controlled by medical practitioners. The evidence is very, very clear that social transition improves psychological outcomes and reduces suicidality for gender diverse and transgender children and youth. Placing barriers in the way of this is simply unconscionable and speaks to an appalling lack of knowledge or research on the part of the authorial team for this section.

“Watchful Waiting” is an outdated and harmful model that simply exists to improve the comfort of those who oppose evidence based treatment for transgender people. It is espoused by those ideologically opposed to the very existence of transgender people in society and must be removed from future guidance. It is ‘supported’ (and I use that term loosely) in this document using a citation from the Endocrine Society’s guidance which, in turn uses Steensma et al. (2013) as its basis. This study is widely understood to have been based on outdated terminology and assessment and has been superseded by much more up-to-date research that completely undermines the findings of Steensma et al. (2013).

Because it is one of few faintly modern ‘studies’ that supports an anti-transgender / anti-supportive treatment ideology (although, by research standards, it would not make it into most metaanalysis at nearly a decade old), Steensma et al. (2013) seems to find its way into a lot of studies despite its many failings and lack of congruence with modern research findings in the same area.

As a clinician I am appalled that these abhorrently harmful practices are being suggested by the NHS and urge that the following (rather more modern) research and guidelines are included in a complete and thorough rewrite of at the very least this section (although frankly, a rewrite of the entire proposal would be more appropriate):

– Durwood et al. “Mental Health and Self-Worth in Socially Transitioned Transgender Youth.” Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2016.10.016
– Durwood et al. “Social support and internalizing psychopathology in transgender youth.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 2021, https:// doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01391-y
– Olson et al. “Mental health of transgender children who are supported in their identities.” Pediatrics, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2015-3223
– Olson, K. R., Gülgöz, S., 2018. “Early findings from the TransYouth Project: Gender development in transgender children.” Child Development Perspectives, 2018, 12, 93–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12268
– Gibson, D. J., Glazier, J. J., Olson, K. R. “Evaluation of anxiety and depression in a community sample of transgender youth.” JAMA Network Open, 2021, 4, e214739.
https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.4739
– World Professional Association for Transgender Health. “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8.” International Journal of Transgender Health, 2022, p. S75. https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644.
– World Professional Association for Transgender Health. “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8.” International Journal of Transgender Health, 2022, p. S53. https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644.
– Memorandum of Understanding group. “Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy in the UK (Version 2).” BACP, 1 Mar. 2022, www.bacp.co.uk/media/14985/memorandum-of-understanding-on-conversion-therapy-in-the-uk-march-2022.pdf.
– Ehrensaft et al. “Prepubertal social gender transitions: What we know; what we can learn—A view from a gender affirmative lens.” International Journal of Transgenderism, 2018, 19(2), 251–268. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2017.1414649

To what extent do you agree with the approach to the management of patients accessing prescriptions from un-regulated sources?

Disagree

Please expand further:

This section seems to be unclear on the difference between “unregulated” and “private practice providers”. Private healthcare providers are a legal and appropriate means of providing healthcare, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. Given the NHS’s woeful inability to meet the 18 week standard, and this proposal’s abrogation of any attempt to do so, it is an absolute farce to suggest that individuals effectively denied treatment by a system that – in this reworking will obviously continue to fail – should not seek treatment elsewhere in the interim.

Worse, this proposal suggests that those providers outside the NHS who actually are providing a standard of care concordant with current international guidelines should be subject to safeguarding referrals. This is simply unacceptable.

1) Accessing treatment regardless of its source MUST NOT be a safeguarding concern
2) Accessing treatment regardless of its source MUST NOT be a barrier to receiving NHS treatment at a later date.
3) The NHS absolutely should provide a safe transition to medically supervised medication prescription and management for those individuals who’ve sought treatment from sources outside traditional heathcare (mainly, I suspect, teens who’ve been failed by the NHS so far and in desperation have obtained tablets from friends or ‘off the internet’).

This proposal as a whole, as has been repeatedly pointed out will fail to bring the NHS into line with its own standard and requirements. It will not make the NHS meet its 18 week timeline for treatment, and will fail to do so because it is designed to fail to do so.

The Coercive nature of this particular service specification is likely to be felt as a threat with a punishment, furthermore, it will contradict Domain 5 of the NHS outcomes as it is likely to prevent families seeking other support from their GPs. It is, simply put, unethical.

Are there any other changes or additions to the interim service specification that should be considered in order to support Phase 1 services to effectively deliver this service?

Please expand further:

For reasons that are not explained, this proposal suggests the use of GnRHa blockers is experimental. It’s not; it’s well documented both in the care of transgender and gender diverse youth (see WPATH’s “Standards of
Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version
8.” International Journal of Transgender Health, 2022, p. S64, S123.

https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644″) but also for youth with a number of other healthcare conditions. In those conditions it’s considered safe, but for some reason this document ignores that large evidence base.

This proposal also ties GnRHa blockers to an unethical requirement to be enrolled in a research program. Best practice guidelines require that any provision of (transgender) healthcare is also available in a manner that is ‘explicitly independent of research participation’, as informed consent must be ‘without coercion or undue influence’.

Therefore, this section needs to be clarified to indicate that:
– GnRHa blockers are an appropriate and safe treatment.
– No research program participation is required for their prescription.

It also needs revision to include the following:
– To reference and recommend referrals to local endocrine services and fertility preservation services
– To clarify prescribing responsibility for cross sex hormones (and again, this should be the GP following self ID at a point of Gillick competency)
– To clarify how and when reviews of this system will occur
– To acknowledge that not all families / carers will be supportive, and that a lack of support is is correlated with worse outcomes for transgender and gender diverse children and youths.
– To acknowledge that in a situation where a child is not Gillick competent, but continues to express a gender diverse or transgender identity, and the family are not supportive, GnRHa blockers may be appropriate to allow the child time to reach Gillick competency without undergoing a potentially traumatic and avoidable puberty, regardless of parental or guardian’s support.
– There is no reference to patient and public involvement in service development. This is contrary to pretty much every part of the modern NHS’s development and must be rectified.

To what extent do you agree that the Equality and Health Inequalities Impact Assessment reflects the potential impact on health inequalities which might arise as a result of the proposed changes?

Disagree

Please expand further:
To put it at its most simple, the EHIIA does not reflect potential impacts on health inequalities.

It is a disingenuous section which is predicated on this statement:
“The interim service specification sets out more clearly that the clinical approach in regard to pre-pubertal children will reflect evidence that in most cases gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence”

As I’ve pointed out in previous answers this is simply based on outdated and incorrect information. It reflects a seemingly wilful lack of research or desire to listen to those with expertise and instead places an ideological bias that is not supported by current research at the center of NHS proposals. This will lead to clear and avoidable harms which this section then go to great lengths to excuse by denying that those seeking treatment for GIDS would be covered under the 2010 Equality Act’s protected characteristic of “gender reassignment”.

The authors of this proposal seem unwilling to read the current massive body of literature which indicates that gender affirming treatment is vital, that the very small percentage of people who desist in seeking gender affirming treatment often do so because of negative and harmful experiences from family, society, or medical providers, and often seek treatment again later when they are in a more supportive environment. And so the authors of this proposal appear to be using just the 2013 ‘study’ as a crutch to instead support something that will instead open the NHS up to repeated legal challenges.

It is clear that even despite the NHS denying and delaying treatment, these individuals will still meet the protected characteristic requirement.

The EHIIA must account for how this ‘interim service’ will avoid discrimination in access to care for this subpopulation of children and young people, and in particular those from BAME groups (which evidence suggests are more likely to be the subject of discrimination), those with disabilities, and those who have families who are unsupportive.

I note the EHIIA also states that the NHS has not (bothered?) to consult with anyone about how to reduce inequalities. This is another abject failure in these proposals.

* We are not going to get into the fact that GICs are an outdated concept from another era here. Watch this for some why.

So today was the big day. Well, kinda. Today was permit sign off day. Knowing that very few of you have your Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses on, and it’s likely that you’ve got enough stress and anxiety in your life, I’ll save you worrying. No, we didn’t pass, but it was close.

Our two issues (we built a whole damn house more or less, and there were just two issues) were that the fan in the main bathroom has died. It has to be working at the time of inspection. And that the hot water was too hot. It’s set right at the boiler, but it gets… over zealous. So despite being meant to be 50ish deg C (120F), it actually comes out at 60C (147F per the boiler). That’d be fine in the UK where it’s the recommended temp (60-65C), but in the US it’s apparently too hot.

That means I need to adjust the thermostat on the shower to prevent potential scalding – so I’ll have to look how to do that. Anyhow, we’ve ordered the new extractor fan to replace the irritatingly poor quality Panasonic one that died. Because of the way the ducting is done we’ve ordered the same damn crappy fan, because I really don’t want to have to re-route it all. It also means cutting through the floor because I really wasn’t expecting to change it (I think I’ve ranted about this before, so I’ll stop).

On the plus side, the electrical is all signed off. The inspector mentioned that since the house is still standing and we’ve been living in it for years, he’d kinda assumed it was done okay! But it’s really a relief to get that one off our plates.

While I was hanging out I finally got around to fixing the mixer. It’s been waiting for… godot? No, for me to be in the right mood – and also to suck up the postage costs from Finland, where the spares place is. I finally did that a week or two back, and the box arrived containing the one thing I needed – a new belt drive for it.

The actual belt install didn’t take long and it’s really clear that the old belt was completely shagged. If I’d’ve known how easy it was I wouldn’t have put it off this long. We also ordered the egg whisking bowl thingie that you can still buy brand new for it(!), and I finally got around to replacing the frontplate with a new lasercut front-plate which is now screwed to the internal faceplate on which are mounted all the controls.

I’ve been wanting to change it for a while because the glue I used to attach the other one reacted with the paint that I’d used to paint the front-plate. I also wanted to do it because I’m not wholly convinced by the epoxy on the internal frontplate. That particular plastic seems kinda hard to persuade things to bond to. So now, the screws act to hold that plastic in place too, as well as making it look pretty :)

The rest of the day kinda filled up with errands. I bought some trousers from ebay which despite saying they were a 12, were huge. Vast. Oceanic. Since they’re nice ones I decided to try out a local tailor and he’s going to narrow the legs, make it fit better at the hips and the waist, and hem them. We’ll see how that goes – if it goes okay, then yay. If not, then I’ve learned something.

The question of why I’m buying clothes off ebay might spring unbidden to your mind, and if it does, it’s because… well, I don’t really know. When I started filming for TE I stuck with jeans and teeshirt, which is more or less what I’ve worn since I came out. Actually, that’s a lie.

When I first came out I wore more skirts, I wore more fitted stuff, and I was working my way towards something that was not just an extension of teen-me’s lack of interest in (or indeed very active hatred of) my body and basically covering it with whatever was to hand. And I toyed with wearing something…not jeans, not teeshirt. And then one of my exes put an end to that, more or less.

And I’d kinda settled into it, not least because I’ve never been thrilled by my waist, which since I was a teen – when I went through a phase of eating a terrifying amount of baked goods – I’ve had rather a lot of weight carried there. Which is not ideal for someone who’s probably fairly high risk for diabetes anyway. And then after last year’s comment from my doctor about just noting that I’d put on weight (he wasn’t unpleasant about it, just noted it, asked if I’d changed my diet, advised me to keep an eye on it), I finally found myself starting to actually work on this thing that’s bugged me for the last [many] years. Add to that that it quickly became apparent that whatever I wore, or did, I’d get transphobic bollocks in the comment section on TE. So… y’know, I might as well do what I wanted.

And now I’ve started to slowly lose that weight, and I’m starting to actually see impacts from exercising (I need to do more of that, but I am still running and doing core every day), and I’m starting to actually quite like what I see in the mirror sometimes. That, and I’ve been toying with makeup – I’ve been futzing with it since May, and I’m now adequate at applying it. And – I like what I see when I do that. Not that I feel like I need it all the time, but I like it for presenting on TE. And for various reasons I may need to actually appear professionally in person in the future (I do have to twice this month), and I feel like it meets an expectation (yay, patriarchy!, but also…I just kinda like it).

And *that* is at least in part why I’ve been buying odds and sods off ebay. I don’t want to buy new clothes – I don’t need to support that industry. But there’s a lot of good used clothes – the only problem is that clothing sizes (particularly women’s clothing sizes) are, as we all well know, a hilarious practical joke. And so one size 12 item is wildly different to another. And so while one thing I might need a 12, the next might be a 14, or a 10… Meh. Hence the tailor / trousers situation.

I do need to go through my clothes and rationalise a bit though. Because its kinda getting out of hand.

I stick the squeezebox on random…and it plays a song. And even when it’s not right – not right for the era I’m transported back to that period where, for a hot minute I was a DJ at university.

I went from hiding in my room at parties, being the “DJ” and playing tracks to keep everyone moving to being in the box in the only student run social center off campus.

I hopped from track to track following a gut instinct of what would make people dance. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

Then I’d hand over the decks to Richard – way more experienced, way more professional, way more skilled. And I’d go out onto that dance floor.

I’d feel the press of hot bodies, the smell of drink in the clammy hot air, the sweat literally streaming down the walls of the building.

And for an hour or two, with the benefit of some alcohol – often quite a lot of alcohol – I could wash away the body I hated. I could feel the music coursing through me (pretty much literally, Rich was an epic engineer and it was LOUD).

I could feel my long hair brushing my neck, I could dance with my friends and forget who society kept telling me I was. I would scream along with the female leads with my voice cracking and breaking as they tore from me.

I would dance my fucking soul out.

And music can take me back to that moment. But it’s better… no — it’s fucking phenomenal now because I can enjoy my body. I don’t have to run. I don’t need the alcohol to forget. I can fucking be me, and throw myself around the (kitchen) dancefloor and it’s fucking epic.

I had a whole bunch of over-exuberant plans about how much I’d get done today. I mean, they really assumed I’d be in the mood for fun and frolics, and that the weather would be good. It wasn’t…bad per-se. It wasn’t hacking down with rain – that’s apparently going to be next week.

But what it was, was foggy. And grey.

And that combined with a not super thrilled mood – just feeling vaguely down meant that the progress this morning was incredibly slow. I got stuff done – I’m switched over to my new phone (which gets security updates…). Because I only do that once every 6 or so years I forget how long it takes. Thankfully I did remember yesterday to start it copying off photos – because that took more than 6 hours. I actually finished it this morning because it failed to copy some videos.

I also got Logitech Media Server running again. For some reason it had tried to run an update on its docker and that had resulted in it failing. I ended up trading for a different docker of LMS, and it seems to be working fine now.

I also trimmed down one of the rails for the attic door, and realised that my original fitting plan isn’t going to work. I’ll need to come up with another plan… which probably involves me buying a bit of wood. It’s obvious now I think about it, but it’s designed for going inside a doorframe, not inside an attic… Kinda irritating but not the end of the world by anymeans.

I also finally got around to calling the maker of our cooker – which has had one ring failing for quite a while, and now a second ring has gone down in power, and last time we made Pizza we noticed it no longer gets Pizza-hot. Oh, and one of the knobs disintegrated…

…it is, obviously, not in warranty being as it’s all of 3 years old. I informed them very politely that it was inadequate, disappointing, and that I will tell everyone I know to avoid Bertazzoni stoves, because they’re lousy quality and don’t stand behind their product. So I will.

I also russled up a pre-cooked lunch for Friday and Saturday, which I’ve been meaning to do more consistently. I baked some eggs a while back, and froze them, so that plus a chunk of sausage and some rice and fruit should do me. The idea being I shouldn’t eat out so much… which is always a bit tricksy.

I also chased up some deets about our Solar install – it looks like we’re good to go ahead and so I called them and lined that up. So that’s good. It sounds like a reasonable amount, but I had hoped to do some other things…

… and yeah, it’s my day off. There’s no requirement for me to do anything. I just had plans, and my mood got in the way :-/

So the en-suite. We were all ready to seal it… and then.

When we installed the toilet, we installed it and used it for months without a problem. Before the rest of the bathroom was even finished, we were using it. Before the shower was installed, we were using it. Hell, before the sink was installed…we were using it.

It was just fine.

Then I installed the bidet – it’s a sprayer with a tee off from the toilet fill connector. It seemed fine for ages.

Then suddenly there’s water coming from under the toilet. Not unpleasant, dirty water. No. This – so far as I can tell is clean water. Initially I thought it was water from Kathryn and I cleaning the tiles. It was just a liiiiiiittle tiny trickle of mostly dried up water. So I mopped it up.

And it continued.

And it continued.

And so I hunted around – the tee valve that connects the bidet is dry. The connection from the wall is dry. The tiles around the toilet are dry. The run of pipe between the toilet and the quarter-turn valve on the wall is dry. The run of pipe between the tee and the bidet is dry. The dry doesn’t have any drips on it. Running my hand all over the inside of the back of the toilet is dry.

I do not understand where this f’kin water is coming from.

I have turned off the water supply to the toilet. It still creeps out, so it’s ooozing out from either the cistern (which we flushed, but which still has about an inch of water in the bottom), or the bowl. Of course – being a single piece toilet it shouldn’t be able to leak from in-between.

So where the hell is it coming from?

So now we’re just waiting to see – when it does finally stop – which bit is empty. If it stops and the cistern still has water in then…we have a significant problem. Although we can unmount the toilet, but because it hadn’t leaked we sealed around the back edge of the cistern…so it’s going to be a spectacular pain in the arse to get it moved.

Anyhow, so there’s that.

We have, however, spent some time at the weekend cutting…the fire doors for the attic! These, plus the bathroom being functional* are what are required for permit sign-off, and they’re done! Well, they’re cut:

We also cut the pantry door, which is a bit more of a complex beast. I’m going to need to run around the edge of that with the trim router, which I should do before we oil it.

Then, in a spurt of unexpected productivity today – I cut some more skirting boards.

Quite a lot of skirting boards… and other random trim pieces.

I have, in fact, finally hit the point where I need to get more wood. Which is pleasing, because this stuff has sat here for nearly a year. Possibly more than a year. I also – almost – got up the enthusiasm to do some work on the kitchen shelf. Although for that I need a 2 x 12″ board, which I don’t have yet. But the thought did actually enter my head, which it hasn’t until now.

But, yes. I spent a lot of time today measuring and cutting – and working out what bits I could do without other bits. But now I need to get the wood for the trim around the en-suite bathroom door which is a bit of a complex beast. That and the bathroom (main) also needs trim. BUT – I’ve realised I do, in fact, have a rabbet bit – which is something I didn’t think I had – which will suit (I think) the trim that has to overlap the tiles. The whole trim-thing continues to be a total mare because to get stuff to fit the plaster – I had to plane the backs of the trim that’s around the doors. That means it’s a weird thickness…

Which means that the skirting boards need to have some sort of finishing corner on them to make them not look stoopid.

We won’t talk about the other corners, because the part of me that knows I should round off the cut end with the 1/8″ rounding bit is shouting louder and more incessantly.

I keep telling it to shush, and that no-one… *no one* but us will care. But it keeps whining about it. It’s most upsetting and means I’ll probably have to do that too on Saturday, before we can oil these bits of wood.

But it’s quite exciting. There’s quite a few bits left to go, but the stuff we had in the garage has made a big dent in the remaining complicated bits of skirting. After this it’s the bedrooms which are a mare because they’re full of stuff, but less of a mare because they’re mainly just two or three straight walls. A single cut-to-length, then oil, then install.

In other-other news, I finally replaced the temporary wire that ran to our second charger with a new correctly rated wire (the old one was…suboptimal and running near capacity). I also buried it to the proper depth, which was a bit of a mission:

I also *finally* got around to changing the faulty breaker…for another faulty one. Irritatingly, it turns out that the used breaker I got to replace the breaker turned out to be faulty, and the person selling it declined to take it back (which was only an issue because COVID meant I spent 2 weeks not changing it and went outside the return period). I gave up and… y’know what, I bought a brand new one. From Amazon. Because… well, in other expensive news, it turns out my aged phone is no longer getting security updates.

It’s about 6 years old, and I’m rather peeved to have to replace it because it still seems to be fast enough and works really well. But – I do use it for my job, and so it’s pretty handy to have something with a really good camera. The OnePlus 6 has done incredibly well – producing some astonishingly useful footage since it manages pretty good 4K with stabilization. But… yeah, it’s time with no security updates coming.

So… I took the plunge, and now I wait for the shiny expensive object to arrive. Meh.

* ish

So, if you’re wondering about the radio silence… it’s because I finally brought COVID home. Ironically not from the hospital. The repeated exposures there didn’t get me.

No, it was a perfect storm of misfortune. We went to Fully Charged Live down in San Diego – and while we were there we went for a dinner. We thought it was going to be outdoors, but it wasn’t. It was in a small back room, and just by sheer shittyness of timing, it was the same night as a game in the stadium. That meant that I dropped the rest of the team off – and they went in ahead of me. Had we all been together, it’s likely our collective panic would have driven us out of the place.

But instead, they sat down while I drove off to park the car, finally making it back about 20 minutes later. By which time, when I walked in, I felt like they’d been exposed and I was feeling social-obligation.

I tried to keep the mask on and eat safely – and maybe we caught it somewhere else, but the timeline of everyone’s illness points to a single point of exposure. And that’s the only true single point of exposure.

It’s been miserable, and I’m so very frustrated that I brought it home and got Kathryn sick. 2 weeks in and I still have a lot of snot, frankly, and an irritating cough. I get fatigued quicker than I should. Kathryn’s about a week behind… so that has spectacularly sucked. Thankfully the vaccines did their stuff, and neither of us have been dreadfully ill. But at nearly a year since my last vaccine my body’s had to do a lot of heavy lifting to get me better.

I went back to work on day 11, because, well – frankly – it was that or engage with the fucking atrocious US healthcare system to try and get some more time off. Today was my second day back at TE – and I can’t say as it went super smoothly. But stuff was filmed, and offloaded, and lo I shall have a ball editing next week.

In chicken news Thelma and Louise seem to have integrated pretty well. I mean, there’s definitely still Astrid and Pippi — and Thelma and Louise — but there’s not a bunch of fighting. Thelma and Louise are way more tractable, which is handy, although they do try and get underfoot. And Astrid is no longer broody – but is now molting. As is at least one of Thelma or Louise. The place looks like there’s been a chicken murder. It’ll be intriguing to see if there’s any big changes, because last time there were some pretty noticable shifts before and after in their feather patterns.

In other, other news, I need to get the shower finished still. Kathryn cleaned off the tiles, so I need to do the last bits of sealing around the shower pipework, tighten up the plumbing on the radiator, and then grout over the top of the shower pipework seal. Then it’s just sealing the tiles and the grout and trim. Endless trim.

But doing that and the attic doors means the permit can be signed off, so I’m gonna try and do a bit of that tomorrow. Unfortunately, just to drive us completely over the edge, the fan in the main bathroom has now died. I can’t believe that 3 years is as long as it’s lasted, and I kinda want to fix it – but I also kinda just want to get a replacement and throw the fucker in. I mean, seriously. 3 years.

We had a plan. It was a solid plan. The two new chickens (Thelma and Louise) were ready for their next step in flock integration. In where they can interact with – but not actually get to our other chickens.

1. We would take the temporary run in which they’ve been acclimatising down – it’s made with roughly 4×6 panels (of ABS pipe with chicken wire zip-tied to it… we’re fancy here). We’d move the panels into the main run.
2. We’d also move Thelma and Louise’s little portable coop into the main run, inside the newly erected fence panels.
3. Thelma and Louise, being more tractable than our older chickens would be allowed to roam free while this happened and then we’d catch them and pop them in their kind of sub-run.
4. We’d move their water and food in with them too.

Simple.

And it went flawlessly, until as we carried their water in it became apparent that while the easy-to-catch Thelma and Louise were now safely ensconced in their sub-run, Astrid and Pippi were enjoying the excitement of the garden having found an escape route through a previously unknown hole in the fence.

Astrid and Pippi are not tractable chickens. They do not crouch to be picked up. They sprint rapidly around the garden.

Apparently the average top speed of a human is 8 miles per hour. A chicken? About 9 miles per hour.

We did eventually herd Astrid back in, and Pippi – I caught her but with my arms wrapped around a shrub, which meant that Kathryn had to come and grab her from me in a careful chicken hand-off.

…well, valves. But that’s not so alliterative.

So as is so often the case as the deadline for our project being signed off approaches (or us getting *another* extension) I put a bit of effort in to trying to get things finished – at least enough – to get signed off.

The bathroom is the main obstacle, that and what turns out to be the terrifying price of CVG fir plywood. Dear lord.

So over the past few days I’ve made a more committed effort to getting the shower installed (a job I’d been putting off because I suspected it would be hideous), getting the bidet installed (a job I put off because it involved disconnecting work I’d already done), and getting the sink plumbing installed (a job I put off because I hate American FIP threads – despite the fact I used them everywhere because I didn’t know the US has finally discovered compression joints).

The shower – actually turned out to be (as far as I can tell so far) far less of a nightmare than I expected.

It took a fair bit of gnawing at the tiles to get the sort of wobbly stubouts (they’re kinked so you can adjust the width to make up for – fairly big – imperfections in your pipe placement, but actually mine were pretty much spot on because I spent bloody hours getting them to the spec on the piece of paper).

Once that was up the assembly proved to be fucking evil – because it didn’t seem like the people who designed it were actually aware that ceilings exist, or that it’s not possible to pass a screwdriver through a pipe to tighten up the screws. However, after a fair amount of pondering I managed to work out an order that allowed me to actually assemble it – and incredibly – it so far has not leaked.

The bidet was the work of a few minutes in the end. It’s awkward, because the toilet is incredibly tight against the wall – a combination of me not really understanding that in the US people often seem to mount their toilets with a noticeable gap between the toilet and the wall – which is probably because the floor mounted drain doesn’t allow for any position adjustment, so the plumbers probably rough it in with more of a gap than I allowed. A combination of that – and the fact that our wall ended up being a good half-inch thicker than we intended.

Anyway, so it’s tight – which makes plumbing anything around it fecking evil.

But, it actually came apart and went back together just fine. So now we had a shower and a bidet. I mean, we can’t use the shower until we seal the floor, but we *have* one.

That left the sink.

Now look, I am able to admit that I am no exceptional plumber. I can make things work – and I’ve got a grasp of the rules that I think is probably good enough to do most basic things. But I do hate FIP joints. Loathe and despise them. So I wasn’t…thrilled to be doing it. But off I went. I knocked the tape off that covered the holes, and took a chunk of time with the hole-saw cutting through the tiles to make a bit more space because I wasn’t wholly convinced by the alignment. And then I pulled the old plugs and inserted my brass stub outs.

And then I spent the entire rest of the fucking day in an unbearably tedious struggle with – mainly – this fucking valve.

It was sat on the hot pipe, and it leaked.

I tightened it, left it a bit, it leaked.

I took it apart, replaced the tape, it leaked.

I tightened it, it leaked.

I took it apart and I replaced the tape again – with a different brand of PTFE tape, it leaked.

I tightened it, it leaked.

At some point in this process, the cold line started to weep too – and I took that apart, retaped it with the new PTFE tape… And it was okay.

So I took apart the hot line a sixth time and coated it in the PTFE goop – and it leaked a little. So I tightened it up – and it seemed to have stopped. And a few hours later I went to bed.

Then I woke up in the morning…and it was weeping again.

So I decided it wasn’t me, I went to Bob and got a replacement, and I replaced it, taped it up, and… so far it hasn’t wept.

Before I ran to Bob this morning I had the great sense to plumb in the waste water, which incredibly, also does not appear to be leaking. Which just leaves the towel rail to install, for which I will have to get a hex whatsit adaptor because last time it was a pigging nightmare without it. And then… we’re done. Well, then there’s trim.

There’s always trim.

Oh! But I also picked up some chisels to install the new pulls for the sliding doors. I do have a couple of chisels somewhere, but I’m pretty sure they’re blunt as hell and I don’t have the patience or skill to sharpen them well (although I do have an India stone somewhere). I also worked out what bit of wood I’ll use to fill the void that was drilled in the door (because I didn’t realize that they’d pocket it for something stupid).

And I ordered the fucking expensive plywood for our attic doors. Which is the other job we need to be signed off as done. Which would be epic.

Our final day in the Lakes we thought we’d relax, take a nice short walk, something not too taxing and without too much height. That went about as well as usual, as we wandered up Muncaster Fell. Our map made us think that it was about a 600 ft climb, iirc, and then a faaaairly flat walk across the top – maybe losing a hundred feet, before climbing up, skirting the summit and then wandering down to a stop on the Ratty which would take us back home.

It turned out that the paths have shifted a bit, they now basically go to the top of the two peaky-bits (I mean, it’s not a very pointy fell), then wander most of the way down between the two, making the upy-downyness much greater. We made it longer trying to avoid the inevitable, and then when we had the chance to skip the highest point, we didn’t, because having come so far we thought it’d be nice to actually see the view from the trig point. It was.

The next day was, leaving the Lakes super early and driving. And driving. And charging. And driving. And Driving. And Charging. And Driving. AND DRIVING. AND CHARGING.

Yeah, renting a shortish range slow charging EV may not have been the best choice. But, it did it, we did it. And we made it to Brizzle where we caught up with one half of a couple of wonderful friends and their kids. We chatted and caused child-related-ink-chaos (one of their kids discovered that the pen we gave them allowed them to draw not just on paper, but also on themselves! Awesome!), drank tea, ate cake and then piled back in the car to drive the last few hours down to my mum’s.

She had persuaded my sister to stay an extra night, kipping on the camp beds in the study which meant that we got to see my sis and her husband as well. It’s been at least as long since I saw her as it has since we saw my mother, so it was a really lovely surprise and lovely to catch up. They stayed that night and so the next morning we got to have a bit more of a catch up before they headed off to the beach and then home. We – Kathryn, my mum and her husband and me, obviously, then went for a long wander on one of my mum’s favourite walks at the moment. One where a wild flower and grass meadow she walks through has turned almost red as the seeds have reached readiness…

The next few days were chatting, eating and walking for the most part… Enjoying the Cornish countryside, taking in some of my mum’s favourite places. We headed over to the Dutchy of Cornwall nursery where we, of course, partook in a cream tea. My mum also got some lovely plants, because – well – otherwise they’d get lonely. And we got some really nice ideas for plants for us to get for our front garden. That evening we headed out on a bat walk – as the light fades, the bats come out from the trees on the rural roads near my mum’s house, and as you walk along they’ll flit around above your head. It’s a wonderful experience that we couldn’t safely have here in the US (‘cos, no rabies in the UK).

That next day the rain was intermittent and we mainly hung out at home, just heading out with my mum for a brisk walk and some pony petting. I took a bit of the afternoon as the weather cleared up to film the drive review for the car we’d rented, having promised Nikki I’d try and review it since it’s a car we can’t get in the US.

We grabbed our swimming cossies the next day and headed out to the coast. We first headed out to Hollywell, which is a popular beach for both surfers and swimmers – first having a bit of a walk down the head before turning around and coming back having realised that we would run out of time before lunch. Paramito, my mum and me had a quick paddle while Kathryn guarded stuff and did some drawing – the timing didn’t quite work out so Kathryn didn’t get a swim there (sadface), and we headed back to the pub for fish and chips. After lunch we headed over to Cubert Commons – and walked down to Poly Joke beach, where after some lovely paddling I was attacked by a Weaver Fish.

Well, that might be an overstatement. I was stung. My first thought was that I’d been cut by a sharp shell, and I started walking out of the water…then the pain just kept escalating. It crescendoed and then I decided to have a little lie down for a second as I felt a weeny bit faint as the pain eased. After a couple of minutes I stood up and we decided that maybe we should head back to the car because it might be a sting that needed checking – since I really had no idea what it was.

As we neared the top of the beach we checked my toe and it had gone unnervingly white, with the rest of my foot swelling a bit – before mostly resolving by the time we got back to the car. To be honest it’s still not 100% now, but it shows no signs of infection and there’s no pain when I apply pressure. It just feels a little teeny bit off. Anyhow, we think it’s a Weaver fish sting based on the symptoms… next time I’ll be wearing shoes.

On the 2nd we popped around town grabbing some of the things we miss that we can’t easily get in the UK. KP Skips, Eccles cakes, chocolate digestives… We also picked up some bits and bobs for friends and family here in the US. Then in the afternoon I made good on my commitment to film – with Kathryn helping as camera person (lucky, because the wind was fierce) I rattled off the walk around from the car and rapidly shot some more B-roll to drop in the review. I’ve rough cut that today and it’s…surprisingly not terrible.

That next day we spent a chunk of the day – the morning – playing a fun packing game. I repacked the lawnmower I bought so it might make the flight intact, and we played an entertaining game of shuffle the item. Our pre-purchasing things weighing of the cases suggested that we had tons of space. Our post-purchasing of snacks and treats meant that we had to shuffle things very carefully between them to get them under the weight limit. It took much longer than we’d hoped, but we still managed to get out in the afternoon to Goliatha Falls which we’d not been to before and which is very, very beautiful. Unfortunately for us it was super busy that day, but my mum got to clamber about all over the rocks and utterly terrify me.

Then our last full day we headed up to Cotele to see the gardens. While not the biggest or grandest gardens, they were definitely some of my favourites – being as they’re much more informal in their planting and the location provides for some really lovely views. On top of that it’s a rare National Trust property that I really would rather like to live in. Not all of it, that’d be far too much – but maybe a wing. NT – call me? ;)

We went with my mum and her husband out for a wander in the evening and during it, he pointed out something that we’d never noticed before. Kathryn had spotted that a slab of stone currently being used as a footbridge over a little beck looks like it was once carved with patterns, and we were chatting about whether it might once have been part of a grander building – maybe a church or an abbey that disappeared in the dissolution of the monasteries in 1530, or perhaps from some other grand building. And as we made our way up the hill, my mum’s husband pointed out that one of the dry stone walls on the walk was almost certainly part of something more… grand. While some of the wall looks like regular old Cornish dry stone wall, two sides and this particular corner are made up of much higher quality stonework, and the corner in particular is gently, but very evenly curved in the manner of the base of a tower or somesuch.

It’s fascinating because we’ve walked past it a bunch of times and had never noticed… we had noticed that the farm barn a little bit further down does feature at least one window that clearly came from something – maybe a clerestory window?

The next morning bright and revoltingly early we started our trek back across the country to the airport… it was, despite COVID a remarkably okay flight and we made it into bed about 24 hours after we got up tired and weary but glad to be back in our own home.

Well, fairly astonishingly, we did it. Not only did we do it, but we did it in time to get down and (thankfully) get the train back to our studio apartment.

After some debate, we decided to take Wainwright’s advice, and instead of just heading up to Burnmoor Tarn, which had been plan A, we instead took ourselves up through Low Holme, and the Miterdale Forest before making our way up to Whin Rigg and across The Screes, before creating Illgill Head and making the (it turns out) incredibly steep descent to Burnmoor Tarn.

By this point we were both pretty tired, but there’s no point to bring pretty tired nine hundred feet and a few miles from your destination. So down we went the rest of the feet, our feet complaining intermittently and my sodden five fingers squelching away (to be fair, they started squelching in the Miterdale Forest).

To our amazement we did the whole thing in about seven hours, which means we got to knock the last couple of miles off the walk by taking the train again from Dalegarth to Eskdale.

We did, however, opt to treat ourselves to dinner at The George IV pub, which was…pleasant. Not amazing, but solid pub food.