I happened to mention a couple of blogs ago about how I am to a certain extent using experiences and skills developed in the voluntary sector to help other girls, and how it shows that this girl’s beauty is far more than ‘skin deep. (Hence the choice of song!) However, I’m not claiming the credit, others have been fighting this particular ‘war’ for over 6 years! I am merely a latecomer and to a large extent a mere ‘foot-soldier’!

In the UK thanks to our National Health Service (NHS), and as transgenderism has been shown to be a recognized medical condition, we can now have our transitions fully handled and funded in this country. Brilliant, as I was left homeless and ‘broke‘ when my marriage collapsed! Maybe not as glamorous as a trip to Thailand, but the end result is the same!

Anyway I live in an area of the North of England called Calderdale, so when myself and my doctor decided that transitioning was the right thing for me, it was only natural that I was sent to the nearest Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) in Leeds. (There are several around the country.) Coincidentally, looking bat the way I am now that I am living full-time as a woman, transitioning is the healthiest decision I have ever made! Six months ago I visited the Leeds GIC expecting them to help me along my way to transition, but apart from my first visit where I was told that my disability wouldn’t stop my transition going a 70 mile round trip just for an unstructured chat, didn’t feel the best use of my (or anyone else’s) time. I later found out that I wasn’t the only one who felt the same, and that people had been campaigning for better care for years!

As examples of what is wrong with the service in Leeds, it is held in a mental hospital, and only this week it was discovered that, apparently, everyone who uses the clinic is put on the same mental health database as those who are ‘sectioned’ for mental health problems! Despite the fact that it could have affected my own transition, something needed doing, and I was lucky enough to be able to go to London to ‘lobby’ the Houses of Parliament in May! See the following for independent articles about what we were doing and why:
http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/Sexchange-group-to-lobby-MPs.5274416.jp
http://www.hsj.co.uk/news/primary-care/yorkshire-and-humber-sha-accused-of-grilling-gender-change-patients/5002198.article
http://christineburns.blogspot.com/2009/04/yorkshire-trans-folk-lobby-mps.html
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-12290.html#

Some of the replies to those articles may sound positive, but in all those months of going to Leeds, they never really told me what was happening or where and when I would move on to my dream!

Thankfully, our local council (Even the far-right British National Party) realized something was very very wrong and unanimously voted to change things, as did all our local Members of Parliament! But the Leeds GIC said they wouldn’t change, effectively totally ignoring the views of democratically elected representatives! However, on Tuesday night, at a meeting of the council, (who pay their bill) they finally agreed to change and care for us, the patients, but those who have been here for the past 6 years, remain to be convinced!! I was lucky enough to be able to speak too and asked why they never actually fully consulted those of us whose lives are directly affected about how they work? They manage to give a very evasive answer!

Anyway, at the meeting Claire, my close friend and the one who had been campaigning all those years, was able to reveal that Leeds had lost one of their patients due to their lack of care – me!!!!!!!! – and that I had already got an escape route planned (and paid for) by my local NHS! She said the look on their faces was priceless!!

But to me the main thing is that having heard and experienced for myself what was wrong with the system, I’ve been in a position to hopefully help make lifer a little easier for those girls yet to come!

Well what a day yesterday was! In my last blog I talked about feeling ‘pretty’. But just for the day I was actually a real photographic model! Hence my reason for the link to the Kraftwerk song, which again is a song I would never have sung about myself before!

This isn’t the subject I mentioned in my last blog when I said about helping other girls, but in another way yesterday should help others. The photo-shoot was for a brochure combating hate crimes against trans people. It was for an authority in the South of England, I live in the North, so I won’t be getting picked out on the street from the shots that were taken. I just hope Simon, the photographer, is allowed by the client to let us have some shots! (It will certainly ‘spice-up’ my photographic record of my transition if he can)

It was great to actually be fully made-up for the shots by a professional make-up artist. And it was brilliant to meet other trans people, both girls and guys. It always amazes me how close our stories follow each other, whatever way we are traveling on our journey.

It was glorious to be pampered and cared for, and to me best of all to know it could ultimately help others

(Sorry not blogged on LJ for a while or, worse still, replied to your blogs!! But I have some wonderful 'excuses/reasons' which I will blog about soon! I'll catch up on commenting soon too!)

To tell the truth this is not a song I have ever felt like singing to myself, or especially about myself, before! “Pretty” is not a word you could in any way shape or form use to describe my male incarnation!! But much to my surprise and amazement that appears to be what people are starting to see me as!! And friends are saying I positively ‘glow’ with good health and femininity, In many ways, to my mind what I find perhaps strangest of all is that I’m getting interest from men, and I like it! As a man I was always ‘straight’ and it appears as if that’s what I may well be as a woman! At least I certainly enjoyed getting kissed on the lips by men! Even if it was such a shock the first time to feel stubble against my lips!!

I used to suffer from a foul temper and my anger could just explode without warning!!! But now all is serene and troubles appear to just be things that happen to other people! Beginning my transition has done wonders for the depressions I used to suffer from too! As an aside, I’ll never forget the look on the psychiatrist’s face who was helping me through my mental problems, it was almost like seeing a light-bulb go on over someone’s head! Transitioning WAS the answer!

But best of all I’m using my experiences and skills developed in the voluntary sector to help other girls! I will try to blog soon a little of what I have been up to! It gives me such a kick and helps show that this girl’s beauty is far more than skin deep. Which I hope you’ll agree, is ‘pretty’ good!

It is not clear where that saying comes from, but as I am moving in that direction there is really no reason I shouldn’t follow the saying to the letter!! Until now ‘on-line’ and off my name has been Davinia. I had spent years thinking what to call myself, but when my daughter was born had given her my first choice of Imogen. So when I started to come out on-line I took an easy route to choose my name and ‘feminized’ my existing one! ‘David’ became ‘Davinia’! Very classy!! Or so I thought!!

However, Steph, a girlfriend of mine was asked by a girlfriend of hers if I was Trans as I had a name like ‘Davinia’. However’ as I was reasonably happy with the name and I was just using it on-line at the time, I really thought nothing of it, it was easier to stick with the name I’m known as on here than change it. And I don’t even know Steph’s friend, she knew Steph is trans so a friend (me) could well be trans too!

But what really started this girl wobbling about her name was a couple of weeks ago when I ‘came-out’ to a girl I’d known for at least 30 years and told her my choice of name! Straight away, without a moment’s hesitation she said “Don’t use that! Change it! It sounds like a drag queen!!” And that is one thing I never ever want to be seen as!! She also said if I stuck with Davinia she’d never speak to me again! But I wasn’t too worried about that! No, what worried me more is very shortly I will be legally changing my name as part of my transition, and after that it would start to get very expensive and complicated to keep legally changing my name as often as I change my mind!!!

So I ‘did me some thinking’ and that’s another good thing about becoming a woman! Unlike men they do actually think!! The name I am now going to be is ‘Catherine Louise Hilton’ shortened to ‘Cate’ if you want although I will answer to ‘Cathy’ or even ‘Oi! You!’ if needed! (lol)

When I told my mother what my legal female name will be, she was ‘over the moon’ as if I had actually been born a girl my name would have been Catherine!

May I apologize if I lose touch with any of you girls who have been friends over the past year as I change my name on blogs etc. My new e-mail address is catherine.hilton@ymail.com by the way! But I guarantee having used my woman’s prerogative once I won’t be using it to change my name ever again!!

Since I finally ‘slid off the fence’, after all those years of self-hatred and depression, and made THE decision there is one thing that has totally amazed, astounded and above all delighted me! I suppose it’s because all our lives are moving in the same direction, although that is a ‘very flat’ way of describing the most fabulous and fantastic life-journeys any human being could ever under take! But over the past year I have made friends with some of the most fantastic girls anyone could ever hope to meet, both on-line and in person.

As I live ‘out in the sticks’ and not in a big city it’s not as easy as I would like to meet other girls in person, and especially when I first ‘came-out’ to myself it was difficult to know where to go to meet others, and more importantly talk with them! So first of all I started to get to know and ‘talk’ to girls on-line, including those across ‘the pond’. And I found I could easily spend hours ‘chatting’ to girls who I now hope we will be friends for life! We had such a lot in common that while we may not have been physically talking, our fingers certainly were!

But when it came to actually getting to know other girls who I’d initially met on-line I was simply amazed how well we could just, well, talk! As a man I was always a little shy and quiet, but now when I meet up with girlfriends there is just no stopping me!! Indeed the animal cruelty people may have issued a warning against me as it appears I can now ‘talk the hind legs of a donkey!’ (lol)

Whatever else happens in my life, and I hope it is going to essentially be good, I consider it a privilege indeed to have been able to get to know such wonderful girls and more importantly enjoy the ‘girl talk!’

“As you sow so shall you reap” It may be a phrase from the bible but as I have started to ‘come out’ to those I know the truth of the phrase has hit me so hard! All my life I have been a warm caring individual which looking back on things I suppose were essentially feminine traits in a ‘macho’ world!

But when the truth of the biblical phrase really hit home was as I came out separately to my two sons. I came out to Robert, my youngest son first. As he is in the army and is not home so often, I thought that me telling him my future as a woman would turn him totally away from me, him being involved in want is often still a man’s world. Then I came out to Andrew me eldest son, he’s almost 21 and at college. With both of them I have not had as much contact as I would like since I was kicked out of thw family home in 1999 to make way for their mother’s police inspector boyfriend! However, I can only be the seed of goodness, understanding, and well love, I planted in them at an early age that made them so accepting of my dream. They both said that all that really mattered was my happiness! (Awwwww! I could almost cry!)

I have now ‘come out’ to well over 30 people in my hometown and until now have had only one negative response, but that could be due to where I came out to her, it was in a supermarket!!

I just hope and pray that people continue to be so accepting, and based on the seeds of love I have planted here most just might be!

The guy above is covering a song by the great singer songwriter, Billy Bragg. Sadly I cannot find a video of Billy himself singing 'Valentine's Day is Over.

The song contains what to me is a wonderful line which is, "God didn't make you an angel, the Devil made you a man!" To me that sums up how I often feel. How did I end up this mess of a man? I am taking steps to rectify this, but according to 'Right-wing Christians' we appear to be going against the will of their God!

If we blame the Devil will there totally unfounded hatred cease?

Just a thought.
----------------------------------------
'Valentine's Day is over' lyrics

Some day boy you'll reap what you've sown
You'll catch a cold and you'll be on your own
And you will see that what's wrong with me
Is wrong with everyone that
You want to play your little games on
Poetry and flowers pretty words and threats
You've gone to the dogs again and i'm not placing bets
On you coming home tonight anything but blind
If you take me for granted then you must expect to find
Surprise, surprise
Valentine's day is over, it's over
Valentine's day is over
If you want to talk about it well you know where the phone is
Don't come round reminding me again how brittle bone is
God didn't make you an angel the devil made you a man
That brutality and economy are related now i understand
When will you realise that as above so below there is no love
For the girl with the hour glass figure
Time runs out very fast
We used to want the same things but that's all in the past
And lately it seems that as it all gets tougher
Your ideal of justice just becomes rougher and rougher
Thank you for the things you bought me thank you for the card
Thank you for the things you taught me when you hit me hard
That love between two people must be based on understanding
Until that's true you'll find your things
All stacked out on the landing, surprise, surprise

Well this is confession time, yet again I’m afraid!! I have been a very naughty girl in putting my own desire to own a ‘flash’ pair of knee-high boots above almost everything else!!! All through my life I have always put others first, but just for once this was something I wanted, just for me! Well, actually for Davinia, but you can imagine what I mean!

I’d spotted a pair of boots on the WWW.mangus.com website. I’m (UK) size 11 and I thought that finding a pair in my size -a pretty tall order. Speaking of ‘tall-orders’ as I’m six feet tall in my stocking feet, I avoid heels to blend in with genetic women height wise. I’d love to be dancing around like the girls around Nancy Sinatra in the video, but health problems mean I’d probably break my ankle in those heels!

When I first started looking for the boots, I got the terminology wrong and put out a message in the community asking for thigh high leather boots rather than the knee high ones. I bet some girls though I was very kinky, speaking of which if you’ve not seen it I can thoroughly recommend the movie, ‘Kinky Boots’! It’s about a shoe factory in the Midlands that starts making boots for TG and CD girls to stay in business.


The boots actually cost more than any other item of clothing I had ever bought for myself in my entire life! But wearing them something special comes over this girl. There is a saying that, “If the shoe/boot fits wear it!!” Wearing these boots makes me feel like a real woman, literally from the ground up! I almost don’t want the Spring and Summer to arrive so I can wear them the whole year round! Ah well, Summer will soon be on it’s way and maybe I’ll then be able to regale you with another shoe story! Speaking of which …….........

So here it is, with just about two hours to go, this girl’s final blog of 2008! At least that is how much of the year we have left in England as I type! But what a year 2008 has been for me! One topic simply dominates my whole year. The final realization that it truly was a case of do or die! To grow old, bitter and twisted having kept the girl I has known I really am hidden away to die in the shadows or to let her finally fly free?

Over thirty years of keeping Davinia hidden and indeed getting married and having a family to make sure she would not suddenly appear had caused me decades of psychological problems. Which as you may have read were aided and abetted by my ex, who despite the overall subject of this blog I will continue to call Phoebe (meaning Psycho Bitch from Hell)

I could go on and on about the frankly appalling things Phoebe did, not just to me but to our children, but the past is indeed fading as my bright feminine future beckons and like Orlando in the clip above ‘I am learning to let go of the past. And my ‘feminine’ life is really just beginning!!

Sadly I cannot remember who posted the Orlando clip in one of her blogs earlier in the year, but I thank her from the bottom of my heart! It is one of those movies I SIMPLY HAVE TO SEE!!! If I understand the film at all the story is about ‘Orlando’ (Tilda Swanson) who is effectively transgendered and lives through centuries from Elizabethan times to the present day. The scene above from the film includes the song ‘Coming’ by Jimmy Somerville which includes the lyric |I am a woman and not a man!” Which is the verse that now perfectly fits my life! Especially as I know I really have jettisoned the past and my feminine future is at my beautifully manicured fingertips!! (OK, so I’m still biting my fingernails, but the positive thinking really changed my life last year, maybe it will improve my nails this!!)

Over the past few months, you may have noticed, my blogs have become less and less frequent! This is because I have been becoming more and more concerned, well to be honest, depressed, about the fact I had heard nothing at all about my transition. I was told it would be six months after coming out to my doctor before I would have an appointment at the gender clinc. Last Friday when I finally attended the Gender Clinic in Leeds it was over nine months since I first saw my doctor. And having suffered from anxiety and depression for at least the past ten years, they were becoming stronger and stronger feelings in my mind again.

The euphoria I had felt at finally revealing the ‘BIG’ secret about myself after well over 30 years, of hiding it away from everyone had turned into endless worry and thinking that as I had now been diagnosed with Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis (MS), my Primary Care Trust would look to save money by refusing to allow my transition!! It was obvious to me at least, in the depressed state I was rapidly traveling towards, that my dream was destined to die on a December day in Northeast Leeds!!

However, life was about to teach me the ultimate lesson in how good things can and do happen to me, not just to other people! And how important it is to remember something of the ‘power of positive thinking’! To open our minds as widely as possible to reveal the whole wide ‘blue sky’ with all it’s beauty and wondrousness.

I am calling it the ultimate Christmas present a girl could ever hope to receive, as at the gender clinic it was revealed that funding had been awarded for at least the first year of my transition, and if they were paying for my transition to start there was no way they would or could leave me in a ‘no-man’s’ (or woman’s) land. Also if they refused to allow me to transition because of MS it would be the very worst kind of disability discrimination.

So after all these years of running away from the woman I am I am finally in line to truly become her!!!

To all my girlfriends all around the world! I've just recived the ultimate Christmas present and will Blog about it soon:

This weekend I went down to visit a very good girlfriend of mine Steph, who lives in the South of England. We were going for a ‘Girls Night Out’ at Pink Punters a Trans friendly bar/nightclub near Milton Keynes. (If interested their website is at http://www.pinknet.co.uk/index.php ) The night was brilliant by the way!

Any way the point behind this posting is some news Steph had read on-line about my local Health Authority, Calderdale. We both belong to the same Yahoo Group. I had set off too early to get the news myself, if I had checked my e-mails, but the news Steph had brought should have an amazing effect on my life!

I’m in Great Britain and due to my personal financial situation I am so grateful that or National Health Service will in effect pay for my transition. But I ‘came-out’ to my doctor about nine months ago when he said I would be referred to the gender clinic within six months. Three months further on and I still have not heard a thing despite my doctor almost getting ‘fed-up’ with me pestering him about my referral to the Gender Clinic.

Calderdale has had some recent issues in how they treat the Trans community which are being addressed by a marvelous trans lady, Claire Eastwood.

I’ve had some depressive issues in the past and the delay in anything happening was getting me down to say the very least!! The news Sterph had read is copied below:
======================================================
Calderdale PCT have asked that individual enquires about accessing GID
services in Calderdale in the first instance be directed not to the
PCT but to Jonny Glenn who is a mental health worker and liaison
between the PCT and the local trans community.

The designation of a full time liaison worker is just one on the
reforms of GID care in Calderdale and it is a measure that I support.
For the past four years Jonny as been closely involved in the campaign
to reform the local GID service. His remit is to advise on access to
local services and referrals to consultants also to report to the PCT
problems relating to the quality and access to care both pre and post op.

He his available from 9 to 5 five days a week. On 01422 281325 or
jonny.glenn@ swyt.nhs. uk
======================================================
It appears as if I may be on my way to getting the best present I could ever get in time for Christmas!!

May I begin by apologizing for the rather obscure reason for stating this blog with ‘Pass the Dutchie’ by Musical Youth from the 1980s. A duchie is actually a cannabis joint, however a ‘duchy’ is also the name given to a rather large property portfolio owned, by an ‘accident of birth’, by a certain Charles Windsor. He’s better known as Prince Charles and the Duchy of Cornwall, which he controls, is one of the largest landowners in Britain, it includes large tracts of London, (See http://www.duchyofcornwall.org/aroundtheduchy_london.htm if you are interested) lots of which I walked past on this particular evening.

Anyway on with my blog! This is more about the simply stunning weekend I spent with Lexy in London. You could say that in a city of over 7 million people, all busy getting on with their own lives, I could have passed as a woman even with 3 days growth of beard, hairy legs and a wearing floral frock (dress), but it was wonderful to be out and about in amongst so many people and not once did anyone raise an eyebrow! After all those years of furtively dressing and almost purposely avoiding people whilst dressed, Davinia was finally out and proud of whom she really is.

On the Saturday night we went to a Trans event at the glorious Art Deco Bloomsbury Ballroom (See http://www.bloomsburyballroom.co.uk/) where there were trans girls and boys of every description. To get there and back was a bus ride across London followed by a walk along Oxford Street, one of the busiest streets in the capital. Lexy and I laughed and chatted like the best of girlfriends and to the rest of the world that must have been exactly how we appeared. It was so empowering to realize that I can successfully be and appear as a woman almost whatever the circumstances. Lexy had described the weekend as “Davinia’s Big Coming-out Weekend” and after the ‘genie’ had been let out to play I knew there was no going back. Not that I would ever want to, especially now I knew I do really pass as a girl!!

If ever a simple weekend away really changed someone’s life, this one did, and I will be eternally grateful to Lexy and Jo!

Far be it from a British girl to tell her sisters how they should vote on November 4, but I think the entire world is praying for a certain result when the polls close. It's 3.30 am as I type this, I couldn't sleep, then when I saw this video I just had to post it or a certainly would have had no chance of any sleep tonight at all!

In some ways it is a shame to have to say the song is written by a British man, Dave Stewart - who used to be in the Eurythmics - but looking at the famous faces in the video the rest of the world's prayers for the election may just be answered!!

I just love the song and the video. Hope you do too!!

It was only really, I suppose, a peck on the lips to a good looking and positive middle-aged lady, (That’s me actually!!) but whilst in London we went to the Star and Garter in Bromley! Their website is at:
http://home2.btconnect.com/starandgarter/

We had a brilliant evening getting to know people and exploring the London ‘scene.’ But what really opened my eyes to myself and my sexuality was as we made to leave I got a deep hug and a kiss from one of the men we had been talking to!! I said in an earlier blog, that I had always thought I would be ‘straight’ depending on the sex I was presenting in!! And now I know for sure!!

That ‘fellow’ won’t realize it but his respect for this girl has in many ways changed and reaffirmed my life choices. Showing me, as if I didn’t realize (!!!) that I really am a girl, and want nothing more than to spend the rest of my days as a woman!!

This might all sound good and exciting, but there was just one real problem!! The kiss felt fantastic!! But he mustn’t have had a shave for a couple of days! So while even the kiss from a man was a new and exciting experience in this girl’s life, a mouth full of moustache was NOT something I expected at all!!

I said earlier that I was fortunate enough to enjoy a weekend in London last month which totally changed my life, moving from a small town girl to a woman comfortable in herself surviving and almost thriving in one of the World’s major capital cities. (Even if it was just for a long weekend)

I was there at the invitation of a friend I had met on-line at least nine months ago and had never actually spoken to other than on My Space. I knew she was a special lady and she evidently thought the same about me, otherwise this visit would never have occurred.

It was Lexy’s suggestion that we should meet up and get some real ‘girlie’ photographs done. And also attend a special trans event where there would be hundreds of other girls all having a great time and exploring their own femininity.

There were many highlights of the weekend, but to me the most special was one of the simplest – to be able to spend time getting to know and love a fellow ‘traveler’.

The area I actually live in does have something of a trans community, but to a large extent it appears to stay somewhat hidden. Although after this weekend I will begin to fully explore the Manchester scene, which is less than an hour’s drive away from where I actually live.

However, to learn how alike Lexy’s life experiences had been to mine and discover her dreams of the future at first hand was a privilege I found simply priceless. That’s where the Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder track come in, until that weekend we had been ‘Together in Electric Dreams’ building a friendship and dreams on-line, but the weekend brought all those dreams and, in me at least, turned what had been just a dream into a profound reality!

As Bobby Mcferrin sang "Don't Worry, Be Happy". I discovered this evening that that is really the only way to LIVE!! For weeks if not months I have being getting wound up in worries, thanking 'what if this happens?', 'will that stop me transitioning?', 'what's the point in transitioning as I'll be dead next week?'

Anyway tonight I had a long chat with my neurologist, who of course gave me his expert opinion. And the good news is that I finally have it straight from an experts mouth that I have no need to worry and I can be happy!!! AND I AM!!!

He did say that at 45 I may be getting to old to transition, so of course I immediately went into worry mode, but I know of many girls who have transitioned at an older age. So I can straight away stop the worry, and be happy!!! It is just possible that oestrogen may make the multiple sclerosis (MS) worse but I am more than prepared to run the risk!! There were, of course, several other questions i asked him about my MS and how to lessen the symptoms, but more than anything I feel like I have another 'expert witness' to give my case for transition when things start moving forward.



On the way back the sun was setting over the gorgeous Lancashire Country side; the hospital itself is in a former stately home, set in 200 acres of parkland, overlooking the River Ribble; the view outside the car was magnificent, but the way I felt inside was unbelievable: I couldn't help but sing:

Well, tomorrow should be one of those days for this lady over here in England! I know I worry too much, but ever since I developed Multiple Sclerosis (MS) I have deep down believed that my dreams of womanhood were dead! Phoebe took almost all the money I had in our long and painful divorce, and I am now officially disabled thanks to the MS, so paying for my transition would be simply a distant dream. (Unless, of course. my mother drops dead, but I'd rather have her around for quite a while longer!!)

Thankfully, in Britain the National Health Service (NHS) do pay for the physical part of becoming a woman, but my worry has always been that to save the Health Service money, they will say that the MS will make transitioning impossible for me. They could say, for example, that the surgery will make the MS far worse!

That's why seeing my neurologist tomorrow evening will be so important, and why it will be one of those 'days' which can change your entire life for good or bad. I think as the expert on MS he will say no problem, but I cannot be sure until he gives the OK, but I long to be able to drive home singing:

(The first video is by the late great Kirsty McColl, the second is from The Kinks back in 1969. Ray Davis the lead singer wrote the song)

I'm sorry to my American Sisters, especially the Republican ones, but a piece of news I saw on the BBC website worries me a little ... well a lot(!!) about the girl who next month could be just a heart beat away from the presidency of the richest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen!! The presidential candidate is 72 so the chance of it happening would be far higher than usual!

The full article is at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7653938.stm

The headline and first paragraph says:
-----------
Palin case employees to testify

Mrs Palin denies that she abused her position to settle a personal feud
A group of Alaskan state employees have agreed to testify at a probe into alleged abuses of power by Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.
-----------

Is it the way the light from America is twisted on its journey across the Atlantic or something deeper (And I don't mean the ocean) but do the ethics of some senior politicians leave more than a little to be desired? Thinking back to hanging 'chads' and the way someone's brother removed thousands of potential voters from a key state?

The song title and the title of this blog goes back to the 1919 baseball world series scandal where "On the second day of Shoeless Joe Jackson's testimony, as reported by the New York Times, a group of small boys were gathered at the courtroom entrance. One asked, "It isn't true, is it, Joe?" He responded, "Yes, boys, I'm afraid it is." By the time this report reached the west coast, it had become:

"Say it ain't so, Joe!" "

'Field of Dreams' is a brilliant film, one of this girl's favourites. but I've always wondered why you have something called the 'World Series' when only America plays baseball?

Well OK so my North American geography may not be that hot, but ain't Alaska and British Columbia both areas of almost unspoilt natural wilderness which have been that way for centuries?

Come next month one of them may be invaded by lumberjacks chopping down trees and hanging around in bars. If the Republican's follow their plans through, the Alaskan Wilderness is likely to be decimated in the search for oil if they are elected.

In case you're wondering the chief lumberjack above is Michael Palin. I'm pretty sure he's no relation to a VP candidate, so all in all this is probably the most obscure blog I have ever done! And I've posted the song as the final verse may mean so much to so many of us!!