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A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 38 Bearthwaite Invests Even More in Itself

A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 38 Bearthwaite Invests Even More in Itself

“Nay, Lad that was fine. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in telling of the lives of ordinary working blokes, and those lads that died fighting that fire and in the explosion deserve to be remembered, and doubtless they were our kind of folk just trying to get by in a hostile world. We may not know their names, but there’s many a man here who tragically lost a mate under different but similar circumstances at work and will feel for them and their families and mates. It one of the reasons we meet here. Even Sasha tells the truth occasionally, though I’m not sure about Dave.” At Vincent’s final words there were hoots of laughter including from Dave.

Hannah and Hannah – The Bigger Girls

Hannah and Hannah – The Bigger Girls

However, as I said we got lucky, with pretty lacy trim, a lovely bow to enforce the dividing line between our conjoined state, and overall some delicious shades of coral. Not exactly pink you understand, there’re just enough shades of orange in there to make us truly distinctive and obviously of superior lineage.

A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 37 Alf’s Philosophies and Youtube

A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 37 Alf’s Philosophies and Youtube

“It’s not all bad getting old you know, John. The good thing about being an old bugger is youngsters just assume you know nowt, which in the case of stuff you don’t give a toss about is probably true, well it is for me any road, but for stuff that really matters, they know nowt and I do. I love dealing with ’em because I won’t play their games and they have to play mine. I haven’t figured out what an app is yet never mind a bloody widget, and don’t bother telling me because I won’t listen because I don’t care. Tell you lads dealing with youngsters is easy money.”

“How do you mean, Alf?”

“Well, while they’re busy doing a thousand quids’ [$1117] worth of damage to a car to rip out a hundred pound [$112] radio to sell on a car boot [yard sale] for a tenner [$11], I’m busy making a legit living out of them. They can’t rip me off because I only deal in cash and direct bank transfers, after I’ve rung the bank to make sure I’ve got the money of course. I only deal in owt that guarantees I get paid up front, cash or goods it doesn’t matter as long as I can tell it’s actually worth what they say it is. If there’s any doubt I won’t accept the deal. I don’t do credit unless it’s someone that lives here. I don’t have owt to do with anything that comes over a mobile phone or a computer, and I don’t give a monkeys how smart it’s reckoned to be. I don’t trust credit card transfers and I’ve never accepted cheques. Result is I’ve never had any bad debts.

Global Importers and Facilitators

“I’ll let you use the rooms upstairs rent free if you’ll hire LGBT+ folk, Mary. There are loads come in here who are highly qualified, but can’t get work despite the equal opportunity legislation. Many like you had decent paying jobs till their management discovered they were different. Make it clear you will hire anyone who can do the job. The LGBT+ are taking a chance just by breathing, for sure they’ll take a chance on a future job even if it means working for free for a while. Everyone that comes in here knows you got fired for being trans. They’ll be more than willing to help get some guaranteed discrimination free employment off the ground.” Mary who was acutely aware how it felt to be unfairly treated and how little it took to hurt someone who was already suffering decided to take Elsie’s advice, and so it started.

A Man of the Scriptures

Jacob was aware he was in for a grilling, but having grown up from birth under the influence of his parent’s synagogue he didn’t see it as a matter of defending his family’s beliefs rather as an opportunity to explain them to outsiders who rarely could be bothered to seek enlightenment.

A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 36 Changes Ancient and Modern

I think unless something happens soon to change his life significantly, something that gives him a place in life, a rôle, a purpose and some light at the end of the tunnel he’ll end up committing suicide before long. Such a mind set is dangerous in people who have kids they care about because their minds become so disturbed they often take the kids with them rather than risk them ending up in even worse circumstances. Keep that to yourself. None else who can’t reason it out for himself needs to know. His lack of self confidence and the fear he’ll lose the children is crippling him to the point of being barely able to function. Christ his whole life has been one unending pile of shite, whatever happens has got to be an improvement. A decent single bloke with no life experience worth a damn and even less self confidence who has clearly been reviled and abused all his life by women as well as men was given the custody of his sister and brother in law’s three orphaned kids because his parents are too old and his sisters already have a family and cant afford to take the kids in, and with no bloody support at all he was expected to cope playing mother and father both to the kids. He’s doing his damnedest, but what the f*** were the powers that be thinking of?”

Morgan and Strath

At birth Morgan’s parents had registered him as a boy and reared him as a boy for obvious reasons, he had a penis. His early life had in the main been happy, but after the age of thirteen his life had become lonely, hard on his nerves and his only constant companions had been hunger and cold. By the age of fifteen he was gender confused, although he’d never heard of the term, which was hardly surprising for that was when Murphy reappeared in his life, and visited him with the puberty Morgan had been expecting for a couple of years. Though Morgan wasn’t particularly surprised, and indeed was a little relieved, his problem was it wasn’t the event any one else would have expected, for menarche and breast development is usually associated with girls.

Is Gender Even Real Part One and Part Two

Part One
Yet again Lindsay was dreaming. The dream was strange but as usual vivid and sharply detailed. It seemed to involve being in a bed in a small room with numerous folk dressed in blue and others in white coats looking at inexplicable things that had moving patterns on them that seemed to almost but never quite constantly repeat themselves. They also looked at objects that made strange noises at regular intervals. Lindsay was aware that there were a number of tubes and white string like things seemingly connected to the bed. However, like many of Lindsay’s dreams it was neither totally rational nor totally consistent. Lindsay’s dreams made life a living torment, for dream and reality crossed over, blended and became each other. It was impossible to determine what was a dream and what was reality. Dreaming of dreams within dreams within dreams, and dreams even deeper nested than that, dreams like images in two mirrors facing each other that reached to infinity and drew one into insanity, meant Lindsay had no idea what being awake was like, for all such experiences were probably only dreams too.

Part 2
“I want you to come home with me. I am here to arrange it all. I know about carrying the message to engage the assassin to kill Tomas, and the new dresses made by Serena your fee paid for. I know you are really a girl. I know all about your new dresses and where you keep them. I know how you get past the guards dressing as a girl, but you won’t be able to do that for much longer will you? It will not be safe for you when the guards here discover that you have been tricking them. I said I want you to come home with me, but I want you as my sister, the girl you want to be. I know you wish to be able to read and write, and I can give you that and much more too.”

Shrink me no Shrinks.

Phyllis was cynical, perhaps with good reason, and considered the delegates and deliverers of the course to be a typical, left wing bunch with a disproportionate number of non whites, non binaries and generally professed anti establishment pedants, despite most being paid good, upper middle class salaries by the establishment which they were in truth pillars of. ‘Ah well,’ she’d thought, ‘It’s good to know that hypocrisy is still alive and kicking at all levels.’

It’s Rat. Tasty. Want Some?

“I know you. Fact is I know hundreds just like you. Gateshead wasn’t it. You were about to blow me in to Social Services weren’t you? Nosey busy bodies like you should learn to just mind your own business. I know you’ll blow me in because you’re a teacher and you have to. I don’t need Social Services and I don’t need you, your do gooder intentions, nor your sympathy. I’ve no intention of telling you or anyone else anything about me. Bye.”

A Lucky Man

I look at my skin which has lost of its elasticity of youth. I think about my long gone missing teeth and the dentures that have taken their place. My lost muscle tone and the tight buttocks that women told me were so attractive have long gone as have most of those women, for few women, never mind men, live to my age. At a hundred and five, despite my good health, and reasonable faculties, I am an old and decrepit man staring death in the face because my heart is finally giving way to time. I have at most three months left, and you can’t imagine how grateful I was to receive that information.

Is Gender Even Real Part One and Part Two

Part One
Yet again Lindsay was dreaming. The dream was strange but as usual vivid and sharply detailed. It seemed to involve being in a bed in a small room with numerous folk dressed in blue and others in white coats looking at inexplicable things that had moving patterns on them that seemed to almost but never quite constantly repeat themselves. They also looked at objects that made strange noises at regular intervals. Lindsay was aware that there were a number of tubes and white string like things seemingly connected to the bed. However, like many of Lindsay’s dreams it was neither totally rational nor totally consistent. Lindsay’s dreams made life a living torment, for dream and reality crossed over, blended and became each other. It was impossible to determine what was a dream and what was reality. Dreaming of dreams within dreams within dreams, and dreams even deeper nested than that, dreams like images in two mirrors facing each other that reached to infinity and drew one into insanity, meant Lindsay had no idea what being awake was like, for all such experiences were probably only dreams too.

Part 2
“I want you to come home with me. I am here to arrange it all. I know about carrying the message to engage the assassin to kill Tomas, and the new dresses made by Serena your fee paid for. I know you are really a girl. I know all about your new dresses and where you keep them. I know how you get past the guards dressing as a girl, but you won’t be able to do that for much longer will you? It will not be safe for you when the guards here discover that you have been tricking them. I said I want you to come home with me, but I want you as my sister, the girl you want to be. I know you wish to be able to read and write, and I can give you that and much more too.”

Changes Ancient and Modern

“However, back to the matter at hand. Nowadays, the matter of male and female is considered by the open minded to be a very broad multi dimensional continuum, a multi dimensional spectrum if you like, rather than two points at the opposite ends of a single dimensional line. However, the question I would love to have answered is at what point, and why, does a person of one apparent gender or perhaps that’s better expressed as one apparent identity, wherever they are on that multi dimensional spectrum, make the decision that they are in the wrong body, or indeed that they are in the right one? I’m asking what is the trigger mechanism that brings about that magical transformation? I know the matter is much more complicated than that, but you have to start somewhere. I am sure I’m not the only one who would like to know. I also suspect the matter to be deep, very, very deep.

This is an extract from A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale Ch. 36 Changes Ancient and Modern that is not yet ready for posting, but I considered it to be capable of standing alone as a solo tale perhaps of interest to those who have no interest in the GOM tales.

Honour Killings

The news was full of it. A trans girl had been tortured to death by her father, brothers and uncles in Lahore. What was so shocking to the civilised world was the men freely admitted their rôles in the matter and justified it by saying it was a matter of honour that the killing had had to take place. The prosecution case had been summarily dismissed and the men had walked free to virtually universal public acclaim in the Islamic world.

Germain and Marguerite

All of Frances’ theatre group, technicians as well as players, were agreed they should put on a production of her play as their next project when they’d finished putting on the ever popular ‘The Song of Solomon’ and after they’d had a few weeks rest. Helen the senior sound technician had said, “After all that blatant eroticism, the darkness of your work will be a challenging but interesting contrast, Frances. Angela will actually have to do some work next time.”

The last caused considerable laughter because Angela was the female wardrobe mistress, and most of the women and girls had been on stage for most of each performance at best scantily glad and more often wearing just stage make up.

Closure

Andrew’s clothes had just about reached the end of their useful existence when he found the four boxes of clothes in front of the bins. The holes in his shoes had been letting water in for some time, his jeans had more holes than material and his shirt was ripped to shreds as a result of a fight over some thrown out food he’d been eating. He’s lost the fight, the food and more significantly a lot of warmth due to his damaged clothing. The boxes of clothing contained items from a charity shop that hadn’t sold. After three months anything still on the racks was dumped to make way for newer stock. After ratching through the boxes all the way to the bottom, twice, he realised they only contained women’s and girls’ clothes. The solitary pair of foot ware in the largest box was a pink pair of girl’s trainers, [sneakers] but they fit him and were watertight. There were no jeans nor trousers of any description in the boxes.

Life had made the young Andrew cynical, and he suspected if they had their hands on him Social Services would naturally return him to his mother simply because it was the most obvious f*** up they could make.

A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 35 Just Wear a Mask

A good man is like a good malt, to be savoured and enjoyed in the evening and an exceptionally good one well into the early hours, but I reckon I’d be in serious trouble if I ever found myself enjoying either with breakfast.

A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 34 Harriet’s Steak & Kidney Puddings

“We went in, and answered all the usual questions Covid folk always asked concerning recent health. I noticed a sign on the door that said, ‘These doors are alarmed!’ I couldn’t help myself when I said to the bloke who was going to stab us. ‘Those doors are lucky. They aren’t going to be violated with anti-Covid vaccine. Me, I’m not just alarmed; I’m bloody terrified.’ Another jobsworth with either no sense of humour or no brains or possibly neither.

A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 33 Shopping

‘Use the best techniques and materials, Son. Old or new, it makes no odds, just stick with the best, but don’t take anyone’s word for anything; try them all for yourself. Smithcraft is the same as everything else, it’s full of charlatans. Make your own mind up.’

The Ends Preceded the Beginnings

It seems strange, even if it’s true, that the ends of our adult lives shall precede their beginnings.

The tragedy of it was it didn’t matter what Nixxi wanted to be, for she already was a girl and she had been since just after conception.

A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 32 The Bearthwaite Economic & Social Recovery Plan

“I like to tell stories, but mostly the only opportunity I have is to my grandchildren. I was surprised to hear that here is a place where adults gather to tell and listen to stories.”

“Aye well, there’s many a tale telt in here that would not be suitable for children to listen to. You could say some are definitely adult in nature.”

Gladys had heard what Pete had just said and added, “Some are definitely top shelf if not triple x-rated and probably not suitable for the ears of grown women never mind children, but boys will be boys even if they have turned eighty, and it’s a traditional barmaid’s obligation to keep the boys under control.”

Pete grinned and said, “My wife, as you probably gathered. What’s your name stranger? And where do you hail from?”

A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 31 Chinglish

Denis asked, “You any idea how lucky you are to have that girl, Pete? That older brother of yours must have been a complete f******g idiot abusing her to the point where living on the streets in Manchester was a better option than living with him. No bloke worthy of being called a man would do that to any kid never mind one of his own, no matter were they trans, nor anything else.”

All the locals and the regular Saturday evening drinkers knew Harriet’s story and she was a popular and well loved young woman. There were nods and sounds of agreement all around the room, before Alf summed it all up by saying, “She’s a sweetie, and my missus says she’ll be a brilliant mum the way she handles kids. Any news on the adoption front yet, Pete?”

Zizzie’s Zex Spectrum Shift.

Zizzie had been born in a body that indicated being a himm. Her medical advisors were of the opinion that as she went through fecundity, a second stage puberty that all the Kemainne folk experienced at about sixteen years of age, her body and face would become those of a femm. Zizzie was of the opinion they were just telling her what they thought she wished to hear and they didn’t really know what would happen.

The Reformation

“I remember Mummy finding me and giving me water to drink when even my muscles were silently screaming from thirst. As I desperately and gratefully gulped the water she asked, ‘What’s your name, Sweetie?’

‘I’m Billie,’ I replied when she took the canteen from me telling me I needed to drink just little sips, but to drink them often till I wasn’t thirsty any more. ‘I’m three and a half and I’m a girl. My birthday is the first of Christmas.’

“ ‘I see,’ she replied. I didn’t know what she meant when she said, ‘You come home with me, and I’ll make sure that you have everything you need, Billie.’ ”

Dmitrianakova the Player

It took even longer for it to be accepted that those rights did not give adults the ownership of their children, for they too had rights. That took away the right of parents to facilitate the practice of genital mutilation in the name of religion, and thankfully involuntary clitoridectomy, circumcision, and ‘correction’ of intersex conditions shortly after birth are now part of a barbaric past that makes all shudder in horror.

A New School for Ruth

Kelvin O’Reilly was a self made multi billionaire though virtually none were aware of his wealth for he didn’t have an opulent lifestyle, drove a thirty-five year old diesel Mercedes 300 because he liked it and was a self professed family man. Ruth was Kelvin’s sixth foster child and he was trying to adopt her.

A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 30 Yet Again Alf Surprises his Friends

The following Saturday evening in the taproom of the Green dragon the men hadn’t even sat down when Dave asked “I’ve seen the stuff unloaded in the brewery. So did it all go smoothly then, Alf?”

“Apart from Bill scaring the shit out of us by setting Harry alight with a gas axe a couple of times it went okay, Dave.”

Cross Dressing can be a Killer

“To me you seem to be a useless self serving member of the elite whose feet are well and truly on the necks of the oppressed poor. I am no bigot, so I reluctantly admit yes I have loved you for a long time. I say reluctantly because as things stand I find that shameful. You would have to convince me, and I shall give you every opportunity to so do, that you serve some useful purpose to the ordinary folk, or you become a part of my foolish past. A past I shall remember with fondness, but also with embarrassment.”

Nothing Makes Sense to me Any More

I, Georgia, who was born George, am doubtless like all others of my age. I have no problems with anachronisms and old word forms and grammar, but I find difficulty understanding modern speech forms, which I can’t help but regard as illiteracy. I accept that language changes with time, but I don’t like it, and I think poorly of those who use what I can not help but regard as stupidity. So, I’m no different from what older persons have ever been.

The Black Færie

“Oh dear! Where to begin, Child. The problem is most of us are woefully ignorant concerning the world of humans and little better concerning the world of Færie. In order to answer your questions concerning your ancestress the Queen I shall have to tell you much to correct your ignorance. So you shall have to be patient, Granddaughter.

Shelly

Margaret’s dad asked Shelly a few questions concerning her early life in the orphanage and on the streets. He asked concerning her relationship with Able, and in the end said, “You don’t have a problem. All you need is a solicitor to represent you when you apply to the court for permission to marry. A magistrate can overrule Social Services, but because they currently have custody of you they will have to be informed, and for sure they will be represented by a solicitor.

A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 29 Yasser Arafat, Slobodan Milosevic, Colonel Gaddafi

I mind playing with my gran’s sewing pins. She was a seamstress and used expensive, thin, steel pins, not the cheaper more common, thicker, iron ones that were used by virtually all women in those days. I’d been playing with them with a magnet and some had become magnetised. She’d complained to my dad, ‘I don’t know what that bairn of yours has put on them, but I’ve even scrubbed them with Ajax powder and still they stick together.’

Fly Free Little Angels

Robert Graham, Robby to his friends, was twelve rising thirteen. His early life had been horrendous. His step father pimped out his mother to buy the drugs they both used, and it would not have been wrong to say Robby had been subject to daily torture. His school friends had been appalled the first time they saw the scars and burns on his body when he was showering after playing football [US soccer].

Words Don’t Come Easy to Me

I’m a ninety-five year old man and my dream since early childhood had always been to be a teenage girl whom a kind, young man fell in love with. He wouldn’t have necessarily been handsome, wealthy or clever, just kind and someone who cared about me. My favourite song has for a long time been ‘Words Don’t Come Easy to Me’ by F. R. David, for it resonates with my soul in ways I have never understood.

Jacqueline and Nicholai

Jacqueline was a nuclear physicist born of a seventh generation Wasp American family. Nicholai was a Russian Orthodox, Siberian quantum physicist who met Jacqueline at an international conference at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore that summer. It was love at first sight with total mutual understanding of their personalities.

A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 28 Treated Like a Mushroom

Dave said, “I mind scavenging hedges for bottles as a kid. Most had three old pennies return on them, beer bottles and pop bottles were like that, but we thought we’d made a fortune if we found a cider bottle, because they had six old pennies return price on them.

We Recycle Everything.

It was a little unusual for a meeting of going on forty men and a couple of women to be held at a scrapyard, but naytheless they were there at Connaught’s Yard. The incongruously pretty and well dressed woman in four inch heels who opened the meeting was maybe in her early or middle twenties and despite her apparent ease with her anomalous surroundings she looked to be seriously out of place.

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