12 months 12 posts

2006 was my first full year of blogging, 12 months of stuff from my head transferred onto the web by the miracle of fingers.

As a bit of an early Christmas present I thought I'd share with you some of my favourite posts from the past year, one per month. Okay, so it's not much of a present, but it's nice sometimes to dust-off blog posts that deserve another airing.

Back in January I was in an equally reflective mood, which led me to try and sum up what transvestism is like for me. Reading it again just now, I still feel like that. I've probably dressed less this year than at any time since I first came out, and at the time I was worried that my lack of dressing would lead to a collapse of the cross-dressing "scaffolding" that was holding a lot of my life together, but that hasn't happened. Which is good.

February saw me featured in the premier organ for UK Transvestism, and having a little rant about some of it's more toe-curling features in Working on my Repartee. I popped up again later in the year, which of course meant buying another copy, which also made me squirm. I realise I'm probably not the target market for Repartee, but also I wonder if actually UK trannies get the special interest magazine they deserve.

In March I discovered that blog material can be found in the most unexpected places. Who would have thought that the remainders shelf in WHSmiths would be the source of material for probably my most popular blog entry yet: Conversational Ebonics? Sadly the freakish vanity publisher of "Off The Hook", Protea Publishing, is now defunct. Shame, I used to enjoy perusing their back catalogue!

Earlier that month I'd bought my first Apple Mac after 13 years in the Wintelness, and by April Apple had met me coming the other way by allowing Macs to boot in Windows mode. Something about "dual booting" chimed in my head with transvestism and led me to explain how to dual-boot your gender.

That's probably my favourite kind of blog entry: write about one thing (usually transvestism) by comparing it to something not obviously analogous. I'm not good at writing "straight" blog entries about what's happening in my life or how I feel about something, I need to filter it somehow. There's some good examples of that in May, and also an example of another favourite activity of mine: gently taking the mickey out of Siobhan other trannies, in Now a major motion picture.

Like a lot of trannies, Sparkle was occupying my mind in June. It's rapidly become the UK tranny scene event of the year, and a lot of t-girls have even started making their débuts there. I decided to let them know what they were letting themselves in for by producing a Sparkle Spotter's Guide. Of course, it can be also be used at Trans-mission, Angelic, the Way Out Club...

I had loads of fun in July writing this: Well , I'm enjoying myself, that's the main thing. The title kind of sums up my attitude to blogging really. I post something that I enjoy, and then hope that other people enjoy it too. It would be a lie to say that I blog purely for my own benefit, I like showing off my occasional bursts of cleverness to others. Why blog at all, otherwise?

2006 was the year of Tranny and TV, the silly little non-cartoon I did initially as a parody of the "Mac vs. PC" adverts, which evolved into something that threatened to take over my whole blog for a while. By August they'd started to really his their stride, with one of my personal favourites so far: Pneumatically-breasted Supermodel. I think I managed to get the timing of the last joke just right, which is a tricky thing when you're dealing with inanimate objects in a static strip!

By September Tranny and TV was sapping most of my creative juices, so much so that it's hard for me to choose a favourite non-T&TV post. I did manage to get uncharacteristically ranty about the masses of crap snaps that are the unfortunate by product of combining drunken trannies and digital cameras in dark and sweaty locations.

There was a apparently a resurgence in my tranny levels in October, if the number of pictures of me dressed up that month are anything to go by! I even managed to write a post that ticked all the boxes at once. How to make your own fetish PVC witch costume was humorous (well I thought so), informative (er, kinda) and featured pictures of me in a frock. Result!

Partly this blog has been a quest to answer the question "why?", and in November I nearly cracked it. And all it took was copious amounts of alcohol and a visit to Milton Keynes. I like that post, if only for the phrase "clutching desperately at slippery gobbets of meaning as they skitter giggling into the shadows", which I'd never have dared to use while sober.

If I worked purely by number of comments solicited, there could only be one favourite post in December: the one announcing my engagement to Jane (who has been helpfully plying me with dry roasted peanuts and wine while I compose this). But let's end on a festive note and remind you all of the true meaning of Christmas.

That's it. My year in a nutshell. Re-reading my blog to compose this has been strange. I've never kept a diary before, so being able to dip back into forgotten occurrences and lost states of mind has been a new experience. Enjoyable though.

Well, enjoyable for me. As always, if you also enjoyed it, that's just a bonus.

Merry Christmas everyone. Thanks for reading this year, thanks even more for commenting. Thanks for everything. I love you all. And that's not the wine speaking.

Although it might be the peanuts.