Helen

Another long truancy from LJ. (Thank you for the nudge.) There are reasons.

I'd meant, according to custom, to post pictures from Japan, where I went over Easter with daughter and daughter's boyfriend, a repeat of last year's excellent "once in a liftetime" trip. However, as I connected to WiFi at arrivals in Haneda it was to find that, while I was in midair, the Supreme Court had decided that I was no longer a woman — although, only when I was in the UK, and only for the purpose of the Equality Act 2010. I remained a woman for the purpose of case law and other legislation. This ruling was welcomed on all sides as bringing "much needed clarity", and was followed by a bunch of organisations and institutions, who had clearly been eager for the opportunity, to show just how creative they could be in finding ways to stigmatize, mock, humiliate and endanger trans people.

We had a great time in Japan, and I'd love to say that brooding on all this didn't cast the slightest shadow on the experience of exploring Tohoku. It did, though.

I think that our three days in Sendai, which included day trips to Matsushima Bay (praised by Bashō in perhaps the laziest haiku ever written, but I can't blame him) and the mountain temple of Yamadera (which, being Englished, means 'mountain temple') were particular highlights for me. I'll put some pictures in a future post.
But throughout, I was dreading the Ovidian metamorphosis that would apparently overtake me on touching down at Gatwick. Tiresias is said to have changed sex after accidentally encountering two snakes copulating. In my case the snakes were (metaphorically, I add, in case any lawyers are reading) J.K. Rowling and Kishwer Falkner, one of whom funded the SC case while the other took the decision and origamied its ramifications into something several times their original size.

Anyway, I've no wish to go over that here, either. I did discuss some aspects of the decision and its fallout over on Medium — and you're very welcome to read it.

Overall, this has not been a great year so far. In January my job (along with that of my colleagues in other Humanities departments) was placed under threat, largely because STEM subjects have failed to recruit enough of those lucrative foreign postgrads on which the UK higher education sector depends — a fall-off prompted in turn by the Government's Reform-appeasing decision to place onerous restrictions on such students' visas. The redundancy threat was later withdrawn, but there's a distinct 'never glad confident morning again' mood at my institution, as at others. It's hard to feel valued in such circumstances.

Then, my brother had a major stroke, which has left him (for the moment at least) in a rehab facility, and almost immediatley afterwards my cat died (admittedly she was 18, but still). The roof and top floor ceilings of my house and those of my neighbours need to be entirely replaced, which will be extremely disruptive and necessitate about 5 months of all-over scaffolding, starting this Monday. All of this was happening against the daily background of slaughter in Gaza and elsewhere, a laughably principle-free government at home and a deranged one in the States. So, one way and another I've had better years.

There's plenty of good stuff too, though — and next time I'll be more cheerful!