TV Dreams

What an amazing evening!

Coco mooted the idea of a regular dinner party at her country home near Melton Mowbray before Christmas, and as is her way it had to be executed properly.

The response to the idea was enthusiastic and steps were put in place to organise what can only be described as a fabulous evening. We dined in the oak room on a table for 12, which was bought specially at auction for these dinner parties.

The menu:

• Homemade Stilton soup – I can’t abide blue stilton and loved it.
• Smoked salmon and caviar
• Raspberry sorbet
• Chicken main course
• Chocolate Tart
• Cheese and biscuits
• Port

All courses were presented to a very high standard by Robert, the chef, with Coco, Natasha and myself waiting at table.

Each course came with an accompanying wine from Coco’s cellar and I can only say she didn’t stint in that department. We drank out of Edinburgh crystal and I’m now regretting not taking a few photos of the table layout – next time.

They were a lovely group of people, a mixture of old and new acquaintances and the conversation flow kept up with that of the wine and port.

Everyone had either gone to bed by 2am or left to go home. Coco, Natasha and I retired to the drawing room to mull over how it had all gone with Coco insisting I finish off the remaining bottles of bubbly. An onerous task – not. :)

We finally retired to bed at just gone 5am whereupon I’m advised that I fell asleep on contact with the pillow. That may be so, but out of the three of us I was the only one up at 8.30am helping Robert to clear-up what little remained of the glassware form the night before. That and seeing guests were provided with a continental style breakfast before departing by 10am.

Would I do it again? I’ve already put my name down on the list for the one in April as there’s only a maximum of 10-12  places available.

BNO Christmas Meal & Party - Pictures courtesy of Gabby

Merry Christmas everyone!

Had a lot of fun getting out and about this last month. First off was the Christmas BNO meal at The Bridge Inn, Fenny Stratford, just along the road from Pink Punters.

The meal was average, not bad but not brilliant. The company was fabulous though. One side of me was BNO veteran, Victoria Elizabeth, and on the other two BNO virgins. :) They certainly picked a good month for their debut.

Of course, no tale of me going out would be complete without a confession as to my fashionable lateness of arrival, although Gabby did play a helping hand what with popping round to the neighbours to hand back something she’d borrowed and to ask if they liked her outfit – given the neighbours weren’t aware of her penchant for dresses it could’ve been quite interesting, but other than the bloke saying, “I was wondering about that.”,  the revelation passed off quite uneventfully. I dunno, they don’t make sensations like they used to. That was the shortened version BTW. Oh, and I wore a blue cocktail dress  (£10 clearance item) and my gorgeous black and white peep toe court shoes, both from BooHoo.com

Next, we had to pick up Rhondda (Gabby’s other half) who’d never been to BNO before. Hey, she’s one really cool, beautiful lady – Gabby’s one lucky individual. Anyway, that’s why we were running late.

BNO itself was very busy and I had a really fabby time talking to loads of girls I knew including some I didn’t – Hi Rachel – she’s so sweet. As usual, the time flew by. Gabby had taken Rhondda home as she had a terrible cold and had to be up in the morning, but Gabby returned to party on.

Bumped into Coco, chatted and boogied a bit – whilst various men looked on (or so Coco said) no doubt with their minds full of unfulfilled wishes. Coco also accused me of being an outrageous flirt although I’ve no idea where she gets that notion from.

Fabulous evening, or should that be morning? Got to bed at 05:35, eek.

That Red Dress

And last Friday I did a photoshoot with Nat at Coco’s Club in the afternoon and stayed on for the party. Perhaps a bit of lethargy crept in as I had to be cajoled into frocking up. Wore my red dress – you know, that red dress (hint – look to your right). I’m a bit reticent to wear it these days as I seem to be instantly recognisable. I do love it though.

There were only about a dozen of us there. I guess the weather and the fact that it’s so close to Christmas kept the numbers down. Still, quality not quantity – that’s wot I say.

I’ll be taking a break now ’til the New Year, but I think 2010 is going to be a bumper year for me – watch this space.

Enjoy your festivities and hope to see you soon. :)

Copyright 2009. Marta Gornicka.

As you’ll see from yesterday’s post I had a photoshoot in the city of London or as near as as we wondered from Brick Lane to Bishopsgate Churchyard.

The picture here was taken while we were trying to track down The Bath House restaurant. The light was coming from a high-rise office block and made some striking patterns on the walk way.

Picked this one as my favourite – may be there’ll be more to come. Hopefully, the ones Marta took with a Hasselblad in the cafe on Brick Lane will be useable, we’ll see. Having met Marta once I’d be very happy to repeat the exercise again when there’s more available light.

Again, if anyone’s interested in doing a male/female shoot with Marta she’d love to hear from you – see previous post for more info. her email addy is marta [dot] gornicka [at] gmx [dot] de and her website is at www.martagornicka.de although it’s just a holding page at the moment.

Thanks again, Marta.

BTW,  jacket, dress, clutch-bag and shoes from www.boohoo.com

Tomorrow, I’m off to Coco’s to reccy her place for photo opportunities. As some may know, Vanessa and I had embarked upon a makeover and  photoshoot venture a few months before she landed a job in the Royal Navy.

That meant I lost the venue for the shoots. But now it’s looking like Coco’s country residence will make a fantastic alternative, and I’m so excited about the possiblities.

There’s five bedrooms with four-poster beds (the genuine articles) a large drawing room, an oak-panelled room with a log fire and there’s the garden, too.

So, if you’d like a photoshoot, and appreciate the finer things in life then why not drop me a line and we’ll take it from there.

It all started less than a week ago when I checked out the Transmission website, which has been dormant for quite a while.

I never did get to any of their monthly club nights even though I promised myself I would. It definitely had a buzz about it and I was more than a little disappointed when I heard of its demise.

So I guess I keep coming back just to make sure there hasn’t been a re-launch. This time round I spotted something on the ‘latest news’ page. An ad from a female fashion photographer wanting to photograph transvestites and drag queens for an art project. Sounded quite interesting so I dropped her an email.

The long and short of it was I drove down to London yesterday to have a photoshoot with her. A photoshoot with a bit of a difference – for me anyway. First off, Marta wanted shots of me in the same location (it turned out to be a cafe in Brick Lane) in male and female mode.

I was going to have to think on my feet, because I wasn’t sure about her suggestion that I could change in the cafe’s loos. Back peddling a bit, it was a nightmare finding parking and I was half-an-hour late for our 3pm meeting, which meant the light was failing fast.

We did find a cafe, went in, and although they hadn’t opened yet Marta persuaded the woman behind the bar to let us use the seats by the window – we needed all the light we could get. Marta got her shots of me in male mode first off, then I took my bag downstairs to the loos.

Thinking the lesser of the two evils would be the Ladies to change in and do my make-up I set to. I used the washbasin, which fortunately had a good-sized mirror, but the light was pretty grim.

Just as I started to apply foundation a very pretty, long-haired blonde girl walked in and got the shock of her life. Asking one of those really obvious questions to which she knew the answer to almost before the words left her lips, she asked me if I was putting make-up on, duh.

Quickly explaining there was a photographer upstairs waiting to take some shots of me in a dress she smiled and said, “Cool.” And then carried on. Nice one.

I threw the slap on praying I hadn’t done too bad a job it, then shut the cubicle door and got changed. In under half-an-hour I was ready and returned to the ground floor.

It was quite enjoyable sitting in the window watching people looking at me as they passed, and for once I was chuffed not to have spotted a single look of recognition of me as a guy. Did I say it was getting dark?

Just for the camera geeks, Marta was using a HasselBlad 500c. Unfortunately, she’d chosen colour film and I’d loved to have seen black and white shots, but never mind. She also took a few with a poloroid and finally a Canon 20D.

We didn’t have much time where light was concerned with the Hasselbladd, so she didn’t waste it, and we were soon on our way. I was going to a muggle meeting discussing issues about identity afterwards and suggested Marta could come too if she wanted to, and she agreed.

We walked to the car park to get rid of my bag then made our way back to Bishopgate, with Marta using the digital camera to get more shots of me in the street. We were looking for Bishopsgate Churchyard. If you ever need to find it allow an extra hour, it’s buried deep in high-rise territory. The meeting was taking place at the Bath-House restaurant, but we’d arrived half-an-hour before they were officially open, so we went for a short walk.

Marta wanted to know why they didn’t just offer us a drink and let us wait there. I explained the UK licencing laws, which she found quite amusing as she wasn’t aware of the equivalent Polish laws. Anyhoos, we wondered around the churchyard, Marta taking yet more pictures before we found a seat and she told me abit more about what she’s doing here in London.

Having got a BA (or the equivalent) in photography she came to London two months ago to start an MA in Photography. She’d already got to know transvestites and drag Queens in Poland (where they have a very much harder time) and she has this desire to put together an exhibition to be displayed hopefully in London and Germany. It’s going to take about a year to complete, and I’m one of the first few she’s photographed. She’s aiming to shoot a collection of 100 TG people so she’s looking to shoot two people per week. I’m guessing she has a fascination for the TG community and was very easy to get on with, in no small part due to her excellent english-speaking skills.

We returned to the restaurant, settled down and ordered drinks. Shortly after that, Michelle Newell, the organiser of the evening, arrived and introduced herself. People started drifting in and most people introduced themselves to me and didn’t bat an eyelid.  Once the guest speaker, Clive Carswell, a psychoanalyst and counsellor, arrived the meeting started.

Clive talked from a psychoanalytical perspective about the role of mirroring from primary care givers in early childhood development and how a failure of this process leads to narcissistic injury and the development of a false self in order to meet the needs of others and prevent the annihilation of the true self. Fortunately, he explained the jargon as he went along and proved very interesting.

Debate was quite lively and after a while a split into groups to carry out little exercises. I think what most of us got froom this was that we didn’t fit into neat little psychological category, but were a mixture of personality types.

Marta had to leave about 8.30pm as she had an early morning photoshoot as part of her MA work. She’s going to send me copies of the photos, which I’m really looking forward to.

After the meeting finished quite a few of us stayed on chatting, and I answered quite a few questions about who I am, but it was all in a very relaxed atmosphere – and the women (the men never actually spoke to me directly, other than Clive) seemed totally unphased. And I got to ask them questions I ordinarily wouldn’t have the cheek to ask.

It really was a wonderful evening, and Michelle does a great job of hosting these events. I’d love to come to some others, but London is a fair way for me to come, but we’ll see.

I’ll just finish off by saying if you feel you’d like to volunteer to act as a model for Marta drop her an email at marta [dot] gornicka [at] gme [dot] de  - she’d love to hear from you.

The only down side of the whole day was the blisters I picked up – lovely shoes, but not suitable for walking round London in!

Two dresses, handbag and a pair of shoes – snakeskin 4″ heeled strappy sandals arrived yesterday from boohoo.com – possibly my favourite online clothes store.

Only one mistake, the shoes are going back. Think mutton, possibly tarty. Can’t get away with that anymore – they’d probably look fantastic on a twenty-something.

Anyhoos, tried them all on which only made me want to go out. BNO was out of the question even though I’d have loved to have gone. Too far at such short notice. Messaged Jane (local girl) on TV Chix, but she replied later saying she’d just got back from shopping at Meadowhall with her daughter. No joy there.

Stayed in and watched the concluding episode of Collision. Great ending. Should have more endings like that – life IS random.

Still, mustn’t complain – out on Tuesday. London, photoshoot – think different. Male and female dress modes. Got to sort out locations. Changing could be a problem, though. After that, going to a muggle meeting (dressed) where a group of people I’ve never met before are gathering in a restaurant/bar to discuss ‘Identity’. Emailed the organiser and she’s fine about me coming as Alex, or I’m assuming she is :)

The group meet once a month, in London, to discuss various subjects of a philosophical nature, and have a guest expert to keep everyone on the rails so to speak. It’s my first adventure of this kind – could be interesting.

Friday, I’m off to Coco’s second party. If you haven’t heard me wax lyrical about her house parties read the previous post.

Other than that been reading Joe McNally’s “Hot Shoe Diaries” – really entertaining. But not so useful if you don’t have a Nikon D700 or Nikon D3 Digital SLR Camera and SB800 or SB-900 Speedlight flashgun(s) - but I have, so that’s OK. Joe shows images from real life situations and talks through how he set-up the shots, giving you f.stops, apertures, shutter speeds and ISO settings together with camera and flashgun settings. Brilliant, but as I say you need the above gear to get the most out of his wisdom and experience.

I guess that’s all.