Bristol Pride, a day of not being a minority!

I wish that I could tell you that it had been a glorious sunny day, but it wasn’t. I wish I could tell that the day stayed dry and bright, but it did not. I am going to tell you though just how much fun I had at Bristol Pride and watching the wife’s band Oestrogenix rock the stage in the Trans Tent.

The day started for me at about half past seven in the morning. Carol was long gone having to be at the Park for eight with the trailer and kit, so I had a nice lay in and awoke bright and early feeling all excited. Pulling on my favourite Marduk shirt and my bike trousers, I got ready for a fast as fuck trip to Bristol on Sylvie, our loveable Suzuki SV650S.

Traffic was light to start with in Weston, but the M5 was a little clogged with holiday traffic and the going was slow up until I got past Clevedon, from here it was a blast to Avonmouth and the turn off for Bristol. Having taken this road before when I went for the crappy job interview in Bristol with the scam company, I knew where I was going and before long I was blasting past my old playground in Avon Gorge. No climbers today though because the rock was greasy and damp. Carol had kindly produced a map for me for when I got close to Pride, which I only had to consult once and that was only because I was unsure about a junction. Turns out I should have followed my nose, because Pride was just around the corner.

Now in case you do not know and this may be news to some of you, there is a reason why I was going to Bristol Pride. You see, technically, when one woman is in love with another woman, they are called lesbians. Lesbians are a part of the LGBT community. LGBT is the grouping that includes, but is not limited to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people. Also often known as Dykes, Fags, Poofs and Trannies. However, if you are a part of this spectrum of people, you will know that these words are more often spat with hate rather than spoken to us. Pride is about people like us saying loudly and Proudly, I am Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender and there is nothing bad about it. Fuck it; at Pride it is the straight “ordinary” folk who are in the minority and I have to be honest, given some the straight “normal” folk I have met, I will gladly take a field of dykes any day.

Pride is an important aspect of Homosexual and Transgender life, with out the People who started Pride, there are many of us who would still live in fear, persecuted by the law for simply being what comes naturally to us. I would say with conviction that the Pride movement has given us greater rights and respect from an otherwise judgemental society. For this reason, Pride gets our support.

So I pull up in the bike park and take all of Sylvie’s locks out of my seat pack.

• Yellow Oxford Disklock
• Black D-Lock
• Black Magnum Disklock and Chain

One disk lock for each wheel, a heavy duty armoured chain and a D-lock through the forks, just to make things difficult. Any thief that can get through this lot, the steering lock and the alarm is damn clever and should be employed by the lock companies to show them how it is done. Giving her a see you later pat, I headed off to the still setting up Pride event and to find Carol.

Oestrogenix had been invited to play in the Trans Tent by the Western Boys, a group that offers friendship, support and advice to a group of ordinary men. Men who happen to have been born with the wrong genitals. Trans Men have a tough time of it, they are often short, look soft and gentle despite beards and crew cuts and have to endure some horribly cruel tricks played on them by Mother Nature. Trans women have similar if opposite issues. We are often tall, well built and muscular and fuck me is it painful having a face full of beard burned out with a laser and electrolysis needle. Next time you are out with your mates and you see a trans person, be fucking polite. They have endured more than you will ever know just to be where they are stood at that moment. If you can’t be polite, then shut the fuck up and don’t stare, it is rude and quite often, they already feel self conscious enough with out your input. Trust me, I have been there. Yeah, I am angry, but then I lost a job I loved due to transphobic prejudice. This is why Pride is so important.

The stage in the Trans tent was set and the tent was nicely tidy, with the PA set up and Carol and Lucile looking relaxed and busy. Nikki the sound engineer looked very chilled and I was greeted with a warm welcome from everyone. Carol was tired and still gave me the biggest kiss I had all week. She looked excited and was bubbly in that special way she has when preparing for a performance. Stepping back, I looked at my beautiful girlfriend and I felt a heart full of Pride, just to be with her.

Bristol was about to be inundated with the local and not so local LGBT community and those folks who were friends, family or just believed that every one should be equal. The march started at twelve opposite the Hippodrome and there was a huge crowd, supported by a group of Samba drummers. I had contacted my biking friend (who should by now be familiar to you) Stu about meeting him. He is not Gay, but I am among his gay friends and he as going to come along with another. Sadly Stu was poorly (I suspect freshers flu had got to him, the joys of being a student!), but Nikki his delightful Girlfriend and her friend Pauline were trying to find us. They found us pretty quickly and just as they said hello, me being the bitch that I am pretended to be some one else! The two young women looked confused for a second until I smiled and said hello properly. Some times my sense of humour just misses!

Pauline, Nikki and your author

Let me tell you about Nikki and Pauline, just so you can be jealous. Both of them are very pretty, early twenties students with smiles and hearts that are a credit to them. Stu (Nikki’s fella) is a lucky guy, but we don’t want to embarrass them both too much, do we?

The March started and the whistles and cheers were deafening. Traffic ground to a halt and some wicked looking Drag Queens, in heels that frankly would have scared me, tottered along ahead of us. I was in my combat patterned Bike trousers, my Marduk shirt and boots so big, I was two inches taller.

Hello Mum! I am at Pride and it is great!

I was filled with the spirit of Pride, even if I could not hear it! The March went right passed Bristol Bike show and we got cheers and support from the bikers too. It was great thing to feel and Carol walked along either holding my hand or taking the photos you can now see. Oh yes, Pride means a lot.

The march ended back at the park and we headed back up to the arena and they got ready for the first act of the day, Kris, the guy who had worked so hard to organise the Trans tent. 

Although he looked like a super hero in his Pride outfit of the day. Kris was also in charge of making badges and he kindly helped me to make a couple.

My first was a rainbow with the legend:

Trans Biker

While the second, suitably enough for me, read:

Trans Hooligan

Oh yes, I am that woman that your Mother warned you about when you young!

The acts that played in the Trans Tent were either inspirational or emotive. However the Trans Man Stand Up Comedian and recent father of a bouncing baby boy was so brilliantly talented, that I actually thought I was going to cry. I wish that I could remember his name, because I would tell you to go and find him and listen to him perform.

Nikki the sound tech has a daughter called Lou and she teamed up with our good friend Zed (who had even brought her beautiful son Pipin with her) and also took to the stage. 

Zed has a rich quality to her singing voice that is just beautiful, however when you realise what the words are that she is singing you realise that her mind and wit are as sharp as an assassin’s blade. Lou played her guitar with perfection given that she was asked to perform only minutes before and seeing them both performing this fantastic number together will go down in my life as one of the glad I saw it events. It was brilliant and they received a justified round of applause.

Finally Carol and the girls took to the stage, just as the heavens opened. The stage flooded and Carol’s drum pedal started to so slip and float away as the rain water flooded in through the gaps in the tent covers. A brief stop so that she could get her pedal back and they were back on and once again performing with their usual professional approach. They do not play like a small band that practices in our hallway, Lucile has the stage presence that you would expect from a big name band, she sings with passion and with her heart in the performance, Carol is intense when she is drumming, focussed and calm and the mystery bassist is there with her unknown face, hidden in the shadows of her secret identity. Will we ever know who she is?

Pride slowly came to an end and with the kit all packed away, I faced the ride home in pouring rain. However, being warm rain made it bearable and the road took me back through the gorge and onto the Motorway. A quick stop for a waking hot drink was needed after such a long hard day, but I was soon back in the saddle and blasting back down the motorway and home. On the SV forum I often read of SV’s that suffer with wet plug, a condition that causes the front cylinder to fail and for a huge power loss as soon as the weather gets damp. Sylvie though is a trooper and all she wants to do skip in puddles, dance in the gutter and flutter her umbrella about her in true Singing in the rain style. Her road manners are impeccable and she rides as smoothly in the rain as she does in the cool summer evenings. Finally as we got home and parked up outside the garage, the rain stopped and as she cooled and ticked, I exhaustedly removed my wet bike gear and thanked her for another fantastic ride. I sprayed her up with GT85 before retiring her to bed and locking her back up with all of her locks.

Pride, what a totally brilliant day. A huge thank you to Oestrogenix for making it a great day out and to the other performers who gave it everything to make the day a success. See you all next year. 

Filtering or how I got there dead quick...

Just me today sadly, poor Carol had to go to work and I had a job interview in Bristol, so although she was not with me physically, she was with me in spirit and here is why.

I took Sylvie to Bristol this morning so I could get to my interview with a company called Mantra, this involved a quick dash up the M5 to Bristol, a quick skoot along the A4 and a sudden stop in a car Park in Baldwin Street. This was all undertaken before nine AM this morning and it was a pure joy to be up and riding at that time of the day. I wont lie to you and tell you that the roads were empty, because they really were not, but it was so cool, the day's heat had not yet risen and the sun was not yet at it's zenith.

Getting from the flat to the motorway was an unusual adventure for me in that I chose a route, found my way there and did not hit traffic until right up until the turning onto the A370. Once in the standstill traffic though, I just filtered slowly through. Carol taught me that to filter is a dangerous and cunning art form and I actually really enjoyed it. I got to the front of the traffic queue and turned onto the motorway.

Riding on the Motorway is not particularly exciting, it is windy, pretty straight and too fast to actually be fun. Riding B Roads at thirty to forty mile per hour is technically more demanding than riding on a motorway at motorway speed (I say motorway speed, because they are not always 70MPH) and considerably more fun to boot. I am still learning how Sylvie corners and to feel her dropping in on one side and then swooping over to the other is exhilarating and you do not need speed to feel that. Maybe this is because I am still learning how to ride her, but Sylvie at lower speeds is a beautiful bike to have control over.

The Motorway quickly gave up the miles to Sylvie's wheels and then the traffic bunched up, with the inside and second lane of the Avonmouth fly over being full of trucks. I managed to get into the second lane and saw my exit, but it was blocked by trucks who were nose to tail, there was barely enough room between them for a Rizla paper, let alone Sylvie and I. So we sailed past our Exit at the great speed of sixty eight miles per hour and headed up the road to the next exit to turn around. It added an extra four miles to our journey and only a few minutes.

The A4 was clogged from the outset for us and once again Sylvie's beautiful slow speed handling came to the forefront as we slowly  filtered through the traffic. Filtering is an art form and having followed Carol, I know that I still have a lot to learn. Today though I aced it and managed to filter slowly and surefootedly through the slow moving or still traffic. At one point I caught up with the ZZR600 that had over taken me on the entry to the A4 and kept pace with the Blue haired rider until I managed to pass them. Filtering is about confidence and taking an opportunity that exists for less than a second. Slipping through gently and with ease. I had one moment when I decided to let discretion be the better part of valour on the road going past "At Bristol", when a truck needed extra room to turn around a bus, but I soon passed the obstruction and was once again on my way.

Once into the centre of Bristol I headed around to Baldwin Street and found a Bike park with a nice steel railing to lock Sylvie too. I do not like the idea of leaving Sylvie unprotected in a busy city and so she had disk locks front and rear as well as a chain and a D-Lock. She also has her steering lock and her alarm just to keep filthy thieving hands away from her. Not sure I mentioned it, but I love my girl Sylvie.

Then came the interview. Forewarned is forearmed and Carol did some digging into Mantra Marketing for me, because she is good at stuff like that. The job advert I had applied for was looking for a Media Sales Executive, sounds posh does it not? The job they interviewed me for was selling door to door... You know those dodgy types who ring your door bell, then stick their foot in the door so that you cannot get rid of them, well that is the job. I was less than impressed. The sting comes in the pay packet, if you work really hard and walk an entire street, knocking on every door and get rebutted at every step. You earn nothing. If you find a little old lady at home and intimidate her into buying some rubbish she does not want, you earn fifteen pounds.

The people at the interview all have a similar look, keen, confused and young. Well except the guys who are obviously out of work sales men in their fifties. The woman interviewing me was hideously pretty, one of those people who should be beautiful, blonde, petite and with a big smile. I felt like I was swimming with a shark and a hungry one at that. She apologised to me for wasting my time and wished me bon voyage home. I left that odd place and was stopped outside by a young man who had the distinct hippy look to him. "Excuse me I am looking for the Krishna centre?" Oh yeah, the same office and phone number as Mantra... Scary.

I took Sylvie over to see a dear friend to Carol and I, a lovely chap and engineering genius known as Wayne.  Seeing him in the garden working his magic on his ZX10 project is a joy to watch, but today he was working on his Dad's Fazer 600. Yesterday he hit some thing big and hard in the road and damaged both wheels beyond repair. So he took them out, took off the disks and ordered new ones. It was a shame to see him looking so down. Luckily it is hard to keep a spirit like Wayne down and he was soon happily playing with Titanium bolts for his race bike.

The ride back to my beloved Carol was very nice and took in the road between Bristol and Clevedon, a lovely winding road with a forty limit, heaven in tarmac form. I had ridden this road a few days before, but had got stuck behind a large articulated lorry, which was in turn stuck behind a large old tractor. No chance of filtering past those two on that day. Today though the road was clear and swift. I did not hit the speed limit of because the corners are rather tight and with out knowing what is on the other side of them, I would hate to go flying round and find a traffic queue. However, I was still faster than anything else on the road and was only caught when the rode finally entered Clevedon itself and more traffic queues.

A quick blast down the motorway and I was soon in the arms of my beloved Carol. I was tired, I was aching from the ride and I was heart sore at being apart from her. My girl is beautiful and her smile is enough to make flowers want to blossom or birds want to soar. She was waiting for me and she treated me to the lunch of royalty, a Quarter pound cheese burger and chips. We sat together in the sunshine, holding hands and basking in each others love. Did I mention that I love my Girl?

In truth I love both of my girls, Carol is my life partner, my soul mate and my friend and Sylvie is our bike. With both of these gifts from the gods in my life, it is hard to be unhappy for long, even after a wasted interview.