One ring to rule them all…

Or one keyboard perhaps? My new keyboard arrived a day late, as I was slightly expecting. What I didn’t expect was for it to arrive slightly faulty. After paying so much this was a bit disappointing. Things went from bad to worse after sending it back, the replacement not arriving when it was promised, not even the day after. No-one had called me to say there was a problem so I rang Korg:

"Oh we’ve realised we don’t have any more Triton 88 notes in stock."

"But mine is a 76 note."

"Oh, um, ahh, we’ve got some of those…"

Anyway 2 weeks after parting with my money I eventually got a replacement, which so far seems to be behaving itself. The plan was to spend the month we had with no gigs, programming the sounds for the set. I thought that was going to be a bit tight but as it turned out I only had 2 weeks. After working 12 hour days for most of the last 2 weeks I have just about got everything sorted, though there will be a serious amount of tweaking and fine tuning when I’ve actually used it with the band. The main thing is that I think it is going to do the job of replacing my mish-mash of keyboards, modules, samplers and bits and pieces, all in one box (its box was quite expensive too!) so that means less to carry and a lot less to set up. This will be such a relief and of course will give me more time to touch up my make up and tidy my hair and things before we go on, which has usually been a bit of panic so far.

We rehearse tomorrow night, its first outing, I’m so looking forward to using it with the band. It’s first gig will be on Saturday, ooohh…

Anyway, enough of all that technical stuff. Whilst I was in between keyboards I had my third appointment at Charing Cross, this time for a second opinion on a tracheal shave, amongst other things. This was my first appointment with a male psychiatrist, so I couldn’t help but wonder if this would be where Charing Cross lived up to their seemingly dreadful reputation. It wasn’t.

Dr Lorimer was just the nicest guy, friendly, chatty and amazingly helpful. He left me with the feeling that he really wanted to help, and really wanted to get things moving for me. Not only did I get the second opinion on the trach shave, but he gave the first opinion on SRS. I asked if there would be any problem or bad feeling if I had my SRS privately with a surgeon of my choice. Not at all. It was indeed, my choice. We talked at length about my hormone regime, my GP has still not received specific instructions on exactly what to prescribe. Dr Lorimer assured me that he would write to him with those instructions, based on what we had discussed, and subject to the results of my blood test, which was only my second in two years of hormone use, one year since my first appointment at Charing Cross.

I even got in there 20 minutes early, which was good because my appointment ran over by 20 minutes, mainly due to me nattering on, but then he was being chatty too, asking about the band and stuff. He was also most interested when I told him my first night out dressed was in Edinburgh, that being his home town. Anyway I left with a good feeling, let’s just hope the test results come through soon and I can see my GP about improving my regime.

I’d heard very little that was good about Charing Cross before I went there. Only such things as they are egotistical control freaks and will try to talk you out of it or just plain abuse you. I can’t say whether or not that was true in the past, but it’s certainly not now. Obviously things will be quicker if you go privately, but unless you’re in a great rush for SRS I can’t see much advantage in that. Hormones take time to work and the Gender Recognition Panel still require a minimum two years of living full time. My next appointment may even be a consultation with the ENT surgeon. I’m still keeping my options open on that, but I think I might as well see what he says about his procedure and my rather large protuberance before deciding to go elsewhere.

And Christmas is around the corner. All I have in my head is a zillion different sounds and combinations and configurations. I really must do some shopping soon. Oh bloody hell…

xx