Kierkegaard's Lunch

  Readying myself for emigration, I am putting together the soundtrack of a whole life spent in England. You can read more about why I am doing this here: https://kierkegaardslunch.blogspot.com/2026/08/mourning-england-in-song-part-1.html  Memories make identity. That's why I'm writing this series of posts. I have to find and claim my identity, these days more than ever. Yet when you're trans, memories can become complex and loaded. For me, stripped of much by a spouse who was bitterly unable to accept what I needed to do, who I was even, and who made these things clear, memories can be tainted. To back into the past means for me to ready myself for something that's never simple. It can be raw. It can be like remembering a old movie, starring someone else. It can bring joy too, if I can decentre myself - recollections of my children will do that.  One part of my past where I can go where I always recognise myself and where I am always safe is music. My music was always ...

Readying myself for what feels like a forced emigration, I am putting together the soundtrack of a whole life spent living in England. You can read more about why I am doing this here: https://kierkegaardslunch.blogspot.com/2026/08/mourning-england-in-song-part-1.html 1980. Punk has become post-punk. New Wave is happening - though to be honest (and I had been paying attention) I was never really clear what New Wave really was . New Romantic is coming but not quite here yet, though The Blitz had been up and running for a year. Bands like OMD and Ultravox are breaking through - synthpop apostles of what was to come, without as yet the blouses and the eye makeup (I beat them to it on that 😉). For me 1980 was my final year at school. A levels, then a futile attempt to to get into St Catherine's College, Cambridge. When that failed I was left with months to fill before going up to Leeds instead - something I never regretted as I had a great time there, and even ended up with a decent ...

Today in Britain, statutory legal guidance that instructs service providers - shops, pubs, restaurants, cinemas, sports centres, doctors' surgeries - to discriminate against trans people comes into force. For decades, trans people who have transitioned to live their lives in the gender that made sense to them have had access to single-sex spaces like toilets and changing rooms, unnoticed and without incident. Now the government has put into law guidance that says they must be banned. Facilities should be restricted to those defined "biologically" as women - or men - despite no-one being able to produce any cogent definition of what biological even means, despite the term having no meaning in law and despite the fact that there is often no way of detecting who fits these so-called "biological" criteria and who does not. Trans women must now be segregated into ‘third spaces’ like disabled facilities or gender neutral ones, and if these aren't available (as the...

Readying myself for what feels like a forced emigration, I am putting together the soundtrack of a whole life spent living in England. You can read more about why I am doing this here:  https://kierkegaardslunch.blogspot.com/2026/08/mourning-england-in-song-part-1.html Gimme Shelter: The Rolling Stones I'd like to claim that I came to this song when it first appeared. Was I paying much attention to the Stones aged 7? I doubt it. But I do know that my 16 year old brother bought Let it Bleed and my guess is that I will have heard it soon after. What I can say is that as soon as I was really paying attention to music - probably from about the age of 11 - this track landed in my head, and it's never left. For me it's the greatest Rolling Stones track of all.  The opening few bars start me off. Keith's tight and threatening opener, all menace and build as the country-esque twang of another guitar comes in behind, and then soul singer Merry Clayton's haunting backing voca...

Readying myself for what feels like a forced emigration, I am putting together the soundtrack of a whole life spent living in England... I am a trans woman who has lived in the UK almost her whole life. Now I am leaving the country, forced out by the deepening political, legal and cultural hate. It's a bitter moment. I am trying to come to terms with having to do this by, amongst other things, charting my 64 years of life in England in 64 songs that I have loved and which have formed the soundtrack of my life in a country that has made clear it doesn't want me anymore. You can read more about the background to this project here:  https://kierkegaardslunch.blogspot.com/2026/08/mourning-england-in-song-part-1.html ******* Street Life - Roxy Music (from Stranded) I was just eleven when this epic came out, and I remember discovering it a year or two later - likely when Roxy's next album, Country Life appeared (containing the absolute belter of a track,  All I Want Is You),  a...