Earning my keep, from 1970 to 2016

Phase 0: No need for details here – it wasn’t exactly “flippin' burgers”, but it wasn’t much better either. Fortunately, it only lasted three months – and, I oughtn't complain, it did earn me my first state pension entitlement.

Phase 1: Employment as a broadcast technician, then engineer (operational positions on high-power short-wave and medium-wave transmitting stations), with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), UK.

Phase 2: Volunteer position as a broadcast engineer in Honduras and Guatemala, with single-handed responsibility for keeping ‘on-air’ numerous local radio stations offering adult education and concientización programmes (basic literacy, domestic health-care, etc., interspersed with a certain amount of political agitation, best not talked about here...).

Phase 3: Faute de mieux, back to the BBC - this time in an engineering planning and installation capacity.

Phase 4: In-house translator with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU – better known to the public as ‘Eurovision’; but, for heaven's sake, there's more to the EBU than the flippin' Song Contest!). Over a 22-year period my responsibilities evolved from pure technical translation (French to English) to my appointment as Chief Editor, Technical Publications – at a time when the Union’s publications were all published in both English and French.

My time with the EBU coincided with the biggest upheaval ever to affect radio and television broadcast technology: the 20-year transition from analogue to digital. As a translator and editor I worked on the whole range of documentation from original research papers that set the theoretical foundations of the digital technologies, through to the publication of the international system standards in association with the ITU, ETSI, CENELEC, IEC, and other bodies. Technologies and systems involved included: the DVB and DAB broadcast transmission systems, digital satellite systems, digital sound and video recording, digital cameras and film-scanners, EPGs, standards conversion, etc.

Phase 5: In principle, a long 'sabbatical' in Chile pending proper retirement; but that went awry for reasons that are nobody’s business but my own - except to mention that I had the 'opportunity' to gain an extensive understanding of Chilean legislation (especially civil and family matters), court procedures and lawyer-speak in Chilean Spanish, plus hands-on experience of the rules and procedures of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Ha! - and then they talk about 'enjoying a career change'!!!

Phase 6: Establishment of MediaMatrix E.I.R.L., a one-person business in Chile offering a range of language and IT services. (The business is now closed, following retirement.)

(Update begins here...)

Thus far, this bio has focused on the professional life of my parents’ second child, a product of the 1950’s ‘baby-boom’ in the UK.  In those days it took nothing more than a midwife taking a squint at a newborn's nether regions and gleefully announcing ‘It’s a boy!’, for the social machinery to spring into action driving the new-born’s bright blue perambulator - one of those flashy ones with go-faster stripes on each side - ever more persuasively towards ‘precarious manhood’.

But even before puberty set in, that child knew he’d been dumped in the wrong pram.  She should have been in the pink one, decorated with its cute butterflies and daises, shouldn’t she?!  But alas, the child’s ill-prepared elders had no idea that their 'boy' had what is now known as ‘gender dysphoria’ – and that the huge existential confusion associated with that condition was what caused him to under-achieve at school, why he was introverted and oftentimes downright antisocial, why he didn’t match up to their expectations, why he didn’t win a place at university, why he always chose to live and work as far as possible from the family home, why… why… and, indeed, why he frequently had suicidal thoughts.

Given this erratic upbringing, this poor academic achievement - coupled with a positive dislike of foreign languages -, how? – and why? - did this ‘misfit’ achieve success as a translator and editor working alongside and in support of some of the world’s most brilliant academics and R&D teams at the forefront of the digital media revolution?

How? - By learning on the job.  After getting a basic engineering qualification with the BBC, aged 21, he never again attended formal classes for anything, and never won any diplomas.  Everything else he learnt in life was self-taught, just by observing how things are done, how they work, how and why they fail.

If he was sufficiently motivated to learn about something, or how to do something, then he was ready and able to learn it independently of the conventional learning environment with its focus on institutional indoctrination at the expense of personal discovery.  And if that motivation was lacking, then he took it as a sure sign that that skill or understanding was not needed on his travels through life.

Since quitting salaried employment at the age of 49, this same autodidact has become an accomplished programmer and multilingual website builder, a legal translator, a novelist (as yet unpublished...) and - most important of all – the woman she always knew she was.

Why?  First, because the alternative would have been a life – and probably a very short one – of continual misery.  And because that boy-child had an unfailing commitment towards me, Jennifer – the daughter my parents never met.  As he sat behind the steering wheel of our shared existence, I was sitting out of sight in the back seat (figuratively speaking...), watching his every move, learning from his successes (and not a few failures...).  I was, in no small measure, his reason to stay alive.  When he felt he wanted to jump off a cliff and drown, I urged him to step back, because I wanted – nay, I needed – to live.

Life in the front seat, life in retirement

Just a few years ago, as we reached retirement age, he and I agreed that the time and place was right to swap places.  I am now in the driving seat while he dozes in the back seat.  But, having come this far, where do we go next?  Thanks to his foresight and determination, I have enough pension income to live on, I have my own home, I am in reasonably good health, I have my freedom.  It's time to give back some of what I have had the good fortune to receive, and do it in ways that can build upon the resources accumulated through decades of self-learning, self-discovery, and will perhaps contribute in some small way to the wellbeing of others.

I have two main projects under way - one very much related to the circumstances that have defined my own life-story, the other focused on the family history of others:

Unravelling the complexities of gender identity terminology

I was born and brought up in post-WW2 England - the 1950s and 1960s.  An era in which the term 'gender' referred only to that seemingly unnecessary layer of complexity found in the learning of French.  A time when the biggest impediment to self-understanding was the lack of information.  No Internet, no media coverage, nothing in the school library; I lived in a world dominated by adults - parents, teachers, clergy, youth association leaders - all deeply-entrenched in the stereotypes of the blinkered society in which they had been brought up themselves.

Back then - over six decades ago - no-one understood 'gender'. Let me tell you - It was hell!

Having lived with gender-identity issues since childhood, I have seen first-hand how social, political and cultural influences come to bear – most-often negatively – on the lives and safety of transgender people and their families.  

Today, everyone thinks they understand everything about gender. But many of those self-appointed experts - nay, the vast majority - are no more able to give a coherent explanation as to why a child whose genitalia resemble those of their father must necessarily be of masculine gender, than they are able to explain why la table is standing on le plancher.

As a communicator and translator I have been increasingly dismayed to observe how the lack of consensus regarding the meanings of the most basic terms relating to gender diversity is exploited for the purpose of generating ever more-damaging disinformation, polarisation and politicisation of young peoples' most private and personal preoccupations.  

Sadly, today, youngsters with gender dysphoria are no better off than I was over six decades ago. It is still hell.  And, if the truth be told, for many of them, their hell is getting hotter day by day.

I am no activist.  But in the hope that I can contribute towards making things a bit less contentious, less dangerous, a bit more meaningful and understandable, for today’s trans kids and their families, I am currently collecting data with a view to publishing a comprehensive on-line multilingual / multicultural / multi-thematic glossary of gender identity terminology.  It’s a huge task.  Don’t hold your breath!

Thematic website dedicated to the genealogy of European settlers in late 19th Century Chile

For some years now I have been building a multilingual web site dedicated to the family histories of the European settlers who were brought to the Araucanía region of Chile at the end of the 19th Century to occupy and cultivate land taken from the indigenous Mapuche communities in the process known euphemistically as the Pacificación de La Araucanía.  The website centres on a user interface for the recording of genealogical data and document archives, and caters for family events specific to Mapuche and mixed-race (metizo) families as well as those of typical immigrant families from across 19th Century Europe.  This too is a long-term project with no end in sight...

And the next update? - Sorry - I've no idea when that might come!