Chiara's place

My blog is kept mostly friends locked for personal privacy reasons.

Should you wish to be added please drop me a request here.

Bigotry, narrowmindedness, prejudice, misogyny, willful ignorance and the usual run of -isms and -phobias are not welcome on this blog, but anyone of any gender (or none or at any point on the spectrum), sexuality (or none), relationship style (or none) race, creed (or none) colour, neurotype or level of physical or mental ability  who displays none of those things or is working on not doing so  is more than welcome :o)

I suppose I'd better introduce myself again and apologies for all those of you who know me of old and haven't run away yet. It's a frightening thought that I've known some of you pretty much since I first set up on LJ in 2007! I'm no longer there because new ToS and the threat to my personal privacy and safety that created. That said, I'm not new to DW either as I know some of you are. I set up here via an invite code in their early days and had x posted for long enough before that final break so it wasn't all that much of a shock when it finally came.

Chiara, the name I use on here is a blog name used to protect (well, me, actually :o)

I'm past sixty (but not speeding) and a married woman who happens to be trans. Young transitioner and post GCS since uni days. That makes me a late boomer but no, I'm not THAT sort o' boomer!

I'm an abuse survivor.

I'm retired but still doing odd bits of academic history and reviewing here and there. I'm an early modern historian so my head spends a lot of its time in the 17th century. 

I was a special needs teacher for twenty years, working with severely disabled and terminally ill kids. I miss nothing about teaching except my kids as I have none of my own. I also worked with folks on the spectrum, the mentally ill and young dyslexic adults (are you sensing a pattern here? :o). I am myself dysnumeric. I'm also a leftie (both in handedness and politics).

My husband is Scottish (ooh, that accent :o) and you'll hear me refer to him both as 'himself' and 'the Scot'. He's a Mediaeval military historian and retired senior civil servant.

I'm a poet, writing under the pen name of Marianna Rochester and also a photographer.  I occasionally get accused of folk music and dance.

We live in rural north Shropshire in England close to the Welsh border, in an area some of you may know as 'Cadfael country'. This is also A E Housman and Wilfred Owen territory.

And that's me. Feel free to ask if there's anything you are wanting to know. There's not much I won't talk about and nothing is usually off limits.