Trans Radio Christmas Ball 2018

The 15^th December 2018 was quite a momentous day. This was the date of the first Trans Radio Christmas ball.

It had taken a lot of effort to get to this date including a change of venue and as we had committed to a minimum number of attendees, despite over a 100 people saying they would come to this if we organised it, in reality people dropped out or changed their mind. We still managed to have a guest list of 80+ which was great as it meant we would break even but the hassle of collecting deposits and the remainder payments from everyone was a bit of a pain.

It was at the Hilton Hotel, in Milton Keynes. We had never stayed at this hotel before or even visited so we didn’t really know what the venue and rooms looked like except the pictures on their website which looked good. The price included a glass of prosecco on arrival, 3 course sit down meal, DJ, room decorations and exclusive hire of the room we were in which meant we didn’t have to share the party with everyone which we felt was really important. We even had a volunteer to be our official photographer, Nia Clarke, and a big thanks to her for the fabulous pictures she took. Also a big thanks to Ginelle Williams who printed all the tickets for us.

The room was decorated really lovely and the staff were friendly. All the guests were all dressed up and ran with the theme of the event being a ball. It was great to see so many people, many we knew personally, but some we knew but had never met and some were new people to us however everyone just spent time with each other either sitting and chatting or up on the dance floor.

 The DJ had been nervous when it found out it was a Trans Radio event but he played to the crowd perfectly with a great mix of tunes which kept lots of people up on the dance floor. There was another mixed party of 300 people in the large event room down the corridor and we had people from there cheekily coming in to our party saying it was much better than the event they were at. Well of course it was!

The party finished at 1am however we had made arrangements with Pink Punters for free entry for any attendees who wanted to continue to party and quite a few people went down there after. The new Champagne and Cocktail bar and new Pink room had only opened the night before and it was a lovely place to spend the rest of the time.

The feedback we got from everyone was really positive and made all the stress of arranging it worthwhile. We have been asked several times if there will be a Christmas Ball 2019…….. at this stage I’m not sure but watch this space!

Goodbye 2019, Welcome 2019

Blimey is it really that long ago that I updated my blog?!! It is funny how life just takes over and you don’t realise how much time has passed. Well now I’m going to probably inundate you with updates as I have a few things to write about!

Dust has now settled on the ‘worlds first open transgender referee’. Lucy still gets requests to be involved in events and has done some of these over the past few months. One of the notable things was for Lloyds Banking Group who did an LGBT webinar across the whole of the group for their staff and had various representatives from the community. Lucy had a 20 minute slot to talk about her life and experiences and it was really well received and she received some great feedback from attendees and gained some additional Twitter followers. She has been contacted by Sky News and Sky Sports with various projects they want her involvement in during 2019 too. 

In February she is a speaker at Just a Ball Game’s seminar #strongertogether which is hosted by The FA at Wembley Stadium. The event is supported by GMB Trade Union, The Professional Footballers’ Association, UCFB, KIO and others, and will see a day of interactive workshops, networking, guest panel speakers from football clubs, fan groups, players, referees, coaches, education establishments, the police, media, and other sports organisations coming together to showcase the great partnership work done in collaboration with JBG. I have a ticket so will be going along to support her as well as all the other speakers and it looks like a great day out.

In other news we have been to Pinks a few times including NYE, hosted the 1st ever Trans Radio Christmas Ball, I have been involved with the first bite size Trans Awareness training sessions with our local NHS authority and Lucy had her final GIC appointment (blog posts for all to follow).

We had been looking forward to Christmas so much however Lucy had issues with her taxi which meant she was unable to work and then health issues plagued her which meant we were back in A&E on Boxing Day evening. This time we went to a different hospital under the same local NHS Trust but as luck would have it, my friend Carole who is a sister there was on duty (see more in blog post about the NHS Trust to follow). No mis-gendering or confusion however this was more to Carole’s presence than any change in policy. 

We had booked a family trip to Butlins between Christmas and New Year and were meeting one of my sons, his wife and son, another couple we know and our friends Jenny and Ethan and their 6 kids however Lucy felt too ill to go. It was very sad for me to be there with our daughters and not her but in reality she was too unwell to go and enjoy herself. I know she felt gutted as we had both looked forward to this break fro the past year.

Lucy is getting better than she was but we are still waiting on some follow up appointments with various departments to try to get her properly better once and for all!