Allied again

Almost by accident, at the start of the academic year in 2018, I got me a rainbow silicon rubber wrist band sporting the slogan "⚧ The Institute ⚧". I wore that accessory rain shine and shower 24/365. Whatever about signalling to students and Others that I was on their side, it reminded me every day to check my privilege (and mind my gob). That ⚧ symbol did A lot of work at The Institute - reducing the number of wheel-chair accessible bathrooms so that Management could preen themselves on having gender neutral bathrooms on campus. Habit is strong within me and, after I retired two years later, I continued to wear my wristband although I encountered minority students once a year rather than every day.

Then, in the middle of October, struggling into an inherited sweater, my wristband broke. At seven years, it had lasted me longer than the sweater, but I was still a bit bereft. I sent a picture of linear silicon and a message "Boohoo, Ally No More" to my right-on offspring.

A week later, we had a multi-generational friends&family knees-up and two younger people, friends-of-family, whom I'd never met before, presented This Old Ally with replacement merch. a) a new wristier made of pastel rainbow plaited wool [new for old shown above] 

b) a brace of Ally-pins which I wore in the lapel of my charcoal-grey 100% woolmarked interview / funeral / wedding / knees-up suit. I won't take this clobber into the shower, not least because the suit is "dry-clean only" but will sport it when I'm out and about. There are plenty of opportunities for an Ould Buffer to be passive-aggressive; to be passive-inclusive, not so much. A few days later, I went for a yomp up the hill with Gdau.I now approaching 14. She said that, if I said something dopey about chromosomes in a discussion about gender and sexuality, her generation would likely forgive me. Making some allowance for the Old, in the same way as my generation used to get up off bus-seats for them. Unless it was clear that my comments were uttered as cruelty or a wind-up. Then again, it seems that 14 y.o's can be quite neanderthal in using casual racist slurs.