chapter nine

a transsexual by any other name

The following definition of gender dysphoria is taken from a website dedicated to this and similar issues:

What is Gender Dysphoria?

Gender Dysphoria is a general term for persons who have confusion or discomfort about their birth gender. Milder forms of gender dysphoria cause incomplete or occasional feelings of being the opposite sex. The most intense form of the condition, with complete gender reversal, is called transsexualism. A transsexual is a male or female who has a lifelong feeling of being trapped in the wrong body. The identification with the opposite sex is so strong and persistent that the transsexual feels the only way to achieve peace of mind is to change the body to match the mind. Some go through the process of living in the chosen role with the help of hormones, eventually leading to sex reassignment surgery. Others seek help to learn to live with their secret feelings with less guilt and shame.

What Causes Gender Dysphoria?

Although life experiences may affect the outward expression of gender behaviour, there must be some underlying changes in the brain for transsexualism to occur. The precise cause of the condition is unknown. It is now generally accepted that some changes likely occur before birth, causing parts of the transsexual's brain to develop in the pattern opposite to that of his or her physical sex.

Unlike my first experience with the NHS, back in the 80s when Anne had spoken to our GP about the way I felt, there was now a considered and professional approach to gender dysphoria. NHS opinion, at least in some cases, was that by treating the condition immediately, precious time and money could be saved in the longer term by avoiding all sorts of future psychological and other health issues. This did not mean that someone could just walk into a clinic and say, ‘I think I’m transsexual’ and be told, ‘Ok, you can have a sex change operation on us.’

It wasn’t that simple and I was still worried that some doctor, somewhere, might conclude that I wasn’t someone who had been born into the wrong body with the wrong genitalia, and tell me to go away. Thankfully that didn’t happen.

However, it was still necessary for the NHS to make sure beyond any doubt whatsoever that I was indeed suffering from gender dysphoria. After all, once it was decided that this was the case, I would undergo an operation that is totally irreversible. Once it’s done, it’s done and even although the doctors were as sure as I was that I was a woman in a man’s body, I still had to prove this to them by living successfully as a woman for two years, in every aspect of my life.

I was subjected to rigorous checks and a succession of psychological tests, each one designed to reiterate what the previous one had found – namely, incontrovertible clinical and psychological evidence that I was female.

Marcia had told me that people in our small island community were speculating about what was going on with me although no one was really sure exactly. I do think that some at least had an inkling about what was happening.

My 48th birthday was coming up on the 16th of February and since I was now living on my own, I wasn’t planning anything. There was a knock on the door that evening and it was a bunch of friends I’d known since Anne and I had come to Coll, nine years previously. We had stayed friends after I separated from Anne; they’d come to celebrate my birthday and brought food and drink with them. It was a nice surprise and we had a really good night – we all liked a good drink and a laugh.

The more you have to drink, the braver you get and the more you say, and one of the women, at the time one of my closest friends, rubbed her hand up and down my arm and said, ‘I know you shave your arms.’

I said, ‘Yes – you know why, don’t you?’ and she replied, ‘Yes.’

I then said, ‘I’m probably going to make a big change in my life soon’, and her response was, ‘It won’t make any difference to us.’

That gave me great hope at the time, and I thought, ‘Yes, everything is going to be alright.’

Sadly, when I finally made my big change, I received a very rude awakening when some of these friends dropped me like a hot potato, turning their backs on me at a time when I really needed my friends around me. Although the passage of time has made things a bit easier between us, my relationship with the group is nothing like it was before I became a woman.

However, that was all to be faced in the future. In 2004 I took the momentous step of agreeing with the Sandyford Clinic that my official start date for living as a woman would be the 1st of May. Before I felt able to do that, there was one thing that I needed to attend to quickly: I needed a new name. I already had my female Christian name of Julie, given to me by Anne, many years previously, but I now needed a surname. For this, I cast my thoughts back twenty-four years to my early trips to Edinburgh as a female, and to the person who had at that time taken me under her wing. Sadly, she had since died, but she was one of the few people who had instantly believed in me and accepted me for what I was. She was Sue Clarke and taking her surname was an easy choice to make, and one I am very proud of. In March 2004 I signed the final self declaration forms at the General Register Office in Edinburgh, and I was now known legally as Julie Clarke.

Although I still had a mountain of red tape to contend with, another positive outcome was that, along with the name change, I was also now certified legally as being female. This allowed me to change everything from my passport – which now had F for female on it to bank accounts, driving licence, insurance policies and everything else official. This all had to be certified by declarations from the legal and health professionals concerned. I wasn’t just changing my name, I was changing everything: my identity, and most importantly, my gender. I was now legally recognized by the authorities as being female, even if I still hadn’t changed physically.

Before those final and permanent changes could be made to my body, changes I had longed for nearly all of my life, I still had to prove I could live successfully as a woman within society for two years. For some reason I had it in my head that I would have to leave Coll to do this, and go and live in the city. Glasgow was my top choice because that was where the Sandyford sexual health clinic was and I thought it would be easier just to blend in with the crowd, like I had always done in the past.

My deadline of the 1st of May, when I would officially change and start living as a woman was only about five or six weeks away and it was becoming more and more apparent to me that moving was not going to be very easy. I would have to find somewhere to live in Glasgow and I would need to try and find a job there too. Although I had more than £50,000 in the bank, this was my life savings and I didn’t want to just fritter it away. Two people in particular on the island were questioning why I felt I had to leave; this was my home. One was my close friend Marcia, who didn’t want to lose her best friend. She told me that she was looking forward to being able to go out to the pub with Julie instead of meeting her behind closed doors. She wanted to go on shopping trips to the mainland with Julie and go on holiday as two female friends together. She also wanted to show me how to really live as a woman – and that’s exactly what she did as time went on.

The other person who helped persuade me to stay on the island was my GP, Dr O’Neill, who had enthusiastically supported me from the beginning, when I first approached her in late November 2003.

Just as Marcia had done, she said, ‘You shouldn’t have to leave. This is your home and what about all your friends?’

I said, ‘I’ll probably lose most of them.’

To which she said, ‘Well if you do lose some, they probably weren’t real friends anyway and even if you lose half of them, you’ll still have more friends here than you’ll ever have in Glasgow, where you’ll be totally on your own.’

I realized they were both right and over the next few days I began to calm down and start to plan properly for my next big milestone: the 1st of May when I would be reborn as Julie Clarke.

There were now only four weeks to go and I still had lots to do. I have to say that I was pretty nervous because I didn’t really know how people were going to react when they met me for the first time as Julie. The whole community now knew what I was going to do at the end of the month, and some folk had been asking me about it and were saying, ‘We don’t care what you do, it’s got nothing to do with us,’ and so forth. I knew from a lifetime of experience that some would see the reality very differently and not find it so easy to deal with. But I was prepared for that, or at least I thought I was, as there was going to be tough times ahead for quite a while after my big change. For now, though, I just had to get on with the business of notifying everyone I was associated with as to my intentions; ploughing through the red tape just went on and on. Very importantly, my employers, Caledonian MacBrayne (CalMac), had pledged their full support. The company admitted that they had never had to deal with anything like this before, but they were willing to embrace my situation wholeheartedly – and still do to this day, even to the point of supporting and protecting me on numerous occasions.

With only about a week to go before I would be living openly as Julie Clarke, I had taken a few days off work to do some last-minute stuff in Oban, the nearest mainland port. It would in fact be my last visit to the mainland as a man; the next time I would go there I would be Julie.

I’ve been through some strange episodes in my troubled life and what happened when I arrived in Oban was certainly one of those, though it kind of reinforced to me that I was doing the right thing. Anyway, it was lunchtime and I was walking along the seafront in Oban, heading for a restaurant on the north pier. The road was quite busy and for whatever reason I turned round and looked back along the street. There was plenty of traffic, but I didn’t notice anyone walking behind me, though as I continued walking I became increasingly aware of loud footsteps behind me. They were getting closer and closer which I found odd because when I had looked back only moments ago there had been no one there. It got to the point where I was sure that someone was right on my heels, so I turned round and was startled to find this little bloke, right behind me.

I have absolutely no idea where he came from, but he came right up to me, looked me in the eye and said, ‘Don’t ever look back – that’s all over now, let it go.’ He then turned and disappeared into what now seemed like a crowd of people. It really freaked me out at the time, and is something I’ve turned over in my mind, time and time again, and which still makes me feel very emotional. I genuinely have no idea who that man was, but I firmly believe it was my old self giving his blessing to the new me. And it remains one of the strangest moments of my journey so far.

There were now just two days to go before I would, for the first time, step out of the front door of my cottage in Arinagour as Miss Julie Clarke. I was very apprehensive to say the least. I had no idea how people were really going to react, but even with this on my mind I was already beginning to feel some sense of relief. The tug of war between my male and female sides was finally over. All the big decisions had now been made, and I no longer cried myself to sleep as I had done most nights for the past forty years. The deep anxiety and heart palpitations that I had been having had also miraculously disappeared.

I was feeling liberated, upbeat and very positive about my future. For the first time in my life I was clear in my mind about where I was going, and a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I also knew I still had an uphill battle ahead of me, but I now felt strong and ready to take on the world that had conspired against me for most of my life. Nothing was going to stop me now.

The first of May finally arrived, and I spent that day discarding clothing and other items associated with my past that I wouldn’t be using again, and generally sorting myself out. I was now officially living as Julie Clarke, but it wouldn’t be until the following morning that I would emerge from my cottage as the woman I had become. There was a ferry due in on that day, so I would need to report to the ferry terminal as usual, and since everyone knew I would now be living as a woman they were probably expecting me to make my first public appearance dressed accordingly.

There was actually no striking difference to my appearance on that first working day as Julie. The uniforms at the ferry terminal are exactly the same for men and women and I tried to keep my makeup quite low-key, initially when I was at work. The day was actually quite disappointing for me, given the huge psychological build up there had been and I also suspect it may have been a disappointment for those people around me who were expecting to see a dramatic change take place, literally overnight.

Two weeks later I had to go to Dr O’Neill to have my ears syringed and when she was finished we had a chat about how everything was going. I explained that I was finding it difficult at work as I didn’t look much different, but she said, ‘It doesn’t matter how you look at work or what people think, it’s how you feel, and that’s all that matters.’

She was absolutely right. After that conversation I began to use more makeup, and my hair was also growing longer since I now had no need to hide what I was doing. I began to feel better and better as my optimism and confidence grew daily.

I was also painfully aware that my sex change was having a huge impact on the rest of the island. There were those who were happy for me, there were those who were apathetic, and there were definitely some who were didn’t approve of what I was doing. Some people came up to me and said that they thought I was very brave and they respected me for what I was doing. Some were still polite towards me, but that was as far as they went, and there were those who now couldn’t look me in the eye. There were also some people who avoided me altogether, but there was only one person on the island who verbally abused me at the time. Now, ten years later, even that person speaks to me openly and easily. For the most part I was doing remarkably well considering the issue I had brought to the community. I was very aware indeed that my situation was always going to be difficult for them, as well as for me. And I completely understand that everyone was entitled to their opinion. At the end of the day everyone had their own way of dealing with it and if I upset or offended anyone I am deeply sorry.

One or two folk dealt with my gender change by bringing a bit of humour into the situation. Being an island, Coll has a couple of quite big commercial fishing boats, and the fishermen are pretty tough and usually have plenty to say about most things that happen on the island. One of them, Innes, is always telling jokes and is quite outspoken, and I have always been quite friendly with him, but he was having a job getting his head round my change to Julie Clarke. Anyway, I was with Marcia on one of my very first pub outings as Julie and when we arrived at the pub, Innes was sitting there drinking with his partner and some other friends. It was the first time he had met me as Julie.

I said, ‘Hello Innes’, and he just looked at me. I was expecting some sort of joke or a comment at least, but he just sat there silently; he simply didn’t know what to say. So I continued, ‘Well, Innes, it’s the first time I’ve ever known you stuck for words.’ Any awkwardness was quickly avoided when the rest of the group resumed their conversations.

The next day Innes came in to the office at the ferry terminal, as he often does, and we had a hilarious conversation. One of the things he said to me was, ‘I don’t know what to call you – is it he or she?’

I said, ‘You couldn’t try she by any chance?’

He replied, ‘No, not yet, I’ll have to get used to it first, so I’ll call you “shim” for now, if that’s ok.’

I said, ‘Yes, that’s fine for now.’ I reckoned it was if it helped him get his head round my new life. And that was how Innes dealt with my becoming Julie – he wasn’t taking the piss, just using humour to help get him through something that was a difficult situation for him.

The following week he went off to the mainland with his partner on a shopping trip, and when they returned they came into the office and presented me with a small package which they told me they thought I might like. They looked on eagerly while I opened it and I was absolutely thrilled to see that it was a mug emblazoned with the words ‘I WOULD RATHER BE A WOMAN!’

Some islanders changed my Christian name slightly, calling me Jules rather than Julie. I think they found this easier because the name sounded like it could be a boy’s or a girl’s name. This was something that I had no control over, but I thought if it helps people and they find it easier to address me, I’ll just have to accept it. This version of my new name also spread to the mainland; people in Oban were starting to call me Jules as well. And to this day I am mostly known as Jules, even by my own family, although a small percentage of folk call me Julie, and I always introduce myself as Julie when I meet someone for the first time. Most people, after a couple of weeks, also start to call me Jules, because that’s what they hear everyone else calling me. Jules is fine I suppose, but when I’m at work at the ferry terminal, my ID badge reads ‘Julie Clarke’.

There was one person who was definitely there for me and prepared to stand by me through thick and thin, and that was my friend Marcia. One or two of my other friends weren’t scared to be seen out with me and also gave me a lot of support, but it was Marcia who was by my side most of the time. She said to me at the time, ‘We have to put up a united front and show people that you can live among them normally as a woman.’ So we increased our trips out to the pub for meals and drinks just to make a point. I hoped that the more I continued to mix with the people I had known before my change, the easier my new circumstances would become for all concerned. By and large this strategy proved fairly successful.

I remained best friends with Marcia and we even travelled together all over Europe; we both liked city breaks; good hotels, restaurants, wine bars, museums, and lots of shopping – boutiques of course. Our favourite way of getting to Europe was by ferry from Rosyth to Zeebrugge which took seventeen hours overnight. This suited us down to the ground. The ferry was like a small cruise ship with restaurants, bars and live music. We’d go to bed around midnight and when we got up in the morning we’d arrived at our destination, it was great. Our first stop was always Bruges where we would spend a couple of nights and from there we toured Europe in a sort of clockwise direction, visiting major cities like Paris and Barcelona.

Marcia and I made this trip several times and I remember once, on the ferry to Zeebrugge, I had a blast from my past when I spotted two couples I knew from Callander, my home town that I had left nine years previously. At the very same time that I saw them on the lower deck, one of the men in the group happened to look up to the top deck where I was standing with Marcia and clearly saw me too, even although my appearance had changed considerably. Davy, who is a bit older than me, was the person I had bought my first drum kit from when I was just fourteen, so we even had a history of sorts. I had spotted them but I had no way of knowing whether they recognised me.

I didn’t see them again until later that evening in the bar when they came over and said hello, and it was clear they had recognised me earlier. We had a few drinks together and chatted a bit. They told me they were amazed at the change in me and said that it was for the better, which was good to hear from people from my hometown. After that we only saw them once, briefly, as we disembarked from the ferry the next morning, but a few weeks later an old friend from Callander phoned me to say that Davy and his friends had spread word all over town that they had met up with me. This was apparently a big deal at the time because they were the first people from Callander to have met me as Julie. Although I had no way of knowing what was actually said, I felt quite pleased that they had gone back to Callander and told everybody what I was now like.

It wasn’t only in Callander that I was the subject of much local gossip – I may also have been the most talked-about person in the history of the Isle of Coll. But gradually, as other local issues came along, my story started to be diluted and was no longer the first thing on people’s lips. As well as the usual stuff, like people having affairs and other boring trivia, fortunately for me, a great good-time story and a welcome distraction was just around the corner.

The story was actually born out of a natural tragedy, and although when it ended I would again be the focus of attention, that attention turned out to be more positive than negative. It was early in the summer of 2004, and a massive story was breaking on the island. Word reached us that a huge whale had been washed up on a beach on the Atlantic coast at the west end of the island, but it was quickly established that the unfortunate animal had died and its body had been washed even further up the beach, making it easily accessible on foot. An increasing number of folk, myself included, headed down to look at the poor creature, which was identified as a fin whale, the second-largest species of whale on the planet after the blue whale. This one was sixty-five feet long, which is the same length as an articulated lorry, and it weighed about thirty tonnes.

As I was there soon after it beached and before the tide covered it again, I was able to take some great photos of it, but although it was one of the most impressive things I had ever seen, it was also one of the saddest. It was heartbreaking to look into its huge eyes and imagine it roaming the ocean. Sadly, its life had ended on a beach on my island. I went home that night and wept as I remembered seeing my own reflection in its huge staring eye and that’s something I’ll never forget.

The whale inevitably attracted the attention of the national press who had come initially to report on the beaching of the animal, though the story quickly turned into a Whisky Galore! caper that became almost bigger than the whale story itself. Islanders were sneaking around in the middle of the night stealing body parts from the unfortunate beast – the prized parts were its huge jaw bones measuring about fifteen feet long. Locals were rumoured to be creeping around, armed with chainsaws, cutting and dissecting the dead creature to remove its giant jaw. Once removed, the jaw was quickly spirited away, apparently on a tractor and trailer, to an unknown location on the other side of the Island. But, just as in Whisky Galore!, when the police and customs officers came from the mainland to confiscate the looted whisky from the islanders, likewise, in this case the police and scientists were quickly on the trail to retrieve the whale bones. The islanders were eventually forced to give up their ill-gotten gains and the jaw bones were left at an agreed location where the police and scientists could find them.

Eventually scientists from Edinburgh University arrived with two big trucks and took the by now, very smelly body of the whale, including the prized jaw bones, back to Edinburgh, where they would eventually reassemble the skeleton for scientific study. However, all was not lost; the scientists cast a life-size model of the jaw bones and presented it to the island. They are now on display on the hill directly above the ferry terminal, and they are one of the first things people see when they arrive on the ferry.

Because the whale had deteriorated somewhat before the press arrived, they were on the lookout for any good photos that had been taken of it earlier – to use in their newspaper coverage of the incident – and that’s when I bumped into a couple of reporters in the pub. I said that I had some good photos of the whale and they asked if they could see them, so I went home and got them. We ended up having a good chat and, of course, a drink. They were plying me with wine, after which I agreed to give them the best of the photos. As it turned out, they used one of them for their article in the Daily Mail, showing the whale only hours after it had been beached. They were happy and I was happy that one of my photos had been used, and I thought that would be the end of it. I was wrong.

About a week later I got a phone call from Willy, the photographer I had given my photos to. He said that someone in the pub that night had told him I was a transsexual. Wasn’t that nice of them? Anyway, he said that the Mail was interested in my story, and they would like to come back to the island and do an article on me. I told him that I wasn’t interested because I was doing well and I didn’t want to attract any attention to myself, but his reply was, ‘Look, we are coming back to the island anyway and we can easily write about you, with or without your input, so why don’t you give us the true version instead of us getting it from others?’

Put like that I really felt that I didn’t have any choice but to agree to speak to them. I was accused by some people of selling my story to the press, but it just wasn’t like that at all. Another friend of mine, Craig, said that I was crazy to let the press do a story on me. He and his wife Lesley are police officers in Glasgow, but they have a house on Coll, so they are regulars to the island and being pretty good friends of mine, they were naturally concerned for my well-being, as they had had a lot of dealings with newspaper reporters in Glasgow. Craig said that they would destroy me by sensationalizing my story and told me that they wouldn’t put over my side of the story as I wanted it, but would make it in to something sleazy, just to make a good story. I told him they had assured me that the story would be entirely based on my input and that they would respect me.

Craig replied, ‘That’s rubbish – mark my words, they’ll destroy you.’ By that point everything had been arranged for their visit, so I went ahead anyway.

The following week the Mail sent over a reporter called Don, along with Willy the photographer. They spent nearly two days with me, doing interviews and photo shoots, and I asked them, ‘Why me? I’m sure I’m not the most glamorous transsexual in the world.’

They told me that they had come across other transsexuals in their travels but I seemed to be different and special in some way. This made me very happy because, as I’ve said before, I have always seen myself as being different from other transsexuals. Above all, I wanted to keep my individuality and just be a woman living normally. I had no desire to go to drop-in sessions where transsexuals all met up with each other and didn’t mix with anyone else. The whole point for me was – and is – to be a normal female and just fit into society.

Eventually the article was published in the Scottish Daily Mail. It was a page and a half long, accompanied by pictures, and was as promised – a well-balanced and sympathetic, if brief, account of who I was. I became good friends with Willy the photographer and still keep in touch with him on a regular basis to this day. The weekend after the article came out I met Craig and Lesley in the pub. In front of the assembled company, Craig said to me, ‘Jules, I’m sorry – the Daily Mail – you were right, I was wrong. They stood by you and told your story sympathetically – well done.’ At that we all had a few drinks together, as always.

I had agreed to the Daily Mail story because it was being done anyway, but I was also aware that it would inform the hundreds of people I had known throughout my life about what I was doing. As well as reaching people who knew me well now, but didn’t have any idea of my plans, the story would also reach those people I hadn’t seen for years. I came to hear plenty of accounts through friends of friends, about people who had seen the article or been told about it, so it really had spread the word very widely.

One of the things that most surprised the reporters when they came to do the article was the fact that nearly everyone just treated me normally. Although only a couple of months had passed since I began living as Julie Clarke, most folk were beginning to accept my decision; they had their own lives to live and my situation was slowly becoming less of an issue. Some people had to try harder than others, but they were getting there, and one or two people had said to me that I was part of the community and I had the right to live in it as I wished. Of course there would be others in the community who would need much more time – months, even years – to get used to it, but in general the attitude of the community towards me was one of acceptance.

The reporters also said that writing about me made a refreshing change; generally they only got to write about transsexuals when they were being discriminated against, or when someone was being violent towards them. I knew what they meant. When I went to the Sandyford for my appointments I would occasionally meet other transsexual people in the waiting room and we would get chatting. All they ever talked about was the abuse they received.

They would ask, ‘What about you?’ And I would say, ‘What about me?’

The response to that would be, ‘Don’t you get any bother?’ And when I said I didn’t, they found it hard to believe and wondered how I’d avoided any trouble.

I truly believe that one of the reasons I wasn’t getting too much bother at this stage had a lot to do with where I lived, as most of the people who lived in the Isle of Coll were amazingly tolerant and understanding. Also, I was supremely confident and at ease. I tried not to attract attention to myself, especially in the early days, and even now you will hardly ever see me wearing a skirt. To me, you don’t have to wear a skirt all the time to be a woman. If I’m on a night out then I will wear a short skirt and high heels, but otherwise I usually wear dressy denims or a trouser suit with a nice top and modest high-heeled boots.

I’m not saying I have never had any issues with anyone since I came out in the open as a transsexual, but any I did have were very brief and low key; just minor things like someone slipping up and referring to me as ‘he’ instead of ‘she’, little things like that, which could be infuriating nevertheless. I do have the greatest sympathy for those poor souls who have had to endure endless discrimination and abuse. Living as a transsexual is hard enough without having to put up with all that too.

I still had a way to go, but one thing was for sure: I was on top of the world. I had never in my life felt such elation, such immense optimism, and I could hardly hold back my excitement. Whereas, in the dark old days, I used to hope that I wouldn’t wake up in the morning, I now went to sleep with a smile on my face. I was eager for the morning to come, when I would be ready to take on the day ahead with an enthusiasm that I had never dreamed of before.

I still had to keep pushing towards the one thing that would make my life as a woman complete: surgery. There were still dozens of appointments ahead in the build up to what would finally change me for ever. As well as my usual visits to the Sandyford clinic, I would have to get laser treatment for facial hair removal and speech therapy to help change the pitch of my voice. When I’m in the company of people who know me I am a bit lazy and often speak as I used to, but when I’m off the island I speak entirely in my female voice. I really should try harder when I’m at home.

Since all of my appointments and assessments were on the mainland, I was able to get away from Coll for two or three days at a time. Marcia would always come with me and we would treat the trip like a mini holiday, doing what we did best – eating out, going to nice bars and shopping. The appointments were usually in Glasgow and only occasionally in our local mainland town of Oban, but we always booked into the Royal Hotel in Oban if we could, it was our favourite hotel. We were very well known there and I had also stayed there often before I became female.

When I made the change to Julie the entire hotel staff accepted me right away – in fact, they started to treat me as if I was royalty! Without knowing it, the staff at the hotel, from the manager to the housemaids and kitchen and bar staff, actually played a big part in building up my confidence.

At the Royal Hotel the staff, as well as the regular customers, were all getting to know me as Julie. They weren’t the only people to say that I was much nicer as a woman than I had been as the man they knew before, and my popularity at the hotel seemed to be mirrored all over the town. I was also becoming well known in the shops and restaurants, and especially to all the taxi drivers – something that had never happened to me before, when I was just that dull little bloke who nobody noticed.

I had turned into a happy, outgoing, optimistic and cheerful middle-aged woman. Men were now holding doors open for me, offering to carry my case up the stairs at the hotel if the lift was full. They would offer me their seat in the bar if it was busy; if I was waiting to cross a busy road they would allow me to cross. It felt good to be a woman and I was becoming more and more confident with every day that passed.