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(To introduce this blog I knew the perfect song, ‘The Jam’ playing their hit ‘Funeral Pyre’. I still remembered the video over twenty years later! Sadly I had to use them playing it on a 1980s TV programme, The video which I would have loved to have introduced this topic with cannot be embedded but click below to see it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFrrNhsGZp4)

Sorry ladies, this girl has a confession to make!! I did actually use to be a man!!! Shocking I know, but for a short while longer close examination will show certain ‘signs’. Plans are underway to jettison my maleness once and for all, and already I’ve been living as Catherine full-time for over five months and have been almost universally accepted.

However, there is one secret I need to reveal so I can totally move on to becoming the real me and totally get rid of the past! In a box high on the top of a wardrobe in my bedroom I still have my male clothes!! Why?? I simply do not know! Shortly I plan to donate the best items to a charity shop to help others, as I spend a lot of my new life doing just that, But as for the ‘rags’/well-worn stuff??? should I have a ‘funeral pyre’ and give the last vestiges of ‘David’ (The male me) a good old Viking style sent-off?

I already have the perfect location in mind for the ‘pyre’! It’s a location I already used to send my wedding ring to a watery grave after my marriage collapsed and to ditch that failed attempt at keeping the real me firmly in ‘the closet’! High on a hill above the town where I live is a pond, 1000 feet above sea level; it enjoys stunning views over my home town. As a child we occasionally used to sail our inflatable rubber-dingys up there too. It seems an ideal location to give the old me a fitting sanded-off. A small part of me says I should simply donate everything to charity, but what do ‘my sisters’ think??

At least that title is what I half thought the band ‘Heaven 17’ were singing way back in 1983 on their hit ‘Come live with me'! Little did I realise how much I would come to rue the onset of ‘Male pattern baldness, which probably started about a similar time in the 1980s.

Thankfully I still have something of a reasonable covering, and my hairdresser, who has other transgender clients, thinks it may well grow back. The hormones may well help when I finally start on them in about a month’s time, but at least this week I’ve been able to start taking some steps to try and at least get some more ‘hair tomorrow’! My doctor/GP has proscribed ‘Fanasteride,’ and I’ve invested in a product called ‘Regaine’ which is supposed to ‘regrow hair’, sadly (for me) its seen as a cosmetic product by the National Health Service (NHS) so I’ve had to buy it at full price! (Still the pack I got was nearing its use by date so it was half price! That must be the ‘luck’ I blogged about earlier!)

Only time will tell if the drugs etc will give me a ‘hair-raising’ experience, but I can only try. But even if I don’t get my hair back at least now I’ve discovered a place to make the most of my wigs in nearby Manchester. (See http://www.transfixedonline.co.uk/) Indeed, I know Steph Booth (Tony Blair’s Mother-in-law) in the town I live in and when she saw how good and natural they’d made my wig look she congratulated me on how feminine I was looking! And others keep doing that too!!

I did think about using the ‘theme song’ of the British comedian, Ken Dodd, as the introduction to this blog, especially as I nicked some of the lyrics as the title! If you really want to hear it click the video below:


However, I infinitely prefer the video by Sting called ‘Spread a Little Happiness’, happiness is a gift that thankfully I’ve been given in abundance especially since I ‘came-out’ after all those years of hiding Catherine ‘in the closet’ (!!). But I’ve long discovered the infinite benefits of not keeping happiness to yourself, but spreading it around! Sometimes I joke that ‘My halo is so bright, it hurts my eyes!’ (lol)

For example in addition to getting involved in Trans issues where I live, I’m a very active member of the districts Disability Forum and use my experiences to hopefully help others. I’m also on the Equality Forum, which aims to make things fairer for all, regardless of race, creed, colour, disability, sexuality or indeed gender. And even in the depths of my depression which I fell into when my marriage collapsed (due to my wife’s infidelity, not my gender issues) I got involved in community issues and a whole lot more at up to strategic level, using my skills and experience to help (and hopefully bring happiness) to others. I won’t bore you with the details but I was actually quite successful at it. My biggest success being campaigning for flood defences for my town which ended up in £44 million being awarded to stop the flood disaster of 2000 where over 750 homes and businesses were affected happening again.

But I do maybe have a problem with attempting to bring happiness to others! One in which I think I need the advice of other girls. In a previous life (work not gender) I was an advertising copywriter, getting paid for playing with words and coming up with ideas for TV commercials etc. Again I was quite successful at it. However, I do still try to ‘spread a little happiness’ and say things that are evidently a joke, and to make sure people know I’m joking I stick my tongue out and laugh. But someone says joking is a bit of a ‘male’ thing to do! Should I try to stop? I do enjoy spreading a little happiness, but I infinitely more enjoy being seen as a woman and I don’t want to do anything to spoil the effect! And I’m now just so ‘goddamn’ happy, people keep commenting on it! It maybe a gift, but I don’t want to keep it to myself!

Apparently, in Britain in the National Press mid-summer is known as the ‘Silly-season’, however recent reporting in certain of our National Newspapers has been far from silly, and to my mind bigoted and almost hate filled!

In my last blog I mentioned how great it was to know there is a National Trans Police Association when I visited ‘Sparkle’ in Manchester, yet in two of our National Newspapers it was an excuse for what I’d describe as ‘sheer bigotry. The two newspapers are The Daily Mail and The Daily Express, and amongst the headlines were: “And if you thought WPCs in burqas were ridiculous”, “Sex Swap Police Scandal”, “Pictured: The trans-gender police roadshow spreading the word at a gay festival,” Remember as I blogged earlier, Sparkle is a transgenderd festival, not gay festival! Thai probably says a heck of a lot about the standard of reporting in those newspapers, but I know that their readers believe what their newspapers say!

The reports can be read here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1206415/And-thought-WPCs-burqas-ridiculous.html
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/120671/Sex-swap-police-scandal-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1206747/Pictured-The-trans-gender-police-roadshow-spreading-word-gay-festival.html
There are some greats shots of the girls at sparkle however in one of the articles!

On the positive side details of the National Trans Police Association are at:
http://www.ntpa.org.uk/ . I think the ‘so called newspapers are stirring up Trans Hatred to ‘up’ their circulation figures, but shouldn’t the anti-hate crime laws be used against this bigotry!

Last month I was lucky enough to go to ‘Sparkle’ in Manchester for the first time It’s held in Manchester’s ‘Gay Village’ near Canal Street, which, to me is an ideal location to avoid any potential bigotry, and as we are supposed to be part of the ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans’ (LGBT) community it is great to get help and support from the entire community. Apparently a Police Chief Constable back in the 1980s, called James Anderson, decided it was best to put all we ‘perverts and weirdoes’ together in one place so he could ‘keep an eye’ on us, hence the ‘Gay Village’!!

Anyway it was brilliant to see hundreds, if not thousands of transgendered girls having fun and really ‘out and proud’! We honestly are NOT alone!!! Sparkle has been taking place for 5 years and to me is well worth a visit. Some pictures of this year and details of next years event arte on/will be on their website, see: http://www.sparkle.org.uk/ Sparkle 2010 will be on July 9th, 10th and 11th. It is billed as the National Transgender Festival and encompasses the entire spectrum of transgenderism, including (something I’m still trying to get my ‘head around’) middle-aged men dressing as little girls. There again Turner Prize winning artist, Grayson Perry, does all right doing that!

There were several meals organized in various locations, a trans film festival and Sackville Park was crammed with music acts and transgender stalls. It was great to see the Trans Police Association for serving trans police officers put in an appearance. I learnt such a lot about the importance of we girls reporting ‘Hate Incidents’ long before they become crimes! But above all it was such an action packed and fun-filled weekend, and yes, this girl really did have fun!

Well there has to be some explanation and, without getting too metaphysical and ethereal, luck is the easiest way to describe it! I’m talking now about my transition and, the way it had totally and utterly changed my life around! Sadly I’m now suffering from Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and needing two arm-crutches to walk around the luck may not stretch to all areas of my life. But then again in some ways I’m lucky there too! I don’t have to worry about walking as a woman, just walking! (lol)

There is of course another explanation as to why my Primary Care Trust (PTC)/Health Authority are paying for me to become a patient of probably the best transgender doctor in Britain, Richard Curtis, and it is part of our apparently much maligned - at least recently in the USA - National Health Service (NHS) it won’t cost me a penny!

The explanation is some have been campaigning for years to change the system for dealing with Gender Dysphoria and transgenderism in the area of Britain in which I live. That is really why ‘I’m lucky’! I was lucky (that word again!) enough to be able to travel to our parliament in London to campaign against the way we girls were being treated, by those supposed to care for us and also speak up for change to our district council, not to mention to human rights lawyers! And we were successful, with local MPs and the entire district council behind us, including the far from trans friendly far-right British National Party!

I consider myself so incredibly lucky (that word again!) to be almost acting as a ‘guinea-pig’ for the new system and way of working. I’ve just received my first appointment for speech therapy, which is great as I always think as soon as I open my mouth I’m so obviously male! (Thankfully others disagree, already) My first laser hair removal appointment will be within the next month, and I get Derma Color Camouflage Cream free from my doctor on prescription, as I’m on Incapacity Benefit as the MS makes me unable to do paid work. (I do, however, do a lot of voluntary work.)

I also feel so incredibly lucky, (that word yet again!) that in the town where I live, and was indeed born and brought up in, people have been so accepting of my life choice. I reckon I must now have ‘come-out’ to almost 900 people, yet I can count the negatives on the fingers of one hand! And everyone keeps commenting on how happy and positive I now sound and I am! I describe it as. “My lights are on and this time some one really is home!” I spent over ten years on anti-depressants when my marriage collapsed, due to my wife’s infidelity not my trans issues. However a few weeks ago I suddenly thought, “Why am I taking these? I’m happy!” and went ‘cold-turkey’ and stopped taking them. Indeed I’m the happiest now I ever have been in my life, and truly contented, and how many can really say that? That’s what luck can do for you!

However, lucky as I do feel, and yes as Joan Amatrading sang. “I can walk under ladders”, I’m not about to start doing the National Lottery, as with help from others I’m making my own luck and finally living my real life, and that is a prize that’s way beyond price!!!!

Don’t worry, I’ve not suddenly turned into plastic nor have I suddenly got a boyfriend named Ken, and I won’t let you (as it says in the song) “Dress me anywhere!” Although I really do love being to all appearances being and dressing as a woman 24/7! As an aside I love it when friends who cross-dress say things like, “I went out dressed last night!” Does that mean they often go out stark naked!! Well, it amuses me, sorry!

Anyway, this girl has suddenly realized what a ‘girly’ girl I have become! All those little girly things all add up to making me feel extra special! For example, I’ve had my ears pierced and when I finally took the sleepers out and got ‘dangly’ earrings it felt so brilliant and feminine to feel them brush against my neck!

In the past the only ring I ever wore was my wedding ring, and what a terrible mistake it was ending up with that! (But that’s a different story!) Now however, my fingers almost ‘glow’ with gold, silver and gemstones! I simply cannot stop buying wonderful jewelry! Necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings and more! Then there are all the clothes, hosiery and lingerie! My wardrobes, which once had space to spare, are now positively bulging with female attire, as are all my drawers! And when I ‘go out ‘dressed’ (lol) I keep getting positive comments on how good I’m looking, for example yesterday one of the most stylish women I know said how good I looked without any prompting! (Mind you she’s called Kate too, only with a different initial letter, so maybe style goes with the name! (lol)) And recently when I wore a dress my mother thought a little too short she ‘told me off’, not really for the shortness of the dress but because my legs are far better than hers ever were!

I used to be able to just run a comb through the hair I had left and that was it! Now however, despite the fact it is (sadly) a wig, I have to spend ages making sure it looks ‘just right’ before I dare leave the house! Then there’s the make-up! I’m simply naked without it! I simply have to go out dressed! (lol) I’m still not too good at it and recon I’ll have to get some lessons, but simply applying it makes me feel so much more female.

I now wear glasses, and while my previous frames weren’t too male, my new ones almost ooze femininity! All these little things are adding up and as many who know me could tell you, I’m happier now than I have been for years, if not decades! And whilst I would actually hate it to be thought of as a ‘Barbie Girl’ (I hope there’s more to me than that) I now simply love the colour pink!! (How’s that for being a Barbie Girl’??)

On my debut photo shoot I found out for myself how good it is to really be pampered, even just having someone else just doing your hair and make-up. Then a few weekends ago when I went to the regular Trans-forum meeting in Manchester (http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/TG-DiscussionGroup/) I saw for myself how a little pampering and expert help an advice can really make a difference!

Unlike the usual meeting where we discuss trans issues, this time we split into two groups, one went to visit a company called Transfixed in Manchester, the others learnt a little dress-making from a couple we had met at International Woman’s day at Manchester Town Hall in the Spring. Thanks to health issues (my motive skills are failing thanks to my MS) I decided to go on the visit. I had heard that a trans girl was organizing the visit, I’ll call her Heather (as that’s her name), but I couldn’t see her anywhere! I’d spent several hours with her at the International Woman’s Day, so I was bound to recognize her, or so I thought!

However, when we arrived at Transfixed, I still couldn’t spot Heather anywhere! And that’s when it dawned on me the quality of the service the company offered and how ‘pampering’ can really change things for we girls! As when I started talking to the ‘Gender Girl’ (or so I’d been thinking) who had come with us, it turned out it was Heather herself! She looked sooooooooo good!!! And above all at peace with herself! To say I was totally ‘gob smacked’ would be something of an understatement! Heather is pictured in the photograph above. If anyone lives anywhere Manchester, TransFixed seems more than well worth checking out! Their web-site is at: http://www.transfixedonline.co.uk/

If like me, you are a fan of the BBC TV series ‘Dragon’s Den’, it is actually filmed upstairs in the mill that houses TransFixed, (Details of the series are at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden/) Dragon’s Den is about helping new business ideas get off the ground and be successful. And from the pampering experience I just enjoyed when I had my eyebrows shaped and lashes tinted TransFixed’s future should be well assured!

I happened to mention a couple of blogs ago about how I am to a certain extent using experiences and skills developed in the voluntary sector to help other girls, and how it shows that this girl’s beauty is far more than ‘skin deep. (Hence the choice of song!) However, I’m not claiming the credit, others have been fighting this particular ‘war’ for over 6 years! I am merely a latecomer and to a large extent a mere ‘foot-soldier’!

In the UK thanks to our National Health Service (NHS), and as transgenderism has been shown to be a recognized medical condition, we can now have our transitions fully handled and funded in this country. Brilliant, as I was left homeless and ‘broke‘ when my marriage collapsed! Maybe not as glamorous as a trip to Thailand, but the end result is the same!

Anyway I live in an area of the North of England called Calderdale, so when myself and my doctor decided that transitioning was the right thing for me, it was only natural that I was sent to the nearest Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) in Leeds. (There are several around the country.) Coincidentally, looking bat the way I am now that I am living full-time as a woman, transitioning is the healthiest decision I have ever made! Six months ago I visited the Leeds GIC expecting them to help me along my way to transition, but apart from my first visit where I was told that my disability wouldn’t stop my transition going a 70 mile round trip just for an unstructured chat, didn’t feel the best use of my (or anyone else’s) time. I later found out that I wasn’t the only one who felt the same, and that people had been campaigning for better care for years!

As examples of what is wrong with the service in Leeds, it is held in a mental hospital, and only this week it was discovered that, apparently, everyone who uses the clinic is put on the same mental health database as those who are ‘sectioned’ for mental health problems! Despite the fact that it could have affected my own transition, something needed doing, and I was lucky enough to be able to go to London to ‘lobby’ the Houses of Parliament in May! See the following for independent articles about what we were doing and why:
http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/Sexchange-group-to-lobby-MPs.5274416.jp
http://www.hsj.co.uk/news/primary-care/yorkshire-and-humber-sha-accused-of-grilling-gender-change-patients/5002198.article
http://christineburns.blogspot.com/2009/04/yorkshire-trans-folk-lobby-mps.html
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-12290.html#

Some of the replies to those articles may sound positive, but in all those months of going to Leeds, they never really told me what was happening or where and when I would move on to my dream!

Thankfully, our local council (Even the far-right British National Party) realized something was very very wrong and unanimously voted to change things, as did all our local Members of Parliament! But the Leeds GIC said they wouldn’t change, effectively totally ignoring the views of democratically elected representatives! However, on Tuesday night, at a meeting of the council, (who pay their bill) they finally agreed to change and care for us, the patients, but those who have been here for the past 6 years, remain to be convinced!! I was lucky enough to be able to speak too and asked why they never actually fully consulted those of us whose lives are directly affected about how they work? They manage to give a very evasive answer!

Anyway, at the meeting Claire, my close friend and the one who had been campaigning all those years, was able to reveal that Leeds had lost one of their patients due to their lack of care – me!!!!!!!! – and that I had already got an escape route planned (and paid for) by my local NHS! She said the look on their faces was priceless!!

But to me the main thing is that having heard and experienced for myself what was wrong with the system, I’ve been in a position to hopefully help make lifer a little easier for those girls yet to come!

Well what a day yesterday was! In my last blog I talked about feeling ‘pretty’. But just for the day I was actually a real photographic model! Hence my reason for the link to the Kraftwerk song, which again is a song I would never have sung about myself before!

This isn’t the subject I mentioned in my last blog when I said about helping other girls, but in another way yesterday should help others. The photo-shoot was for a brochure combating hate crimes against trans people. It was for an authority in the South of England, I live in the North, so I won’t be getting picked out on the street from the shots that were taken. I just hope Simon, the photographer, is allowed by the client to let us have some shots! (It will certainly ‘spice-up’ my photographic record of my transition if he can)

It was great to actually be fully made-up for the shots by a professional make-up artist. And it was brilliant to meet other trans people, both girls and guys. It always amazes me how close our stories follow each other, whatever way we are traveling on our journey.

It was glorious to be pampered and cared for, and to me best of all to know it could ultimately help others

(Sorry not blogged on LJ for a while or, worse still, replied to your blogs!! But I have some wonderful 'excuses/reasons' which I will blog about soon! I'll catch up on commenting soon too!)

To tell the truth this is not a song I have ever felt like singing to myself, or especially about myself, before! “Pretty” is not a word you could in any way shape or form use to describe my male incarnation!! But much to my surprise and amazement that appears to be what people are starting to see me as!! And friends are saying I positively ‘glow’ with good health and femininity, In many ways, to my mind what I find perhaps strangest of all is that I’m getting interest from men, and I like it! As a man I was always ‘straight’ and it appears as if that’s what I may well be as a woman! At least I certainly enjoyed getting kissed on the lips by men! Even if it was such a shock the first time to feel stubble against my lips!!

I used to suffer from a foul temper and my anger could just explode without warning!!! But now all is serene and troubles appear to just be things that happen to other people! Beginning my transition has done wonders for the depressions I used to suffer from too! As an aside, I’ll never forget the look on the psychiatrist’s face who was helping me through my mental problems, it was almost like seeing a light-bulb go on over someone’s head! Transitioning WAS the answer!

But best of all I’m using my experiences and skills developed in the voluntary sector to help other girls! I will try to blog soon a little of what I have been up to! It gives me such a kick and helps show that this girl’s beauty is far more than skin deep. Which I hope you’ll agree, is ‘pretty’ good!

It is not clear where that saying comes from, but as I am moving in that direction there is really no reason I shouldn’t follow the saying to the letter!! Until now ‘on-line’ and off my name has been Davinia. I had spent years thinking what to call myself, but when my daughter was born had given her my first choice of Imogen. So when I started to come out on-line I took an easy route to choose my name and ‘feminized’ my existing one! ‘David’ became ‘Davinia’! Very classy!! Or so I thought!!

However, Steph, a girlfriend of mine was asked by a girlfriend of hers if I was Trans as I had a name like ‘Davinia’. However’ as I was reasonably happy with the name and I was just using it on-line at the time, I really thought nothing of it, it was easier to stick with the name I’m known as on here than change it. And I don’t even know Steph’s friend, she knew Steph is trans so a friend (me) could well be trans too!

But what really started this girl wobbling about her name was a couple of weeks ago when I ‘came-out’ to a girl I’d known for at least 30 years and told her my choice of name! Straight away, without a moment’s hesitation she said “Don’t use that! Change it! It sounds like a drag queen!!” And that is one thing I never ever want to be seen as!! She also said if I stuck with Davinia she’d never speak to me again! But I wasn’t too worried about that! No, what worried me more is very shortly I will be legally changing my name as part of my transition, and after that it would start to get very expensive and complicated to keep legally changing my name as often as I change my mind!!!

So I ‘did me some thinking’ and that’s another good thing about becoming a woman! Unlike men they do actually think!! The name I am now going to be is ‘Catherine Louise Hilton’ shortened to ‘Cate’ if you want although I will answer to ‘Cathy’ or even ‘Oi! You!’ if needed! (lol)

When I told my mother what my legal female name will be, she was ‘over the moon’ as if I had actually been born a girl my name would have been Catherine!

May I apologize if I lose touch with any of you girls who have been friends over the past year as I change my name on blogs etc. My new e-mail address is catherine.hilton@ymail.com by the way! But I guarantee having used my woman’s prerogative once I won’t be using it to change my name ever again!!

Since I finally ‘slid off the fence’, after all those years of self-hatred and depression, and made THE decision there is one thing that has totally amazed, astounded and above all delighted me! I suppose it’s because all our lives are moving in the same direction, although that is a ‘very flat’ way of describing the most fabulous and fantastic life-journeys any human being could ever under take! But over the past year I have made friends with some of the most fantastic girls anyone could ever hope to meet, both on-line and in person.

As I live ‘out in the sticks’ and not in a big city it’s not as easy as I would like to meet other girls in person, and especially when I first ‘came-out’ to myself it was difficult to know where to go to meet others, and more importantly talk with them! So first of all I started to get to know and ‘talk’ to girls on-line, including those across ‘the pond’. And I found I could easily spend hours ‘chatting’ to girls who I now hope we will be friends for life! We had such a lot in common that while we may not have been physically talking, our fingers certainly were!

But when it came to actually getting to know other girls who I’d initially met on-line I was simply amazed how well we could just, well, talk! As a man I was always a little shy and quiet, but now when I meet up with girlfriends there is just no stopping me!! Indeed the animal cruelty people may have issued a warning against me as it appears I can now ‘talk the hind legs of a donkey!’ (lol)

Whatever else happens in my life, and I hope it is going to essentially be good, I consider it a privilege indeed to have been able to get to know such wonderful girls and more importantly enjoy the ‘girl talk!’

“As you sow so shall you reap” It may be a phrase from the bible but as I have started to ‘come out’ to those I know the truth of the phrase has hit me so hard! All my life I have been a warm caring individual which looking back on things I suppose were essentially feminine traits in a ‘macho’ world!

But when the truth of the biblical phrase really hit home was as I came out separately to my two sons. I came out to Robert, my youngest son first. As he is in the army and is not home so often, I thought that me telling him my future as a woman would turn him totally away from me, him being involved in want is often still a man’s world. Then I came out to Andrew me eldest son, he’s almost 21 and at college. With both of them I have not had as much contact as I would like since I was kicked out of thw family home in 1999 to make way for their mother’s police inspector boyfriend! However, I can only be the seed of goodness, understanding, and well love, I planted in them at an early age that made them so accepting of my dream. They both said that all that really mattered was my happiness! (Awwwww! I could almost cry!)

I have now ‘come out’ to well over 30 people in my hometown and until now have had only one negative response, but that could be due to where I came out to her, it was in a supermarket!!

I just hope and pray that people continue to be so accepting, and based on the seeds of love I have planted here most just might be!

The guy above is covering a song by the great singer songwriter, Billy Bragg. Sadly I cannot find a video of Billy himself singing 'Valentine's Day is Over.

The song contains what to me is a wonderful line which is, "God didn't make you an angel, the Devil made you a man!" To me that sums up how I often feel. How did I end up this mess of a man? I am taking steps to rectify this, but according to 'Right-wing Christians' we appear to be going against the will of their God!

If we blame the Devil will there totally unfounded hatred cease?

Just a thought.
----------------------------------------
'Valentine's Day is over' lyrics

Some day boy you'll reap what you've sown
You'll catch a cold and you'll be on your own
And you will see that what's wrong with me
Is wrong with everyone that
You want to play your little games on
Poetry and flowers pretty words and threats
You've gone to the dogs again and i'm not placing bets
On you coming home tonight anything but blind
If you take me for granted then you must expect to find
Surprise, surprise
Valentine's day is over, it's over
Valentine's day is over
If you want to talk about it well you know where the phone is
Don't come round reminding me again how brittle bone is
God didn't make you an angel the devil made you a man
That brutality and economy are related now i understand
When will you realise that as above so below there is no love
For the girl with the hour glass figure
Time runs out very fast
We used to want the same things but that's all in the past
And lately it seems that as it all gets tougher
Your ideal of justice just becomes rougher and rougher
Thank you for the things you bought me thank you for the card
Thank you for the things you taught me when you hit me hard
That love between two people must be based on understanding
Until that's true you'll find your things
All stacked out on the landing, surprise, surprise

Well this is confession time, yet again I’m afraid!! I have been a very naughty girl in putting my own desire to own a ‘flash’ pair of knee-high boots above almost everything else!!! All through my life I have always put others first, but just for once this was something I wanted, just for me! Well, actually for Davinia, but you can imagine what I mean!

I’d spotted a pair of boots on the WWW.mangus.com website. I’m (UK) size 11 and I thought that finding a pair in my size -a pretty tall order. Speaking of ‘tall-orders’ as I’m six feet tall in my stocking feet, I avoid heels to blend in with genetic women height wise. I’d love to be dancing around like the girls around Nancy Sinatra in the video, but health problems mean I’d probably break my ankle in those heels!

When I first started looking for the boots, I got the terminology wrong and put out a message in the community asking for thigh high leather boots rather than the knee high ones. I bet some girls though I was very kinky, speaking of which if you’ve not seen it I can thoroughly recommend the movie, ‘Kinky Boots’! It’s about a shoe factory in the Midlands that starts making boots for TG and CD girls to stay in business.


The boots actually cost more than any other item of clothing I had ever bought for myself in my entire life! But wearing them something special comes over this girl. There is a saying that, “If the shoe/boot fits wear it!!” Wearing these boots makes me feel like a real woman, literally from the ground up! I almost don’t want the Spring and Summer to arrive so I can wear them the whole year round! Ah well, Summer will soon be on it’s way and maybe I’ll then be able to regale you with another shoe story! Speaking of which …….........

So here it is, with just about two hours to go, this girl’s final blog of 2008! At least that is how much of the year we have left in England as I type! But what a year 2008 has been for me! One topic simply dominates my whole year. The final realization that it truly was a case of do or die! To grow old, bitter and twisted having kept the girl I has known I really am hidden away to die in the shadows or to let her finally fly free?

Over thirty years of keeping Davinia hidden and indeed getting married and having a family to make sure she would not suddenly appear had caused me decades of psychological problems. Which as you may have read were aided and abetted by my ex, who despite the overall subject of this blog I will continue to call Phoebe (meaning Psycho Bitch from Hell)

I could go on and on about the frankly appalling things Phoebe did, not just to me but to our children, but the past is indeed fading as my bright feminine future beckons and like Orlando in the clip above ‘I am learning to let go of the past. And my ‘feminine’ life is really just beginning!!

Sadly I cannot remember who posted the Orlando clip in one of her blogs earlier in the year, but I thank her from the bottom of my heart! It is one of those movies I SIMPLY HAVE TO SEE!!! If I understand the film at all the story is about ‘Orlando’ (Tilda Swanson) who is effectively transgendered and lives through centuries from Elizabethan times to the present day. The scene above from the film includes the song ‘Coming’ by Jimmy Somerville which includes the lyric |I am a woman and not a man!” Which is the verse that now perfectly fits my life! Especially as I know I really have jettisoned the past and my feminine future is at my beautifully manicured fingertips!! (OK, so I’m still biting my fingernails, but the positive thinking really changed my life last year, maybe it will improve my nails this!!)

Over the past few months, you may have noticed, my blogs have become less and less frequent! This is because I have been becoming more and more concerned, well to be honest, depressed, about the fact I had heard nothing at all about my transition. I was told it would be six months after coming out to my doctor before I would have an appointment at the gender clinc. Last Friday when I finally attended the Gender Clinic in Leeds it was over nine months since I first saw my doctor. And having suffered from anxiety and depression for at least the past ten years, they were becoming stronger and stronger feelings in my mind again.

The euphoria I had felt at finally revealing the ‘BIG’ secret about myself after well over 30 years, of hiding it away from everyone had turned into endless worry and thinking that as I had now been diagnosed with Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis (MS), my Primary Care Trust would look to save money by refusing to allow my transition!! It was obvious to me at least, in the depressed state I was rapidly traveling towards, that my dream was destined to die on a December day in Northeast Leeds!!

However, life was about to teach me the ultimate lesson in how good things can and do happen to me, not just to other people! And how important it is to remember something of the ‘power of positive thinking’! To open our minds as widely as possible to reveal the whole wide ‘blue sky’ with all it’s beauty and wondrousness.

I am calling it the ultimate Christmas present a girl could ever hope to receive, as at the gender clinic it was revealed that funding had been awarded for at least the first year of my transition, and if they were paying for my transition to start there was no way they would or could leave me in a ‘no-man’s’ (or woman’s) land. Also if they refused to allow me to transition because of MS it would be the very worst kind of disability discrimination.

So after all these years of running away from the woman I am I am finally in line to truly become her!!!

To all my girlfriends all around the world! I've just recived the ultimate Christmas present and will Blog about it soon:

This weekend I went down to visit a very good girlfriend of mine Steph, who lives in the South of England. We were going for a ‘Girls Night Out’ at Pink Punters a Trans friendly bar/nightclub near Milton Keynes. (If interested their website is at http://www.pinknet.co.uk/index.php ) The night was brilliant by the way!

Any way the point behind this posting is some news Steph had read on-line about my local Health Authority, Calderdale. We both belong to the same Yahoo Group. I had set off too early to get the news myself, if I had checked my e-mails, but the news Steph had brought should have an amazing effect on my life!

I’m in Great Britain and due to my personal financial situation I am so grateful that or National Health Service will in effect pay for my transition. But I ‘came-out’ to my doctor about nine months ago when he said I would be referred to the gender clinic within six months. Three months further on and I still have not heard a thing despite my doctor almost getting ‘fed-up’ with me pestering him about my referral to the Gender Clinic.

Calderdale has had some recent issues in how they treat the Trans community which are being addressed by a marvelous trans lady, Claire Eastwood.

I’ve had some depressive issues in the past and the delay in anything happening was getting me down to say the very least!! The news Sterph had read is copied below:
======================================================
Calderdale PCT have asked that individual enquires about accessing GID
services in Calderdale in the first instance be directed not to the
PCT but to Jonny Glenn who is a mental health worker and liaison
between the PCT and the local trans community.

The designation of a full time liaison worker is just one on the
reforms of GID care in Calderdale and it is a measure that I support.
For the past four years Jonny as been closely involved in the campaign
to reform the local GID service. His remit is to advise on access to
local services and referrals to consultants also to report to the PCT
problems relating to the quality and access to care both pre and post op.

He his available from 9 to 5 five days a week. On 01422 281325 or
jonny.glenn@ swyt.nhs. uk
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It appears as if I may be on my way to getting the best present I could ever get in time for Christmas!!