At the end, after the word usage notes, is the Poem ‘Taffy was a Welshman’ which is vaguely relevant to the story. I’d had the vague outline of the story in my mind for a few days. Some details were inspired by comments I read on BCTS suggesting Taffy can only be a woman’s name – I assume those comments originated in the US, in the UK it is different. Robin too like a number of other essentially female names in the US is essentially a man’s name here. The highly respected, polite and competent anchorman on the 12/12/19-13/12/19 overnight ‘Election 2019’ BBC program was Welshman Huw Edwards, and watching the election coverage gave me more pieces for the story. Then a friend came over to use my Bridgeport milling machine to remove a broken half inch stud from a casting and the detail was virtually finalised. Taffy is also a chewy toffee or candy in the UK, but that didn’t help me write the story at all.

It all started when Chris came into my work shop with a cast iron exhaust manifold with a bolt rusted in and snapped off below the surface. I didn’t recognise the part, Chris didn’t say what it was off, and I didn’t ask because I was too busy looking at the end of the broken bolt, which was mostly rusty but shewing a bit of clean metal where Chris had snapped it off. As he shewed it to me pointing out the bolt, I asked, “You want it out?”

“Yeah, and it’s a rush job. There’s money in it, Taff. Can you do it now?”

“Yes. You didn’t snap the bolt, you just finished snapping it. From the look of it it nearly failed in tension. Some idiot over tightened it years ago. It’ll be difficult to get out, so I’ll warm it up in the muffle furnace first. Let it get hot before I do anything to it, because it’ll be a bastard to set up on the mill for drilling out. Give it fifteen to soak in the heat or better still an hour. You had lunch yet?”

“No. Why?”

“Whilst it’s warming up, I thought I’d get pie and chips [fries] at Elsie’s.” Elsie’s was a chip shop that did a sit down service with bread and butter, scones and mugs of tea to go with your order. It was less than a two minute walk away and I was a regular.

“Ok if I park the van in your yard, Taffy?”

“Yeah. Just don’t put it in front of the loading bay. I’m expecting a delivery of steel, and if the bay is clear they’ll drop it there and I won’t have to move it twice, or lift it up.”

We ate at Elsie’s and as we were finishing a pint mug of tea Chris asked, “What you doing on Saturday night, fancy the Casino?”

Now going out with Chris was fraught with perils. A brilliant mechanic, especially on old motorbikes, he wasn’t over bright, was the size of a house and as strong as an ox which is a bad combination because he was also permanently looking for ladies to spend a little quality time with. That’s his expression not mine. He’s a good looking bloke, or at least most women think so, and even sober he never bothered to find out if the girl he was chatting up was with someone. When he’d had a few he’d chat them up with their boyfriend sitting next to them. Fights, lots of fights, were the result. I’m five foot three, rising ten stone [less than 140 pounds] and unless I’ve got a tyre lever or a torque wrench in my hand pretty useless in a fight.

However the Casino seemed safe. There were a lot of big bouncers there, and the bar staff wouldn’t hesitate to refuse to serve someone they considered had had enough. Neither Chris nor I were gamblers, but both were reasonable pool, billiards and snooker players, and the tables at the Casino were excellent. If there were a sporting event on, the atmosphere in the rooms with the wide screens made the Casino the best place to watch it if you couldn’t actually be there. The dance floor was big and had a heavy but unobtrusive security presence. The Casino’s management said their policy was to prevent trouble rather than deal with it, but if they had to they were more than capable of doing so. Chris and I were members which meant no queuing to get in, which made a hell of a difference when the weather was bad. All in all it seemed safe enough. “Ok. But if you get into any bother you’re on your own. Don’t drag me into it, or I’ll say I don’t know you. Right?”

“I’ll pick you up at eight.”

We walked back to my workshop where I took the manifold and the ten mm nut I’d put in with it out of the furnace. I placed the nut over the bolt hole and MIG welded it to the bolt. A squirt of WD40, a socket on the nut, and the bolt was out.

“Christ, man, you make that look so easy, Mate.”

“Doesn’t work every time, Chris, and like I said this would have been a bastard to set up for drilling it out.” I looked at the manifold carefully, not sure what it was I thought I’d seen. Eventually I said, “Yes. It’s cracked. Want me to braze it?”

“Yeah. It’s off an old Sunbeam. No chance of getting another, and I don’t fancy the price you’d charge for casting a one off.”

I power brushed the rust off to see better and it wasn’t too bad, the crack was maybe an inch and a quarter long but it needed stopping or it would grow. I drilled through with a three mm [⅛ inch] drill at each end of the crack to relieve the stress at the crack tips and prevent it extending and ground the crack out a bit with a tungsten carbide burr in a pneumatic die grinder to give the braze somewhere to lie and some clean metal to bond to. When I warmed it up with the oxy torch a lot of smoke came out of the crack and burnt off. “It’s an old crack, Chris. Full of shit. Funny that, you’d think a manifold would get hot enough to keep stuff out and the muffle furnace should have driven any oil out. Mind cast iron this old is usually full of shit anyway, but not usually that much.”

“I got the bike off a scrapyard. It was under a fifteen foot pile of mixed scrap. God alone knows how long it had been there. I’ve restored the frame and wheels, and there’s just the engine to do. I’ve got a customer for it, but he’s emigrating in three months and wants to take the bike with him. Can you braze it?”

“Oh yeah. I’ll use plenty of flux. Probably the crack widened enough to see it with the heat of the muffle furnace. You got lucky. If the heat hadn’t opened it enough to see it and sort it out it would have split the manifold in half before long even if the bloke only rode it at weekends.” It brazed fine and I wrapped it up in a fireproof blanket to cool slowly. “I’ll clean it up a bit with an angle grinder and finish it with the belt grinder to produce a nice looking job when it’s cooled down. I’ll run a tap down the bolt holes to clean’ em up and drop it off with you on my way home. The bolts are I presume Whitworth? You’ll still be at work?”

“Yeah, three-eighths. I’ll be at work till nine or ten. Twenty-five quid?” asked Chris.

“Call it twenty. You bought lunch.”

Chris and I are both twenty-five. I’ve never admitted it, but I’ve been looking to settle down for a couple of years, but I’ve never met anyone to settle down with. The pubs and the clubs are all right, after all you’ve got to do something with your time, but I could live without them. I can’t see Chris ever settling down, no woman in her right mind would want to live with him. Don’t get me wrong I like the bloke, but I’m a bloke too, and we mostly talk engineering or sport. He’s coarse and lives by his five Fs rule, find ‘em, follow ‘em, frig ‘em, fuck ‘em and forget ‘em. Like I said he’s coarse, and I can’t see him ever loving anything except old motorbikes. Truth is he’d rather talk vintage motorbikes than drink.

I’m not an experienced bloke as far as women go, but though I’m certainly not averse to the odd tumble that’s not what life is about for me. I do have an edge on many blokes, which is a private place to go for a bit fun. A long and private lane leading to a relative’s farm, which Chris makes far more use of than I do.

On Saturday night, Chris picked me up and we played snooker for a couple of hours, had a drink and went to watch some darts on the TV. When the darts coverage was over we separated and went to see what feminine company we could find. I got chatting to a good looking girl who said her name was Jackie. I saw Chris make a bee line for the prettiest girl in the place. She was late twenties maybe thirty, slim, elegant looking, possibly five eight in her heels, a dark brunette with pretty features. At the time I couldn’t make out much about her face because of the lights. I found out she was pretty when I saw them drinking together at a table later.

Jackie was pretty to look at, but her mind was truly ugly, and she was a gold digger. There aren’t many girls interested in engineering and those that are know something about it or they are less than ten and desperate to learn something about it. I knew a few in both categories, including my eight year old niece Philippa who spent most of her Saturdays with me. Jackie wasn’t less than ten and knew nothing about engineering, but she was interested in the economics of my business. I usually stayed till three, but I couldn’t get rid of her, and I’d had enough by twelve. When I said I was going her eyes lit up. When I offered her a lift home they dulled when she realised she hadn’t scored. I dropped her off at a house in a rather insalubrious part of town and went home.

I was watching Keith Fenner, one of my favourite engineering channels on youtube, when there was a knock on the door. It was just gone two, so I picked up the poker from the fireplace and asked, “Who is it?”

“Me, Chris.” I let him in and seeing the poker he said, “Taking no chances I see.” Chris didn’t seem happy, so I fetched us both a couple of cans each of Fosters from the fridge. “No luck either?” he asked.

“Gold digger. Interested in the business not me. Pretty on the outside, ugly as fuck on the inside.”

“You’re too fussy, Mate. A fuck isn’t a lifetime commitment. Remember—“

“Yeah I know the five Fs. What happened to you with whatever her name was?”

“Geraldine she said. Yours might have had an ugly mind, but at least it was probably female. She told me in the car she was trans, so I took her home.” Chris was shaking with I don’t know what. Fear? Rage? “I could have kissed it,” he said in shock.

I said nothing because Chris was the way he was, and nothing would ever change him. I went for a bottle of gin, cracked the seal, and poured us both a good measure. “If you drink that you’d better crash on the couch,” I told him.

“Thanks, Mate. I left the car next to your van.”

That was my only glass of gin, but the bottle was empty when Chris yawned and said, “That’s me. Thanks, Mate.” Chris could soak up booze, but I think he’d hit his limit.

It was five or six weeks before I went to the Casino again. One weekend had been a family wedding, another a birthday party and I went to a two day vintage bike exhibition with Chris at the NEC(1) Birmingham. I usually went to the Casino once a month, but it was the sort of place I had to be in the mood for becauses it was really loud. Most of the time when I went out I went to one of my local pubs and played darts, crib(2) or dominoes. I was on my own, and when I decided to try dancing I saw her with a group of girls who all looked to be in their twenties. I walked over and asked, “Would you like to dance?”

“I know you from somewhere don’t I?”

“My name is Huw, but I get called Taffy,(3) and yours is Geraldine, or so I’ve been led to believe.”

“You’re a friend of that animal that I met a few weeks ago. Dirty, nasty, lowlife that couldn’t get his mind out of the gutter.”

She was working herself up into a state and obviously still upset by her encounter with Chris. No surprises there. “Hey calm down. I’m not Chris, and I came to talk to you and ask you to dance, no strings. If you think me buying you a drink is me trying to get into your knickers you can pay for the drinks then you’ll owe me nothing.”

“You’re different!”

“I know, but I still want to dance with you, and either you buy us a drink or I shall.” She bought the drinks, and we danced.

“How come you were on your own last time?” I asked.

“You noticed?”

“Yeah. It’s a disgusting habit I have called watching pretty girls.”

“You know about me don’t you?”

“Yes. Chris told me, but I still like watching pretty girls.”

“You really are different, but to answer your question. I went to the ladies, my friends thought I’d already left and they left to go to Reubens thinking I would be there. How come Chris and you are friends?”

“Chris and I are not exactly friends. Our mums were in same ward at Firs maternity hospital. That was on Twist lane. It’s long gone now and there’s a housing estate on the site. We were born on the same day and were always in the same class at school. We’re more than friends and less than friends too. We’re nothing like each other.”

“He’s an animal with only one thing on his mind.”

“I know. He was born that way. As a bloke I get on with him ok, but I do appreciate what some women think of him. Most think he’s a good looking bloke and worth trying to attach, but intelligent women understand what he is and don’t bother. My sister won’t be alone in the same room as him. We’re both into motorbikes and engineering. I’m a self employed machinist. I make and repair things, mostly in metal, using lathes and things like that. I have my own machine shop, and I do some blacksmithing and foundry casting too. Chris is a mechanical genius especially with old bikes. He has the motorcycle repair and servicing garage on Lord Street. I make and repair a fair amount of stuff for him so you could say we work together.”

I liked Geraldine. I liked her a lot. So at about twelve I said, “Wing Yo’s is open all night. You fancy leaving soon and getting a meal before this place closes and the restaurante gets full of drunks and idiots?”

“You mean like your friend Chris?”

“Possibly, but there are worse blokes than Chris. He’s crude, but he’ll tell a girl exactly what he wants. If he’s told to bugger off he does, and he’s too proud of being a man ever to hurt a lass.”

“That I am aware of. To start with I was frightened of him, but he took me home and I was surprised when he was nice about it. What’s the deal on the Chinese?”

“Whatever you like. If you like you can pay for both of us, we can go Dutch, or I’ll pay. You decide.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I’d like a goodnight kiss at the end of it, but anything else is entirely up to you.”

“Ok. I like the food at Wing Yo’s. We go Dutch. You’ll get the kiss, and I’ll consider other things. You ok with that?”

“Sounds sweet to me. What do you fancy eating?”

“Special spring roll starters and egg drop chicken soep if you’ll eat half?” I nodded. “Poku beef with oyster mushrooms, sweet and sour pork with crispy seaweed and prawn egg fried rice, but I won’t be able to eat it all and usually take the rest home. How about you?”

“If I order Peking style ribs, the duck pancake special, mixed oriental fungi and Szechuan lamb with the bamboo shoots, water chestnut and Chinese artichoke mixed vegetable side dish we’d have enough to share and eat tomorrow sometime.”

“You are pushing your luck, Huw.”

“No I’m not. I’m not presuming anything about tonight, and I’m not trying to pressure you in any way about it either. I’m just saying I’d like to meet you tomorrow. When is up to you if you decide that’s ok. I’m just looking forward to a good meal tonight and asking you if you’ll meet me tomorrow too. You use chopsticks and rice bowl?”

“Yes, and I’ll think about tomorrow, but I’m thinking that would be nice, although I haven’t made my mind up yet.”

“Ok. That’s fine. All I’m asking is that you think about it.”

That meal was the beginning of the best part of my life. We shared all our dishes, and drank Oolong tea. We laught and fed each other with our chopsticks. It was great fun. The waiters were more attentive than I’d ever noticed them before and when we’d finished they packed up more food than I thought we’d bought. Yo himself gave Geraldine a deep red carnation and said, “It is said that it is a privilege to watch love begin and grow. We know we have been so privileged. There is no charge. Please visit us again.”

I knew I was as bright a red as Geraldine, but I bowed as did she to all the staff as they lined up to bow us out. As I drove Geraldine home she said, “You want to have a coffee and talk about it?”

“Yes please.”

When we arrived at her place she put the food in the fridge, put the coffee maker on and said, “The coffee is a very expensive blend from Indonesia. I think the occasion warrants it even though I don’t know what’s going on here. However, I want to know. What are you thinking about the events of tonight?”

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I played safe and said, “I want to see you again at the very least to enjoy my share of the food. I like you a lot. I admit I don’t have a lot of experience with women but tonight was the most fun I’ve ever had with a girl. I’d like to think you enjoyed it too, and I’d like to do it again some time with you. I’d like our relationship to develop a lot further, and I am hoping you feel the same.”

“You don’t know anything about me other than what you can see and that I’m trans.”

“That’s not true. I know you are a very exciting person to be with. I like you. You are pretty, intelligent and have promised to kiss me. What more do I need to know?”

“I told you you were different. You have not asked me if my breasts are real, if I still have my penis or how I do sex. Most men have asked those questions hours ago. You haven’t even asked me how old I am. Do you not wish to know before I suggest going to bed?”

“I thought you were thirty tops. I’m twenty-five. The rest I don’t care about. What you want to tell me, tell me. What you don’t, don’t. If you are offering to go to bed with me, I would like that, but I don’t need any more information before I do, and even if I misunderstood you and that’s not what you meant I still would like to meet you again, preferably tomorrow to eat the rest of the meal with you. I really do want to get to be much closer to you, Geraldine.”

We had another coffee and we told each other about our lives. My life had mostly been good. I got on with my parents and my sister Aelwen and her husband, Mick. I told Geraldine about Philippa my niece whom I was protecting from all the folk who wanted her to be a ‘proper’ girl and stop messing about with her uncle doing dirty, greasy things fit only for boys, things she enjoyed.

Geraldine told me about her life which had mostly been pretty grim. Eric, a little boy who didn’t fit, didn’t know why, and who was treated so badly at home he ran away at nine and lived on the streets for years till she discovered she was a girl. She went back to school as a girl, still living on the streets, was hounded by social services and only went back to school to take her exams. She was clever and did well. By the time she’d passed her GCSE exams she’d turned sixteen and able to tell social services where to go. She did her A’ levels still living on the streets and only got somewhere to live when she went to Bristol university to read psychology from where she took a first and went on to work for the Unicorn Gender Trust as a gender counsellor, where she still worked. She told me she had just turned twenty-eight.

She took me to her bed and as we undressed I saw her breasts were her own and she appeared as every other girl I had ever seen. Her hips and bottom were feminine and provoked an entirely masculine reaction. “You really didn’t care did you?” she asked in an amazed tone of voice.

I didn’t answer, for I knew not what to say. We had Chinese for lunch.

Chris was my best man more than sixty years ago. He’s been dead six years now, and, as I suspected would be the case, he never had a long term relationship other than with his 1952, 1300cc, V-twin Indian Chief which he was sure to tell anyone who would listen had telescopic forks.

My wife died last year. I don’t know where all the time went, but it was fun, and I live in the hope that I’ll be rejoining her soon.

Word Usage Key

1 NEC National Exhibition Centre.
2. Crib, cribbage a card game popular in some UK pubs.
3 Taff or Taffy is a usename traditionally used for Welshmen named Dafydd, (pronounced Davɨð) the Welsh version of David – Saint David is the patron saint of Wales.) It is also used more or less across the whole UK for any Welshman, in the same way Jock and Paddy are used for Scotsmen and Irishmen. It was at one time a pejorative racist term. There is a racist poem from the late eighteenth century that became a popular published nursery rhyme ‘Taffy was a Welshman’ that told of Taffy and implied all Welshmen were thieves. It has also been used for those born near the river Taff. I have not been aware of any using it in a pejorative sense for many years.
4 Jerry pot, Chamber pot.

Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief;
Taffy came to my house and stole a leg of beef;
I went to Taffy’s house and Taffy was in bed;
I upped with the jerry pot(4) and hit him on the head.

Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief;
Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef;
I went to Taffy’s house, but Taffy wasn't in;
I jumped upon his Sunday hat and poked it with a pin.

Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a sham;
Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of lamb;
I went to Taffy’s house, but Taffy was away,
I stuffed his socks with sawdust and filled his shoes with clay.

Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a cheat,
Taffy came to my house, and stole a piece of meat;
I went to Taffy’s house, but Taffy wasn’t there,
I hung his coat and trousers to burn before a fire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taffy_was_a_Welshman