The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3389 by Angharad Copyright© 2023 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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The problem with reminiscencing is that one memory tends to remind one of another and they are not always in chronological order, so one in college might remind me of an episode from school or vice versa. The recollection of that field trip experience reminded me of several when I was younger and in the Young Ornithologists Club, run by the RSPB. Now I was quite a keen birdwatcher not as obsessional as 'twitchers' tend to be in running all over the country to see something they hadn't got on their list, and to some the list became more important than the actual birds and when that happens, you should realise that you're doing something wrong.

Occasionally, unusual birds would turn up on Farlington Marshes and then we'd all try to see it. If often followed strong south-westerly winds, so odd American birds would turn up. If it was easterly winds then something might visit from continental Europe. To find it all you had to do was find the crowds of people bearing binoculars or 'scopes, as telescopes were referred to, often quite expensive ones too. My own stuff was mid-range optics, which was all my parents could afford to buy me, usually at birthdays or Christmas. I might have wanted dresses and makeup but was quite happy to have better 'bins' to watch birds or just after I left school, my dad paid for a midrange 'scope', but one with a good reputation for reliability or quality. Opticron were one such make and while they've gone up-market today, their stuff is good value and good quality. I use their hand lenses too and recommend them to students.

One day some years ago I was with the YOC and we were out looking for some rare species that had been carried by a storm and we happened across some insect or other and I mentioned something special about its wings or something, that's right, it was a caddis fly and someone scooped it up in a glass specimen pot and I pulled out my hand lens and told them to look for a special feature and to notice that the wings were like the lepidoptera only instead of scales they had hairs on the wings. I held out my lens.

"Charlotte, haven't you got lovely nails," commented Sue, who was the only other girl in the party, "Don't you ever paint them?" This set the boys laughing, especially the two who were at school with me. "Well, they are," she added, "she's got lovely nails and they are shaped too, look," she said grasping my hand and waving it under their noses. I just blushed and hope the earth would swallow me. I did have nice nails and I kept them long for a boy and they were shaped like girl's ones. After all, I was a girl, but they didn't know that and Sue thought I was female anyway, which I agreed with but not out loud, it tended to have consequences.

"Why don't you paint them, Charlotte?" asked Simms minor whose elder brother had been a bane in my earlier years at school.

"We could do," offered Sue, who just so happened to have some nail varnish in her bag. So that's what we did, albeit with reluctance on my part, but the faces of my two school contemporaries meant that if I refused they'd either beat me up when no one was looking or arrange some sort of accident in the mud like they had once before on one of these trips and I had to cope with cold wet clothes the rest of the day. Bright pink nails seemed the easier of the two options and besides, I'd be able to take it off when I got home.

"That looks better, Charlotte," said Sue and my fingers did look very feminine and pretty though my dad may disagree. I had thought my mum had a bottle of remover but I was proved wrong as I found out when I got home. Mum wasn't interested in my excuses and told me that no one could have done it without my consent and she would get some remover the next day but I'd have to cope with it until then. So far, my dad hadn't seen it and unless I skipped tea he would. I ran to call my usual partner in crime, Sîan, who it appeared had none either. "I don't paint my nails very often, so how did you manage to end up with some on your fingers?" I related how disaster struck this time and that I had not told Sue that I wasn't a girl and the other two made threatening noises so I agreed thinking that Mum had some remover but she didn't. It was a Sunday evening and all the shops were closed and it was too late for Sîan to phone around to see if she could locate some.

"Sometimes you can scrape it off," I'd tried that as soon as I got home trying to abrade it with my key but Sue had used two thick coats and a top coat, so it was there to stay for the moment.

Of course, in school the more I tried to hide it the more everybody saw it and I had to endure the jibes from classmates and teachers and I stopped trying to make excuses when they didn't listen. My long hair didn't help any either and together with my delicate features and scrawny body I looked more girl than boy. That is scrawny except my hips which made trousers cease to fit my burgeoning bum, at least in a comfortable manner. Hence my experimenting with girl's ones and eventually buying a pair of girl's ones which Sîan helped me purchase from the same shop she had bought some for wear in cold weather.

At least this time I couldn't be sent to the headmaster but I got detention for improper uniform. When I queried it I was told that even the girl's school didn't permit coloured nail varnish so it was a breach of uniform rules. I tried to reason that it was an accident and the reply was, "Yes, Watts, just like your hair and the fact that it's longer than a boy should have it, in fact as long as anyone in the girl's school, don't tell me it grew overnight." Sue had made such a good job of it, it couldn't be an accident or a prank.

I eventually got home and my mum hadn't got the remover. I was so angry, I'd endured endless teasing and threats and detention in the expectation that she get some. Instead she gave me a fiver and told me to go to the supermarket and get it myself. I took off my uniform and pulled on some jeans and sweatshirt and my unisex trainers and set off to the nearest supermarket. My jeans were stretch girl's ones and they did make my bum look female but my sweatshirt was long and hid much of it. She had told me to get some clear nail varnish as well which puzzled me. I had to endure the checkout girl saying what lovely nails I had and then when I got home having my mother tell me to clean off the colour and then paint them with the clear stuff. I tried to explain again what had happened and she had told me that it was punishment for growing my nails too long for a boy but as long as I didn't wave them about, no one would notice. I had to wear it for the rest of the week.

Of course, Sîan noticed it the next day but she told me it was permitted and half the girls in her school did it. "Yeah, but what does it say about boys wearing it?"

"It doesn't specify boys or girls, so you'll be alright."

"Being in the uniform regulations doesn't prevent me getting beaten up."

"Just refer them to me," she said and I just laughed. The thought of her sorting out one of the hairy giants in year eleven, was as ludicrous as me besting them in a fight, it was never going to happen.

It so happened there were very few comments so if they were noticed it was old news and had lost its topicality, besides my hair alone was enough to provide an entry to teasing me so I didn't get away totally unscathed. If I'd been picked on for my long hair and then they'd noticed my painted nails I'd have been bashed but the more physical boys tended to be the least observant as well as the most stupid so I survived.

That led me recollect the headmaster making me wear the girl's uniform again. Apparently, we had a guest speaker and I was chosen to present her with some flowers afterward. I wasn't very happy with his request but apparently, my father was. I asked why I couldn't do it in my boy's uniform and was told with my hair I looked like a girl anyway.

"But in a boy's school?" I protested.

"Don't tell me that you don't like flouncing around in skirts, Watts?" said old Murray.

"Whether I do or not, this is being imposed on me without my agreement."

"That's right, Watts, just do it, oh, and not too much makeup, eh?"

I was furious and it led to a loud argument with my father and his threatening rather than doing me actual bodily harm, I also had to iron the girl's uniform which was one of Sîan's old ones, except the shoes, they were bought by my mother the last time I had worn it and still fitted me.

The next morning had me wearing the skirt and girl's blazer with a blouse and a padded bra, courtesy of my mum, and opaque black tights. After I met Sîan, I was wearing enough mascara to paint a small car, plus eye shadow and brow pencil with some clear lip gloss. She also played with my hair and pulled it looser near my hairline so it framed my face a little, making it more feminine. By the time I got to school and had to report to the headmaster's office, I looked like a sixth former's wet dream.

"Ah, Watts, yes you actually look better in that uniform than the boy's one, if I had my way you'd wear it all the time." He told me to use the ladies' toilet if I needed to and to sit in the secretary's office until ten o'clock then to come to the door of the hall and a teacher would be ready and waiting to instruct me on what I had to do. That transpired to be to say out loud that, 'On behalf of the school we were grateful that she had given her time to us with an interesting and entertaining talk and the bouquet was to show our appreciation of that.'

When it happened I was applauded in walking into the hall and up to the stage with the big bouquet and presented her with the flowers which she accepted graciously then said to the headmaster, "But I thought this was a boys' school?"

"Yes it is, but we occasionally borrow Charlotte because she has such clear diction."

"Oh, I see, well thank you Charlotte for the flowers and your diction," I bobbed a brief curtsey and said, "It was my pleasure," which almost had Murray salivating. He accused me later of enjoying wearing female clothing and that I had convicted myself with my own words. I argued that giving the guest a bouquet had been the pleasurable element, not the uniform.

"You seem too comfortable by far in those clothes, I want an essay by tomorrow morning, two thousand words on why skirts seem so comfortable." He then dismissed me and I left fuming, to return to my class and the jibes that would arise. "Ah, Charlotte, " said my chemistry teacher, "welcome back to the real world."

I recollected the leery eye of many of my classmates and shivered, I came back from my reverie and shivered again. Murray should have been prosecuted for the abuse he showed me and for potentially screwing up my sense of gender identity; he didn't because I knew exactly what I was though I had a few years to wait until Stella and her homicidal driving projected me into the female I always knew I was. I shall always be grateful to her and for introducing me to Simon, my husband, who I love dearly.