After dealing with the rush after the show, Sandy took me out of earshot of the punters. “Have you been playing us Carrie, up there in that skimpy costume there was no way I could see you as other than a real girl, you go in at all the right places and stand out at all the right places, tell me the truth, are you really a girl?”

“Calm down Sandy, I have not been lying to you, it’s amazing what can be done with spandex and silicone. But I must admit that doing that last routine with the girls I almost felt as if I was one of them, just like when I am here at the bar with you having our girly chats and flirting with the customers.

After all the customers had left, the Hotties, Sandy and I stayed on for a drink as they all wanted to question me as to what was happening.

“A few nights ago after Sandy left me, as I was walking home I was followed by some lads and they were getting quite abusive and threatening and one started to run his hand up my thigh, until they were stopped by a passing police car. I was really worried that one of them was going to assault me and discover that I was not who I seemed to be. I somehow felt as if I was a vulnerable woman and it has become easier for me to think that is what I am and relate to all the problems you have. Violent assault, patronising men talking down to you and treating you like a simpleton, to say nothing about period pains and menopause hot flushes. That is where all my jokes are coming from, it’s me trying to understand your feelings.”

“Well after that show tonight nobody is going to consider you as Darcy la Doudou, a drag substitute for Mimi, to the world you are now Carrie Farewell, one of the better female comedians.” Sandy gave me a hug as she spoke.

“Actually I want a clear break between my life as Cory Farewell and my alter ego as Carrie.so I will be using my mum’s maiden name, and will call myself Carrie Carter when on stage.” I replied after a short pause to consider what she had said.

I managed to collect my belongings from the university the next day without any mishaps, even dressed in chinos and a shirt and with the breast forms taken off for the day, I still looked female, or at best androgynous, and that is actually how I felt. Not only was I now leaving behind my time as a student, but I was also leaving behind my life as Cory. The girls had convinced me that although I had only recently fallen into the role, that my future would have to be as Carrie, I was no longer acting the part, it was becoming part of me and that is who I now was. Back at the flat, apart from one or two sentimental personal items, Cory was packed away in a suitcase and put in a cupboard well out of the way.

For the next two months I was applying for job after job in the theatre world, with no luck, so continued working in the Hotspot. It wasn’t worth the bother switching back and forth between Cory and Carrie, so I was now living full time as a girl. Spending so much time with Tara and the girls, and working with Sandy, I just automatically copied and adopted all their mannerisms and ways of interacting with each other. With wearing female clothes, mainly skirts but sometimes trousers, to all intents and purposes I was now virtually female, except for the obvious physical bits, but even they seemed to be getting less prominent.

One night at the club after the last bar rush was over, I was approached by Maggie from the university. “Hi Carrie, or Cory, or whatever, do you remember me. Maybe it’s my overactive gaydar but I saw through the new you almost right away, despite how convincing you look. I loved your act tonight, you are one of the best female comedians around, and one of the most attractive. Remember that I told you that if you ever asked me for a date, I said to ask me again when you are dressed as a girl? Do you fancy going for a drink somewhere when you have a night off, do you fancy a chat?”

“I told you at the time that I was perfectly straight and despite how I’m now looking I am still male hetero inclined, lesbian relationships are not on the cards, but having said that I would love to have a drink with you, no doubt you have a million questions that you want to ask me.”

“I’d love to Carrie, and don’t worry, your secret is perfectly safe with me.”

Back at home, I told Tara about my meeting with Maggie and asked her what she thought I should do.

“She sounds pleasant enough, it’ll do no harm to have a drink with her, as a friend. If either of you want to take it further, either she will have to go against her nature and turn bi or hetero, or you will have to accept that you are a girl in a lesbian relationship. There is another choice though. I know that I told you cuddled up in bed one time that I saw you as a friend, a girl friend, but I’m now starting to remember you as Cory, I think that if you want we could get together, you could carry on in public as Carrie, but in here you could be Cory. I could live with that if you can.”

I went out for a drink with Maggie, and had an honest heart to heart with her, saying that although I would continue to work as Carrie, that I wanted a man/woman sexual relationship that I was going to work on with Tara, which she agreed was not what she was looking for. We left as friends promising to keep in touch, with a long goodbye hug, although we had never had a close relationship.

After one of my routines at the club, the manager of the comedy club, who I recognised from when I worked the bar there. introduced himself and asked for a chat with me, understandingly not recognising me.

“Carrie, I know that you have an established gig here at the Hotspot, but would you be interested in doing some shows at the Comedy Club for me?”

“Are we talking professionally? I’m not interested in unpaid open-mic performances, I already have an established spot here.”

“No, you’re beyond that, I’ve heard so much about your act and having seen you perform it would be on a professional contract. I don’t know what you get paid here but I’m sure that you will get a much better deal with me, I need more female acts, there are too many young jack-the-lads about who think that because they can make a few wisecracks with their mates, that they have a career as a comedian, and most of them are a turn-off to my female customers.”

“I need to think about it and have a word with Duncan, the owner here, and the girls in the Hotties troupe, they have been very supportive to me and I don’t want them to feel that I am letting them down.”

Duncan and the girls were disappointed when I told them about the offer, but thought that it was too good an opportunity for me to turn down, although they said it would give them a problem as to how to replace me.

“That should be easy. Sandy is brilliant with people, she says that she is not a performer, but that is what she does every night behind the bar, engaging with the customers. Give her a few gigs as a trial, she can use my material to start with until she gets herself together with her own style. The same goes for working with the girls, when we have been out as a group you have seen her move on the dance floor, she has natural rhythm and will soon pick up your routines, probably better than me.”

After a few trial sessions I was doing a regular 3 nights each week at the Comedy Club and it’s associated venues in nearby towns and was becoming quite well known on the local circuit but was still doing two nights at the hotspot to give Sandy a break. She had quickly got over her nerves about appearing on stage and was going down very well with the audiences, many of whom fondly remembered her from chatting with her when she was working behind the bar.

I had now established a relationship with Tara staying in the roles of Carrie in public and Cory when we were alone at home, and although I was becoming more and more at ease in feminine the ways I conducted myself, we managed to strengthen our relationship.

Time moves on and things changed. Following a guest appearance on a local tv station chat show, I soon became a regular, I had outgrown the Comedy Club circuits and although appreciative of the opportunity they had given me, my career was taking me in other directions. Rather than being seen as a comedian, I was now becoming known as a tv chat show guest and occasional host. As my career developed and I grew from local to national tv stations, I came to the attention of the tabloid press who were digging into my background, and inevitably my life story became known. For a couple of weeks my photo and story were splashed all over the newspapers, particularly the red-top tabloids.

We later found out from some of the reports that the story was sold to one of the red-tops by a jealous Mimi la Reine, Tara and I found out where he lived and went to visit him to ask why he felt that he had to make my life public. The door was opened by an attractive fashionably dressed middle-aged woman who looked at us for a few seconds.

“I suppose that you had better come in.” She quickly invited us after she had thought about it.

“Mimi, is that you?” Tara asked as we walked in.

“It’s Emelia now, Emelia McQueen, I chose to use my mother’s maiden name but she was known in the family as Mimi, I suppose that I owe you an explanation.”

Surprisingly, stripped of all the flamboyant glamorous dresses, excessive padding, outrageous makeup and very camp voice, Emilia came across as an attractive middle-aged perfectly passable woman and seemed a lot happier in her new life, apologising for outing me in a fit of jealousy when she thought that I had planned all along to take over her act at the Hotspot, and how successful my TV career had become.

“When I visited the club, unrecognised looking as I am now, and saw your act, even when using my material, I realised that I was never going to compete with the likes of you Carrie and really make it as a successful drag artist. I accepted that I would end up performing in seedy, down-market clubs and pubs, depressed and half-drunk most of the time. The way you transformed and performed as a woman rather than a man in drag convinced me that I really wanted to be a genuine woman and I am now started on transition, I couldn’t be happier, thank you for opening my eyes.”

We had arrived ready to really have a go at Mimi for what he had done, but left Emelia as friends wishing her well in her future life.

However, far from being my downfall, over the following weeks and months I was suddenly invited as a guest on chat shows eager to let me tell my story, panel games, fly-on -the-wall documentaries who were all keen to follow the fashion for the media to push LGBT stories. However ‘every dog has his day’ and I was soon yesterday’s news, just another personality getting on with a tv career.

My brief moment of fame however, had its drawbacks. Since university I had not been to see my parents, even though I had kept in regular contact by phone they were previously unaware of my new lifestyle until they saw all the media publicity, and it was time to pay them a visit to meet the new me. Rather than hit them with an extreme over-feminine version of Carrie, I deliberately toned down my appearance, and arrived with my hair tied back in a plain ponytail, minimal makeup and a casual jacket and trouser suit. Even so when my mother first saw the rather subdued version of me her eyes nearly popped out of her head, as she scrutinised me from head to toe, before wrapping her arms around me with tears in her eyes.

“It’s not what I was expecting Cory….,sorry, Carrie. From seeing you on TV and the photos in the papers I was expecting to see a much more glamorous version of you, but you look delightful the way you are.” I didn’t know what sort of reception I would receive and was pleasantly surprised that she seemed to just accept me. “I have sent your father out, I thought that it would be better to have some time together to get to know how this all came about, I thought that it would be easier with just the two of us. Come on in and get settled and I will put the kettle on, or would you prefer something stronger, I think I need a nice cold G&T to settle my nerves.”

For the next hour I told her how a one-off appearance as Darcy had led to me living as Carrie and the friends I had made along the way, interrupted many times with questions.

“You have talked a lot about your friend Tara, if you two are serious about each other when are we going to meet her, she seems to be a really nice girl.”

“That is the next shock for you Mum, we plan to get married, although we haven’t decided yet whether it will be as two brides, or as a bride and groom. I know that my life is not as you expected it to be, but do we have your blessing.”

“If you’re happy then I’m happy for you, of course you have my blessing.”

“What about Dad, how will he react when he sees me?”

“To be honest when he first saw you on TV he was deeply upset, blaming himself and me for how you have turned out, but when he hears the story you have just told me, I’m sure that he will come round, but even if he is not happy, I will work on him and he’ll fall into line.”

When I heard the front door open as Dad returned, I nervously held my breath. He must have spent at least a minute looking at me before walking over. “If you are going to continue living as a woman, you need to learn to act more like one, come here and give your old dad a hug, you haven’t done that since you were about 8 years old.”

We all settled down for some sandwiches, cakes and tea while I went through my story again for his benefit.

“Well, it was all a bit of a shock when we first heard about you and saw you on TV, but you seem happy enough, and I like the sound of Tara, bring her over soon. The main thing that I am disappointed in is that it looks unlikely that our unusual name, Farewell, is going to continue, there are not many people around that share the name, and any relatives I know of are all female and have taken their husband’s name.

I thought for a while before replying. “ That’s where you are wrong Dad, I wasn’t going to tell you yet, but Tara is pregnant, and you will be grandparents in a few months, and the early signs are that the baby is a boy and we have agreed that he will be registered as a Farewell.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful, so unexpected, but you are still so young to be starting a family.” Mum gushed as she rushed over to hug me, and Dad put his hands on my shoulder “ congratulations son, I hope that you will both be very happy together.”

Two weeks later Tara came with me to meet my parents and was an instant success, particularly with Mum, who whisked her away to discuss plans for the wedding and for bringing up the baby, while I went out for a walk with Dad.

“Have you thought about your future Cory, Carrie, whatever, a child changes everything, at the moment you are travelling around a lot and a child needs a stable life.

“Actually I’ve just been signed up to front a travelogue programme which will commit me for about 4 months. It will mean that I will be visiting small fledging farm industries, talking to the owners about how starting a business has changed their lives and how they see their business growing. That will see me through Tara’s pregnancy and the early months of the baby, but I want to be a bit more settled after that and enjoy his first words, his first steps and be part of his life. We will be looking for somewhere to settle down as a family home with a sideline to give an income to pay the bills.”

“Don’t answer me now, have a think about it and discuss it with Tara, but I am thinking about retiring from my business and selling both the business and this house to downsize. With what you are currently earning, together we should be able to find a smallholding somewhere where your boy and any future children can grow up in a pleasant peaceful surrounding. Think about it and we’ll talk again.”

Tara and I hadn’t really thought that far ahead, our main thoughts were getting through the pregnancy and birth rather than life afterwards but Dad had given us plenty to think about and Tara quite took to the idea.

“I quite like your Mum and Dad, and if we could find somewhere with a Granny-wing, it would be useful to have someone at hand when you are away filming, and for the occasional babysitting. Let’s see if we can find anything suitable.”

Over the following months I started on my new project for ‘Carrie’s Inspirations’ visiting small family-run industries from mussel farms in one of the Scottish sea lochs, a one-man band gin and whisky distillery in rural Northumberland, a vineyard and winery near York, an Alpaca farm and knitwear company in Lincolnshire, a pottery manufacture in Staffordshire set up by former employees of a world-famous pottery brand, another vineyard near Hereford, a dairy and cheese shop in Gloucestershire and a lodge camping complex in Hampshire. The one thing that they all had in common was the need to diversify from traditional farming to supplement their income, with the sideline eventually becoming the main money-making side of their business.

While the programmes were with the production team getting ready for broadcast Tara and I had several weeks to relax before the arrival of the baby discussing the places that I had visited.

“They all sound like people that have found their niche in life, does anything like that appeal to you?’ Tara asked me one evening. “Have you seen anything that appeals to you?”

“Actually I have but I’m not sure that this is the right time to make a change, with the baby due anytime and all the stress and bother that will bring, there is no need to add to add the worries of starting a new business and a new life.”

“There will always be a good reason not to make the leap, another baby, your parents or my parents becoming ill, your work on TV drying up, if you have found something tell me about it and see whether I think it is a good idea.”

“The owners of the vineyard I visited and featured near Hereford want to retire, they set it up from nothing over 30 years ago, and although they have full-time and seasonal staff they are finding it more and more difficult to cope with the demands of the business. It is a thriving profitable business in a beautiful area, large enough to be successful but not too big that it becomes a corporate millstone. As well as the main house, the winery and an associated smallholding and shop, it also comes with a separate cottage on the estate which would be ideal as a retirement home for Mum and Dad, and a barn ripe for conversion as a guest wing for when your family come to visit."

‘Sounds interesting and I like the idea of a ready supply of decent wine.” She joked. “We can go and have a look together, and if it all seems ok, we should maybe have time to get settled in before the baby arrives.”

“ I’ve been thinking about where to take my life from here. I know that families have all sorts of diverse relationships now, maybe I am old-fashioned, but I really think that the traditional family is still the best situation to raise children in, with a mother and father to learn from. While I will continue to work as Carrie Carter, personally at home with the children and the staff of the vineyard or whatever business we end up with I will be Cory Farewell, what do do think?”

“To tell the truth I have been having similar thoughts myself but didn’t know how to raise the subject. If you can live with a split-personality, I can too, and I agree it may be a more stable life for our children.”

A week later, now back to appearing as Cory, albeit with some of the now ingrained effeminate traits, Tara and I visited the vineyard and discussed the purchase of it with the current owners. Jack and Margaret Fisher. We agreed a purchase price for the property, land, and stock still maturing, along with a 12 month retainer fee for them to help us get our heads around the business.

We managed to get settled in at the vineyard before baby George Arthur arrived, but having Mum and dad nearby allowed me to start learning the business without Tara being left to cope alone. By now all the production work on ‘Carrie’s Inspirations’ was complete and the show was ready for broadcast. After the showing of the episode about our vineyard we were inundated with visitors eager to follow up on what they had seen and there was a surge in sales of wine and the associated foods from our shop, according to Jack and Margaret it have never been busier. It seemed that our future was now established.

We kept a wall between the Carrie’s ongoing appearances on the travelogues which proved to be very popular and continued in further series, and my life as Cory at the vineyard and in my family life. The only time the two became interwoven was to be when Carrie made a guest appearance to host the annual celebration of the end of the grape picking and processing season when things calmed down again. Gradually my career as Carrie began to wind down and my life as Cory the vineyard owner and now the proud father of a daughter Alexandra, known by the family name Sandy, and another son Duncan, became the norm. I never regretted my time as Carrie, which kick-started my career and helped to shape my personality, but I was now totally at ease as Cory, except for occasional celebrations when Carrie came out of the closet again.

The end.