Chapter 19

"No Jenny!" I said sharply stepping right into her path as she was making a lunge to push Blanche off the platform. "This has been a good a day for me and I know how to play this game!

I know you don't like me Blanche but what have you got against 'ladyboys'? Is it that they're from Thailand, is it a race thing? No? Maybe a colour thing? Is that what gets to you, that ladyboys and I aren't quite white. Of course it could be religion that's always a good one and I know the people in Thailand and I rarely go to chapel. Then there's the worst one of all - that they and I just aren't Welsh enough for you. Come on Blanche, pick your prejudice so we can have a good argument - unless that is you want to forget this silly game and join Jenny and me on the train before we all miss the coach back to Cardiff?"

At that moment the train door opened and by default we stepped on together. "I've got nothing against Thais. I don't know any Thais - it's you I can't stand Williams!"

"You're right Blanche, it's the jeans. They're too tight and they make my bum look huge and nobody likes a big bum."

"It's not the jeans. They're great jeans. It's you. You're a Mister!"

"I know Blanche; it says so right on my birth certificate so it must be true. Lucky really it didn't say I was a horse or they wouldn't have allowed me on this train. I like horses but they do poop everywhere so I can see their point in not letting them on the train."

"It's nothing to do with horses it's … You're a …"

"Yes Blanche?"

"I hate you!"

"I know Blanche but it's so exhausting and I don't know why you would hate someone you hardly know… unless that is, it's easier for you to hate them than talk to them?"

"Why did you do it?"

"I don't think I did do it any more than you did it. One day we look in the mirror and recognise that the person being reflected is us."

"So why do I look at you and see a man who looks like a woman?

"I don't know, when you saw Dana International on Eurovision †, did you see a man who looks like a woman? How about Hayley on Coronation Street? ‡

"Hayley is played by a woman, everybody knows that."

"How does everybody know? Is it because she looks like a woman? What if they had cast a woman who looks like a man or a man who looks like a woman? What if they had cast me?"

"It doesn't make any difference. You're the one I see in Cardiff. You're the one who makes my skin crawl!"

"Like it's crawling now as you talk to me? I'm not asking you to like me as there are things about me that I don't like either - the way my tummy sometimes looks like it's full of cold lumpy porridge; the way I get into arguments like this one. There are things about you that make me want to scream like the way you lift up your chin and look down your nose."

"I don't do that!… Do I?"

"It doesn't matter. I don't like anything about peanut butter; I don't buy it; I avoid looking at it; I've even been known to leave the room when someone else is eating it but I certainly don't waste energy hating it! You are my human peanut-butter!"

"Stuffed olives! They're my peanut-butter."

"With the red stuff in them? Gross! Who eats those thing?"

Blanche and I will never be friends but thanks to Yorkshire Sarah, who I'm sure I'd been channeling, we did get to Cardiff together without bloodshed. Blanche, Jenny and I even shared a taxi from the coach station.

I so wanted to sleep-in next morning - emotionally drained I guess - but there was money to be earned and a boat to build. The contrast between the company of Dad, Jack, Ian and Bill to that of those I met through modelling was stark. In many ways the men were easier to be around as, in this environment at least, they joked around a lot and didn't get jealous or easily offended. But then I suspected that they found it easier to lavish care and attention on the boat than they would have on a baby left in their care! Was it a male/female thing, a young/old thing a 'manual work'/'media work' thing? Mainly different levels and different areas of experience I expect and it did at least make my life more interesting in the days ahead when we I had to spend so much of my time soldering, splicing, swaging, vacuuming, dusting, washing, plucking, epilating, exfoliating…

The downside of an emotionally easy working life is that it leaves few memories. In my time with the gang I do remember our celebrating together some success at work of Serena and Penny's, particularly as they jumped and I was dragged into the waters of Cardiff Marina in March - it appears that the Non-Executive part of Non-executive Director meant I couldn't fire them. In my time spent at classes I do remember when the instructor unexpectedly pulled my mask off underwater as part of my scuba lesson; I do remember when it became clear in the dance class that the man with the livid scar and the taller of the girls with cerebral palsy had fallen in love; and I do clearly remember throwing the self-defence teacher flat on his back, even if in my kick-boxing lessons I'd found I had developed almost a phobia against using against a real person, one of the kicks at which I was becoming adept in practice on the punch bag. The only major memory from the yard over that time was when unloading the newly delivered carbon-fibre mast we accidentally punched out one of the workshop windows.

Most of all I suppose I remember the day I fulfilled my assignment for a sportswear shoot in Bristol. Two models, ten photographers and one organiser with each photographer getting 2 hours with one of the girls. My first was a 'Mr Cool' type type who said he wanted to bring a modern ironic eye to classic photos of the past - whereas I suspected he was a nasty little perv as I reprised the classic 'Tennis playing girl scratching her bum' poster.

† Transgender winner of Eurovision Song Contest in 1998
‡ In 1998 became the first long running transgender character in a British soap opera.